General Alchemy

[Erik Twice]

I've added this card to my cube and I'm going to print its additional text so you can slip it inside the sleeve:



I like this card for several reasons. The most important is that it's a good green two-drop. There are surprisingly few cards in that category, most are support for certain themes (tribal, enchantments), mana dorks or simply godd stuff cards that don't support any particular archetype and aren't actually too good at my power level.

The fact that it has an ETB or Death Trigger is very rare. I was running Strangleroot Geist to support Pod and it was so bad with its GG cost. Antique Collector works in that slot while being 1G and having a better ability. It provides recursion, doesn't screw up graveyard synergies and puts artifacts into play. He provides wrath insurance, is good with sacrifice decks and is even a human with evasion, which means it can attack and slot into aggro.

It's a bit of a pain of a card but I like it and would recommend it to others.



I'm thinking of running this as if it were a X-spell in the four slot.

On the other hand:



This card hits hard. A haste 3/3 is much better than you may think. It has always overperformed when I've drafted it because, if it hits twice, you have put them at a low enough life total that you can burn them. The issue for me is just that it doesn't do anything. That is, it's raw damage with no synergies or tricks or anything. Just hit, draw lightning bolts and burn their face.

Note that you will need 16 lightning bolts. Attacking three times isn't rare at all.

I am tempted to play Electrostatic Blast, Sinister Reflections, Predatory Sludge and Puppet Raiser

 

[Nanonox]

I'll echo your sentiment on the Antique Collector. I drafted it a bunch in your cube and was always impressed by possibilities it opened up as well as the value it procures with clues and keeping key creatures in live in your deck.

Self-mill, sacrifice and artifact decks will all gladly play this, but even a midrange good stuff deck will be happy with the card advantage of the clues.
Since it can trigger itself, I am sure that even a control deck would play this as a 2 drop that would replace itself.

I'm not adding the Alchemy cards to my cube for now, but if I were to do so, this would be at the top of my list!

 

[MilesOfficial]

There was a half million dollar tournament this weekend that I went out of my way to try caring about without any success because the cards are all fake. Funnily enough, the winning deck was a Venture deck! Turns out you only need to turn the knob on a few cards to get there. Can I say that it's entirely stupid how hard it was for me to find a comprehensive look of all the cards that are rebalanced in Alchemy? Eventually, I found a Scryfall query that'll do it, but there should be a very clear and easy place to do it on the WotC side of things, and it should be one of the first things you find when you look up the format, not something that takes expert sleuthing or compiling multiple articles that make changes on previous changes.

For those curious, these are the key cards that have adjustments made for the format from the winning deck:



I see the gameplay value but I really, fundamentally don't like this kind of format. Limitations breed creativity, right?

Speaking of which:



It's really not that far off from a cubable card (something I would be a touch interested in at the very least!), but the ability seems arbitrarily stupid to make it Alchemy worthy. What, are you going to have a single artifact in your hand you keep there so it gets (1) cheaper for multiple turns? No, that's not how this will be played. It's basically saying "the first artifact you cast each turn costs (1) less" in most scenarios, with a little less control than that but I guess the "perpetual" part to make up for it. There's no reason for this nonsense except to justify itself.

I'm trying hard to care about the larger game of Magic but they make it so hard when the primary way I'm playing the game is Arena and this nonsense has taken over all the competitive constructed formats, and the entire pro game is now tied to it? I'd love to be able to watch LSV glide to the top 8 of a tournament and then go out to a PTQ and try out that same deck, but it's now impossible for half a dozen inane reasons.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Speaking of which:

View attachment 6690

It's really not that far off from a cubable card (something I would be a touch interested in at the very least!), but the ability seems arbitrarily stupid to make it Alchemy worthy. What, are you going to have a single artifact in your hand you keep there so it gets (1) cheaper for multiple turns? No, that's not how this will be played. It's basically saying "the first artifact you cast each turn costs (1) less" in most scenarios, with a little less control than that but I guess the "perpetual" part to make up for it. There's no reason for this nonsense except to justify itself.

To be fair, if you're playing a deck that includes a few artifact curve-toppers at five or six mv, this can do more work on a single card in hand if you stick it on turn 2.

 

[sigh]

I would cube the hell out of that if the second ability was Etherium Sculptors

 

[MilesOfficial]

Would I cube this if it were a real card? Yeah, probably.



Man, the art feels so...unfinished? It's such a big gap from the art direction of the main set.

 

[ravnic]

"Whenever ~ deals combar damage to a player, chose land or nonland, then reveal cards from the top of your library until you reveal a permanent card of the chosen type. Put that card into your hand, then shuffle."

You could do it.

 

[blacksmithy]

yeah the art on these is perennially bad, but definitely some gems in this release as far as cool effects that could translate to paper

 

[Zoss]

Does anyone with a better eye for art know why the art is invariably bad on the Alchemy cards? Do we think it's just rejects from the regular set, or is it something about the saturation/aspect ratio being slightly squished/different font sizes necessitated by Arena?

Also, Seek X and Cascade into X should definitely be paper mechanics. It's a shame we probably won't see them due to them already existing in Alchemy, and those squandered resourcesare frankly my biggest regret about the format.

 

[LadyMapi]

Am I the only one who thinks that Forgeborn Phoenix looks like absolute GRBS?

