Card/Deck Start your Engines: A Temur Card Advantage Deck

[Alfonzo Bonzo]

Chandra in that decklist reminds me of playable windfall effects. Anybody tried out



Yet?

 

[Aoret]

Chandra in that decklist reminds me of playable windfall effects. Anybody tried out



Yet?

I'm testing it but have yet to play it. I played sealed against my girlfriend over the weekend testing this changeset seeded as extra cards into the pools. I divided them by color and it ended up being roughly 50/50 to go Izzet and Abzan as the two portions. Methodology was more akin to team sealed because I added extra packs to get closer to draft deck quality. My half was the izzet half, but as you can see from the changeset, it's much more conducive to an aggressive prowess deck.

I think the card stands a chance to shine in aggressive dimir decks, reanimator of all sorts, and lab man decks, but it might just be a crappy four drop that never gets played. Not sure yet!

 

[sigh]

Really good discussion, a few thoughts:

1. Ramp and Control can easily start to feel like they overlap, since both archetypes have an interest in obtaining mana superiority. Some thought should probably be given to how to create a range within R/G/x that a player will likely be inclined to move around within: sort of a where it makes sense to go down a more traditional G/R monsters deck, though sometimes you might want a more controlling G/R wildfire deck. If you give me too many big dumb monsters, I might be inclined to just push a midrange rush and leave loam at home.

2. Recursive elements are incredibly powerful in cube, and can really format stifle, or swallow up the more niche interactions you are trying to encourage. Just something to keep in mind when tuning.

1. Do you have any ideas on what other routes can be taken to make that fork in the road more clear? Are there 4-5cmc doods that can work in beatdown, but favor the slow road? Is there a different type of card you would rather see? This point interests me tremendously, as the color pairing would need two sets of signals, effectively. For instance, I like deadbridge goliath in that it gives you a hint at wanting the long game. Also self-recursive. Red is a whole 'nother beast. Even just laying my red section out recently by 'fast-type' and 'slow-type' opened my eyes to how easily red can get/be very fast-skewed.

2. Do you think type-restricting is useful in this regard (nature's spiral), or just restrict # of recursions. Maybe/probably a mix of both.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

1. Do you have any ideas on what other routes can be taken to make that fork in the road more clear? Are there 4-5cmc doods that can work in beatdown, but favor the slow road? Is there a different type of card you would rather see? This point interests me tremendously, as the color pairing would need two sets of signals, effectively. For instance, I like deadbridge goliath in that it gives you a hint at wanting the long game. Also self-recursive. Red is a whole 'nother beast. Even just laying my red section out recently by 'fast-type' and 'slow-type' opened my eyes to how easily red can get/be very fast-skewed.

2. Do you think type-restricting is useful in this regard (nature's spiral), or just restrict # of recursions. Maybe/probably a mix of both.

For question #2 I would just keep an eye on things and see how they play out. Maybe we can do some grid drafts (just the draft) and see how those decks look.

Question #1 is really hard to answer in a forum post. I kind of touch upon it here in this post I just made about my R/G decks. This is a spot where drafters can move around quite a bit, and it depends a lot on the composition of the packs that are being fed to them. I think the easiest way, during testing, would be to provide some fairly sharp contours in the various effects, and see how people react to them. The thing that makes this complicated is that a slower RG deck will almost always splash a third color, which dramatically changes how it functions.

For me, that RG base relationship was impossible to really establish in my drafters' minds until I added spikeshot elder, and that single card began producing actual R/G decks:

1. Benefits from ramp
2. Benefits from green auras
3. Super powerful effect for the format
4. cost encourages color simplicity
5. rewards ramping
6. Both controls and rewards a longer game

I kind of latched onto that, and than added stormbind and savage twister. X cards really benefit from ramp, but twister suggests a more pure controlling relationship. Than once you add in smoothers like magmatic insight and tormenting voice it suggests that control is possible, though its easier (and smarter) to draft the deck if you dip into blue, just because you aren't dependent on those two cards to meet your draw needs. Than on the other end of the spectrum you have the RGB decks that are more interested in value recursion to overwhelm removal.

