Chris Taylor
Contributor
Damnit I'm bad at remembering white cards lately
Sets [KLD] Kaladesh Spoilers Thread
- Thread starter Rasmus Källqvist
- Start date
Damnit I'm bad at remembering white cards lately
You know, I forgot about that too? But I think I blocked Gideon's Reproach from my mind because the art is so damn ugly.
I think I'll be running the Blue and White Gearhulks for now. My black section is already plenty stacked, so I don't think I've got a home for the Black Gearhulk. Same for the Green one. The red one is... interesting. Not sure how to evaluate it, to be honest. I do think it's one of the more pushed punisher cards out there, and it is a respectable body. Not sure where else I'm going for cards in this set yet. Lots of tough decisions to make, and maybe that's just a side effect of further solidifying my cube's master plan. So far I think I'm on:
Filigree Familiar
Key to the City
Cataslysmic Gearhulk
Torrential Gearhulk
scrapheap scrounger
morbid curiosity
Skyship Stalker
Nissa, Vital Force
And a variety of other cards I want to bring in from other sets. Interesting, in fact, how many previously existing cards I've slated for swapping in based on the cards and discussions focused around Kaladesh. Pretty cool. I like when sets promote a lot of internal dialogue and lead to cool new choices
It may not work as efficiently in every metagame any more, but WoG effects are definitely Tempo and Card Advantage. It's been proved out in formats for years and years, most recently here.
I think we do agree to varying degrees on everything else.
Filigree Familiar
Key to the City
Cataslysmic Gearhulk
Torrential Gearhulk
scrapheap scrounger
morbid curiosity
Skyship Stalker
Nissa, Vital Force
And a variety of other cards I want to bring in from other sets. Interesting, in fact, how many previously existing cards I've slated for swapping in based on the cards and discussions focused around Kaladesh. Pretty cool. I like when sets promote a lot of internal dialogue and lead to cool new choices
Constructed honestly doesn't agree with you.... If you are in modern and want a wrath you actually IRL play Damnation and Supreme Verdict. MTGTop8 listings can verify for me. Legacy aside, Terminus is far too inconsistent without a good way to manipulate the top of the deck, and if you can't, 6 mana is much worse than 4. I remained puzzled at the notion that a controlling, slow-game deck's mana base mysteriously stops at 4 mana. Every control deck I've ever seen can hit obscene amounts of mana fairly consistently, even in faster formats. WoG and it's brethren are grade A+ tempo and card advantage wrapped in one package, have been since they were printed, and remain that way to this day. This is especially true in standard, which is why they've stopped printing Wrath of God (source). Even 5 mana wraths are fine at this. My recent-ish Sultai Delve control deck could easily cast Crux of Fate and still hold up Dissolve.I'm not saying Wog is a bad card. I'm saying it costs 4 mana.
If we're in constructed and you want a wrath that can add both tempo and CA, I would suggest:
So cheap you can sequence out a bunch of follow-up spells to capitalize on your CA you just made, rather than hoping the aggro player can't just sequence out a bunch of spells to get ahead of you on spell castings, and rebuild their board state.
We're probably more or less in agreement on everything else. I don't think you're arguing raw spells > creatures in today's game.
It may not work as efficiently in every metagame any more, but WoG effects are definitely Tempo and Card Advantage. It's been proved out in formats for years and years, most recently here.
I think we do agree to varying degrees on everything else.
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
I can agree with you that WOG helps you recoup tempo, but its mana cost puts such a limit on what else you can commonly do with your turn, that its hard to see how you can argue that it helps put you ahead on tempo.
That a developed mana base allows you to more easily sequence out multiple spells in a turn is a given; however reduced casting costs make this much easier to do. Tempo friendly cards are either very cheap (like the 1-3cc spells in your jund decks) that let you play multiple spells a turn, planeswalkers that give you free effects thus letting you play multiple spells a turn, or have ETBs attached to them allowing you to play multiple spells a turn.
