magusofthefork

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My thoughts on Maros MH2 Teaser

Just thought I would go over some of Maros teasers and write my thoughts about them. Will revist later once we know the answers to these teasers. I won’t be going over every teaser.

• a theme on only a handful of cards in Modern Horizons gets a larger presence

Not sure what this could be as there were a lot of themese in MH1. I think the one I’d like to see more of is the “lands in graveyard” theme as we’ve had bits of it across magics history but never really enough to build a deck around.

• a Frog twenty-six years in the making

This one interests me. 26 years in the making implies this frog has been around as an idea for almost the entire history of magic. I’d love to hear the design story behind it

• a Future Sight mechanic reused for first time

There are still a lot of Future Sight mechanics that have yet to be used again. I’m hoping for Transfigure and for the sake of the modern format I am hoping its not Gravestorm because that mechanic is so hard to balance that it could easily cause another Hogaak situation.

• a white enchantment with a trigger that investigates

If this is good and can generate multiple clues it’ll probably become a commander staple. White is stil really hurting for card draw.

• “for each other Ooze you control.”

More Ooze tribal? Awesome. I wonder if we’ll get an Ooze commander

• “If an ability of a <CENSORED> or another <CENSORED> you control triggers, that ability triggers an additional time.”

I am guessing the censored bits here are creature types or potentially one of them is a card type (ie if the ability of an artifact or another artificer you control). Could be a very powerful card and if I’m right about the censored bits being types could potentiall have some interesting shenanigans when combined with things that can change the cards type.

• “you may sacrifice a Mountain rather than pay this spell’s mana cost.”

This is one of the cards more likely to be overpowered. Cheating on mana costs is almost always really powerful.

• “Trample over planeswalkers”

This is a weird one. Does this mean if a creature hits a planeswalker with less loyalty than its power the rest will hit the player? If so I’m all for it. I do like getting more answers to planeswalkers.

• “If an Insect card was milled this way,”

Insect tribal stuff? I don’t think we’ve ever had that. I wonder what insect tribal will do. We don’t currently have a dedicated self mill tribe (zombies kinda like it but thats just because they like graveyards not because they like specifically self mill) this could be fun. Not sure if there will be enough here for a full deck though.

• “Protection from permanents with corruption counters on them”

Corruption counters is a cool idea. I could imagine that being a major set mechanic in future with decks that corrupt their own creatures for a benefit and cards that gain bonuses against corrupted creatures. Would fit a New Phyrexia set quite well.

• Creature – Dauthi Rogue

Oh Dauthi, haven’t seen them in a while. I assume this will be a monoblack creature with Shadow.  Will probably do something like make the opponent mill when it deals combat damage.

• Creature – Elemental Incarnation

I wonder if this will be a new cycle similar to the old elemental incarnation cycle

• Artifact Creature – Clue Myr

This will be the Myr/Clue equivilent of Gingerbrute. I like Gingerbrute so I’ll probably like this one too.

• Tribal Artifact – Lhurgoyf

This feels like an attempt to buff Tarmogoyf since getting it in the graveyard will give the goyfs +2/+2.

• Legendary Creature – Merfolk God

I bet Prof is happy with this. Probably Simic or Bant colour ID but castable in monoblue so it can be a decent lord in modern and also a good Commander for Merfolk tribal.

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Who, What, When, Where, Why?

Saw this recently and it kinda bugs me. The color pie as changed since this was made and the colors for this don’t quite feel right. Also why is white life gain when the other modes are all removal? If I were to redesign this card now I’d make it like this: Who - 3B - Destroy target creature What - 1G - Destroy target artifact When - 2U - Counter target noncreature spell Where - 4R - Destroy target land Why - W - Destroy target enchantment Deals with every card type bar Planeswalkers (and the weird ones but we don’t count those) Not trying to dunk on the original card or anything just something I wanted to say about it.

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Wizards has now made this into a secret lair.

What are the chances of Full-Text Basics for the next Unset?

Is that something you all would want?

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Doing some maths on Temple of the False God

With Temple of the False God being in all the Strixhaven commander decks I’ve been seeing people talk about whether or not this card is good. With some claiming you should never run it in any deck.

I run this card in my sea monsters deck. Not because I think its good but because its Kiora themed and I like the deck to run Kiora themed cards in it. So because its a card I am actually playing in a deck I’d like to find out for myself how good or bad it actually is.

So its time for some maths.

What I decided to do was try to find out how frequently this land was useless in a normal game of edh because that seems like the most important bit to me.

So first we have to define what the failure states are for Temple of the False God. The card requires you to have five lands in play (including itself) in order to tap it for mana. This means temple of the false god is bad if its your 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th land in a game.

This means that the failure states would be if you have it as your only available land for the turn among your first 4 lands in the game. Which means we have 4 possible failure states. - You have drawn exactly 1 land by turn 1 and its Temple of the False God.

- You have drawn exactly 1 or 2 lands by turn 2 and one of them is Temple of the False God.

- You have drawn exactly 1, 2 or 3 lands by turn 3 and one of them is Temple of the False God.

- You have drawn exactly 1, 2, 3 or 4 lands by turn 4 and one of them is Temple of the False God.

(Note: The reason it works out like this is because if you have drawn 2 lands by turn 2 and one of them is the Temple that means you had to play the Temple as a land drop either on turn 1 or turn 2. If you had drawn 3 lands by turn 2 though you can keep temple in your hand instead.)

So to calculate the chances for each of these failure states we need to do a hypergeometric distribution to work out the chance of drawing exactly X lands by turn X then multiply it by the chance that one of those lands is temple of the false god (X/Y where Y is the number of lands in your deck).

I did these calculations 3 times. One for decks with 40 lands, one for decks with 36 lands and one for decks with 32 lands. This should cover the range of most casual edh decks. I assumed no mulligans were taken, 1 card was drawn per turn and no land ramp was played.

