I love that they work together. Just like in the books of ya olde age (it was rumoured that these two kept in touch despite the fight between the two brothers if I remember correctly)
These are super cool, bro!
General (BRO) The Brother's War Spoilers
- Thread starter TrainmasterGT
- Start date
I am so incredibly pumped about having Ashnod and another Tawnos. Flavour-wise, love them both, feel very appropriate. Love that Ashnod works with her Transmogrant and Altar, and while I'm less of a fan of Tawnos's interaction with his artifacts we already have Izzet Tawnos for that, so w/e.
Yeah, me too. You are correct - they were rumoured to be friends or lovers, but they were more like close acquaintances with their only common ground being their respective attachments to a detached, borderline inhuman mad scientist prosecuting a vast war over little more than ego. Turns out commiserating over truly shitty bosses is able to overcome such trifling differences as committing war crimes or participating in torture, who knew.
I'm now wondering what type I would have Food be instead of Artifact for maximum flavour. Enchantment seems to imply fae trickery (Eat the food, never return) which is cool but perhaps thematically limiting? Still prefer it to Artifact though. Land doesn't make any sense. Creature and Planeswalker do in certain contexts but also ew.
Yeah, me too. You are correct - they were rumoured to be friends or lovers, but they were more like close acquaintances with their only common ground being their respective attachments to a detached, borderline inhuman mad scientist prosecuting a vast war over little more than ego. Turns out commiserating over truly shitty bosses is able to overcome such trifling differences as committing war crimes or participating in torture, who knew.
I'm now wondering what type I would have Food be instead of Artifact for maximum flavour. Enchantment seems to imply fae trickery (Eat the food, never return) which is cool but perhaps thematically limiting? Still prefer it to Artifact though. Land doesn't make any sense. Creature and Planeswalker do in certain contexts but also ew.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Since plants are creatures in magic and artifacts are something artificial, a creature would fit better. That said, maybe have it be a permanent without a type? Or create a new type for these kind of tokens
New mechanic! I love the modality of this keyword. You get to either make a big creature for a lot of colorless mana or make a smaller creature for a little bit of colored mana. Two cool features of this mechanic are that it makes it easier to increase the as-fan of cheat targets without needing to increase the number of expensive creatures and that if you blink a prototype, it comes back as it's full-sized self. There's a lot of cool synergies with these waiting to be explored!
I'm sure some people aren't going to like this because of memory issues and/or the frame, but I'm going to wait until I have a chance to play these in person before making a judgment. They definitely won't be problematic online, and I would guess it's not going to be too hard to remember that you cast your creature for 3 mana instead of 7. Like I said, we'll see.
We knew unearth is coming back already, but I'm excited nonetheless. More ways to interact from the graveyard are always welcome.
This is part of a meld combo, but I think it seems decent by itself.
Fucking hell, Wizards, stop inventing new mechanics that offer modal costs! I just finished making a new 2-3-7 cube.
Look at our twoheroes walking war-crimes! I feel like Urza is the stronger of the two (permanent ramp, looting instead of rummaging)... but I feel like Mishra is the cooler card.
(Yes, I know that there are also Rare and Mythic cards for the pair... but I like these designs quite a bit.)
EDIT: They're also probably going to do interesting things in Standard, what with there being several really solid artifacts with Channel:
Look at our two
(Yes, I know that there are also Rare and Mythic cards for the pair... but I like these designs quite a bit.)
EDIT: They're also probably going to do interesting things in Standard, what with there being several really solid artifacts with Channel:
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Prototype has me hoping I can find a replacement for Myr Battlesphere I'm more into. Fleshgorger is close, but it doesn't work all that well with Animate Dead.
Hurkyl is kind of funky, I'm not sure if you want to diversify your card types or not, it's probably best to be somewhat moderate so you can actually hit something reliably. Very good with multi-type permanents, but most of those are creatures.
She's pretty aggressively costed though.
Hurkyl is kind of funky, I'm not sure if you want to diversify your card types or not, it's probably best to be somewhat moderate so you can actually hit something reliably. Very good with multi-type permanents, but most of those are creatures.
She's pretty aggressively costed though.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
I hope this is the set we get instant sorceries in 
Oh my Edric, what big claws you have.
Prototype has me hoping I can find a replacement for Myr Battlesphere I'm more into. Fleshgorger is close, but it doesn't work all that well with Animate Dead.
Hurkyl is kind of funky, I'm not sure if you want to diversify your card types or not, it's probably best to be somewhat moderate so you can actually hit something reliably. Very good with multi-type permanents, but most of those are creatures.
She's pretty aggressively costed though.
Not only does Hurkyl seem sweet (Cast spells -> draw cards is pretty much always strong), its Hurkyl! Just need a Drafna and my wishlist is complete!
Edit: NVM, thought she drew any noncreature, not one that shared a type. Still seems decent but not as strong as I had hoped - might juuuust be good enough for my cube if I squint. Cool for a list that supports Delirium though since you'll be able to grab the multi-type creatures off her. Probably at her best with a high density of cheap artifacts and artifact creatures in the deck, rather than worrying about getting the right balance of a bunch of different types?