Ugh, I feel almost like going off and talking about pauper again, because the RUG tron decks there really show how this can play out, where you have two almost identical decks but slight tweaks in the card composition can dramatically change the deck from being a control or ramp deck. Ramp decks just want to hit big mana and toss out haymakers that they hope are good enough, while control decks want mana superiority to power their "many for ones."

 

[sigh]

As hard as a suuuuper open ended question can be, definitely a useful and constructive answer. I've thought about the twister, and might still, but for now adding these beauts to my mental picture:

Thoughts on demise? Saw it in my binder and fits like a buncha points Grillo makes just now.

Edit:
?
Is this just too narrow, not good enough, somethingsomething? In my mind it seems to fit a lot of roles the deck wants: a cheap creature, gains life for buying time, can chump. Also synergize with the fact that this is a more creature-control archetype... right???
Also, to me at least, seems to be a nice drafting signal that can do slower deck stuff.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

I think you might be fine for R/G tie-ins. Double wildfire without tons of mana fixing is pretty great already. I was thinking maybe try flame slash and roast for removal, as aggro can run those but they fit better in slower R/x midrange or control decks.

One other card I think you are missing:



I think at that point its probably alright to start doing some test drafts on cube tutor and see what happens?

Essence warden seems like more of a tokens card, no?

 

[sigh]

I think you might be fine for R/G tie-ins. Double wildfire without tons of mana fixing is pretty great already. I was thinking maybe try flame slash and roast for removal, as aggro can run those but they fit better in slower R/x midrange or control decks.

One other card I think you are missing:



I think at that point its probably alright to start doing some test drafts on cube tutor and see what happens?

Essence warden seems like more of a tokens card, no?

I could see reintroducing one of those. I've also been thinking about fall of the titans, which it seems big RG decks can take full advantage of. Also it's in the list Dom posted.

I love me some harmonize, and agree that this is probably the place it can shine brightest.

I'll be doing a test draft IRL tomorrow! And then updating cubetutor for some there.

It does seem more like that . One of my next targets for deep discussion is how to utilize the "slow-type" cards being built into green in the GW pair! First though will be getting this to work, and then tying it to U and B. So many ideas to flush out!

 

[safra]

Harmonize is bad and you should feel bad if you run it

 

[sigh]

http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads...ake-stompy-gruul-more-interesting.734/page-11

(Will link later when not on mobile)

Found this, which is pretty cool. This discussion has happened! I'm glad to see this is an archetype on the brink. I hope this thread can help finally bring it into the light.

 

[vennythekid]

Harmonize is bad and you should feel bad if you run it

I'm curious, why do you think so?

 

[sigh]

One important note for everyone to keep in mind, I think:
Grillo brought up an excellent point, which is that blues draw package has to be reevaluated in parallel with non-U control being explored.

Some particular lines I'm looking at are more U card quality spells, rather than just a package of raw card advantage:

 

[safra]

I'm curious, why do you think so?

The 2uu version isn't that exciting either imo (i would MUCH rather play Divination in most environments) given what else that gets you these days and green is more exciting with on-board CA engines anyway. Harmonize is, like, my perfect example of an 'EDH card' because the people who say it's good are evaluating it in the context of 'decent mono-G draw spell' and not even comparing it to blue equivs because of the colour identity rules. It might be more interesting in a 2-drop dork format but not a lot more? I like Life's Legacy more in sac environments and the 3G ROE instant elsewhere.

Also, like, this is the Gifts Ungiven thread right? Which would you rather draft? What would make you want Harmonize more?

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Thats all true. There is also the reality that paying at sorcery speed is really bad in a pressure format. Contemporary versions would need to have some sort of rider attached to make up for the tempo loss, at a minimum. There was a period of time where harmonize was a staple cube card, but as formats powered up, its become a lot worse, for all the reasons you stated.

That being said a big part of this experiment is premised on the notion that for non-blue control to be viable, it can't be a strictly inferior mirror of a blue deck. Thus ponder and preordain have to go, which helps make magmatic insight, faithless looting, and tormenting voice more reasonable picks. The blue draw spells in general should be toned down in both density and quality, and this creates a window where harmonize can suddenly shine again.