It would be absurd to say that a six mana creature without an ETB generates tempo, simply because it represents a board presence, and you can conceivably develop your mana base to the point where you could cast it and a second spell in a turn. I think this is the mistake that you are making, you're looking at WOG, noting that it impacts the board, and working under the presumption that this is tempo generation, which it is not. It impacts the board, but it dosen't put you ahead on board itself, nor does it do a particularly good job facilitating the types of plays that could put you ahead, due to its high CC.
Wrath at four mana is a clunky spell that limits potential follow-ups, and terminus was just an example, from a format, of how a wrath that actually does produce tempo and CA looks like.
The reason that I left the abyss out, for example, is because it gives you an immediate free spell effect every (well technically not immediate, but very close). This is similar to how planeswalkers work, freeing your mana up to both pursue your original game plan, well benefiting from free spell castings.
Though in retrospect, given how worse WOG has gotten in magic over the years, I can see how you would think of it as a tempo card, though this just seems to me a perversion from the power card it always was. When I look at a lot of modern magic, and the way something like damnation gets played (or even languish), those spells are very bad at just stopping creature decks like they could in the past. Now you sweep the board, and the opponent can just CoCo a new board into existence at EOT. In modern, damnation can just mean you're facing a voice token or slightly small kitchen finks next turn after reducing their board, rather than wiping it.
Thats a substantial downgrade however, from what resolving a wrath in older formats was like, when its worth was much less matchup determinant, and it was essentially a game reset where you ended up with the better mana base you could leverage on the next turn. Now its more likely to just delay or downgrade an opponents board development, and in that world, I can see why someone would recatagorize it as a tempo card.
How weird.
I honestly don't know what to say any more...
Recouping tempo is tempo advantage. You are gaining relative to your opponent the ability for the two decks to kill each other.
Destroying more than one of their cards for your one card is card advantage. You've spent relatively fewer cards than them over this interaction, so you gain cards over them.
These two concepts work in exactly the same manner, so I don't see why you agree with one and not the other? It's not actively drawing you cards, and likewise it's not actively increasing the speed at which you can conclude the game in your favor. It simply takes both away from your opponent, and is thus an advantage for you. It's the textbook example of this duality of advantages.
And I honestly don't see how mana cost ever comes into play for this specific discussion. Are we arguing over a specific format? If no, it will get used in a format where it is guaranteed to be accomplishing both. It's what the spell type does, after all. Different formats can simply swap in different Spell names, but the theory is literally the same each time.
Heres an example of a pure CA card:
It's a 4 mana sorcery, is a 3-1! and is awkward for sequencing. Is WoG even close to the same as this? No, it's obviously affecting your opponents speed to kill you at the same time it's getting the 3-1. Tempo & card advantage. Relative advantage, as discussed above. Concentrate, on the other hand is absolute CA, and potentially even tempo disadvantage (hence why cards that can recoup the difference are so key).
Recouping tempo is tempo advantage. You are gaining relative to your opponent the ability for the two decks to kill each other.
Destroying more than one of their cards for your one card is card advantage. You've spent relatively fewer cards than them over this interaction, so you gain cards over them.
These two concepts work in exactly the same manner, so I don't see why you agree with one and not the other? It's not actively drawing you cards, and likewise it's not actively increasing the speed at which you can conclude the game in your favor. It simply takes both away from your opponent, and is thus an advantage for you. It's the textbook example of this duality of advantages.
And I honestly don't see how mana cost ever comes into play for this specific discussion. Are we arguing over a specific format? If no, it will get used in a format where it is guaranteed to be accomplishing both. It's what the spell type does, after all. Different formats can simply swap in different Spell names, but the theory is literally the same each time.
Heres an example of a pure CA card:
It's a 4 mana sorcery, is a 3-1! and is awkward for sequencing. Is WoG even close to the same as this? No, it's obviously affecting your opponents speed to kill you at the same time it's getting the 3-1. Tempo & card advantage. Relative advantage, as discussed above. Concentrate, on the other hand is absolute CA, and potentially even tempo disadvantage (hence why cards that can recoup the difference are so key).
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
I think the misunderstanding is that in the classic WOG scenario, the spell recoups tempo. I don't consider a card that is only recouping tempo that you already hemorrhaged, to be generating tempo over your opponent.
Thats what a tempo card or strategy is classically supposed to do:
It doesn't just put you to parity, it puts you ahead.
