Community

Black has always been my favorite color.  Glad to see it is getting a lot of awesome cards. 

My general impression is that the direction they are moving is to slow the game out of the gate a little, opening up more options for different strategies.  Hopefully this will make for a more fun game once rotation happens.


Can't wait for Mana Leak, Birds of Paradise, and Birthing Pod to rotate.
 

Jul 2, 2012 -- 8:39AM, Xylovenious wrote:

Black has always been my favorite color.  Glad to see it is getting a lot of awesome cards. 

My general impression is that the direction they are moving is to slow the game out of the gate a little, opening up more options for different strategies.  Hopefully this will make for a more fun game once rotation happens.


Can't wait for Mana Leak, Birds of Paradise, and Birthing Pod to rotate.
 

If you want to slow down the format, you hit the creatures first. They are always what dictates the clock of the game. 5 years ago people were playing 6,7, and 8 cc creatures because the 1 and 2 drop creatures were 1/1 and 2/2.  Then we got figure of destiny, wild nacatl, goblin guide, and finally delver. Each time the creatures got better and the game went faster. As a result the spells had to become cheaper and more effective to keep up.  Now they stopped the cheap spells, but left the fast hard to kill creatures. That was a mistake imo.

So instead of Day of Judgment, we get Planar Collapse (+1W).  Instead of Mana Leak as an all purpose counter, we get Rewind (+1U).  We lose Ponder for card drawing, but we get to keep Divination!  Instead of Mind Control, we get Switcheroo, which requires you to have a creature to switch.  Thank god Blue at least got Sleep, even if it's not a permanent solution.  Red loses Shock and Incinerate, only to replace it with a poor man's Incinerate (Spear) and Turn to Slag!  Oh, and let's not forget that instead of giving us Earthquake, who could hurt players, we get Magmaquake!  Let's not forget it hits Planeswalkers (even though Earthquake could have too by redirecting, but let's not say that.)  Black loses Doom Blade, Sorin's Thirst, Consume Spirit and Deathmark, but gets Murder, Essence Drain, Public Execution and Mutilate instead (and Mutilate is so much better in mono-black than anything else)! Are we seeing a pattern yet?

Meanwhile, Green may have lost a turn one accelerator, but it got one of the most ridiculous creature auras in the game in Rancor.  It gets Thragtusk, which replaces itself when it dies and gives a life bonus when it comes in.  White gains Faith's Reward which could be a great sideboard card against board sweepers, as well as getting Serra Avenger and Sublime Archangel.

I have never seen such an unbalanced core set toward one of the three basic Magic archtypes: Control.  The sad part is that this has been a continuing trend. Now I have played all three archtypes.  I like them all.  But the neutering of control has been happening more and more as Magic has gone on.  But it was never this bad.  Even Boil wasn't this horrid to control as you could work around it by playing some non-basics and you could just counter it.  Instead, they give Cavern of Souls in their prior release whose only drawback is that it can't make colored mana unless you are casting the right creature type.  It's not even Legendary! Compare it to Boseiju which came into play tapped, made you pay 2 life to use and didn't produce colored mana.  They also give undying which, unlike persist, makes the dead creature better instead of worse. 

I think most of the board agrees with it too, as I continue to see people commenting on the way control decks are being hosed out.  Pillar of Flame is an alright answer to cheap undying, but it's a sorcery, not an instant, and does not stop regeneration.  There are so many good hexproof creatures that Rancor's weakness is lessened because countermagic is worse.  It just feels like Magic has skewed towards aggro more and more and to me, that makes Magic BORING.  I grew up in a time where each archetype had a shot to win, and you had to prepare for decks of all three types.  But when I can maindeck control hosers with no real drawback, I think the game needs a hard look at how they may be alienating a group of their players. 

OK, so do I need to take a control deck to SCG Denver this year? Cause that's the impression I'm getting.