Magic The Gathering

[Krokodil Overdose]

A simple rewording of Party to make it significantly less retarded (and not contingent on creature types that haven't seen proper tribal support since fucking Onslaught) would be to make it a number ability, like Bolster or Echo. Format it like this: "Party of [number] - [Stuff happens] (Your party consists of up to one each of each creature type you control, to a maximum of [number].)" That way, you could also scale abilities to party size, and squeeze in the obligatory "party of 5" boomer humor.

The First iteration of Ally was a great "Fixed" Sliver mechanic.

The Party shit is an absolute abomination, for it to work in an EDH deck you will have to have..

The Good Party Support Cards
The Good cards in each Party Pie.
The Good EDH staples.

This will leave very little room for any tribal support (if there is any) for your 4 different tribes, which means your entire deck is very rarely ever going to work..because you either need to draw the 1/4 of your deck dedicated to a specific tribe..OR have 5 Different tribes on your field and a party payoff. This mechanic could have been made far better if you just have it be based on "Different creature types" instead of the "LUL DND TROPES"

FWIW, Rogues only ever saw tribal support in Morningtide, Wizards and Clerics haven't seen full-fledged tribal support since Onslaught, with a few exceptions (a handful of cards in Dominaria for Wizards, Battletide Alchemist for Clerics.) Warriors are the only creature type that have anything like modern tribal support, where they realized "hey, if you want this to function as a tribe, maybe we need a significant volume of support instead of just throwing in a half-dozen cards and calling it a day." So tribal support in those particular cases was going to be hit-or-miss anyway, and I think it's meant more to synergize with global buffs as opposed to trying to make all 4 tribes work for you as such.

Though a reverse coat of arms would be funny, where each creature gets a bonus for each other creature that shares no types with it.

For Party to be at all good, it needs to scale instead of being on/off depending on if you've completed your pokedex. Graveborn Muse and Sea Gate Loremaster are good examples of how to do this- fine by themselves, but better with friends. Of course, considering how often they've had [race] [class] Ally in the type line, they could have just done that- thrown in more of the Ally creature type without including any tribe-specific mechanics, just as a nod to something that tribal players actually liked from OG Zendikar.

 

[Flexo]

It would be easy to fix up ally cards by making them modal. Fuck, you could even blend it in with this mechanic - make a cleric ally that gets a benefit if you play a cleric. It gets a different benefit if you play an ally. Bang! You support an old archetype that was kindof fun in the original block in a way that's more creative than the scrap that was in bfz/ogw... and you can fit it in with this stupid hybrid-tribal idea.

Mark already addressed that in his article yesterday.

Before I wrap up for today, I do want to touch upon one last element of party. As I said above, the last two times we visited Zendikar, we captured the adventure party feel using Allies. As such, during vision design, we made sure that every Cleric, Rogue, Warrior, and Wizard was also an Ally. This was done so that Zendikar Rising would play nicely with your old Ally decks. The problem was Ally is a class type. Because of party, the creatures also had to have another class type. In addition, the classes needed a race. This proved to be pretty wordy, especially on legendary creatures, some of which the text wouldn't fit. Ally, itself, doesn't have much mechanical meaning in Zendikar Rising (there is one card that cares), so we were adding a lot of words for something that barely mattered in the set it was in. Sadly, that meant that we had to pull the Ally creature type, so Zendikar Rising doesn't have any Allies.​

Really, the 'party' idea should just be concerned about the number of different creatures you have with a creature type not shared by other creatures. Rather than picking four very specific tribes which, to me, don't even really make fucking sense - we've got warlocks, archers, monks, soldiers, knights... why are only -those four- types out adventuring? It just reads in such a clunky way, too. Yes, suggesting that a saproling is a party member is maybe weird, or that 100 saprolings only counts 1 towards the party is weird... but 1000 rogues also only count 1 towards the party.

Because like I already pointed out, one changeling screws the entire deck.

Also it would become a rules nightmare to basically define "different" - like does a "Kor Warrior" count as different from a "Kor Cleric"? What about from a "Kor Warrior Ally"? How do typeless creatures count?

Oh sure you can get this all ironed out - but to the satisfaction of all the autists playing magic? (much less how fun that would be to program into one of their digital versions)

Oh man if only there were spells with less than 3 mana that exist to kill creatures, sure you might be able to sneak it in all in one turn. But a 7 mana 3 Card Combo to oneshot one player? EHHHH

If it means there isn't a 200/200 on the field?

