Peter: Capital Punishment in a 2 player game is much worse than Assassin's Strike, which is a bad card.
Unrelated:
I heard some of you liked Gravecrawler.
Unrelated:
I heard some of you liked Gravecrawler.
Sets Conspiracy 2 Spoilers Thread
- Thread starter Dom Harvey
- Start date
I get what you mean, i like that idea also, but i would rather want to see that downside on this card:
So excited about this card, but i fear it will be too powerful most of the time... looking at you Cruel Ultimatum
This is perfect for my Reject Rare Cube
This card is super cool. I don't know how good it is in a 2 player game, but I do know Council's Dilemma is way less awkward in a 2 player game than Will of the Council.
System so organized they get to you and now you runnin' itThis is perfect for my Reject Rare Cube
Cast Dualcaster Mage and reverse Capital Punishment
Dom Harvey
Contributor
oh my
oh my
As a Legacy player, I just exploded inside.
I must have one for my cube. This is non-negotiable.
I must say, monarch might just be the missing piece to get me into EDH.
So excited about this card, but i fear it will be too powerful most of the time... looking at you Cruel Ultimatum
It's absolutely too good. Go look at the final 45 cards you had with any Ux deck you've built recently. I guarantee you find at least 2-3 cards you can staple to this that make it a super value card at worst and utterly busted BCS. How many times have you drafted say a UR deck and see a Vindicate type card, wish you could run it but know you can't so have to pass. No longer a problem with Arcane Savant. It's the ultimate broken card splash enabler. And if you support combo, this card will be the best card in your cube. Imagine slapping a storm card to this and then tossing in momentary blink, et all? Storm with zero effort.
Momentary Blink + this guy + Tendrils of Agony is for 16 points of drain over probably two turns, just by themselves. Now throw in Minds Desire???
But even besides that, you don't have to get marginally playable cards for you deck, you can be UR control and pick a Primal Command to use with this guy, or a white wrath, or Wretched Confluence. Yikes.
But even besides that, you don't have to get marginally playable cards for you deck, you can be UR control and pick a Primal Command to use with this guy, or a white wrath, or Wretched Confluence. Yikes.
That's what I'm saying. The card is worse than True-Name Nemesis. IMO, this is the best blue creature ever printed.
I think the cards goes to the yard, so blink didn't do anything w/o multiples. This card seems too good for higher power environments.
Card doesn't go to the yard. "Copy that spell + cast the copy for free". Spell stays firmly in exile for Savant to reuse
Savant copies the card and casts the copy, so the original never moves.
I don't think Savant is as broken as ahadabans thinks, though. The BCS is really high, but in the common scenario where it casts some off-color removal, wrath or card draw, it's not that overpowered. It still competes for the title of best blue creature ever, but I wouldn't write it off as broken BS yet.
I don't think Savant is as broken as ahadabans thinks, though. The BCS is really high, but in the common scenario where it casts some off-color removal, wrath or card draw, it's not that overpowered. It still competes for the title of best blue creature ever, but I wouldn't write it off as broken BS yet.
I'm definitely running Savant and seeing what happens. I think Time Warp on a 3/3 body is going to be fine. The card was already close to the cutting board and the combo potential seems balanced enough. I might take Savant out though if somebody combines abuses it too hard with Cruel Ultimatum. I'm not sure whether my cube can handle that particular synergy. You can even sacrifice it to have it return itself with its own Ultimatum. Because that effect needed buyback.
The card would likely be too good with a single casting of the card in exile. Repeatable casting means this card is broken to pieces. I love the design but would not run this in anything but a degenerate power or combo cube.
Forget about things like Cruel Ultimatum. You don't need that for this card to be unfair.
Baseline for this card (and this really is about as low as you can go) is something akin to Shriekmaw. And that's this dude paired with a basic 2 mana removal spell. It only gets worse from there. This plus vindicate or even something marginal like Aftershock is... a super steroid version of Acidic Slime.
How about Decree of Pain? Wrath for 5, draw at least 3 cards for your troubles? This plus Mind's Desire. This plus Time Spiral. Combo not needed, it's just retarded value compounded to an absurd level with any amount of ETB abuse or design thought put into it. Flickerwisp... cast Time Spiral. Galepowder Mage, swing, cast Treasure Cruise EOT every turn.
This card is build-your-own-ETB guy and ignore the rules of Magic with things like cost and color pie. It's Mana Drain that requires no target card to counter or card in hand to cast, marginally weaker only because it costs 5 instead of 2. And for those who play side boards, this guy gets to pair with a different card each game, so he can be your Batman Utility belt to get you whatever you need in your matchup (assuming Vindicate on a stick isn't good enough).
I'm one to blow things out of proportion and could be talking out of my ass here, but this card combos with about 20% of the cards in my cube and does so in a way that is utterly busted to the point that no sane blue mage is passing this card ever or keeping it out of their final 23 even if it's literally the 45th card they picked.
Forget about things like Cruel Ultimatum. You don't need that for this card to be unfair.
Baseline for this card (and this really is about as low as you can go) is something akin to Shriekmaw. And that's this dude paired with a basic 2 mana removal spell. It only gets worse from there. This plus vindicate or even something marginal like Aftershock is... a super steroid version of Acidic Slime.