I think we are pretty much priced into trying this, for at least a couple of drafts, and if it don't work out/isn't desirable, than we know its better to frame this as a grindy midrange archetype, rather than as something competing on the same axis as blue based control.

 

[sigh]

The 2uu version isn't that exciting either imo (i would MUCH rather play Divination in most environments) given what else that gets you these days and green is more exciting with on-board CA engines anyway. Harmonize is, like, my perfect example of an 'EDH card' because the people who say it's good are evaluating it in the context of 'decent mono-G draw spell' and not even comparing it to blue equivs because of the colour identity rules. It might be more interesting in a 2-drop dork format but not a lot more? I like Life's Legacy more in sac environments and the 3G ROE instant elsewhere.

Also, like, this is the Gifts Ungiven thread right? Which would you rather draft? What would make you want Harmonize more?

This is "the gifts ungiven" thread, I guess. But a hiatus was taken to work out the rest of the deck ideas. Aka, make archetypes that work on their own, and then gifts can take it over the top. Rev 1 was a little too "in a vacuum"-y.

I'd want harmonize over gifts in a:
1. Deck without U
2. Deck that wants raw card count over precision combo-value-tutor hybrid.
3. Cube that wants some cards that are semi-easy to understand. Gifts is not that.

But it could very well be a bad card. Any suggestions as to what might really want to be in, instead of harmonize?

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

There really is nothing like it in green.

Also, useful commentary:

The final card on this list is really quite laughable with the blue timeshifted version not having seen play for so so long. The cost to card ratios on this spell are not unacceptable however for a blue control mage the sorcery speed is. In green you care almost nothing for your card draw to be instant and you have much better mana ramp. A blue instant that cost 1UU and drew you three cards would seem outstanding and make the top end of this list and Harmonize is closer to this theoretical card than it is to Concentrate. Despite this green does not often play Harmonize however this has more to do with green lacking answers to things and thus needing to pose questions rather than find the right answers with card draw. Green has always tended to get its card advantage through doing other things like making dorks or Plowing lands or by using engines.

Harmonize is very much on the cusp of being cube playable with only the top 8 cards in this list having been cube mainstays for the duration. I would like to see more powerful and more interesting cards that are pure card draw spells. The sparse nature of this list goes a long way to highlighting the deficit of good card draw in recent magic history. The design of modern cards has made pure card draw worse from several fronts. The higher power of monsters makes the loss of tempo from card draw more punishing. The greater resilience of permanents makes drawing into your answers a weaker strategy and the built in card advantage on many tempo gaining cards closes the gap on total card advantage between control and agro archetypes. As such you card draw is relatively less powerful despite drawing the same number of cards as it once did because one of the cards you drew with it was used to deal with something that had already paid for itself in card terms alone.

Bolded part of it because its important to cube design in general

 

[sigh]

I'm agreeing with Grillo that exploratory is basically where we want, and it's time to actually put something to the grindstone. Will be trying harmonize.
Found on the updated version of that draw spell list:

Seems pretty sweet as a R draw spell. It's not like GR needs to be holding up countermagic, so...?

EDIT:

Can someone who's played with this explain why it's a trap? It seems like creature-heavy GR control is the best shot it's got at actually being something?

 

[Aoret]

I'm a bit late with this as I didn't finish writing my rant about Harmonize before I had to leave for work today, but here goes.

I think we're deluding ourselves if our answer to "non-blue control" is including colorshifted blue cards while making blue worse. Grillo explores this above, but basically we need to find ways for green to generate card advantage that are actually, well, green. Off the top of my head that's things like Garruk, Primal Hunter (who a lot of us have started to resent for being a bit ott, but who you also can't argue is a pretty damn green sort of advantage engine), dudes that do ETB stuff plus Evolutionary Leap (which I personally harbor distaste for due to the repetitive nature of it's usage) . You can see an example of this in one of the many grid drafts I lost to safra; I basically just get chump blocked over and over by stuff that gets sacrificed to leap while generating incidental ETB bonuses. If memory serves I was playing pretty poorly that night, but setting that aside, you can still see the repetition in the gameplay.