Also your plan now involves..3 Cards and an extra mana? This is an ETB trigger not a cast trigger. There are plenty of easy answers to this situation. Common ones.

There are plenty of easy answers to EVERY situation...


Oh man, I guess we just shouldn't even bother playing magic then. Only 71 cards can't be countered, so clearly we can't build a functioning deck. /sarc

Maybe you should just go play some YuGiOh.

A simple rewording of Party to make it significantly less retarded (and not contingent on creature types that haven't seen proper tribal support since fucking Onslaught) would be to make it a number ability, like Bolster or Echo. Format it like this: "Party of [number] - [Stuff happens] (Your party consists of up to one each of each creature type you control, to a maximum of [number].)" That way, you could also scale abilities to party size, and squeeze in the obligatory "party of 5" boomer humor.

Technically, they saw support in the Lorwyn block. (except cleric) i.e.

 

[Flexo]

For Party to be at all good, it needs to scale instead of being on/off depending on if you've completed your pokedex.

It... does. I've posted a few scaling cards to the thread already.

 

[Honka Honka Burning Love]

Oh man, I guess we just shouldn't even bother playing magic then. Only 71 cards can't be countered, so clearly we can't build a functioning deck. /sarc

Maybe you should just go play some YuGiOh.

There is a difference between "Oh my god this can be answered" and "Here is an easily answered edge case."

There is a reason Meld sucked ass, there is a reason Mutate has seen almost no play. If you are going to risk getting blown out Then the reward for it needs to be big.

A flying Fatty isn't really worth the risk when you can get blown out by Gutshot. Yes there are easy answers to every situation..but every single piece of instant speed interaction in the game is an answer for this, There is no world in which I would ever build a deck around party unless they reveal an absurdly good legend for it.

Meanwhile in the land of actually WHAT THE FUCK power.

Remember how steppe lynx was god damn absurd? WHELP THERE IS A RED ONE NOW because we can't go a standard cycle with Red Stompy being the easiest way to ladder in Arena. I know strange complaint but Mono-red aggro has been a deck since Amonkhet, it is time to give it a rest and maybe give burn a little time to shine.

Also in other Random complaints.

WOTC : "Mono-black can't have a good reanimation spell anymore, The best thing you can have is return a cheap dork or 2 for 3 so here have a 6 Costed creature that can't hit legendary creatures and your opponent chooses"
Also WOTC : Red can reanimate, Simic Can reanimate, Dimir Can reanimate Golgari Can reanimate..and all can do it better than Mono black.

Can we have at least one good 4 Mana Sorcery that says "Put target creature from the graveyard into play." a decade or so. Why the hell is it that Multi color cards do it better than the Mono colored black cards for a lesser mana cost.

 

[cuddle striker]

Morningtide, .

Fuck, take me back to lorwyn, already.

and good burn decks. and land destruction.

 

[Rich Evans Apologist]

Mark already addressed that in his article yesterday.

Before I wrap up for today, I do want to touch upon one last element of party. As I said above, the last two times we visited Zendikar, we captured the adventure party feel using Allies. As such, during vision design, we made sure that every Cleric, Rogue, Warrior, and Wizard was also an Ally. This was done so that Zendikar Rising would play nicely with your old Ally decks. The problem was Ally is a class type. Because of party, the creatures also had to have another class type. In addition, the classes needed a race. This proved to be pretty wordy, especially on legendary creatures, some of which the text wouldn't fit. Ally, itself, doesn't have much mechanical meaning in Zendikar Rising (there is one card that cares), so we were adding a lot of words for something that barely mattered in the set it was in. Sadly, that meant that we had to pull the Ally creature type, so Zendikar Rising doesn't have any Allies.​

This almost implies to me that Allies was designed by someone else who has left the company, and Mark placed the blame for BFZ's tremendous failure squarely on the idea of the mechanic rather than some dumb shit he pushed. OG zendikar... didn't have any legendary allies.

If anything, making a vampire warrior ally that "gets +1/+0 and intimidate whenever another warrior etbs & gets a +1/+1 counter whenever itself or another ally etbs" would be a simplistic enough design that you'd have absolutely no need for a legendary creature with, which could allow you to make tribal support carts for both Ally and for the various classes at once.

Because like I already pointed out, one changeling screws the entire deck.

Also it would become a rules nightmare to basically define "different" - like does a "Kor Warrior" count as different from a "Kor Cleric"? What about from a "Kor Warrior Ally"? How do typeless creatures count?

