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Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
The red one for sure, best Chandra effect so far I would venture. And the Dragons mode is actually pretty good in a go wide strategy as well. The white one looks pretty powerful to me as well, at least in limited. The blue and the black one look fun out less powerful. The green one is pretty much unplayable I think. As a ramp option it's really mediocre, and for the Dragons mode it's completely reliant in other colors.
 
FlowerSunRain

FlowerSunRain

Contributor
The green siege seems good. Four colored mana per turn is a lot, even if you can't spend it all at once. The White and Red sieges are certainly playable. Black and blue are reasonable, but not something I'm be interested in running.
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
I tried the red siege and it was 100% of the time worse than inspiration. I feel like if you want another one of this effect, run a second chandra pyromaster (Who has been solid for me the whole time)

Green seige takes some work. it --> 4 and 5 drop is nice, but not much better than 4 drop > 5 drop. and it's been forever since boomveggies was good.

White siege is strong, but I kinda don't want to add it if it'll just be tapping creatures 90% of the time, since it's just another boring white 4 that is much better served by something like faith's fetters. I have a feeling the counters mode is the real deal, but that won't matter if my drafters don't think so and just jam it in control every time.

Blue siege is being tried out for me. No clue weather it's good, but I opened a foil one and I love me some frost titan drawback.

Black siege seems slow as hell, and better served more fairly and stronger by phyrexian reclamation, which I feel is both more (but not too) powerful, and more interesting to play with. My experience was the drain mode only wins you games you were going to win (or more charitably, draw, given prerelease level limited decks) anyway
 
Eric Chan

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
yeah, without having tested a single one, i kind of hate all the sieges from reading them alone... they seem like heavily overcosted modal cards, for the effects that they grant. maybe one of them will prove cubeable in the long run, but i'm not too optimistic
 
Eric Chan

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
Right, I actually do want to go in the direction of continuing to lower my cube's power level even further - partially to see what'll happen, and partially to open up some new archetypes. Still, though, Chris nailed the issue on the head - even in that kind of environment, none of these sieges read as exciting to me. For modal cards, I prefer them to be both cheap and versatile in just about every situation that you might encounter.

 
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shamizy

shamizy

Team got wrecked early at GP San Jose, but I got to spend the rest of the day picking up some good stuff. Pickups, signings, and the TC + Cut are shiny!

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CML

CML

Contributor
Eric Chan said:
yeah, without having tested a single one, i kind of hate all the sieges from reading them alone... they seem like heavily overcosted modal cards, for the effects that they grant. maybe one of them will prove cubeable in the long run, but i'm not too optimistic
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they're way, way better than they look
 
Lucre

Lucre

Thats sad I had high hopes for the red one.
Blue is interesting if you are going heavy on the grave. You are going down 1 card until you hit a flashback etc though.
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
Eric Chan said:
hmmmmmmm


i need to hear more... which ones are worth testing? please don't say all
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I will say eric: I have an overly weird experience with chandra, pyromaster, and outpost siege is really good if your opponent ever attacks her; might as well have one they don't get to kill for "free" right?
White one is sweet on both halves, only reason I don't love the hell out of it is that I rankle at the ages old Icy Manipulator + Wrath of God combo: Removal spells that synergize with other removal spells (It's half the reason I nixxed maze of ith back in the day)

Green still seems aweful when you aren't doing eldrazi things, black seems slow and blue looks horrible on the face of it (Who the hell kills a looter anyways?). I'd hold off on those, and if I come back raving tomorrow morning after tonight's cube draft that blue siege is amazing and you should all try it ask me if I've been drinking before you add it.

White and Red are good though
 
CML

CML

Contributor
Chris Taylor said:
Kinda, but it also is a goblin bombardment type thing as well.
Also I hate the stupid voting wording on shit
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it's a perfect metaphor for american democracy! you get to choose, kind of.

i'm not going to try the U and B sieges this week but i would enjoy it if someone else did. I am going to try WRG.
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
Eric Chan said:
Wait, but you're the custom card guy!

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I sure am, but I'm also "Design Guy", which means placing unnecessary burden of complexity on my players makes me hate myself. I do have custom cards, but the day I don't need them will be a happy one.
Even if Coercive Portal did exist with a non-stupid wording, I'm not sure it's a card I'd want in my environment. I had something similar (4, ETB Tapped, T: Draw a card) and it was...okay. The exact kind of filler that was sometimes successful and mostly ignored that is characteristic of mediocre artifacts.
 
Diakonov

Diakonov

Having the option to use the Goblin Bombardment mode makes it more interesting and probably better.

CML said:
i'm not going to try the U and B sieges this week but i would enjoy it if someone else did. I am going to try WRG.
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I'll try the blue one this week.
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
Eric Chan said:
so if that card is bad, and can at least be played by every deck... why are we considering Outpost Siege again?

also, this custom card reduces complexity!
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Not if people know what the actual card does :p
No matter how simple a custom card is, people still need to read it, process it, and figure out if it's broken or not. People get really weird about the custom cards and end up thinking about way more than "is this card right for my deck?", they find out if it's balanced, possible analogues, color identity, etc

All perfectly valid stuff, but it makes picks take a lot longer than they should. For some reason, even for a card as weird as outpost siege, people seem to shortcut a lot faster.
 
spicewitch

spicewitch

Wotc's apologisms for why they print completely fuckin useless cards is so gross sometimes.
http://archive.wizards.com/Magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/mr236 said:
Imagine a draft environment where every card had the same power level. What would separate the good drafters from the bad ones? Every player would get enough playable cards. They're all playable! Making the crucial twenty-third pick wouldn't be all that tough. You can't go too wrong. In addition, there is a lot of fun in figuring what cards other people are undervaluing. Players love finding the hidden gems. If there's no variance, there is a distinctive lessening of discovery. And as I've explained in “Making Magic” numerous times, the game is all about discovery.
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Oh no! Everything is playable! How terrible... that would be like a good cube draft!
 
James Stevenson

James Stevenson

Steamflogger Boss
Staff member
bumbeh said:
Wotc's apologisms for why they print completely fuckin useless cards is so gross sometimes.


Oh no! Everything is playable! How terrible... that would be like a good cube draft!
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What a lame attitude! The game is all about discovery? Discovering your deck is terrible after drafting cards wizards put there for you to discover are terrible? Fun!

But seriously, can anybody defend having bad cards in draft formats?
 
Dom Harvey

Dom Harvey

Contributor
I see no downside to having the 'bad cards' be situational SB cards or niche cards that enable certain archetypes instead of outright unplayables
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
I think you guys are being a bit to reductive about this. Maro is making a good argument for magic not to become chess.
Magic shouldn't become chess, there's a lot of appeal that comes from games being different. Here's a lovely video explaining why that is a good thing:

Sure I'm all for less Mudholes and One with Nothings, but WotC hasn't done that in a while. Take a look at some of the worst cards from fate reforged:
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Half of these even have their place, they're just contextually bad here: Archers for having 2 toughness in a format of morphs, Neutralizing Blast for not being in ravnica, Colateral Damage is fine with a pile of token makers, Skirmisher enables raid, etc
You'll notice bathe in dragonfire, despite being the worst flame slash printed yet is still a high pick

I get the hate behind cards like Time Reversal, because had things been different that could have been gideon in your sealed, (Fuck you deathwing I'm gonna open a 3rd soon I can feel it) but there are situations where time reversal would be good. We just don't see them because we look at it, see time spiral still legal in legacy and yell at maro for it.

Because at the end of all this, you know what my favorite unplayable one with nothing level draft card is?
 
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