Here are my Results:

This means the failure rate for Temple of the False God is about 7.57%. Getting mana screwed by Temple of the False God roughly once every 13 games in a 40 land deck might sound high but for comparison the chance of just missing a land drop by turn 4 under the same conditons is 27.4%* (This is why card draw, ramp and mulligans are so important!). *This is the chance of drawing 3 or less land by turn 4 in a 40 land deck with no card draw, no ramp and no mulligans.

Once you start factoring the things I didn’t like card draw, land ramp and mullgians the failure rate just gets lower so why do people have such a dislike for this card? Quite simply I think its because the failures are much more noticable than the successes. When you do get screwed by the Temple you remember it but the times where you got it later on and got some extra value out of the mana are not as memorable.

So is the card bad? No I don’t think it is. It has a pretty low failure rate so its unlikely to cause problems in most decks. Whether or not you should run it in your deck depends on if you think the benefit is worth that failure rate. For some decks it won’t be. For my sea monsters deck which has a lot of card draw and land ramp in it as well as a lot of high cmc creatures I think its worth it.

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The Colleges of Strixhaven

I saw a leak today with information on Strixhaven and using that with a few reasonable assumptions I have potentially worked out what the colours of the colleges will be. If you don’t want info from leaks then skip this post but if you don’t mind and are curious then click on through.

The leak we got was from a website that had pre-orders up with a little synopsis of the set. Here is the leak:

and this is the important bit for this post:

So we have the names of the colleges and we know they are 2-colour. This doesn’t seem like much to go on but one thing stood out to me (and from what I’ve heard a bunch of other people). Witherbloom is one of the colleges. This name screams Golgari to me. Others have taken this to mean that the set will be Enemy Colours however something else stood out to me. Witherbloom is #4 on the list. Wizards always lists guild combinations in WUBRG order so assuming that hasn’t changed this would mean it can’t be simply the enemy colour guilds as that would put Witherbloom 3rd not 4th. Using just these two assumptions (Witherbloom is Golgari and The Colleges are listed here in WUBRG order) we can actually narrow this down to just 2 possible combinations and a 3rd assumption I’ll get onto later gives us just 1. So if I have worked this out right then I may have just worked out exactly what the colours of the colleges are!

So where do we begin. Well first of all I said that we are assuming Witherbloom is Golgari. Silverquill - Lorehold - Prismari - Witherbloom - BG Quandrix - The second assumption I made was that this list would be in WUBRG order. As Witherbloom is 4th here that means that Quandrix can only be the two guilds that appear after Witherbloom; Boros and Simic.

In order to maintain colour balance we also know that it has to be a 3-2 or 2-3 split between Ally and Enemy colours (going 4-1 forces you to be full Ally or Full Enemy). This means Silverquill and Lorehold have to be ally colours. We also know that WU is first in WUBRG order, so to maintain that order Lorehold cannot be WU. If WU is present is has to be Silverquill With the same logic Silverquill can’t be GW because that is the last ally colour and Lorehold has to be an Ally. We also know that Prismari can’t be WU or UB because it needs at least two ally guilds before it.

That leaves us with the colleges looking like this: Silverquill - WU, UB, BR, RG Lorehold - UB, BR, RG, GW Prismari - BR, RG, GW, WB, UR Witherbloom - BG Quandrix - RW, GU

The next thing to look at is Quandrix. It only has 2 possibilities so we can examine both. If Quandrix is GU we then know that the other 3 colleges can’t be green So that would give us this:

Silverquill - WU, UB, BR Lorehold - UB, BR Prismari - BR, WB, UR Witherbloom - BG Quandrix - GU

This doesn’t work. If you haven’t noticed the two colours we need among the three remaining colleges are red and white, which means one of the three remaining would have to be red and white and that option isn’t there (because RW comes after BG in the colour order).

That means Quandrix can’t be GU so it must be RW as that is the only other option.

With Quandrix being RW blue is the only absent colour which must appear twice among the three remaining colleges. That gives us something that looks like this: Silverquill - WU, UB, BR, RG Lorehold - UB, BR, RG, GW Prismari - BR, RG, GW, WB, UR Witherbloom - BG Quandrix - RW

The possible blue combinations are: Silverquill is WU and Lorehold is UB Silverquill is WU and Prismari is UR Silverquill is UB and Prismari is UR Loredhold is UB and Prismari is UR

We can already eliminated one of these. If Lorehold is UB then Silverquill has to be WU as it is the only colour combo to come before UB in wubrg order. So that means the 4th in the list is wrong. We can also eliminate the second one here. Having Silverquill as WU and Prismari as UR would mean the only colours not used twice et are black and green, we already have a black and green college so this doesn’t work.

That leaves us with two options: Silverquill is WU and Lorehold is UB Silverquill is UB and Prismari is UR

First if Silverquill is WU and Lorehold is UB, the remaining unused colours are red and green. Which gives us:

Silverquill - WU Lorehold - UB Prismari - RG Witherbloom - BG Quandrix - RW

Second if Silverquill is UB and Prismari is UR, the remaining unused colours are green and white which gives us:

Silverquill - UB Lorehold - GW Prismari - UR Witherbloom - BG Quandrix - RW

Some of you may have noticed something here. The second option of these has been done before. This was the combination done in Guilds of Ravnica. I do not believe wizards would want to repeat a combination this close together. This is my 3rd assumption that nicely leads us to only one possibility: Silverquill - WU Lorehold - UB Prismari - RG Witherbloom - BG Quandrix - RW 

I think this actually works quite well with all the names, at least none of them jump out at me as not making sense. So I am quite happy with this prediction. Of course I could be totally wrong with all of this, especially if one of my assumptions turns out to be wrong but this didn’t take me too long and  was actually quite fun to do so I don’t mind if it turns out I’m wrong. Either way I’ll reblog this post when we know the answer (If I remember) regardless of whether I’m right or wrong. I hope this was easy enough to follow for people. Its not easy to know if your own logic makes sense to other people.

