Necromancy scales pretty directly with your environment's power level. It'd be perfectly fine in a retail limited environment that wasn't centered on the graveyard, for example.
Card/Deck Low Power Card Spotlight
- Thread starter Grillo_Parlante
- Start date
I did, during Invasion block constructed. I used it to discard Draco, turning it into an 18/18 with flying. Unfortunately Invasion block had too much bounce spells and Backlash to make the deck viable, even while loading it up with 4 Counterspells and 4 Undermines. It was cool on paper but didn't play very well.Has anyone ever played with this thing in any context?
yes, yes, but it's kind of BS in cube because it incentivizes you to hate-draft off-colour fatties, preventing them from wheeling in the draftSo, another question:
Did anyone play Conspiracy? Was this card any fun? I kinda like it as a "reanimator" card, especially since it encourages you to draft off-color fatties.
I love draft matters cards but this and Arcane Savant both made for poor incentives in the drafting section that made the cube feel less fun overall, plus I don't love the logistics of relying on your SB for round 1 games.
Volatile Chimera does not grant the ETB effects of the creature it becomes. Most of the larger creatures in my cube have some ETB ability, making it hard to abuse the Chimera.
Arcane Savant, on the other hand, was often horribly broken.
Arcane Savant, on the other hand, was often horribly broken.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
I remember testing this card and ending up with a Cruel Ultimatum and a way to self-bounce my stuff. Too spicy!
I briefly was like, oh, Arcane Savant is a cool way to cast a cheaper Dragonstorm, and then I remembered the games I had actually played with Arcane Savant, and then I shuddered in horror, and then I said no thank you. Cheap enablers for expensive archetypes are well and good (and I play Oath, Flash, Show and Tell, Reanimate, all that similar nonsense), but the Savant is , like. Stupid. It's stupid how easy it is to have it be busted and it's stupid easy to break it wide open way stronger than the floor case. Reanimate it, blink it, recur it, pay to make one off Sneak Attack..........the more cheat effects you have in the format the more degenerate that cheat effect becomes.
Arcane Savant is a badly designed card.
This is an excellent point, but getting to make your unblocked 3-drop have 7 power is already pretty abusive.
to make one off Sneak Attack..........the more cheat effects you have in the format the more degenerate that cheat effect becomes. Arcane Savant is a badly designed card.
This is an excellent point, but getting to make your unblocked 3-drop have 7 power is already pretty abusive.
Ehm, no it’s not.
Griselbrand’s potency is because he is both Baneslayer and Mulldrifter: his draw 7 can be used immediately but if he stays on the battlefield he’s also a massive flying lifelinker. Chimera would gain every part of this value.
But you would still only have a 1/3 chance of turning Chimera into Griselbrand, and would need to have drafted two more worthwhile creatures. In my cube 9/11 creatures of mana value 6+ rely on ETB effects for their value, making Chimera a poor proposition. In other cubes I could see it being a bit better with a different selection of top end creatures, but the card still asks a lot of its drafter.
Would you care to explain why? safra’s argument seems to be that Arcane Savant piles degeneracy on degeneracy, which is an issue for any card designed for eternal formats. We can’t know the designer’s intent for sure, but outside CN2 drafts, Cube is the only format I can think of where Arcane Savant is relevant. Either it is a disposable rare, good only in CN2 retail, or a card that is either very degenerate or environment distorting in the only other format in which it can be played.
I’ll let the burden stay on Safra
Arcane Savant was designed for Conspiracy 2: Take the Crown in which it wasn’t a bad design. At least until explained in detail and everyone agrees. It’s just a cheat card that is better than most other cheat cards. Its function and performance is as always up to the environment.
Fair enough. If you limit the design scope to Conspiracy then I can’t see any complaints. Cube is the only other format where it is playable, and I think it’s too format warping, having played it in both powered cube and mid-powered cube.