Oh sure you can get this all ironed out - but to the satisfaction of all the autists playing magic? (much less how fun that would be to program into one of their digital versions)

The main concern is that you allow each creature to count as up to one type. One of them gets to pick Kor, one of them gets to pick Warrior, and those two race/class combinations can't be picked again when trying to resolve a spell/effect that cares. A changeling then just becomes a free roll, since you can pick some ridiculous tribe.

This is still a clunky mechanic, but it's no less clunky than trying to force some weird synergy between 4 different tribes that have nothing to do with each other, necessarily split across different colors.

 

[Flexo]

Remember how steppe lynx was god damn absurd? WHELP THERE IS A RED ONE NOW because we can't go a standard cycle with Red Stompy being the easiest way to ladder in Arena.

"But it dies to removal..."

lol

You should see the r/g Steppe Lynx that has Haste and can't be chump blocked.

This almost implies to me that Allies was designed by someone else who has left the company, and Mark placed the blame for BFZ's tremendous failure squarely on the idea of the mechanic rather than some dumb shit he pushed.

Actually in his State of design for that year he blamed it on eldrazi.

If anything, making a vampire warrior ally that "gets +1/+0 and intimidate whenever another warrior etbs & gets a +1/+1 counter whenever itself or another ally etbs" would be a simplistic enough design that you'd have absolutely no need for a legendary creature with, which could allow you to make tribal support carts for both Ally and for the various classes at once.

Though I've been saying they need to streamline legendary for ages now.

The main concern is that you allow each creature to count as up to one type. One of them gets to pick Kor, one of them gets to pick Warrior, and those two race/class combinations can't be picked again when trying to resolve a spell/effect that cares. A changeling then just becomes a free roll, since you can pick some ridiculous tribe.

Then you're just doing what they're doing now. You may as well just say "per creature you have" by that point rather than force on the players extra bookkeeping. Especially if the board gets very large.

This is still a clunky mechanic, but it's no less clunky than trying to force some weird synergy between 4 different tribes that have nothing to do with each other, necessarily split across different colors

You're right it's not less, it's more clunky.

Looks like there is nu-threshold in the set too. (Several cards refer to "eight or more cards in graveyard")

 

[Rich Evans Apologist]

Actually in his State of design for that year he blamed it on eldrazi.

He also mentioned that the allies were too bland, if memory serves, and it appeared on certain cards (like Mina & Denn) which seemed to have no real relation to the concept. Both valid complaints about the block - the eldrazi being made ubiquitous and boring, the allies mechanic being stretched to a point of unlikability - but they don't detract from how you could have worked them in relatively easily without them being parasitic or completely detached from the rest of the set.

View attachment 1566323
Though I've been saying they need to streamline legendary for ages now.

Psssst. Drana wasn't an Ally in OG Zendikar. They don't need legendary Allies, which to begin with seemed at odds with the flavor of the idea.

Then you're just doing what they're doing now. You may as well just say "per creature you have" by that point rather than force on the players extra bookkeeping. Especially if the board gets very large.

You're right it's not less, it's more clunky.

How is it extra bookkeeping? Most of these cards max out on their party 'benefit' at 4. If I have two wizards, three soldiers, and a bird, I've got three. If I've got seventeen different combinations of classes, I've got functionally four.

And what they're doing now is forcing you to play warriors, clerics, wizards, and rogues for some dumb fucking benefit - if you let people play any combination of different creatures, these cards might actually see some play in decks that go moderately wide. As-is... yeah, wonderful, real flavorful, they're going to do fuckall and only fit into decks very very specifically tailored for those cards.

Just about the only hope for these cards in the standard format is that enough of these get printed that fit in a weenies-style deck that goes wide-enough that the deck would be fine enough on its own WITHOUT the party cards. If everything was on the power level of the new Linvala, then teh deck might see some use even if it doesn't give a single fuck about the party mechanic beyond as a very very very rare upside.

 

[Flexo]

He also mentioned that the allies were too bland, if memory serves, and it appeared on certain cards (like Mina & Denn) which seemed to have no real relation to the concept. Both valid complaints about the block - the eldrazi being made ubiquitous and boring, the allies mechanic being stretched to a point of unlikability - but they don't detract from how you could have worked them in relatively easily without them being parasitic or completely detached from the rest of the set.