So let me know what you all think of this and if you have your own ideas of what the colleges are I would love to hear it.

[magusofthefork]

I made a meme deck for Standard based on Tibalt’s Trickery. Let me know what you guys think! Explanation of the combo: The combo works by mulliganing to Tormod's Crypt and Tibalt's Trickery and casting them both, countering the crypt with the trickery. When you counter Tormod's Crypt you'll get one of the following: - If you hit Yidaro you get to attack your opponent with an 8/8 trample haste. - If you hit Valki you get to cast the other side of the card Tibalt, Cosmic Imposter which on turn 2 is insanely strong. - If you hit Emergent Ultimatum you cast it and pick Yidaro and Valki from your deck. Your opponent has to let you cast one of them. - You hit another Tibalt's Trickery. This is a 20% chance (3/15) this happens and if it does you probably lose the game. If you get Tibalt's Trickery but not Tormod's Crypt in your opening hand you can instead go for the play of putting Zirda in your hand and then playing and countering Zirda on turn 5. Its slower but even on turn 5 it should still be a pretty strong play, especially if you went first. There is a roughley 37% (7/19) chance you hit Tormod's Crypt or Tibalt's Trickery off of this play, if this happens you probably lose.

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Enjoy this dumb meme I made out of this card.

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So lets see what I got right:

• A white creature that can make an opponent lose the game simply by attacking them no matter how much life they have

So on the first one I was pretty close. It is a lifegain effect that makes an opponent lost the game its a mythic but its only 5 cmc not 6 and it happens at the end of turn but does require attacking. And you win if you have enough life. I don't know why I put the opponent thing because it literally couldn't be that from the clue. That was dumb of me.

• A multicolor creature that lets you repeatedly reanimate permanents out of your opponent’s graveyard for no mana

I was wrong about this one. It actually doesn't work well in commander due to basically being a Ninja (and not having commander ninjitsu), its also probably not super powerful and it doesn't have 3 colours. I was right about it being dimir colors though, I just thought it would also be white or green.

• Three creatures with five creature types

Wizards surprised me with this one and actually did make a mechanic that applies to 3 creatures They just have 3 creatures that are every party type.

• An artifact granting +2/+2 to a subset of creatures that first appeared in Alpha

this one disappointed me, I was hoping batching would be a thing but no its just artifact creatures. I got this completely wrong but I'm just disappointed by the card.

• X being used for a variable it’s never been used for before

This one I got 100% right. It was referring to using X to count how many creatures are in your party so yeah its counting creature types.

• a 6/6 artifact creature that costs 3 and a 7/5 artifact creature that can cost 3

Right on both accounts here. First one requries milling and the second is just a cost reduction. They sounded like simple designs and they were.

• The return of four mana symbols that have each only ever been used on two cards before

So I was right about it being 2brid but there are no eldrazi in this set, I was right about the missing color being white though but for the wrong reason, it was tazris activated ability so white is missing as she is already white (and they clearly just wanted a party commander that had a 5 color identity but didn't require all 5 colors to play so players could just do like bant party or something)

• Lands that come with a choice you’ve never had before

This one wasn't much of a prediction as it was me vageuly remembering a leak.

• Targeted enchantment removal in black

I was half right on this, it was an instant/sorcery that destroys a creature or enchantment but its not particularly overcosted. I think I was still right about it mostly just being a limited/commander card though. I've not seen people play it in standard yet.

• A red/white creature with a line of rules text that starts with “Whenever” and ends with “draw a card”

It was actually just an equipment themed card that lets you draw cards if you play with its theme.

• A card with three different activated abilities that all copy something

Pretty much spot on with this one. Its a mythic artifact that copies spells, abilities and token copies of creatures. The only thing I didn't get was that its any perfmanent not just creatures. Close enough though.

Here are snippets of rules text, you’ll see:

• “three plus”

• “different converted mana cost X or less”

Didn't answer the first 2 here.

• “equal to 20 minus”

Oh hey it basically was a deaths shadow nice guess past me.

• “Cowards can’t block Warriors”

Not a prediction but a hope that it was a new card and it was! yay!

•  “don’t lose unspent red mana”

I was kinda right with this, it would technically work without that line but its effect would be much weaker. I don't think they'd print it without that line.

• “twice the number of equipment”

It was just Nahiri, this was pointed out to me already. I assumed Maro would know what was already spoiled but it turned out he didn't.

• “If it’s the third time”

I didn't make a prediction here, just a hope that it ended with this turn and it did! Omnath was still a pain in the arse though but for different reasons.

And finally, here are some creature type lines you’ll see:

• Mouse

• Leviathan Crab

• Shapeshifter Rogue

• Demon Cleric

• Wurm Horror

• Hydra Horror

• Cat Horror

• Angel Wizard

Again there were no eldrazi, zendikar just has some weird creatures on it apparently.

So I got some right, some wrong and some way off. Not great but not too bad. This was fun though. I look forward to doing it again.

Maros clues for Zendikar Rising.

For fun I thought I’d go over Maros clues and comment on them. If I remember I’ll revisit this post later and compare my thoughts to what the actual set looks like.

• A white creature that can make an opponent lose the game simply by attacking them no matter how much life they have

So this is a creature with an attack trigger or maybe a damage trigger that can make a player lose the game. Considering its in white this is probably something to do with lifegain like “whenever ~ deals combat damage to a player if that player has less life than you they lose the game”. It’ll probably be a mythic and at least 6 cmc.