Mana cost matters because the cheaper the spell is, the easier it is to cast multiple spells in a turn, allowing you to pull ahead. I can draw-step terminus, than proceed to use the rest of my turn as I wish, relatively uninhibited, allowing me to execute my strategy at a faster rate than my opponent, beating them on units of time or tempo.
With WOG its much harder to do this due to its cost, and the types of tempo generating cards relevant to modern magic theory today (ETB creatures/planeswalkers) are not just designed to just recoup lost units of time, they are designed to push you ahead.
Thats what a tempo card or strategy is classically supposed to do:
It doesn't just put you to parity, it puts you ahead.
Mana cost matters because the cheaper the spell is, the easier it is to cast multiple spells in a turn, allowing you to pull ahead. I can draw-step terminus, than proceed to use the rest of my turn as I wish, relatively uninhibited, allowing me to execute my strategy at a faster rate than my opponent, beating them on units of time or tempo.
With WOG its much harder to do this due to its cost, and the types of tempo generating cards relevant to modern magic theory today (ETB creatures/planeswalkers) are not just designed to just recoup lost units of time, they are designed to push you ahead.
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
Since I'm having another epiphany here, real quick:
Classic wrath decks ran the card not to lose. They would recoup their lost tempo from spending turns 1-3 durdling, but after that they weren't interested at all in getting ahead on an opponent (which WOG is not good at doing anyways). All they wanted to do was stay at tempo parity, draw a bunch of cards, and win purely though card advantage.
That was what wrath did: it was an enabler for a card advantage based strategy, by just preventing the deck from losing. Thats classic, old school, card advantage based magic.
NWO design is much more likely to put you ahead on both tempo and card advantage, doing this in a way that advances a proactive gameplan that threatens to end the game (tempo) while also putting them ahead on cards (card advantage). This is consistent with the sort of forward moving, board state heavy, game they tend to like to encourage.
Wrath does not do that.
Classic wrath decks ran the card not to lose. They would recoup their lost tempo from spending turns 1-3 durdling, but after that they weren't interested at all in getting ahead on an opponent (which WOG is not good at doing anyways). All they wanted to do was stay at tempo parity, draw a bunch of cards, and win purely though card advantage.
That was what wrath did: it was an enabler for a card advantage based strategy, by just preventing the deck from losing. Thats classic, old school, card advantage based magic.
NWO design is much more likely to put you ahead on both tempo and card advantage, doing this in a way that advances a proactive gameplan that threatens to end the game (tempo) while also putting them ahead on cards (card advantage). This is consistent with the sort of forward moving, board state heavy, game they tend to like to encourage.
Wrath does not do that.
I literally wish I did not have the energy to 'advance' this discussion, which we aren't. I just can't handle the number of assumptions being thrown around, and the narrowness of semantics.
My tempo, based on the actual Theory of Everything from magic's origin: 'a resource you start without and gain over the course of the game'. This is one of three resources used to win the game. It's the resource of efficiency, how quickly your spells are advancing you towards your victory over how much mana it takes to do so. In this way any exchange that yields you a net positive in tempo is just as much of an advantage, including reducing your opponent's. You only have to win faster than your opponent, so slowing them down helps. Wrath of god largely accomplishes this by raw mana and time advantage. Your opponent spent more mana and turns than you did, thus you have increased your efficiency over your opponent. Advantage.
My card advantage, from, guess what, the ToE: 'a resource you start with and gain over thencourse of the game.' This one should be easy. How many cards you've seen and can utilize, and you start with 7. WoG provides this by reducing the number of cards the opponent has available to advance their plan relative to you. You destroyed three creatures for one WoG. Advantage.
The third resource, the philosophy of fire: ' a resource you start with and do not gain'. It's how good your decks cards are at actually netting a result of death for your opponent. Control decks generally have very few cards with extremely high 'fire power', while agro is more cards with less individual 'fire power'. A balanced game should involve two decks with the same amount of this resource. Wrath of God has zero of this resource. The card cannot kill an opponent.
In the end, all the thousands of useless words, what it comes down to in my mind is:
Wrath of God buys you time and wastes the opponents time and mana.
