Search results

I think it's fine if some players decide to play red aggro. It would be a matter of balancing the speed of aggro compared to the chimera exile creatures. Aggro decks could be looking for creatures (to exile with chimeras) with damage, evasion, removing blockers, drawing cards, and so on to help...

Yeah, I remember being really into the timeshifted stuff when Time Spiral block was getting previewed and released. We all knew that the time shifted stuff in Future Sight needed to be from the future, so it was fascinating to see what they actually gave us.

Which do you like best between the white borders and future frames? I started out with lots of white border cards during revised and eventually 4th Edition and Chronicles. So I am on the fence between "it's cool nostalgia" and "white borders are less desirable reprints and black borders are...

White border and future frame reprints are a little too weird for me. I could have used a normal Smokestack original art reprint instead of future frame. But what the hell. It's an interesting concept, and somebody will find this to be cool.

I would take the Legion Extruder for this reason. Value engines! I'd be tempted by the shiny new Kitsune, but extruder is also shiny and new. The Wight also interests me, but first picking a gold card is risky. That's a crazy pack. Picking in cubes with that much card power is wild. From Fair...

Yep, I fully agree with all of what you're saying. I've thought a little about what it would take to adjust for some of these types of things, but it seems pretty daunting. Part of this would involve making a dictionary of common phrases and giving a discount for cards that let you chunk the...

Case Study: Words Read in Outlaws of Thunder Junction Retail Draft Goal: make more of a fair comparison between the words read in a retail set draft and a cube draft. Note these two differences between typical cubes and typical retail sets: 1) Retail draft sets have a smaller list of...

It will depend on some semi-qualitative aspects of the card's rules, definitely. As I think about this, I'm settling on the theory that you spend 100% of the time it takes to read a card the very first time, and then the percentage decays from there. I think a second read is going to take...

If you're looking at a card for the second time in a draft, or reading a piece of flavor text for a new mechanic for the second time, how much of a "discount" do you get, in your estimation? In other words, what percentage of reading time do you save when you're understanding a new card that...

They aren't marked as DFC's, so sleeving a copy in each direction doesn't look different than it would as two separate printings with "Deckmaster" card backs. But if that detracts from your subjective enjoyment of the card, that's a good enough reason not to buy it. I guess I'm thinking from...

If you have Kitsa and Reckless Charge or Berserk, you would briefly care about vigilance for the purposes of maximizing your attack. I think vigilance is a reasonable inclusion on this card design. I'll buy a copy of Kitsa. It's 8 lines of text, 37 words, 51 with prowess reminder text. This is...

I haven't put hybrids into cubes yet due to the scarcity of hybrids that I like. If they do a common cycle here and there, this could change. I largely ignore the gold sections of new sets, because they're gentally more wordy and fit into less decks. But hybrid cards could become very...

Insatiable Frugivore If they're gonna do food humor, this is more my style. This is pretty damned funny.

I really like how this set is using green's mana production abilities to fuel a lot of mana sinks. In this case, mana sinks includes using the pseudo-blink theme and recasting ETB creatures. Ramping into fatties doesn't have to be the only use of green's mana. Stickytongue SentinelMistbreath...

As I go through the full spoiler, I see three generally useful simple artifacts in a row: Heirloom EpicPatchwork BannerShort Bow I'm still keeping an eye out for the perfect modern day Jayemdae Tome for my cubes, so the epic interests me. (I think I recently got the perfect Jalum Tome in...

It's probably hard to figure out how strong to design 2 MV aggro creatures in green. It takes a lot to make them viable in competitive constructed formats.

Dour Port-Mage This type of effect (returning a creature you control to owner's hand) is rare as a repeatable effect. There's Vedalken Mastermind, Crystal Shard, Tolarian Sentinel, Temur Sabertooth... it thins out pretty quickly. Given how stingy they are with this effect, it's a little...

Kitsa, Otterball Elite Holy smokes, that's a strong looter. It's probably too pushed for me, and the last ability is mostly trinket text unless you support spell velocity or storm stuff. But this certainly adds a strong blue two drop for anybody that wants one.

I'm not sure the challenger is quite as busted as that in my cube. I have three colorless equipments plus Ancestral Blade, so that's a possible combo rather than an automatic second card each turn. Otherwise there are a handful of effects that can target it without killing it. But yeah, the...

I like it! I have enough cheap spells and flashback that I might want to find space for this thing. Here's a comparison: Abbot of Keral KeepEmberheart Challenger For those of us that have squinted at the abbot and tried to imagine that it's good, Emberheart Challenger might be an interesting...