• A multicolor creature that lets you repeatedly reanimate permanents out of your opponent’s graveyard for no mana

This will be one of the “hey look commander players, heres a fun new commander for you!” cards of the set. If Maro is being literal when he says permanents then it’ll be an esper or sultai creature if he just means it could be any permanent (like its something that takes artifacts for example) then it could be any color combination but I’m certain it’ll be blue. It’ll also probably be super high power level for commander.

• Three creatures with five creature types

I can’t see 5 creature types fitting on the typeline so it could be an ability granting types like changeling but as its only 3 creatures I don’t think thats likely. New mechanics are usually on more cards than that. I think what is more likely is these creatures are DFCs with different types on each side that when you add both sides together results in 5 creature types. We already have a DFC creature with 4 types. Lone Rider is a Human Knight on its front side and an Eldrazi Horror on the back.

• An artifact granting +2/+2 to a subset of creatures that first appeared in Alpha

My first thought is that this would just be giving a creature type +2/+2 that exists on both Zendikar and Dominaria BUT why did maro say “subset” instead of “type”? Maybe its defenders or something I could be reading too much into it. Or maybe they are finally batching creature types and its something that buffs horses, unicorns and pegasus? I can hope.

• X being used for a variable it’s never been used for before

Based on the prevelance of them in other hints I’m just gonna go with “Creature Types”. Like an equipment that gives +X/+X where X is how many creature types it has. Can’t really think of what else it could be. Most countable variables that I could see being used in a black bordered set have been used at this point.

• a 6/6 artifact creature that costs 3 and a 7/5 artifact creature that can cost 3

The former will have some sort of huge downside similar to Lupine Prototype or has some cost restriction like Myr Superion. The latter will just have a cost reduction ability.

• The return of four mana symbols that have each only ever been used on two cards before

This intrigues me because its only 4 mana symbols. 2brid mana fits this description as there was 1 cycle of 2brid cards and 1 5-color 2brid card which makes 2 of each BUT if only four mana symbols are returning that means one of the colors has dropped off and isn’t going to appear. My best guess would be that this is going to be used to represent remnant eldrazi drones taking on color as they merge into the natural environment of the plane and that white is the missing color in the cycle.

• Lands that come with a choice you’ve never had before

I heard someone else mention DFC lands at some point in Zendikar Rising. I don’t know if it was a leak or a rumour or something maro previously said but it would fit this clue. You can either play as one side or the other.

• Targeted enchantment removal in black

Presumably it’ll be an instant or sorcery with “Destroy target creature or enchantment an opponent controls” and it’ll be a bit overcosted so it only sees play in commander and standard/limited sideboards so 4 or 5 mana.

• A red/white creature with a line of rules text that starts with “Whenever” and ends with “draw a card”

That line of text is “Whenever ~ attacks each opponent may draw a card” because wizards hates boros players. I’m kidding. It’ll probably be something that gives the opponent a choice though so when it triggers the opponent has to pay some mana or take some damage and if they don’t you draw a card.

• A card with three different activated abilities that all copy something

I think this will be a rare/mythic artifact. The abilities will be Copy a spell, Copy an Ability or Create a token copy of a creature. It could also be a legendary creature in which case each of the abilities will definitely require different colors to use so that the commanders color id is 3-5 colors

Here are snippets of rules text, you’ll see:

• “three plus”

This could be any number of things. No idea.

• “different converted mana cost X or less”

This one sounds really weird. It reads so weird I’m not even sure what it means.

• “equal to 20 minus”

This will reference life total in someway. Like Deaths shadow.

• “Cowards can’t block Warriors”

I love this line of text and I really hope this is on a new card and not just another reprint of Boldwyr Intimidator.

•  “don’t lose unspent red mana”

A nongreen card that lets you keep mana for longer than a phase? Interesting. This is probably on a card that wouldn’t work well if it didn’t have this line so they chose to bend the color pie a bit for it.

• “twice the number of equipment”

Well we already know from Nahiris card there is an equipment subtheme. This will likely be the payoff card for drafting/building an equipment deck.

• “If it’s the third time”

I hope this ends with “this turn”. While I love Yidaro I do not like the idea of more cards that require tracking how many times you have done something across multiple turns. It quickly becomes a pain in the arse to track.

And finally, here are some creature type lines you’ll see:

• Mouse

• Leviathan Crab

• Shapeshifter Rogue

• Demon Cleric

• Wurm Horror

• Hydra Horror

• Cat Horror

• Angel Wizard

There are quite a few horrors here. I wonder if they are Eldrazi related or something new. I am also looking forward to “Leviathan Crab” that sounds great.

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They were also added as box toppers that are too do with zendikar and not in the set. I’d say I was pretty close with my predictions.

Are fetches going to be printed in Zendikar?

People are speculating whether the next Zendikar set will have fetch lands. I believe we are going to get fetch lands with the release of Zendikar but they won’t be in the set and won’t be standard legal. They will be in whatever zendikars mythic edition or collectors bundle is, possibly with new art and sold at a really high price.

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Zendikar Sealed

I decided to try out Sealed on Arena. See how it compares to Draft. As with most formats sealed is basically just Draft but a little worse.

First Pool I got this

So I pretty much knew straight away what colours I was going to be in. Even if the rest of the pool for the colour sucks I was 100% going to be playing white. Looking over the commons/uncommons blue sucked, red had a lot of good removal but no threats and there were almost no black cards at all. Plenty of decent white and green so I went selesnya and splashed black for Nissa and a Feed the Swarm (may as well).

The decK:

So this is the deck I ended up with. This is one of the reasons I prefer draft over sealed. I had a mix of +1/+1 counter synergies, party synergies and landfall synergies. So building the deck was fairly difficult as I didn’t have one dominant strategy to focus on. I leaned towards landfall in the end because my best rares use it. (ooze usually just dies anyway).