I'd also like to offer up a more dangerous suggestion. Control is about generating advantage, stabilizing, and then killing your opponent with a big creature or cool engine or whatever. Green decks have advantage engines that aren't straight card draw and while it's a difficult problem as many of the options are distasteful, we'll solve that soon enough. But what dissuades our drafters from doing the more obvious thing and just ramping up to Avenger of Zendikar instead of playing control to get there? Do we really expect people who pick AoZ to then think "ooh! I know how I'll cast this! I'll find ways to prolong the game while generating incremental advantage until I'm able to get to seven mana and drop this bad boy on the table!"

...so then we have to cut ramp? And then what implications does this have on wildfire? Certainly that archetype can work just off the back of Brindle Shoats, loam, planeswalkers and such. Do we include like 2 ramp cards as a "combo" with wildfire? I feel like that will send the wrong signal and make people angry when they realize they picked up the only two Rampant Growths in the entire format and are expected to durdle their way into casting their fatties.


so tl;dr I think this can work but you're gonna have to really think about the implications to green as a color overall and be willing to let go of traditional notions if you want people to do more than breeze past the archetype you're pouring your blood, sweat, and tears into. I actually don't think losing ramp is a big loss at all (it is, after all, well documented that it's kind of a shit strategy and prone to winning/losing games based almost entirely on RNG of whether you draw your deck in the right order, but that's kind of a separate argument and this is supposed to be the tl;dr...)

 

[Aoret]

EDIT:

Can someone who's played with this explain why it's a trap? It seems like creature-heavy GR control is the best shot it's got at actually being something?

Basically it plays a lot worse than it reads on paper. If I just cast a subpar four drop and that cantrips, okay, fine I guess (though the rate gets even worse when you consider it is green). But when you then tell me I need a sac outlet (or to be able to get it killed in combat over and over) just to earn the right to pay 6 mana to draw a card? I dunno, that starts sounding worse to me. The closest comparison is that four drop enchantments-cantrip-now bear, which needs a lot less work to get going and only has one less power.

 

[Eric Chan]

We actually discussed how Masked Admirers was surprisingly bad in Modern Masters 2 - which is as low powered a format as any - and that, for a midrange green card advantage engine, Reach of Branches is actually what you might be looking for, instead.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

I think we're not trying to cut ramp so much as we're trying to thread the ramp and control elements together, as they are both operating on a mana superiority axis. The difference is one is overly focused on threat presentment (ramp) while the other is more focused on interactivity (control). This was much easier for me to do because of the bouncelands, which are ubiquitous in the format, and provided badly needed ramp for control strategies. Green is so focused on threat presentment rather than answers, that this is where the archetypes major conflict comes in.

I mentioned a little bit the pauper tron decks that can be very similar, but which tiny shifts can have the list lean one way or the other. Fortunately, I managed to find the article that explains this.

"Going for the throat wholly focused weapon is not only easier in deck construction but it is sound due to the variety of potential opponents. Why, then, is metagame deckbuilding important? It allows for the prepared to gain edges on the format and also encourages further diversity. Approaching deck selection from a spells first perspective as opposed to simply selecting a strategy and trying to win the race can yield better results in the short and long term if one can follow the trends.

Let’s look at a recent example.

Temur Tron

ZBishop June 2015
Creatures
4 Aurochs Herd
3 Fangren Marauder
1 Fierce Empath
1 Ulamog's Crusher
9 cards

Other Spells
4 Mulldrifter
4 Ancient Stirrings
1 Deep Analysis
3 Firebolt
1 Rolling Thunder
4 Chromatic Sphere
4 Chromatic Star
4 Expedition Map
4 Prophetic Prism
2 Oblivion Ring
31 cards Lands
1 Bojuka Bog
2 Haunted Fengraf
1 Island
1 Khalni Garden
2 Mountain
1 Unknown Shores
4 Urza's Mine
4 Urza's Power Plant
4 Urza's Tower
20 cards