Nope.

https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/state-design-2016-2016-08-29

No mention of ally in there at all. Maybe you saw it on his tumblr?

Psssst. Drana wasn't an Ally in OG Zendikar. They don't need legendary Allies, which to begin with seemed at odds with the flavor of the idea.

She was in BFZ, along with 5 other legends.

How is it extra bookkeeping? Most of these cards max out on their party 'benefit' at 4. If I have two wizards, three soldiers, and a bird, I've got three. If I've got seventeen different combinations of classes, I've got functionally four.

Yeah, the way they do it now. You didn't specify any limit in your rules proposal, you just said different types. (See how fun it is to try and write rules for non-mind readers?)

And what they're doing now is forcing you to play warriors, clerics, wizards, and rogues for some dumb fucking benefit - if you let people play any combination of different creatures, these cards might actually see some play in decks that go moderately wide. As-is... yeah, wonderful, real flavorful, they're going to do fuckall and only fit into decks very very specifically tailored for those cards.

So again, you just want "effect per creature" with some kind of extra bookkeeping on it.

Try it. Grab like a jumpstart pack and throw the creatures from it on the table. It's a lot faster to go through them with a checklist of "do I have __?" than it is to figure out "how many divergences do i have?"

Trust me, you can ask any programmer which search takes more computer cycles to perform.

Just about the only hope for these cards in the standard format is that enough of these get printed that fit in a weenies-style deck that goes wide-enough that the deck would be fine enough on its own WITHOUT the party cards. If everything was on the power level of the new Linvala, then teh deck might see some use even if it doesn't give a single fuck about the party mechanic beyond as a very very very rare upside.

So far every creature referencing party is a member of. So 90% of the time what you activate/play/etc will get 1 effect off itself. (The spells requiring party look overpriced so far, considering they essentially have an extra cost of "have 4 creatures" - like that red instant).

 

[Rich Evans Apologist]

Nope.

https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/state-design-2016-2016-08-29

No mention of ally in there at all. Maybe you saw it on his tumblr?



She was in BFZ, along with 5 other legends.


Yeah, the way they do it now. You didn't specify any limit in your rules proposal, you just said different types. (See how fun it is to try and write rules for non-mind readers?)


So again, you just want "effect per creature" with some kind of extra bookkeeping on it.

Try it. Grab like a jumpstart pack and throw the creatures from it on the table. It's a lot faster to go through them with a checklist of "do I have __?" than it is to figure out "how many divergences do i have?"

Trust me, you can ask any programmer which search takes more computer cycles to perform.


So far every creature referencing party is a member of. So 90% of the time what you activate/play/etc will get 1 effect off itself. (The spells requiring party look overpriced so far, considering they essentially have an extra cost of "have 4 creatures" - like that red instant).

Let me sum this all up for you: you're defending shitty mechanics because ???

Maybe it was on his Tumblr, idk. Most people regard the BFZ allies as shit (they are) compared to OG allies, who tended to be threats themselves and have big payoffs in big numbers. Rather than "when ~ etbs, get a shitty keyword" they also included effects like bala ged thief, murasa pyromancer, hagra diabolist, tuktuk scrapper, sea gate loremaster, etc. There were a lot of allies that grew into bigger threats, whose effects scaled tremendously the more allies you had.

The newer ones were shit. Their card advantage elements are shit compared to the original ones, their abilities to pump the team and present threats are shit compared to the original ones, and they tend to be overcosted for all the more they actually do.

BFZ legendary allies are not OG Zendikar. This one really should be self-evident. You don't need legendary allies, and Drana doesn't need to be an ally again if you're going to use it as a reason to avoid printing allies because "it would be parasitic and too many words" after a set with fucking mutate. Y'know, where the big legendary things were LEGENDARY CREATURE - X Y Z and the mutate rules text.

I thought of formatting for how to shove allies in. "Whenever ~ or another creature that shares a type with it etbs, do thing." Viola! It's even thematic. Now a vampire wizard ally will coodinate with vampires, with wizards, and with allies! So your vampire wizard ally can work with a human warrior ally like... heyyy, isn't that kindof what they were going for in the first place?
-
I don't specify the number of different types because every single card that involves this mechanic has had 4 as its top-level cap. You could preserve that with "up to the total number of creatures you control or 4, whichever is lower" phrased more elegantly. "For each creature you control, select up to one of its types. Each distinct type you are able to select, up to a maximum of 4, grants you <bonus>. A bonus of 4 is considered a full party." You could phrase that differently for state-based effects, though I tend to prefer this mechanic as one that modifies snapshotted instances - on cast, on resolution, on etb, etc. Really, I would prefer 5 as the 'maximum' party size aesthetically, but whatever.