I did okay, I went 4-3 (sorry for no screenshot I accidentally clicked through). Nissa was actually surprisingly weak as bombs go which surprised me. If you can’t get her loyalty up she doesn’t do an awful lot. Which I actually like. I don’t think planeswalkers should be super bombs. I assume Jace is weak in limited too, though I know nahiri is insane with the right equipment.

Felidar Retreat was as insane as you’d imagine. I don’t think I lost a game with it in play. The flexibility of turning land into 2/2s or +1/+1 counters for the entire board is exceptionally strong and as a bonus it just gives you creatures vigilance when it buffs them.

My last opponent the game was really close and I screwed up. They had Zargas and the 3/3 ping wizard in play which is a disfustingly good combination but they were at 4 with a single blocker. I had nissa in hand and the 1/1 that puts a +1/+1 counter on a creature. I played the creature and then Nissa and then realised my mistake. I assumed I was dead and it didn’t matter. I had forgotten Nissa gives lands Menace! If I had used Nissa on a land and then played the creature and gave the land a +1/+1 counter I would have hit the opponent for 4. It was a big msitake that meant I went 4 wins instead of 5 or higher. It happens, just gotta make sure I learn from it and do better next time.

Speaking of next time I decided to do a 2nd Sealed. I felt my first one was a big skewed by opening some absurd rares.

Pool #2

This time all my rares suck (for limited) but I had quite a nice pool to make a deck with. I had a lot of landfall cards including 3x Akoum Hounds.and some decent removal in both red and green to back it up. Plenty of MDFCs too. So I just went all in on Landfall aggro. I made the curve as aggressive as I could.

Despite worse rares (I ran both the green ones) this deck actually did way better (and I didn’t massively screw up this time so that helped.)

This might actually be my best ever sealed run on Arena as I don’t think I’ve ever gotten 7 wins

My losses were to a BW lifegain clerics deck. Pretty much the worst match up, good removal and life gain is how you beat this deck and the other loss was to WU midrange, I got close to winning but I’d had a slow start which let them gum up the board with 3/3s and 3/4s.

Two things I learned from this:

- There are basically no bad top decks in a landfall deck You either get a land which triggers all your landfall cards or you get a spell to use, both are good. If you are in a position where drawing land isn’t good you’ve already lost.

- I should aggressively mulligan for early game with this sort of deck. This might sound bad but the games where I mulliganned for a 1 drop I did really well. The game where I didn’t do that was the 2nd loss and if I had I would have won. 

While it was alright sealed just isn’t as fun as draft (and the rewards are worse too) so I’ll probably not play anymore sealed until kaldheim. Gonna keep playing drafts though.

[magusofthefork]

Yet more ZNR Draft

Okay yeah this draft format is really good. The only bad game I had was where my opponent DC’d after mulligans and never came back. Definitely my favourite Draft format since Dominaria. Actually might just be my favourite draft format on Arena.

So for Draft #3 I ended up red again. Red just always seems to be open for me, not sure why because red seems good in this format.

Aggro deck + removal = pretty good.

Heres a couple of highlights:

This guy is pretty good, its not easy to get that damage through but if you manage it its basically a Big Chandra emblem. In this game I got 2 in and combined with a little aggressive pressure it killed them pretty quickly. They were essentially forced into a race they couldn’t win.

Heres an example of what I mean when I say games are often very close. We were literally both at 1 when I won. They scooped but they were dead on their turn to the goblin construct. Don’t rate the goblin too highley though this was the only other time it worked (though tbf its out of about 5 times I actually drew it).

ZNR Draft #4

Red was open again but I wanted to try something else so I ignored all the red cards (note: do not do that if you want to do well, just take whatever is good). I ended up in a Party deck again but this time Azorius, splashing green for Veteran Adventurer. That splash was well worth it, it might technically have a cmc of 6 but I never paid more than 5 for it and 5 mana for a 5/5 with vigilance is really good in limited. If that was all it was it would be worth it but the fact it counts as any party member was key to hitting a full party. Up until this point I’d never hit it but with the Adventurer I got full party in pretty much every game I cast him.

Below is a picture showing that off. I won this game from having a full party.

Skyclave Appirition

Its just removal for all but the highest cmc threats. Yeah your opponent can get up to a 4/4 illusion out of it if they kill it but that actually never happened to me. Theres not a ton of removal in the set and I guess its just not worth doing a lot of the time.

Lithoform Engine

I only drew it a few times, one of those times it got countered, one of those times it didn’t do much but one of those times it won me the game. I think its good in draft if you have a deck that expects to go long. It just does so many things. In the game I won with it it: - Copied a removal spell to kill an extra creature - Copied a blink of an eye to bounce my opponents only blockers - Copied the card draw trigger of a creature to get me through a land clump - Copied multiple creatures to give me an insane board. So yeah if the game goes long its very good.

MDFCs

I was watching North 100 earlier and one thing that was brought up about MDFCs is whether or not they should count towards lands or spells depends on how often you’d expect to use it as that thing. In hindsight that seems obvious but once I started viewing MDFCs like that I think I drafted better and built my decks better. For example in this deck Makinda Stampede is a land because the only time you’ll want to cast it is late game when you have a big board. Kabira Takedown however is a spell because even if its only dealing 2 damage thats often going to be better than playing it as a land but being able to be a land when you really need a land does help.

Got the same result as the previous deck in the end 6-3

So not only am I having a lot of fun with this draft but I’ve earned quite a few gems from it so far. Those things combined with Standard and Historic kind of sucking right now means I’ll probably be playing a lot more Zendikar Rising draft.

[magusofthefork]

Zendikar Rising Draft #2

I did another draft cos why not?

In this draft I got a much worse deck (though I picked up 3 pathway lands during the draft so that was cool), I kinda flip-flopped on what deck I was gonna go into for a bit but I ended up in Boros (splashing black for an equipment and a creature because I didn’t have enough playables in 2 colors and the equipment seemd strong.)