Wrath of God destroys more than one creature for one spell.
Tempo advantage, and Card advantage. It's as simple as that for me.
All y'all people go back to enjoying Kaladesh. This argument is clogging up the thread for no gain. Sorry about that.
My tempo, based on the actual Theory of Everything from magic's origin: 'a resource you start without and gain over the course of the game'. This is one of three resources used to win the game. It's the resource of efficiency, how quickly your spells are advancing you towards your victory over how much mana it takes to do so. In this way any exchange that yields you a net positive in tempo is just as much of an advantage, including reducing your opponent's. You only have to win faster than your opponent, so slowing them down helps. Wrath of god largely accomplishes this by raw mana and time advantage. Your opponent spent more mana and turns than you did, thus you have increased your efficiency over your opponent. Advantage.
My card advantage, from, guess what, the ToE: 'a resource you start with and gain over thencourse of the game.' This one should be easy. How many cards you've seen and can utilize, and you start with 7. WoG provides this by reducing the number of cards the opponent has available to advance their plan relative to you. You destroyed three creatures for one WoG. Advantage.
The third resource, the philosophy of fire: ' a resource you start with and do not gain'. It's how good your decks cards are at actually netting a result of death for your opponent. Control decks generally have very few cards with extremely high 'fire power', while agro is more cards with less individual 'fire power'. A balanced game should involve two decks with the same amount of this resource. Wrath of God has zero of this resource. The card cannot kill an opponent.
In the end, all the thousands of useless words, what it comes down to in my mind is:
Wrath of God buys you time and wastes the opponents time and mana.
Wrath of God destroys more than one creature for one spell.
Tempo advantage, and Card advantage. It's as simple as that for me.
All y'all people go back to enjoying Kaladesh. This argument is clogging up the thread for no gain. Sorry about that.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
I thought the epic discussion I was having with Grillo on Muldrifter vs. Cloudblazer / valuetown vs. elegance was mainly by my relentlessness, but I see Grilo's got himself into another epic discussion yet again
FWIW, I personally agree with Sigh here, but there is merit to Grillo's point of view, depending on which definition of tempo you use. For example, the mtgs wiki defines tempo as:
Clearly, Wrath of God does not add a threat to the board, so according to this definition, WoG does not create tempo. It is, to my mind, a very strict definition of tempo though, born out of the desire to condense the meaning of the word into a bite size sentence. I would instead gladly link to this old, old article, which roughly defines tempo in terms of "number of plays/turn", and contains the following passage, which is exactly relevant to our discussion
And there you have it, in essence, Wrath of God undoes multiple turns of your opponent's efforts. It is entirely irrelevant whether your opponent can quickly rebuild using stuff like CoCo (which itself can be a tempo play when it hits more than 4 cmc worth of creatures). The fact is that your opponent spent more than one turn and more than one play to build the board you are undoing with one turn, one play, and less total mana spent than your opponent spent on his threats. This constitutes a tempo gain any which way you look at it, unless you want to stick to the strict definition I quoted earlier.
Edit: Oops, pressed submit before I was ready
To further Onderzee's point: the MTGS definition of tempo here is pretty unreasonable. The pace at which one deploys threats? Then Vapor Snag and Remand aren't gaining people tempo, under this definition, and nearly anyone would agree that these are tempo cards. Indeed by this very narrow definition, even Man-o-War generates no more tempo than a Grey Ogre.
I think perhaps a more reasonable perspective here is of tempo as "the pace at which the number of unanswered threats changes". This is sufficiently broad while also allowing for some specificity. Notably it catches all the cases above: Remand makes one of your threats remain "unanswered" or else stops your opponent from having an unanswered threat--a tempo play. I've also deliberately left the "sign" of this ambiguous, as I think "recouping tempo" and "gaining tempo" are exactly equivalent.
It's reasonable to think of time in Magic as mana--not an exact analog, but reasonable. Imagine that your opponent curves out 1-4, and then you cast WoG. You've now netted six mana from your opponent, which constitutes a great deal of time and tempo. You can also think of time in Magic as turns: your opponent has invested four turns into their board, while you have invested just one to undo it. In either case WoG has generated a tempo advantage, so I think it's clear that for whatever conception you have of time in Magic, WoG generates a tempo advantage--to be specific, it reduces the quantity of unanswered threats.