It's also fucking easier to count types. ESPECIALLY if you're thinking about arena. "Do I have an X?" requires searching ALLLLLLLLLLLLLLL of your card instances until you get it. So if your only wizard is at the very bottom of the stack, you're sitting there until it finds it.

The only way around this would be to specifically flag instances of these 4 creatures in a separate variable every single time one enters or leaves or has its type changed from the battlefield - you'd have to have a secret line of code on every single card EVER that has these types to do so, though, and you'd have a real nightmare when thinking about something like arcane adaptation.
Otherwise, you're asking some wotc mook to fix the knapsack problem - if I hand you a bag of 100 different random creature tokens, can you know without looking at every single one which combinations will add up to 4 of the applicable types?

What's more likely - that four random creatures have some distinction from each other, or that four random creatures are these exact, specific types?
What's more likely - that your wizard token is the 100th in the stack of different tokens, or that your first 99 tokens don't yield 4 distinct tribes/classes?
If my first 3 tokens are a rogue, a warrior, and a cleric, how do I know if there's a wizard in the other 97 or not?

"Do I have this many distinct creatures?" only becomes complicated when you try to compile all different permutations. IE, what are the distinct sets if I select 'kor' instead of 'cleric' for my first card? Maybe I picked Kor for it, but now I've got a creature that's just a kor. So I'll go back and pick cleric. Did I pick cleric on any of the other cards? It's a little cumbersome at times for a human to do, but you're only trying to hit 4.

For a computer, it's fucking easy to do with so small of numbers. Make a pool {distinct tribes} and for each creature, you look at its tribes. You can make a simple flowchart of each possible permutation and selection. If you pick tribe A, it knows to ignore all instances of A in that decision tree and keeps going until it reaches the number 4. It can compute every single decision tree in this regard quickly, and choose the optimal configuration - and even figure out quickly if one leaves the battlefield whether you've still got the right amount. It's a little more cumbersome for humans to map out that decision tree, but A) you're only going to 4 and B ) you're able to slot these cards into any deck now, rather than one specifically built around these 4 dumb tribes.

(Cards with no tribe nor class would simply not count towards any total. That one's easy to resolve.)

The red instant is draft chaff, same as the Shepherd of Heroes. Thusfar Linvala and Archpriest of Iona look good, because they're aggressively statted. You can ignore Linvala's detain effect, and so long as you run the Archpriest with one of the three other ones, it's a 2/2 for 1.

 

[Opiophile]

With the addition of D&D shit into the game, how long until WotC decides to try a set themed after another very popular Hasbro IP? I mean...come on, lots of autists play Magic, so I would imagine going to the My Little Pony plane would be very successful with tards, troons and children. What a coincidence, those are WotC's three favorite categories of it's playerbase! The straight white male nerd who makes up a massive majority of the playerbase, and the people who supported the game throughout the years are barely a distant memory for WotC at this point.

We'll never get another Innistrad or Invasion block again, and all we'll have to look forward to is what shitty Hasbro IP are they going to shoehorn into the game, and how many trans/gay/lesbo characters are they going to introduce this time?

 

[Honka Honka Burning Love]

With the addition of D&D shit into the game, how long until WotC decides to try a set themed after another very popular Hasbro IP?

2022, this is going to be a yearly thing I bet because WOTC is so creatively bankrupt that they just gave up on core sets again to do this.

 

[cuddle striker]

please stop arguing about shit mechanics, it's making a plagued thread.

Maro fucks up continually, always has. I love when he non-answers direct questions.

 

[Memento Malum]

So theres now a DFC land that can enter untapped. (Gotta pay 3 life, but still) Why would I ever not run those over basics? Literal zero oppurtunity cost to have a land thats also a spell late game.

 

[Salt_Merchant]

So theres now a DFC land that can enter untapped. (Gotta pay 3 life, but still) Why would I ever not run those over basics? Literal zero oppurtunity cost to have a land thats also a spell late game.

i mean in standard the only real reason to not just run 4 of these in every deck is dollars.


If i remember correctly its mythic rare right, so its a mythic rare land that will be a 4 of in every deck that can run it............


really gets your noggin joggin

 

[Honka Honka Burning Love]

So theres now a DFC land that can enter untapped. (Gotta pay 3 life, but still) Why would I ever not run those over basics? Literal zero oppurtunity cost to have a land thats also a spell late game.