As a result I did do worse than in my first draft (though not too much worse) but every game was super close and a lot of fun. I felt like the games were won or lost on skillful plays rather than just luck (though there was still a bit of luck involved).

I went 5-3

Heres the deck:

Its built around the party mechanic and like last time its very aggressive though a bit slower than the landfall deck. I initially had 1 more basic in my deck but after flooding for the first 3 games I took it out. Felt weird playing this few basics but as I still flooded a bit I think it was correct. 

Equipment

Equipment in general is just stronger in this set. Honestly I think this is the way to go with equipment in future, have it attach on ETB. Equipment would probably be much more easy to balance this way as it would basically act as an aura but for a high cost you can move it onto something else.The Rakdos equipment in particular was very good it makes pretty much any creature threaten a lot of damage or to trade with 2 creatures.

Party

The party mechanic is quite fun, trying to balance out your creature types when choosing what to trade off (or not trade off) is an interesting decision to make. I had quite a few removal spells that worked based off of party members and, in limited at least, they are better than they look. I actually won 2 games off of the burn spell because of that extra face damage you get from party members. I never really hit a full party in this deck but I very often had 3 party memebers. I think when evaluating how good a party spell is treat it as though its 2.5 party members. I’m not sure any of these cards will see constructed play though.

The above picture shows what a party board typically looked like for me. I think in that game I ended up dealing around 30 damage but still lost as my opponent stalled out with lifegain and decent sized creatures and then I got overwhelmed by bigger creatures. Bant midrange is a bad matchup for boros aggro though.

MDFCs

These are really good, just like last time they helped me smooth out my draws and the pathway land that I ran (the WB one) was great fixing, if I’d drawn a swamp already I’d play it as for white mana but if I hadn’t I’d play it for black. These are definitely gonna be good in constructed and probably very good for aggro decks without being overpowered like fetchlands. I really like the design of them. Also I played the big Minotaur as not a land a couple of times in this deck, so when you aren’t playing hyper aggressively like with my previous deck hes pretty good.

Conclusion

I’m really enjoying drafting Zendikar Rising. If its always like this then I’m gonna draft it a lot and it’ll probably be my favourite draft set since Dominaria. We’ll see.

[magusofthefork]

My First Zendikar Rising Draft

I went in mostly blind (I’ve looked at spoilers but not enough to actually remember most of the cards and I’ve not yet read/watched any articles/videos on ZNR limited). My first pick was Nahiris Lithoforming and I think maybe my 3rd pick was a Akoum Hellhound. So I figured I’d try go for a R/X Landfall deck.

I got some Geopedes and some Land//Spells and actually stayed mono red for the first pack. I just didn’t really see anything worth taking in the other colors for what I was doing. Same thing in pack 2. My rare was the blue mythic land, I think its probably gonna be good in constructed so I took it but it was never gonna go in the deck. Again I stayed pretty much monored here. I think I picked up a couple of green landfall cards but not enough to commit.

Pack 3 I opened Zagras, Thief of Heartbeats but Red was still very open with plenty of good red picks in pack 3. So I just stayed red throughout. I had the choice of splashing green for a couple strong landfall cards or black for Zagras and a vanquish the weak. I went with the latter since Zagras is probably more fun and its easier to splash for a 5/6 drop than a 2/3 drop.

Heres the deck a very aggressive almost monored landfall aggro deck

I wasn’t sure how well this deck would do but I noticed I didn’t see much good removal going around so I figured this might do pretty well getting my opponent down to low health early on then using one of my late game cards to finish.

Yeah thats pretty much how it went down in almost every game I went 7-1!

Normally I’d talk about how each individual game went but theres only so many ways I can write “I played lands and turned Hellhounds/Geopedes sideways” so instead I’ll talk about how certain cards did and what I noticed of the format in general.

Geopede is really good

You really shouldn’t underestimate it. A 3/1 Trample for 3 might not look strong but it attacked as a 5/3 Trample every single turn and in this format at least it seems thats hard to deal with. Especially when backed up by Inordinate Rage and Sizzling Barrage. Sizzling Barrage in particular was really good with the Geopede as it often killed the blocker so with Trample it was like Geopede wasn’t even blocked in the first place.

Cliffhaven Kitesail is the best Kitesail

I have always liked Kitesail and Cobbled Wings in draft for aggro decks. I usually like to run 1 if I can because giving flying to one of your creatures can really help close out a game you’d otherwise lose to getting stalled out on the ground. Cliffhaven Kitesail feels the strongest of these effects. Being able to attach it for free is a big deal, quite a few times I played it on 4 to attatch to my geopede and then play another geopede which I wouldn’t be able to do with older equipments. Some opponents could deal with a 5/3 with trample. None of them could deal with a 5/3 with flying and trample.

Land Spells are really fun

Especially with Pyroclastic Hellion. The best ones were Song-Mad Teachury and Kazuul’s Fury. I would often play them as land in the first few turns then pick them up with a Hellion later and use them to sneak in lethal.  Akoum Warrior though was a bit weak, at least in this deck, I never played it as a creature. Spikefield Hazard was pretty good, again usually just a land but it let me remove a Kor Blademaster once which was pretty crucial to winning. But these land spells really helped smooth out mana and let me keep more 7s as well as providing some nice end game stuff when needed. I’ll wait a bit to judge their impact on constructed but for limited I like them.

I wish I got to resolve Lithoforming

Most games I either didn’t draw Lithoforming or I won without it, the one game where it was a strong play my opponent conceded with it on the stack. Shame I didn’t get to properly evaluate it but in this case it was lethal (pumping Geopedes by at least 2/2 but more likely 4/4)

My one loss

My one loss was against a rogues deck, they had a fast start and I didn’t so I ended up on the defensive which this deck just could not do. Monored Landfall needs to be the aggressor to win.