I think perhaps a more reasonable perspective here is of tempo as "the pace at which the number of unanswered threats changes". This is sufficiently broad while also allowing for some specificity. Notably it catches all the cases above: Remand makes one of your threats remain "unanswered" or else stops your opponent from having an unanswered threat--a tempo play. I've also deliberately left the "sign" of this ambiguous, as I think "recouping tempo" and "gaining tempo" are exactly equivalent.
It's reasonable to think of time in Magic as mana--not an exact analog, but reasonable. Imagine that your opponent curves out 1-4, and then you cast WoG. You've now netted six mana from your opponent, which constitutes a great deal of time and tempo. You can also think of time in Magic as turns: your opponent has invested four turns into their board, while you have invested just one to undo it. In either case WoG has generated a tempo advantage, so I think it's clear that for whatever conception you have of time in Magic, WoG generates a tempo advantage--to be specific, it reduces the quantity of unanswered threats.
*Rattles with the swear jar*
What did we say about saying the t-word?
What did we say about saying the t-word?
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
Yeah, I almost wish I had gone back and kicked the cloudblazer dead horse back to life
To be clear, I'm not strictly using the MTGS definition of tempo. My definition is closer to rate of spell castings, or spell velocity, than specific threats on the board, and strategies based around the idea should be proactively condensing the game. Modern magic has more of a focus on assertive threat presentment, and thats certainly an element that can't be ignored in an NWO context, so I can see where MTGS is coming from in this instance.
Wrath was always used as a board wipe to bring you back to parity after doing a lot of durdling, causing you to fall behind on board development. I'll concede that a return to parity with your opponent, is in a literal sense "generating tempo."
However, what got me to initially respond was this:
Wrath is not "generating tempo" in the same way that a planewalker does in todays game, nor an ETB creature, and maybe this is part of why its gotten worse over the years. Those contemporary cards that provide both CA and tempo also provide an assertive threat that directly condenses the game down to a clock, which WOG doesn't do.
I may have overspoken, but this distinction is important.
To be clear, I'm not strictly using the MTGS definition of tempo. My definition is closer to rate of spell castings, or spell velocity, than specific threats on the board, and strategies based around the idea should be proactively condensing the game. Modern magic has more of a focus on assertive threat presentment, and thats certainly an element that can't be ignored in an NWO context, so I can see where MTGS is coming from in this instance.
Wrath was always used as a board wipe to bring you back to parity after doing a lot of durdling, causing you to fall behind on board development. I'll concede that a return to parity with your opponent, is in a literal sense "generating tempo."
However, what got me to initially respond was this:
Wrath is not "generating tempo" in the same way that a planewalker does in todays game, nor an ETB creature, and maybe this is part of why its gotten worse over the years. Those contemporary cards that provide both CA and tempo also provide an assertive threat that directly condenses the game down to a clock, which WOG doesn't do.
I may have overspoken, but this distinction is important.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Yeah, I think Ian Lippert's loose definition from the article I linked to is actually very close to your idea of tempo. When I read your "WoG isn't actually generating tempo unless you can follow it up with another spell", that sounded very much like you were applying the plays per turn metric from the article. Of course, as you yourself note, you can also generate virtual tempo by undoing your opponent's work, rather than making multiple proactive plays in a turn yourself.
If you are going to make all your arguments based on multiple different semantics, why are we still at this? We can similarly go back to the beginning of your half of the argument to look into exact verbiage (even though that matters far less than some people think):
Now you seem to have opened up enough to concede that tempo is involved with Wrath of God (see your above post), which seems to already completely debunk your own opening argument. So it's not pure CA? So it's.... CA and Tempo? Like Whydirt and literally everyone not you has said? Huh. Additionally, I honestly didn't even see this later paragraph. That makes this argument even more ludicrous. What's the difference between?