Sideboard
2 Ancient Grudge
1 Dispel
2 Electrickery
1 Moment's Peace
4 Pyroblast
1 Ray of Revelation
11 cards

Izzet Tron
JSiri84 June 2015
Creatures
1 Ulamog's Crusher
1 Mnemonic Wall
2 cards

Other Spells
2 Sea Gate Oracle
2 Mulldrifter
3 Flame Slash
1 Rolling Thunder
1 Capsize
4 Condescend
2 Counterspell
2 Exclude
4 Impulse
3 Lightning Bolt
2 Mana Leak
2 Mystical Teachings
1 Think Twice
2 Twin Bolt
2 Pristine Talisman
3 Prophetic Prism
4 Swiftwater Cliffs
40 cards Lands
4 Island
2 Izzet Guildgate
4 Urza's Mine
4 Urza's Power Plant
4 Urza's Tower
18 cards

Sideboard
1 Flame Slash
2 Bottle Gnomes
1 Echoing Truth
2 Gorilla Shaman
2 Hydroblast
1 Negate
3 Pyroblast
2 Serrated Arrows
1 Shattering Pulse
15 cards

The first list is a typical Temur Tron list in that it attempts to win through sheer power. It has minimized its interactive elements and is instead wholly focused on finding Tron to power out its threats. While more resilient than previous versions thanks to the card replacement ability on Aurochs Herd, it still tries to not care about what is happening across the table.
The Izzet Tron list goes to the other extreme. Instead of dedicating part of its deck to assembling Tron, it instead makes the natural progression of its mana engine part of a long game plan. Instead, it runs powerful answers in Condescend and Twin Bolt, as well as the best Ancient Stirrings ever in Impulse as a way to find specific answers or Tron pieces while also keeping defenses up. By committing fewer resources to enacting its own plan Izzet Tron finds more slots used to answer opposing threats. The result is a deck that is well suited when its pilot is prepared but could be caught flat if a trend changes.

Twin Bolt, for instance, is at its best when there are numerous decks that rely on X/1 creatures such as Delver or Goblins where it has the potential to trade for two cards It is terrible against token strategies where it will often trade for less than one card. If the metagame were to shift to tokens I could absolutely see Izzet Tron moving to Electrickery in that slot. There the utility to having the card main leads to greater play when it comes to sideboarding. The presence of both Impulse and Mystical Teachings allows the deck to run more virtual copies and helps to prevent dedicating multiple sideboard slots to a rather narrow card."

 

[sigh]

haha wow. I can almost feel the negative energy flying off the screen. And the words definitely succeeded in plenty of feel-bad on this end. Bravo.


By paragraph order from post 67 up to here, excluding paragraph 1:

2. My blue is probably too strong, so making it worse is something I should be doing anyway. I feel like this is easy for a lot of cubes to also accidentally do, because blue draw spells are easy to include, widely used, and blue is cool. For that reason I see it being a valid approach for >1 cube here. I like both suggestions of draw. I do run evolutionary leap and have liked it reasonably well.

3. I like that engines are mentioned. Cuz that's what I am trying to accomplish, so I'm on at least the right track. My easy solution for the question later in the paragraph is not just not run AoZ. If the 6+ drop is seasons past, ramping it out is probably stupid at best, so some other game plan should precede it, much like the GB pro tour deck. My other six drop (Prime Time) could be replaced with Ulvenwald Hydra, which is also worse early unless you are on a straight land-ramp package, and also blocks better relatively speaking (reach). I fully recognize that changes have to be made to green to change how it plays. This thread is trying to constructively figure that out.

4. I feel like wildfire can definitely be made to work without ramp. And might actually be more fair/fun that way. I don't see ramp being contrary to the goal of green control, but maybe that is the case.

5. I hope to accurately consider the implications. In fact, that's the whole point of this thread. As far as I can tell, no one's really taken the time of day to actually lay the implications out fully, so I'm trying to take a bigger approach than just talking about it on the back of a napkin in the middle of another thread.

