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2 years ago ::
Sep 30, 2011 - 10:07AM
#21
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Date Joined:
Nov 18, 2004
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Wait.
What.
Since when is Harvet Pyre  a bad removal card?
Read better, i.e., more thouroughly. Respondents sayign it's a bad spell are discussing it in multiples. It requires you to remove portions of your graveyard to scale it up. If you nuke something big, earlier, you cannot nuke something equally big later without devoting energies to refilling said graveyard. If the graveyard can contain in an average of competitive play only 4-6 cards from casting non-permanent spells, you will eventually only use this readily to nuke something for 4-6, and this means any later Pyre in your hand is effectively useless without rebuilding. If you are dealing with multiple 4/4 or 5/5 creatures, then you will NOT be able to use multiples effectively.
I suspect, but cannot insist, that it works best in a counter-burn strategy, or a R/G accell-burn build, where you toss a lot of spells to ramp up, using said grave to build up large Pyres. Keeping creature cards in the bin will help pump Splinterfright  s and such cards.
"Possibilities abound, too numerous to count."
"Innocent, unbiased observation is a myth." --- P.B. Medawar (1969)
"Ever since man first left his cave and met a stranger with a different language and a new way of looking at things, the human race has had a dream: to kill him, so we don't have to learn his language or his new way of looking at things." --- Zapp Brannigan (Beast With a Billion Backs)
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2 years ago ::
Sep 30, 2011 - 11:13AM
#22
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Date Joined:
Jan 17, 2005
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Having a Harvest Pyre was definitely nice. I used it quite often and found it useful. But, yeah, I wouldn't want multiples, not without some way to fill my GY, anyway. One was the right amount to have in limited.
Got to say I disagree with the design philosophy though. Red tends to get pigeonholed into aggro decks for two reasons. The first is that its midrange and late game creatures tend to be lacking (titan aside, of course), compared to what white, black, and blue have to offer. Sort of the same issue many green creatures suffer from. And the second is that, where every other color starts gaining card advantage, as the game goes on, with card draw, recursion, and so on, red winds up suffering from card disadvantage, as it has to use 2 cards to kill one. Big creatures have been updated, made actually worth casting, rather than just reanimating. Red's removal though hasn't gotten any love to counteract that.
A key component for red has always been its X damage spells. These see play in limited, but not much in constructed. They just aren't good enough. The devs need to give red an X spell that deals X to a player or 2X to a creature. 4 mana to kill a 6/6 at sorcery speed wouldn't be as good as black's removal. But it would at least give red a viable option. And red might actually run some X spells in constructed again, other than as the occasional one of.
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2 years ago ::
Sep 30, 2011 - 12:52PM
#23
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Date Joined:
Jun 14, 2006
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I chose the "I played my double-faced cards in sleeves in my deck" option for the poll, because it's what I ended up liking best and doing during the last rounds. I had a base red-green deck with six werewolves, so that was perfect for experimenting. I started by playing checklists in opaque sleeves and having the DFCs in penny sleeves in my deckbox, so that transformation wouldn't require unsleeving, but I ended up hating that method : getting the right DFC out my box without showing others was slow and unpractical, and looking at the checklist card in my hand felt unesthetic and also annoying because of having to take the time to see which one it is by looking for the blackened dot. With opaque-sleeved DFCs, I got them out of the sleeve once they were on the battlefield, and put them back only once they left the battlefield. I found that to be the lesser evil, and overall very manageable. The fun of transforming felt worth it with that method.
I really look forward to drafting this set. It seems that fewer cards than usual are all-good all the time; most are somewhat situational and require careful deckbuilding. Among other things, managing the graveyard resource intelligently looks very skill-intensive and rewarding.
 Magic The Gathering DCI Rules Advisor Don't hesitate to post rules question in the Rules Q&A forum for me and other competent advisors to answer : http://community.wizards.com/go/forum/view/75842/134778/Rules_Q38A
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2 years ago ::
Sep 30, 2011 - 12:58PM
#24
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Date Joined:
Jun 24, 2003
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(Of course, all this is ignoring my real belief, which is that every card in a Limited pack ought to be of equal usefulness...
That would make Limited rather uninteresting, if it weren't completely impossible in the first place.
It's like saying every tool at the hardware store ought to be of equal usefulness.
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2 years ago ::
Sep 30, 2011 - 2:36PM
#25
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- Warm, wet and squishy inside
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Wow, this is a fascinating and top-notch article (I think immediately after reading it). I think the "bad removal" plan is actually quite good. I also like the "sometimes conditionally good" removal spells. Nobody is kidding themselves about how Brimstone Volley is a premier removal spell, but sometimes you're desperate enough to play something "worse" because it fills a role in your deck. I've been a fan of Enfeeblement  for many years, and Dead Weight  seems to be in the same vein but better. Wouldn't it be funny if black became the "second best enchantment color" because of it's connection to the idea of curses and hexes?