 

[sigh]

Does anyone with a better eye for art know why the art is invariably bad on the Alchemy cards? Do we think it's just rejects from the regular set, or is it something about the saturation/aspect ratio being slightly squished/different font sizes necessitated by Arena?

Also, Seek X and Cascade into X should definitely be paper mechanics. It's a shame we probably won't see them due to them already existing in Alchemy, and those squandered resourcesare frankly my biggest regret about the format.

I don't know about the art really, they mostly look alright to me, but the textbox font always throws me off. They even use the Jeleren font for the name and stuff, and then they toss the most generic sans-serif font imaginable into the textbox. That alone immediately makes them look quite fake, along with not having the usual info at the bottom and instead an ARTIST_NAME_HERE in a bigger font than the text lol

The bolding of (some) ability words is also weird.

 

[blacksmithy]

alchemy cards always look like total crap. not a single one printed so far has had anything but poop art, and the arena formatting, while i myself am pretty used to it, is “uncanny valley” jarring if you’re used to paper cards or even the OG ugly cards, MTGO cards. it gives me great pleasure to make customs of these things and change the art and frame entirely

 

[LadyMapi]

Why does Arena format cards the way it does?

 

[Onderzeeboot]

"Whenever ~ deals combar damage to a player, chose land or nonland, then reveal cards from the top of your library until you reveal a permanent card of the chosen type. Put that card into your hand, then shuffle."

You could do it.

This wording avoids the shuffle clause. You could still put a shuffle in there to make it really random and prevent Sensei's Divining Top abuse: "Whenever ~ deals combat damage to a player, choose land or nonland. Shuffle, then reveal cards from the top of your library until you reveal a card of the chosen kind. Put that card into your hand and the rest on the bottom of your library in a random order." This wording emulates seek the best in a paper world, I feel.

You could even keep the existing wording and add reminder text: "(To seek, shuffle, then reveal cards from the top of your library until you reveal the sought cards. Put those cards into your hand and the rest on the bottom of your library in a random order.)"

 

[sigh]

Why does Arena format cards the way it does?

The sans-serif font at least is probably because they are more legible on computer screens in general. No idea on any other part of the cards.

 

[blacksmithy]

The sans-serif font at least is probably because they are more legible on computer screens in general. No idea on any other part of the cards.

yeah, a lot of it is “optimized” for being displayed on a screen and wiggled around a bunch during game animations and stuff like that, which detracts SIGNIFICANTLY from its value as a work of art, which the physical cards at least, i feel, should be judged as in addition to their value as game pieces

 

[LadyMapi]

On a related note, does anyone know how to make Cockatrice only grab paper cards? I'm sick of having half the cards I want to mess around with look like absolute shit because the newest printing was in a Historic Anthology or whatever.

EDIT: I think that the terrible art is part of the reason that all of the digital-only cards feel "fake". The art direction for paper cards is so strong that the lackluster art just reminds me of the crappy art people usually end up using for custom cards.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Jukai Liberator art link; Settle the Wilds art link

 

[Onderzeeboot]

I mean, a lot of these cards need more adjustments, but seek is definitely a doable mechanic in offline Magic. The main difference, obviously, is that in paper Magic you can't search for specific cards without revealing them. That part of the mechanic really is something you can only do online. Still, cards like these seem very fun to play in cube




Art link

 

[blacksmithy]

having played some seek cards in my arena cube i can confirm, they are quite fun!

 

[LadyMapi]

I'm not sure I like all of the shuffling involved in your rendition of Seek, Onder. I think being able to set up your Seeks with topdeck manipulation definitely makes the mechanic stronger, but I don't think it does it in a way that actually breaks the mechanic.

 

[Zoss]

I mean, a lot of these cards need more adjustments, but seek is definitely a doable mechanic in offline Magic. The main difference, obviously, is that in paper Magic you can't search for specific cards without revealing them. That part of the mechanic really is something you can only do online.

Honestly, why can't we do this in person? WotC obviously can't let people search without revealing for tournament reasons, but in a format such as cube where we're likely playing with people we know well and in which the stakes are no higher than bragging rights most of the time I think it's entirely reasonable to trust your opponent.

Granted, this is very playgroup-dependent and I probably wouldn't do it myself, but I don't think a lack of confidence in your playgroup should necessarily be a hard and fast reason to not try this mechanic if you think it's otherwise superior to keep the hidden information aspect.

 

[sigh]

Seek could be written without shuffle, and effects where not-shuffling might be too good can simply say "shuffle and then seek".

Honestly, why can't we do this in person? WotC obviously can't let people search without revealing for tournament reasons, but in a format such as cube where we're likely playing with people we know well and in which the stakes are no higher than bragging rights most of the time I think it's entirely reasonable to trust your opponent.

Granted, this is very playgroup-dependent and I probably wouldn't do it myself, but I don't think a lack of confidence in your playgroup should necessarily be a hard and fast reason to not try this mechanic if you think it's otherwise superior to keep the hidden information aspect.

you can involve a third party if you really want to 'enforce' trust; in the case of cube the player at the game next to you..

This could theoretically be done even in tournament MTG with the help of judges

 

[blacksmithy]

to me one of the benefits of seek>search is simple convenience, so i would rather resolve the whole ability without shuffling if i translated it to paper

 

[Chris Taylor]

I agree you probably don't want to shuffle the whole library, but putting the rest of the card on the bottom in a random order is probably still a time saver rather than letting people organize them