It's possible to create a cube environment where the card is broken. Just like it is with many other cards like Show and Tell. It's maybe even easier (to create an environment where it's broken) with Arcane Savant. But that doesn't make the card a bad design or badly designed. It's actually quite elegantly designed. And choosing not to include it in a cube is a very fair decision because it's a cheat card and with a pretty high power level.
i also tried savant once, realized how many random things it just ends the game immediately with, and decided never again. card is real stupid and it’s near impossible to warp your format enough to make it anything close to fair
How did it end the game immediately in your cube?
spitting image, of all things
"Wait, it's all Kiki/Twin?"
"Always has been."
Frankly, Arcane Savant is one of those cards that's hard to NOT go infinite with if you're including off-the-wall cards. If you're just running Faithless Looting, cantrips, and removal, then yeah, it's fine, but as soon as you include even something as simple as Victimize you're going to have a bad time. It's 5 mana for a 3/3 that also cheats an entire spell as ETB, and the spell you get, which is typically worth a card on its own, tends to be expensive à la Cruel Ultimatum. And you can choose!
That card IS bad design.
It breaks the color pie. You can cast a WBRG spell in a mono-blue deck and benefit from it without having to deal with any color restrictions, because that spell isn't part of the deck itself. That leads into:
It breaks draft consistency. Because the savant player can swipe expensive spells that aren't supposed to be going to that player normally. It's hard to maintain a good draft when there are players that are just taking whatever is shiniest because there is no effort required on their end to cast that shiny besides "reach 5 mana".
It breaks the mana cost system. You can cast an arbitrary-mana spell for 5 mana, and then repeat it via flicker effects for [how much flicker spell cost], which might be 0 with something like Soul Herder.
It breaks the sideboarding system. Because it lets you pick from your trophies before each shuffle, if you know what deck you are facing (and in a draft you most often do) you can exile the most beneficial card against that matchup right from game 1.
It breaks the deckbuilding system. You don't need the spells in your deck. Pretty self-explanatory, but: At least on other cards that lets you cast a spell for free, you also need the spell in your deck, and typically need both cards in your hand and/or in play somehow, so running a totally off-color or super expensive spell would be a real risk to deck performance; and you'd have to side out/in new cards as usual to align to a certain matchup.
It breaks the color pie. You can cast a WBRG spell in a mono-blue deck and benefit from it without having to deal with any color restrictions, because that spell isn't part of the deck itself. That leads into:
It breaks draft consistency. Because the savant player can swipe expensive spells that aren't supposed to be going to that player normally. It's hard to maintain a good draft when there are players that are just taking whatever is shiniest because there is no effort required on their end to cast that shiny besides "reach 5 mana".
It breaks the mana cost system. You can cast an arbitrary-mana spell for 5 mana, and then repeat it via flicker effects for [how much flicker spell cost], which might be 0 with something like Soul Herder.
It breaks the sideboarding system. Because it lets you pick from your trophies before each shuffle, if you know what deck you are facing (and in a draft you most often do) you can exile the most beneficial card against that matchup right from game 1.
It breaks the deckbuilding system. You don't need the spells in your deck. Pretty self-explanatory, but: At least on other cards that lets you cast a spell for free, you also need the spell in your deck, and typically need both cards in your hand and/or in play somehow, so running a totally off-color or super expensive spell would be a real risk to deck performance; and you'd have to side out/in new cards as usual to align to a certain matchup.
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As an aside, Arcane Savant is a card I've been tempted to customize by adding the rider "reveal Arcane Savant as you draft it. You may reveal your next draft pick. If you do and it's an instant or sorcery, you can do the Arcane Savant thing. Otherwise too bad." As sigh said, letting the spell be entirely unrestricted is absurd and leads to bad things.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
I approve of the "Otherwise too bad" in the rules text.
How did that end the game immediately?
I'm guessing @blacksmithy had some sort of mass haste to the entire board. Or a few counter spells as backup for the upcoming sweeper.
Or maybe a lose definition of 'immediately'.
Not talking directly at anyone anymore. There are plenty of ways to break Arcane Savant. That doesn't mean it's always broken or a bad design. You can sculpt your cube however you see fit. That's the beauty of this format. We create limited sets for our players just like Wizards of the Coast do. If Wizards could create a format where it wasn't broken, then so can you if you try.
Or maybe a lose definition of 'immediately'.