The Rogue decks

Speaking of the Rogue decks they seems kinda weak. Its possible this was just a really unfavourable matchup for them but I did notice even in the game I lost the rogue deck did not manage to hit 8 lands in my graveyard before the game was over. If I build a rogue deck in future I’m gonna treat the cards like their “8 cards in the yard” ability isn’t gonna be active til the late game.

First Impressions

I think this format could be fun but I’m not so sure yet. Some of the games I played felt kinda close, in that I feel like my opponent was close to stablising against me or I had just run out of steam as I won which is where you want Aggro to be but I did also feel like some of the games were completely one sided with my opponent having no chance of keeping up with me. If this was just a particularly strong deck and I got lucky in drafting and matchups then this format is fine. However if one sided games where Landfall Aggro steamrolls everything else are common this format is going to get stale fast. I’ll have to do more drafts to find out but for now I’m cautiously optimistic about ZNR Draft.

[magusofthefork]

Not being able to design White or Red cards for this cycle is an indication of a much bigger problem. White and Reds slice of the color pie is too shallow. The cycle itself is pretty generic in design, its just a typical charm cycle but with a kicker that lets you choose all of the options. That latter bit is what makes it a bit harder to design for than a normal charm cycle because each mode needs to be good both when they are all used together and when they are used separately. I’ll go over red and whites issues separately because they have similar but different issues. Now I don’t know this for sure but I suspect that the problem here was reds card in this cycle was very similar to fiery confluence, Savage Alliance and Collective Defiance. If you look at those cards you’ll notice they all have the same thing An ability that hits creatures, and ability that hits players and a 3rd thing that does something red does rarely (Destroy Artifacts, Give Trample and Wheel respectively). So this card in the cycle probably followed that same template but they didn’t want to just make a card that was already done and couldn’t think of a good red thing to do in the 3rd slot. The reason why is because reds slice of the pie is too shallow. Its powerful because its the only color that gets efficient direct damage to any target (with white/green getting restrictive but efficient creature damage and black getting very inefficient damage to any target) So the solution to this is red needs to expand its color pie a bit. Either by making its tertiary abilities primary/secondary or by granting it completely new abilities. Either could work but Wizards should look into doing that. Preferably something that scales well into commander but isn’t super strong in other formats (especially in RDW) because Red is strong in 60 card formats when it comes to aggro. I have a lot of ideas and I could write an entire separate article on how to expand reds color pie (I may do that later) but I don’t want to make this post too long so I’ll just list a few mechanics red could get but currently doesn’t: - Bounce (limited to opponents creatures)/Phasing/Suspending. Red has the philosphy of do something now worry about the consequences later. These 3 fit into that, removing a creature temporarily. Red kinda does this already with “can’t block” but can’t block mechanics are typically too weak to be worth using outside of when its just tacked onto an already good card. - Spell Bouncing/Copying/Redirecting Red gets copying and redirecting already, its actually secondary in stack interaction but it gets it rarely. I think it should get it more commonly and blue has had a monopoly on common stack interaction for too long. Spell Bouncing is also a thing red could do, it combines its stack interaction with what I said above about bouncing. Unsubstantiate  (only targeting opponents things) and Narsets Reversal  would be perfectly acceptable red cards imo. - Screwing with lands Again red already gets this but its rare. There are ways of screwing with lands beyond aggressive land destruction that could make for a fun thing to play against. I’m thinking cards like Contaminated ground (but turning into a wastes and damge instead of lifeloss), literally just ghost quarter but as a mountain. Enchanters Bane but for lands (and dealing set damage). I could go on but I’d rather get onto white now. White is in an even worse position than red. Its color pie is narrow AND weak. Whenever there is a cycle of cards the white one always does one of 3 things Gain Life, Put a Counter on a creature or Create a 1/1 Token (on rare occasion it gets a 2/2!). Thats it thats all white gets and these abilities are all increadibly weak abilities that scale terribly into the late game and into commander. White not only needs more stuff it needs strong stuff, particularly later into the game. One common suggestion is to give white taxing effects and taxing counters (ie mana leak). I 100% agree with this suggestion and white definitely should get those but that only really helps white in 60 card formats in the early game. Wizards is doing something to help with that, recently whites been getting better graveyard recursion and thats great its really helping but so far its still been too weak. Give white more Angelic Renewels for a start. Also stop with the CMC 3 or less thing. I get that you want to distiguish white ressurection from black but I think a better way to do that is set up black as necromancy while white is saving creatures and restoring artifacts. Mechanically you can do that by only allowing white to bring back its own creatures and artifacts. While black can take anyones creatures and turns them into zombies. (see rise from the grave and shamble back as examples). My last suggestion for this post is probably contraversial but again I’m gonna dip into blues color pie (blue has the biggest pie, it can afford to share damn it!) and say we should give white mind control effects. White already got this once before, it was flavoured as white recruiting opponents creatures usually by saving them. I don’t see any flavour or mechanical reason white shouldn’t get this ability, it seems a perfect fit to me. Unlike blue I would suggest mostly putting this ability on sorceries rather than enchantments to support the flavour of it being recruitment not a min control that could wear off. If on a creature is should be a cast trigger (to avoid blink shenanigans). I also think it should be limited based on power or creature type (varying on different cards). “Monsters” are often defined mechanically has having power 4 or greater so recruiting a creature of power 3 or less seems apt. This would still be strong in commander as while you won’t be able to take your opponents haymakers there are a lot of utility creatures up gro grabs.

Like with red I could go on about this but I think I’ve made my point well enough here. Red and White need a bigger slice of the color pie (and they could easily take a bit from blue) and then not only would this issue of incomplete cycles stop coming up but the colors would be closer in power level to the rest of the colors in commander and in the late game of 60 card formats where these colors both struggle.