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So many modal cards. It is a little exhausting and a little same-y after them doing it in basically *every* set now..
Yeah, honestly...
Seriously, I like modal cards. One of my recurring cube design things revolves around modal mechanics in order to fill out the curve, but come on.
Honestly, I kinda wish that, in the absence of blocks, they just had mechanics last multiple sets. So you'd have three sets in a row with Kicker or whatever.
Eh, I like that when the modes are simple enough. Deans are terrible, but Adventures are great. Prototype is super clean, not sure how to you indicate the creature is prototyped on paper but it's just two possible states.So many modal cards. It is a little exhausting and a little same-y after them doing it in basically *every* set now..
Modality is really important in Magic because we are somewhat short on sources of agency:
- Which cards to play - diminshed when you draw fewer cards than you can play. Drawing a single card a turn makes this a rather limited source of agency whenever CA is a scarce resource.
- When to play cards - diminished for mana higher mana costs and when tempo is a scarce resource.
Modality helps with adding more agency to both these dimensions.
I think Hearthstone offers a helpful point of comparison. The "Druid" class identity, after ramp, was modal spells. This meant that in the game's first few years, a critical mass of really strong modal spells appeared for the class and codified themselves as the auto-include core of any competitive deck (it's been, god, 7 years, but off the top of my head: 2 innervate 2 wild growth 1 and then eventually 2 nourish 2 swipe 2 wrath, 2 Ancient of War, eventually 2 Ultimate Infestation, early on 2 Druid of the Claw, Cenarius and then eventually the Death Knight, so on and so on and so on....). Eventually Blizzard gave Druid other competitive toolsets that represented different cores of a competitive deck - Malygos, Yogg-Saron, and above all else, Jade - but the "core" of any "real" Druid deck changed remarkably little over many many years.
Each individual 'Choose One' card wasn't a threat to deck diversity, but the problem was created by a critical mass, where they represented a sufficiently branching decision tree to cover (and dominate) any gamestate that might come to pass.
Modal spells are awesome in Limited because generally in retail limited players are looking at - and evaluating between - maybe two or three actually compelling lines or options. In Cube and Constructed, the number of viable lines of play for a given hand and deck is much higher; there is still usually some kind of pretty easy-to-perform heuristic for Hero to narrow her options down to two that she can genuinely weigh against each other. If every card in your deck were modal, the level of analysis required to make really marginal choices ('do I keep Nourish for cards, or slam ramp and hope to draw into UI?' is only one choice for one card but itself already represents a real cognitive load) probably quickly outpaces the actual improvements to gameplay that you're creating by consistency and reduced odds of 'the Jund problem' (of drawing the wrong half of your deck at the wrong time).
what does this mean for cube? probably not much because we're not gonna get that overwhelming majority of all of our cards presenting genuinely distinct modal choices game after game after game. What does it mean for Standard? Has there been a standard format ruled by modal spells? ultimately, i guess planeswalkers mean that the answer is 'yes', but Magic has wisely stayed away from the worst excesses of 2010s Druid.dec. That said, I still doubt any of us are at risk of doing that to our formats. cheers
Each individual 'Choose One' card wasn't a threat to deck diversity, but the problem was created by a critical mass, where they represented a sufficiently branching decision tree to cover (and dominate) any gamestate that might come to pass.
Modal spells are awesome in Limited because generally in retail limited players are looking at - and evaluating between - maybe two or three actually compelling lines or options. In Cube and Constructed, the number of viable lines of play for a given hand and deck is much higher; there is still usually some kind of pretty easy-to-perform heuristic for Hero to narrow her options down to two that she can genuinely weigh against each other. If every card in your deck were modal, the level of analysis required to make really marginal choices ('do I keep Nourish for cards, or slam ramp and hope to draw into UI?' is only one choice for one card but itself already represents a real cognitive load) probably quickly outpaces the actual improvements to gameplay that you're creating by consistency and reduced odds of 'the Jund problem' (of drawing the wrong half of your deck at the wrong time).
what does this mean for cube? probably not much because we're not gonna get that overwhelming majority of all of our cards presenting genuinely distinct modal choices game after game after game. What does it mean for Standard? Has there been a standard format ruled by modal spells? ultimately, i guess planeswalkers mean that the answer is 'yes', but Magic has wisely stayed away from the worst excesses of 2010s Druid.dec. That said, I still doubt any of us are at risk of doing that to our formats. cheers
If by "finish" you mean "reached the point where it makes me want to puke at shear rage over how it does not exactly match my vision", then yes!
That explains your Avatar.
it's time to draft it for years and then redesign it from the ground up several times. ONE OF US ONE OF US
Chris Taylor
Contributor
You know I mean on the typelineWe already have that.
Hey WOTC, why doesn't this just have Enrage?
Weird that an artificer has nothing to do with artifacts
Feldon's a Sadboi, not an Angryboi.
Hey WOTC, why doesn't this just have Enrage?
Dom Harvey
Contributor
The Commander decks were previewed today and this thing stood out to me. As a six-drop it's not that impressive but the 'Scavenge' looks excellent to me - maybe this set can complete the artifact/graveyard crossover?