Not talking directly at anyone anymore. There are plenty of ways to break Arcane Savant. That doesn't mean it's always broken or a bad design. You can sculpt your cube however you see fit. That's the beauty of this format. We create limited sets for our players just like Wizards of the Coast do. If Wizards could create a format where it wasn't broken, then so can you if you try.
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In order for Arcane Savant to have an acceptable power level, you need to intentionally neuter instants and sorceries in your format. If you look at instants and sorceries in CN2, the only card that's a clear cheat target for Arcane Savant is Expropriate which, conspicuously, is also blue. The other spells that seem overly good as targets are either cheaper (Show and Tell, for one) or draws you into the appropriate color in order to make the most use of its effect (Selvalla's Stampede).
Conspicuously absent are any cards that could easily abuse Arcane Savant's potentially powerful ETB. The only ways to "easily" repeat a creature's ETBs in the set are:
• Followed Footsteps
• Into The Void
• Kaya, Ghost Assassin
• Repulse
• Stunt Double
Note that all of them are effectively 4+ mana when used on Arcane Savant, and none of the ones that let Arcane Savant stay on the battlefield are instants or sorceries. Oh, right, and special mention goes to
That card would have potentially resulted in an brutal "one card combo" with Arcane Savant, but the set avoids it by having a grand total of one way to sacrifice a creature at instant speed, in the form of Altar's Reap.
If your format deviates from those restrictions (by, say, having powerful expensive non-blue instants/sorceries, or a cheap way to repeat ETBs, or both reanimator spells and repeatable sac outlets, or...), Arcane Savant is probably going to result in an undesirable play experience. Any card that needs that much babying is very much a bad design, and demands to be referred to as such.
...
Because, in all honesty? That's what people actually mean when they say that a card is "broken" or "poorly designed". They're saying that, barring a meticulously designed format (which may or may not actually be possible to construct with the Magic card pool), that card doesn't lead to fun times. And, oftentimes, people will defend that description if asked, usually by mentioning why they think that a given design is unacceptable.
Going "but you can make a format where the card isn't broken, so you can't say that it's broken" is unhelpful at best and malicious at worse, like going "we can't mention that the Pinto fucking catches fire if it gets rear-ended, because it's a solid car in contexts where it isn't being rear-ended!"
And, I say all of this as someone whose primary interest when it comes to cubing is designing formats that intentionally violate the normal rules-of-thumb for whether or not a given card is "good", "fun", or "soul-crushing".
Conspicuously absent are any cards that could easily abuse Arcane Savant's potentially powerful ETB. The only ways to "easily" repeat a creature's ETBs in the set are:
• Followed Footsteps
• Into The Void
• Kaya, Ghost Assassin
• Repulse
• Stunt Double
Note that all of them are effectively 4+ mana when used on Arcane Savant, and none of the ones that let Arcane Savant stay on the battlefield are instants or sorceries. Oh, right, and special mention goes to
That card would have potentially resulted in an brutal "one card combo" with Arcane Savant, but the set avoids it by having a grand total of one way to sacrifice a creature at instant speed, in the form of Altar's Reap.
If your format deviates from those restrictions (by, say, having powerful expensive non-blue instants/sorceries, or a cheap way to repeat ETBs, or both reanimator spells and repeatable sac outlets, or...), Arcane Savant is probably going to result in an undesirable play experience. Any card that needs that much babying is very much a bad design, and demands to be referred to as such.
...
Because, in all honesty? That's what people actually mean when they say that a card is "broken" or "poorly designed". They're saying that, barring a meticulously designed format (which may or may not actually be possible to construct with the Magic card pool), that card doesn't lead to fun times. And, oftentimes, people will defend that description if asked, usually by mentioning why they think that a given design is unacceptable.
Going "but you can make a format where the card isn't broken, so you can't say that it's broken" is unhelpful at best and malicious at worse, like going "we can't mention that the Pinto fucking catches fire if it gets rear-ended, because it's a solid car in contexts where it isn't being rear-ended!"
And, I say all of this as someone whose primary interest when it comes to cubing is designing formats that intentionally violate the normal rules-of-thumb for whether or not a given card is "good", "fun", or "soul-crushing".