6. A succinct and through explanation. It does seem so nice on paper, that's for sure.

-------

7. This is a great suggestion . It seems to slot well into "late game recursive value engine", which makes me very happy (redundany = yay).

-------

8. Thank you Grillo. A well put statement on what's trying to happen, and a definitely underline of the looming issue. And maybe this experiment is an overall failure because of that.

9. sweet article, and a good perspective on it all.

10+. (grillo's article).

 

[Aoret]

haha wow. I can almost feel the negative energy flying off the screen. And the words definitely succeeded in plenty of feel-bad on this end. Bravo.

In no way trying to trash you or the thread and I'm sorry if it came across that way. I care about this and I want it to succeed, so I'm criticizing what I felt was a bad turn for this to take, and trying to contribute by exploring a bit of the space where I think I can lend insight.

2. My blue is probably too strong, so making it worse is something I should be doing anyway. I feel like this is easy for a lot of cubes to also accidentally do, because blue draw spells are easy to include, widely used, and blue is cool. For that reason I see it being a valid approach for >1 cube here. I like both suggestions of draw. I do run evolutionary leap and have liked it reasonably well.

Fair enough, if blue needs to be worse, I don't mind that a bit and I'm all for balance. I'm just wary when we start down the path of "lets use straight draw spells in other colors! Oh, blue's draw is still better, we should make it worse!". It strikes me as a line of thinking where we convince ourselves we're innovating on archetypes when all we're doing is color shifting (which has it's own merits and creates interesting space, as has been explored in a few cubes on the forum, but which isn't the point of this thread afaik)

3. I like that engines are mentioned. Cuz that's what I am trying to accomplish, so I'm on at least the right track. My easy solution for the question later in the paragraph is not just not run AoZ. If the 6+ drop is seasons past, ramping it out is probably stupid at best, so some other game plan should precede it, much like the GB pro tour deck. My other six drop (Prime Time) could be replaced with Ulvenwald Hydra, which is also worse early unless you are on a straight land-ramp package, and also blocks better relatively speaking (reach). I fully recognize that changes have to be made to green to change how it plays. This thread is trying to constructively figure that out.

Seasons past is an excellent point and a great direction to go for what you're trying to do. If we had enough cards like that, I think this becomes not a concern and what Grillo articulated above about mana superiority rings true for me. However, and this is a big however, I have to stress my concern about including traditional ramp targets alongside traditional ramp spells. Most people are just not going to choose our weird quirky foreign archetype over something familiar unless you explicitly tell them it's there. This has less to do with the jump from 7 mana down to 6 and everything to do with Spells That Ramp Mana + Big Green Creatures = ramp deck. We absolutely must protect the identity of the archetypes you're trying to create by forcing the players away from these familiar, easymode alternatives.

4. I feel like wildfire can definitely be made to work without ramp. And might actually be more fair/fun that way. I don't see ramp being contrary to the goal of green control, but maybe that is the case.

I was a bit unsure of the wildfire thing, but if you think it has legs I'd love to hear more about how it plays out in practice.

5. I hope to accurately consider the implications. In fact, that's the whole point of this thread. As far as I can tell, no one's really taken the time of day to actually lay the implications out fully, so I'm trying to take a bigger approach than just talking about it on the back of a napkin in the middle of another thread.

Agreed, nobody has taken the time to actually test a lot of this stuff and that's probably what is needed here. I don't really have the time to commit to it, so the best I can offer is theorycraft occasionally. Very possible I should just get out of the kitchen and let you guys work, but I had to speak up on the harmonize thing because I felt like it was a really bad direction to take.

7. This is a great suggestion . It seems to slot well into "late game recursive value engine", which makes me very happy (redundany = yay).

Totally agree this card seems super sweet.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

I wouldn't get too negative. Lets just run the package and do some cube tutor drafts and see what we get. I feel that the data from the drafting process and the final deck lists will be valuable. Honestly, I kind of still suspect harmonize will play much better than it looks. I found the article ahadabhan linked to in the perfect imbalance thread.