Depends on the meta, if there is an aggro deck in the meta..3 life can matter. Especially if you never intend on casting the other card.

In other news..Despite being autistic as hell..Secret Lair Yargle is probably one of the better secret lairs in terms of art and flavor text.

Quite frankly the Fatal Push art might be my favorite art for that card so far.



The flavor Text on anger of the gods is

"Eating those Clerics may have been a bad idea."

which made me snicker.

 

[cuddle striker]

Depends on the meta, if there is an aggro deck in the meta..3 life can matter. Especially if you never intend on casting the other card.

In other news..Despite being autistic as hell..Secret Lair Yargle is probably one of the better secret lairs in terms of art and flavor text.

Quite frankly the Fatal Push art might be my favorite art for that card so far.

View attachment 1571251

The flavor Text on anger of the gods is

"Eating those Clerics may have been a bad idea."

which made me snicker.

yargle! yeah that's good art.
It's a bad habit from playing too long but I don't like the idea of a bolt land. Hell I don't like the idea of a shock land. Bolting yourself feels like a bad idea for the manabase you've gotta rely on. You'll eventually run into a burn or direct damage deck.

 

[Honka Honka Burning Love]

Hell I don't like the idea of a shock land.

I love the shock lands, they are basically perfectly powered as Dual Lands with the land types, I've been saying for ages that they should just be in core sets just to protect the game from the stupid Maro bullshit of "we never print full god damn land cycles if they are actually good" *COUGH FLIP LAAANDS*

 

[Rich Evans Apologist]

I mean, against aggro or burn decks, you can just regard the card as a tapped land with an emergency-only 3-life-to-untap. 7 mana sorc to get 8 p/t on two bodies with another marginal upside isn't the worst thing, and I could see it being run in control decks ubiquitously because of that low opportunity cost. Maybe midrange decks, if any are allowed to exist? And if the Heliod white lifegain-aggro deck is out there, seems like it'd fit in there just as well. Largely because it's either a passable land OR a finisher, it just has a feeling of inevitability. Any deck that can afford to play a land tapped or has marginal life gain can afford to swap out a plains or two for this bad boy.

The red version got spoiled, which is XRR deal X divided among <=2 creatures/planeswalkers. If X>=6, double the damage. Unlike the white one, this can't close out the game and is basically just removal stapled to a land -- feels like this might've been the better approach.

Also, uhh. I'll fully admit I'm not a huge fan of black getting specific, unconditional enchantment removal. Doesn't really feel like eroding the color pie further is something that the current design team should have in its bag of tricks.

I love the shock lands, they are basically perfectly powered as Dual Lands with the land types, I've been saying for ages that they should just be in core sets just to protect the game from the stupid Maro bullshit of "we never print full god damn land cycles if they are actually good" *COUGH FLIP LAAANDS*

If core sets just rotated between shocks and checks, the world would be a better place. Seems like they figured out "shocks + fetches in standard makes for a miserable bog soup," but refuse to acknowledge that the blame mostly lies on shocks. Or they're insanely stubborn about only printing shocks in Ravnica sets, which is plenty stupid.

 

[Honka Honka Burning Love]

I mean, against aggro or burn decks, you can just regard the card as a tapped land with an emergency-only 3-life-to-untap. 7 mana sorc to get 8 p/t on two bodies with another marginal upside isn't the worst thing,

It isn't the most terrible thing on the planet, but it is real bad against burn/aggro. You basically never want to draw it outside of your opening hand against those two decks.

In EDH these will be good, in Standard they will be fine-ish..in any format with a real burn deck these are gonna be pretty bad, so they will be okay in History/Pioneer for now..until the card pool gets large enough for red to have a real burn deck.

Also, uhh. I'll fully admit I'm not a huge fan of black getting specific, unconditional enchantment removal. Doesn't really feel like eroding the color pie further is something that the current design team should have in its bag of tricks.

On one hand, I agree with you. On the other hand..it is a 3 mana, sorcery with life loss attached. Black being able to do anything it wants at the price of Life is pretty consistent in the color pie, and the card is NOT GOOD.


Edit : Watched the SSG VS live VODs and uhh..the Green Card that is 2G : Return a card from Graveyard to your hand or a ETB Tapped Green land was freaking absurd.

That might be The One.