'Performing multiple actions in one turn' (getting ahead on spell castings)
'performing one action to undo multiple actions over multiple turns' (getting ahead on spell castings)
How do both get you ahead on spell castings? Because with WOG they might as well not have cast their 2-4 cards. You still have 3 spell actions that you can use to benefit you, and all 4 of theirs are in the toilet. It's literally the same both ways. Efficiency, not just more spells in one time period. More efficient use of spells in a given time period.
Are we done now? Are all the nit picks on terminology out of our system? I know I've certainly exhausted all of mine. Holy Christ.
Now you seem to have opened up enough to concede that tempo is involved with Wrath of God (see your above post), which seems to already completely debunk your own opening argument. So it's not pure CA? So it's.... CA and Tempo? Like Whydirt and literally everyone not you has said? Huh. Additionally, I honestly didn't even see this later paragraph. That makes this argument even more ludicrous. What's the difference between?
'Performing multiple actions in one turn' (getting ahead on spell castings)
'performing one action to undo multiple actions over multiple turns' (getting ahead on spell castings)
How do both get you ahead on spell castings? Because with WOG they might as well not have cast their 2-4 cards. You still have 3 spell actions that you can use to benefit you, and all 4 of theirs are in the toilet. It's literally the same both ways. Efficiency, not just more spells in one time period. More efficient use of spells in a given time period.
Are we done now? Are all the nit picks on terminology out of our system? I know I've certainly exhausted all of mine. Holy Christ.
Captain obvious moment here but semantic arguments ruin discussions. I think most everyone is saying the same thing using a different vocabulary.
Here's my version of the same message. You can describe the game on one axis. Card advantage. Whether virtual of real. At the end of the day -30k foot level- the deck the spends the most mana (or gets the most mana worth of effects) generally wins.
Aggressive decks try to do this with tempo. By playing out 7 cards in the time there opponent gets to only play 3. Man-O-war is effective here because it undos things your opponent does while also building your board. Untap effects do it by doubling your mana, etc.
Control decks win either by drawing more cards or playing bigger effects (or a combination). And the longer the game goes the bigger his advantage gets against aggressive decks.
That's really it. We can call it "tempo" or "spell velocity" or whatever. All the same thing. NWO added an urgency to the game via free spell effects - either attached to creatures of things like walkers (which break the fundamental mechanic of paying mana for effects).
Here's my version of the same message. You can describe the game on one axis. Card advantage. Whether virtual of real. At the end of the day -30k foot level- the deck the spends the most mana (or gets the most mana worth of effects) generally wins.
Aggressive decks try to do this with tempo. By playing out 7 cards in the time there opponent gets to only play 3. Man-O-war is effective here because it undos things your opponent does while also building your board. Untap effects do it by doubling your mana, etc.
Control decks win either by drawing more cards or playing bigger effects (or a combination). And the longer the game goes the bigger his advantage gets against aggressive decks.
That's really it. We can call it "tempo" or "spell velocity" or whatever. All the same thing. NWO added an urgency to the game via free spell effects - either attached to creatures of things like walkers (which break the fundamental mechanic of paying mana for effects).
"Hey, one of the best sets Wizards has every produced is about to be released and hit our cubes. I know, let's argue about tempo. Again."
Well, as long as everyone is being semantic, I'll jump in to remind people that NWO only refers to how complex cards are allowed to be at common, no more, no less.
The game paradigm shift that people are talking about would be modern design.
Lightning Bolt is fine at common under NWO. Under modern design it's an uncommon if it shows at all.
Ancestral Recall might be allowed at common under NWO guidelines. (100% if it was limited to you drawing cards.)
Power level, balance of creatures vs spells, ect is not NWO related. Anything printed at uncommon or higher is not NWO related except for the fact that if it's complex, that's probably why it's not a common.
The game paradigm shift that people are talking about would be modern design.
Lightning Bolt is fine at common under NWO. Under modern design it's an uncommon if it shows at all.
Ancestral Recall might be allowed at common under NWO guidelines. (100% if it was limited to you drawing cards.)
Power level, balance of creatures vs spells, ect is not NWO related. Anything printed at uncommon or higher is not NWO related except for the fact that if it's complex, that's probably why it's not a common.