How about Decree of Pain? Wrath for 5, draw at least 3 cards for your troubles? This plus Mind's Desire. This plus Time Spiral. Combo not needed, it's just retarded value compounded to an absurd level with any amount of ETB abuse or design thought put into it. Flickerwisp... cast Time Spiral. Galepowder Mage, swing, cast Treasure Cruise EOT every turn.
This card is build-your-own-ETB guy and ignore the rules of Magic with things like cost and color pie. It's Mana Drain that requires no target card to counter or card in hand to cast, marginally weaker only because it costs 5 instead of 2. And for those who play side boards, this guy gets to pair with a different card each game, so he can be your Batman Utility belt to get you whatever you need in your matchup (assuming Vindicate on a stick isn't good enough).
I'm one to blow things out of proportion and could be talking out of my ass here, but this card combos with about 20% of the cards in my cube and does so in a way that is utterly busted to the point that no sane blue mage is passing this card ever or keeping it out of their final 23 even if it's literally the 45th card they picked.
I think that's a healthy bit of hyperbole. Depending on what you draft he's pretty insane value, but his activation being an ETB trigger means that simply countering him or pointing removal at him in response to his initial activation is typically enough to either nullify his effect or stem the bleeding from whatever atrocious activation he had.
Remember, he does cost 5 mana. That's not insignificant. While he is certainly abusable with blink effects, let's be real:
In high-powered environments, If you get to untap with this guy and a blink engine like eldrazi displacer, you've already won.
In lower-powered environments, he's not nearly as bad (seeing as he scales with the cards you put in your cube- much like snapcaster mage.)
Don't get me wrong, I love this guy and I suspect he'll cross between annoying and devastating in the right deck, but the 'I can storm off of a resolved 5-mana creature with no natural protection after a full turn from my opponent with zero interaction' (oh and you also need the blink engine) argument isn't realistic, in my opinion.
Obviously it's great if you get a 6+ mana spell, but there aren't that many of those and you might not see one. (And are you really running Decree of Pain?) Ignoring that, how good is a 3/3 plus Vindicate for 5 mana? It's good, no doubt, but you're giving up the deathtouch value on Acidic Slime, or the 2 mana mode on Shriekmaw. That seems entirely fair.
Dom Harvey
Contributor
most of us cut Magister of Worth for being too obnoxious and this is better than Magister most of the time for a mana less
I mean, these kinds of discussions are always a bit wonky because of the subjectivity of power level. It all depends on the power level of your cube, you know?
I could be off here. I ranted about Priest of the Blood Rite and ended up cutting it for sucking. This might be version 2.0 of that.
And I've been working on a combo cube project which has a very high density of spell effects. Arcane Savant would break that cube with relative ease. That may or may not be the case in other cubes that are more creature centric. For those who feel an evoke-less vindicate version of Shriekmaw is a fair card, I'd say your meta is pretty high power and Arcane Savant is probably going to fit right in. If you already struggle with goodstuff value builds dominating FNM, Arcane Savant is only going to make that worse for you.
EDIT: Also worth noting I think you can setup infinite loops here that can't be stopped with creature removal. Say Arcane Savant with a reanimation effect stapled to him, and then goblin bombardment in play. Infinite damage loop right? We've just scratched the surface on the ways you can break this card. There's a reason it was printed in a conspiracy set with a draft mechanism attached to the ability.
And I've been working on a combo cube project which has a very high density of spell effects. Arcane Savant would break that cube with relative ease. That may or may not be the case in other cubes that are more creature centric. For those who feel an evoke-less vindicate version of Shriekmaw is a fair card, I'd say your meta is pretty high power and Arcane Savant is probably going to fit right in. If you already struggle with goodstuff value builds dominating FNM, Arcane Savant is only going to make that worse for you.
EDIT: Also worth noting I think you can setup infinite loops here that can't be stopped with creature removal. Say Arcane Savant with a reanimation effect stapled to him, and then goblin bombardment in play. Infinite damage loop right? We've just scratched the surface on the ways you can break this card. There's a reason it was printed in a conspiracy set with a draft mechanism attached to the ability.
Arcane Savant really, really needed an on-cast trigger, rather than ETB, to be anywhere near the realm of fair. As it stands, I may prefer Aether Searcher.. I'm intrigued by Arcane Savant, but my guess is that a quick skip through my spells section will reveal that it would be really obnoxious. I'm undecided, but not terribly hopeful.
Recruiter of the Guard could've used better art I think? But yeah, that's crazy awesome. I would normally be mad to see this kind of colour shift business (Imperial Recruiter) but tbh red gets so many goodies these days whereas white needed some real love. This is gonna be awesome!
Adriana, Captain of the Guard... They really phoned that in, didn't they?
Recruiter of the Guard could've used better art I think? But yeah, that's crazy awesome. I would normally be mad to see this kind of colour shift business (Imperial Recruiter) but tbh red gets so many goodies these days whereas white needed some real love. This is gonna be awesome!
Adriana, Captain of the Guard... They really phoned that in, didn't they?
I think Recruiter of the Guard is much better than Imperial Recruiter FWIW. Making it 2 toughness limit instead of 2 power means you can get a lot of really juicy targets for aggressive decks. Hero of Oxid Ridge. Things like Blistering Firecat, et all. And it still gets Karmic Guide and Acidic Slime, various white double strikers, etc.