Relevant exert from the post:

I find this list fascinating because it is still 100% power-max mindset but the dynamic of cube back 6 years ago was so vastly different from today it's almost unrecognizable. The green section in particular is extremely telling. In the top 20 most powerful green cards in all of Magic according to a good portion of the cube community, you have Harmonize at 13 and Krosan Tusker at 18. Two cards that Riptiders don't even run anymore, cards that the current MTGS crowd would LOL at I think if you showed up today and asked about them (people here I feel know better).

I don't call these out as bad cards, but more to illustrate how much lower the average power level was 6 years ago. And how that fact alone completely changes the game in ways I'm not sure people really appreciate. Harmonize is NOT a bad card. Even today. It's a 3 for 1 for 4 mana. That is totally decent (more than decent in fact). You could play it in a current list and not feel like an idiot if it weren't for the fact that you can now instead play things like Polukranos, World Eater for the same mana cost (and there are now enough busted cards a 4 CMC for green that there is zero reason to run harmonize). The game is also so much more tempo driven. Why do I need pure CA cards when something like the hydra can generate CA with mana and/or just win the game by itself? More importantly, do I have time anymore to draw cards when my opponent just dropped Hero of Bladehold and that will take the game out of reach if I don't respond immediately. Power max lists have nothing but cards like this in it now. Even your average Riptide list is full of value cards like this.

The effect all this power creep has had on the game IMO is net negative. Even in my cube, I've kept out a lot of the power and I still have found that I just don't have time to do things I used to be able to do. Even my beloved Genesis is starting to show his age. There are plenty of games where there is simply too much pressure on me to get to 6 mana, spend 3 to get back boneshredder all to kill a single threat. In my first cube, this was a frighteningly powerful play. Today? Eh. You kind of need to do more with 6 mana. And I'm really unhappy with that honestly. At least for me, the game didn't get better as a result of this dynamic shift. It just made it harder to experiment with less efficient yet interesting card combinations.

I feel like the creative space I once had is shrinking. The bar is being set too high on your average good stuff list. And we combat that (here at Riptide) by removing many of those cards and replacing them with complex interatctions. This is generally a positive thing, but you know what? It also has an alienating effect on more casual players. A lot of what I've done to my cube over the last year is going over the heads of people. And cards require too much effort to unlock. This is contrary to how the cube used to work and it isn't something everyone likes. But going full good stuff today isn't like before. It just squeezes out too many fringe deck lists.

Speaking of which, how about?



The bolded section from my post several posts above about harmonize also reflects on my concerns about loam, but states it much better. Loam is a pure draw engine in an age where the design of modern cards punishes pure draw. Even worse, its a pure draw spell that does nothing until lands hit the yard.

At the worst though, I think we would just shift to a more jundish approach. Thats an incremental advantage axis inline with modern design, though the potential negative is that green is so good at asserting pressure, loam could just become a win-more in practice.

This has been a very interesting discussion though.

 

[Aoret]

Genesis is an interesting one and something I'd definitely overlooked. I haven't played with the card much so I can't really speak to power level, but in a vacuum this is exactly what I'm talking about re: advantage that isn't pure draw.

Also couldn't agree more with the sentiment that we need to just get actual testing done. If you guys think CT drafts are valuable (as opposed to running some grids as previously mentioned), I'm happy to pitch in with that effort. It's a lot easier atm for me to bang out a few drafts on work breaks than it is to get together to do a grid.

edit: is there a link/list somewhere? or is it still something sigh is tinkering with?

 

[sigh]

Genesis is an interesting one and something I'd definitely overlooked. I haven't played with the card much so I can't really speak to power level, but in a vacuum this is exactly what I'm talking about re: advantage that isn't pure draw.

Also couldn't agree more with the sentiment that we need to just get actual testing done. If you guys think CT drafts are valuable (as opposed to running some grids as previously mentioned), I'm happy to pitch in with that effort. It's a lot easier atm for me to bang out a few drafts on work breaks than it is to get together to do a grid.

edit: is there a link/list somewhere? or is it still something sigh is tinkering with?

Yeah I'm tinkering still. I'll be letting you all know when the list is updated, which might be in ~5 hours?

I also do like ol' genesis.