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
No semantics is important. Most arguments develop out of semantic differences, and its usually better to address them, rather than plowing forward. I feel that was the mistake I made with my disagreement with Onderzeeboot about cloudblazer. I think we weren't in agreement about the meaning of a lot of the language we were arguing with, and it would have been better to smooth that out first.
Wog doesn't negate the aggro players prior turns. They still got use out of their mana. WOG acts like a game reset, but doesn't position the caster to do anything else on their turn, which is a real cost. You're not casting WOG to pull ahead on tempo, you're casting it to pull even on tempo, and pull ahead on card advantage. This is different than how a card that generates both CA and Tempo works in NWO design, where a spell that generates tempo and CA is pulling you ahead on both.
That difference is important, and a big part of what differentiates NWO design from old school design, and why I say that a lot of those new cards are more likely to break that old bifurcation.
When we're getting angry about someone being open minded to another's point of view maybe we should step back. You made a reasonable point about WOG being able to recoup tempo, which I acknowledged, and I think we all would prefer an evolving discussion, rather than a yelling match.
Wog doesn't negate the aggro players prior turns. They still got use out of their mana. WOG acts like a game reset, but doesn't position the caster to do anything else on their turn, which is a real cost. You're not casting WOG to pull ahead on tempo, you're casting it to pull even on tempo, and pull ahead on card advantage. This is different than how a card that generates both CA and Tempo works in NWO design, where a spell that generates tempo and CA is pulling you ahead on both.
That difference is important, and a big part of what differentiates NWO design from old school design, and why I say that a lot of those new cards are more likely to break that old bifurcation.
When we're getting angry about someone being open minded to another's point of view maybe we should step back. You made a reasonable point about WOG being able to recoup tempo, which I acknowledged, and I think we all would prefer an evolving discussion, rather than a yelling match.
Discussions here are generally very constructive. Sometimes people get defensive though and this is where semantics get used as technicalities to not lose arguments. That's where things devolve. Not suggesting that is happening now just that if we avid that this will remain a good use of our time I feel.
My gripe with some of the terminology is that it's not useful in describing certain things. All this discussion about how WOG impacts the game and no consensus. Yet I don't for a second believe anyone here is confused about how or when to play that card and what impact it has on games of Magic. So how valuable are these terms if they can't effectively explain a basic card like wrath.
I wasn't before but I'm now officially on team "stop using the word tempo". And I'm getting pretty close with spell velocity too.
My gripe with some of the terminology is that it's not useful in describing certain things. All this discussion about how WOG impacts the game and no consensus. Yet I don't for a second believe anyone here is confused about how or when to play that card and what impact it has on games of Magic. So how valuable are these terms if they can't effectively explain a basic card like wrath.
I wasn't before but I'm now officially on team "stop using the word tempo". And I'm getting pretty close with spell velocity too.
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
The way you handle that is you can develop a settled meaning, and than you might provide different examples for guidance as to what constitutes or doesn't constitute the term. Maybe a specific odd example comes up, and than their might have to be a discussion about that example, with the most convincing explanation becoming cannon, until someone can challenge it. No one wants to do that with a game though, because its not fun.
Unfortunately, not addressing the issue just means that you get a bunch of local interpretations that people than argue about (which is what happened here). You can ban tempo from the vocabulary, but its still a major theory behind how the game works, and its not going anywhere.
Unfortunately, not addressing the issue just means that you get a bunch of local interpretations that people than argue about (which is what happened here). You can ban tempo from the vocabulary, but its still a major theory behind how the game works, and its not going anywhere.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
I don't want to be pedantic here (and by that I mean I am totally going to be), but there should be a comma after "No"? I mean, you're not exactly off to a good start when you begin your defense of the importance of semantics with denying the importance of any and all semantics, are you?
Also, I'm fricking thrilled about Kaladesh. I am actually going to a Grand Prix for the first time in my life, and the format is going to be team sealed Kaladesh. How awesome is that!
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
That depends entirely on your deck. This seems like loads of fun in an aristocrats style deck, or with Life from the Loam and fetchlands.
Yeah, I'm just trying to think about how often this can go off realistically in a game.
Just realized that it's an excellent card with
Tokens count too, so an Eldrazi domain type cube could trigger this easily AND have big things worth cheating into play..