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2 years ago ::
Sep 30, 2011 - 3:42PM
#26
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(Of course, all this is ignoring my real belief, which is that every card in a Limited pack ought to be of equal usefulness, enabling you to first-pick solely on personal preference and make subsequent picks based on a combination of personal preference and compatibility with previous picks. Because apparently, everyone else would rather get stuck paying for useless junk because it makes the environment more "skill testing" if you can get unlucky and end up with nothing but Dryad's Favors and Harvest Bounties your entire draft. This is a very regular occurrence for me; one or two halfway-decent picks in each freshly opened pack, and then nothing but utter crap for the rest of the draft with very few exceptions.)
Maybe you should work on reading signals then =p
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2 years ago ::
Sep 30, 2011 - 5:44PM
#27
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Date Joined:
Nov 20, 2010
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Wait.
What.
Since when is Harvet Pyre a bad removal card?
Read better, i.e., more thouroughly. Respondents sayign it's a bad spell are discussing it in multiples. It requires you to remove portions of your graveyard to scale it up. If you nuke something big, earlier, you cannot nuke something equally big later without devoting energies to refilling said graveyard. If the graveyard can contain in an average of competitive play only 4-6 cards from casting non-permanent spells, you will eventually only use this readily to nuke something for 4-6, and this means any later Pyre in your hand is effectively useless without rebuilding. If you are dealing with multiple 4/4 or 5/5 creatures, then you will NOT be able to use multiples effectively.
I suspect, but cannot insist, that it works best in a counter-burn strategy, or a R/G accell-burn build, where you toss a lot of spells to ramp up, using said grave to build up large Pyres. Keeping creature cards in the bin will help pump Splinterfright s and such cards.
I took Harvest Pyre out of my deck after it sat in my hand for three matches and was never able to kill anything worthwhile. Swapping it out for a bad creature worked out really well for me.
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2 years ago ::
Sep 30, 2011 - 9:22PM
#28
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- Aww it's a cute OH MY GOD
- the bear goes RAWR!
Date Joined:
Jul 28, 2003
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I would take a Raging Goblin over a Harvest Pyre unless I have a way to fill my graveyard reliably enough that I can Harvest Pyre things bigger than Raging Goblins, because a Raging Goblin might win me a game, at least if the opponent gets a slow start, while a Harvest Pyre with no assistance won't do me any good against most real threats. A Raging Goblin or a Grizzly Bears or any other halfway decent creature is better than a removal spell as weak as Harvest Pyre or Corpse Lunge
...
(Of course, all this is ignoring my real belief, which is that every card in a Limited pack ought to be of equal usefulness, enabling you to first-pick solely on personal preference and make subsequent picks based on a combination of personal preference and compatibility with previous picks. Because apparently, everyone else would rather get stuck paying for useless junk because it makes the environment more "skill testing" if you can get unlucky and end up with nothing but Dryad's Favors and Harvest Bounties your entire draft. This is a very regular occurrence for me; one or two halfway-decent picks in each freshly opened pack, and then nothing but utter crap for the rest of the draft with very few exceptions.)
The combination of your demonstrated card evaluation skills and your simultaneous complaint about consistently not being able to put together a serviceable draft deck might lead one to draw some sort of connection or causality between the two.
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2 years ago ::
Sep 30, 2011 - 9:54PM
#29
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Date Joined:
Aug 13, 2001
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Willpell is many things, quite a few of them good. But if there's one thing he is not, it's a Spike. He doesn't understand how Spikes think and approaches subjects like power level from a viewpoint that any experienced Spike instantly dismisses as hopelessly naive. It's almost impossible to even correct him on such things, there almost isn't a common language there. I've resigned myself to enjoying the 80% or so of his posts that are entertaining and/or insightful, on other aspects of the game, for which having to wince occasionally at the other 20% seems a fair price to pay.
Jeff Heikkinen
DCI Rules Advisor since Dec 25, 2011
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2 years ago ::
Oct 02, 2011 - 9:36PM
#30
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Date Joined:
Feb 26, 2004
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It's like saying every tool at the hardware store ought to be of equal usefulness.
Counting price as a factor of usefulness (ie a screwdriver should cost less than a Swiss Army knife which includes a screwdriver), I fail to see why you say that would be a bad thing. Ideally, the hardware store would sell just one tool, which can do everything you could possibly need a tool for. But assuming that you wanted the separate tools for the same aesthetic reasons that you might want different Magic cards, how is it fun to be charged more money for some "tools" than others, so that your personal preference might end up randomly being expensive, or condemning you to lose games just because your favorite strategy is intentionally made weak by Wizards since it's not as popular as a strategy you find boring? No, I want all cards and decks to be equally useful; your choice of what to play should never be restricted by anything other than your wishes.
My New Phyrexia Writing CreditsMy M12 Writing CreditsAs far as the benefit of the rest of Magic is concerned, gold cards in Legends were executed perfectly. They got all the excitement a designer could hope out of a splashy new mechanic without using up any of the valuable design space. Truly amazing.
--Aaron Forsythe's Random Card Comment on Kei Takahashi 
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