Mark, why there are no Red and White Inscriptions? Broken cycles will be something more common now? A lot of people seems upset about this.

Set design designed a full cycle. They didn’t like the red and white ones and couldn’t make satisfying versions. So rather than make a cycle where some of the cards are cool and some suck (something I get complaints about all the time), they just made the cool ones.

[magusofthefork]

How do people feel about enchantment removal in black?

There are three camps:

1) Like seeing abilities in colors that haven’t had them before.

2) Dislike seeing abilities in colors that haven’t had them before.

3) Care that thought is going into Color Pie decisions.

Group #1 is happy. Group #3 is cautiously happy. Group #2 is not happy.

[magusofthefork]

Maros clues for Zendikar Rising.

For fun I thought I'd go over Maros clues and comment on them. If I remember I'll revisit this post later and compare my thoughts to what the actual set looks like.

• A white creature that can make an opponent lose the game simply by attacking them no matter how much life they have

So this is a creature with an attack trigger or maybe a damage trigger that can make a player lose the game. Considering its in white this is probably something to do with lifegain like "whenever ~ deals combat damage to a player if that player has less life than you they lose the game". It'll probably be a mythic and at least 6 cmc.

• A multicolor creature that lets you repeatedly reanimate permanents out of your opponent’s graveyard for no mana

This will be one of the "hey look commander players, heres a fun new commander for you!" cards of the set. If Maro is being literal when he says permanents then it'll be an esper or sultai creature if he just means it could be any permanent (like its something that takes artifacts for example) then it could be any color combination but I'm certain it'll be blue. It'll also probably be super high power level for commander.

• Three creatures with five creature types

I can't see 5 creature types fitting on the typeline so it could be an ability granting types like changeling but as its only 3 creatures I don't think thats likely. New mechanics are usually on more cards than that. I think what is more likely is these creatures are DFCs with different types on each side that when you add both sides together results in 5 creature types. We already have a DFC creature with 4 types. Lone Rider is a Human Knight on its front side and an Eldrazi Horror on the back.

• An artifact granting +2/+2 to a subset of creatures that first appeared in Alpha

My first thought is that this would just be giving a creature type +2/+2 that exists on both Zendikar and Dominaria BUT why did maro say "subset" instead of "type"? Maybe its defenders or something I could be reading too much into it. Or maybe they are finally batching creature types and its something that buffs horses, unicorns and pegasus? I can hope.

• X being used for a variable it’s never been used for before

Based on the prevelance of them in other hints I'm just gonna go with "Creature Types". Like an equipment that gives +X/+X where X is how many creature types it has. Can't really think of what else it could be. Most countable variables that I could see being used in a black bordered set have been used at this point.

• a 6/6 artifact creature that costs 3 and a 7/5 artifact creature that can cost 3

The former will have some sort of huge downside similar to Lupine Prototype or has some cost restriction like Myr Superion. The latter will just have a cost reduction ability.

• The return of four mana symbols that have each only ever been used on two cards before

This intrigues me because its only 4 mana symbols. 2brid mana fits this description as there was 1 cycle of 2brid cards and 1 5-color 2brid card which makes 2 of each BUT if only four mana symbols are returning that means one of the colors has dropped off and isn't going to appear. My best guess would be that this is going to be used to represent remnant eldrazi drones taking on color as they merge into the natural environment of the plane and that white is the missing color in the cycle.

• Lands that come with a choice you’ve never had before

I heard someone else mention DFC lands at some point in Zendikar Rising. I don't know if it was a leak or a rumour or something maro previously said but it would fit this clue. You can either play as one side or the other.

• Targeted enchantment removal in black

Presumably it'll be an instant or sorcery with "Destroy target creature or enchantment an opponent controls" and it'll be a bit overcosted so it only sees play in commander and standard/limited sideboards so 4 or 5 mana.

• A red/white creature with a line of rules text that starts with “Whenever” and ends with “draw a card”

That line of text is "Whenever ~ attacks each opponent may draw a card" because wizards hates boros players. I'm kidding. It'll probably be something that gives the opponent a choice though so when it triggers the opponent has to pay some mana or take some damage and if they don't you draw a card.

• A card with three different activated abilities that all copy something

I think this will be a rare/mythic artifact. The abilities will be Copy a spell, Copy an Ability or Create a token copy of a creature. It could also be a legendary creature in which case each of the abilities will definitely require different colors to use so that the commanders color id is 3-5 colors

Here are snippets of rules text, you’ll see:

• “three plus”

This could be any number of things. No idea.

• “different converted mana cost X or less”

This one sounds really weird. It reads so weird I’m not even sure what it means.

• “equal to 20 minus”

This will reference life total in someway. Like Deaths shadow.

• “Cowards can’t block Warriors”

I love this line of text and I really hope this is on a new card and not just another reprint of Boldwyr Intimidator.

•  “don’t lose unspent red mana”

A nongreen card that lets you keep mana for longer than a phase? Interesting. This is probably on a card that wouldn’t work well if it didn’t have this line so they chose to bend the color pie a bit for it.

• “twice the number of equipment”

Well we already know from Nahiris card there is an equipment subtheme. This will likely be the payoff card for drafting/building an equipment deck.

• “If it’s the third time”

I hope this ends with “this turn”. While I love Yidaro I do not like the idea of more cards that require tracking how many times you have done something across multiple turns. It quickly becomes a pain in the arse to track.

And finally, here are some creature type lines you’ll see:

• Mouse

• Leviathan Crab

• Shapeshifter Rogue

• Demon Cleric

• Wurm Horror

• Hydra Horror

• Cat Horror

• Angel Wizard

There are quite a few horrors here. I wonder if they are Eldrazi related or something new. I am also looking forward to “Leviathan Crab” that sounds great.