Card/Deck Low Power Card Spotlight

[Onderzeeboot]

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:

As someone who places a high value on the integrity of the color pie, I would think this argument resonates with you @Velrun It's hard to defend a mono blue card being able to cast Cruel Ultimatum in a deck, even if you ignore the fact that you're spending 2 less mana here and you get a 3/3 creature out of the deal. The fact that it so easily breaks the color pie without any impact on your deck at all means I have to agree with sigh here, Arcane Savant is indeed a bad design.

 

[Velrun]

Thank you for proving my point @LadyMapi down to the smallest detail. It is exactly like I initially wrote. You can put a Cruel Ultimatum into your cube or you can choose not to. Including spells Savant can abuse is a choice.

This is thr beauty of this format. All the other formats we can complain about because we are not in charge of them. This one we are the ruler. If Savant can be abused, it is 100 % our fault.

The card is super clean. Including it is a choice. The fact that most of your cubes aren’t fit for it doesn’t make it a bad design. Why is this even a discussion? If your cube is not made for the card..doesn’t change the design of the card.

 

[Velrun]

As someone who places a high value on the integrity of the color pie, I would think this argument resonates with you

This is not an argument. Other cards can cast off-color spells as well.

Yes it is easier with Savant which is also what I initially wrote.

It doesn’t break color pie. It is just a very effective cheat card.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

This is not an argument. Other cards can cast off-color spells as well.

Yes it is easier with Savant which is also what I initially wrote.

It doesn’t break color pie. It is just a very effective cheat card.

None of the other cards that allow you to cast off-color spells allow you to do so without including that card in your deck, thereby putting yourself in a space where you either have to alter your mana base to accomodate said spell (typically worsening your mana base), or accept that you have a dead draw in your deck that you can't cast. In contrast, Arcane Savant places no burden on your deck at all. It allows you to run an off-color spell without compromising your mana base or your draws. It's not because it can cast off-color spells that Arcane Savant breaks the color pie imo, it is because it can do so at no cost to the integrity of your deck.

 

[Zoss]

How did that end the game immediately?

The way Arcane Savant is worded, when it enters the battlefield you may copy any card you've exiled with a card named Arcane Savant and cast that copy. Note that the original spell stays exactly where it was during this process. If the spell you're casting is Spitting Image, then you can target Arcane Savant to create a token copy of Arcane Savant. This token copy triggers its ETB ability, allowing you to cast a copy of Spitting Image, which you can use to target Arcane Savant once more. Repeat this process as much as you want and get an arbitrarily large number of 3/3s which you can then attack with next turn and win, similar to how you'd win with the Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker and Splinter Twin combo.

Or at least that's what I assume happened. I wasn't there, but that's the obvious combo. The thing is that Kiki/Twin involves two cards that you have to draw and at least seven mana (if you combo with Kiki-Jiki and Pestermite), whereas this is a single card and five mana. Kiki/Twin is already considered an obnoxious combo in the MTGO cubes which tend to be much more high-powered than ours, with many more options to interact for free and many other combos which win on the spot, meaning that in the context of cubes that normally win through combat this strategy is not only an outlier but an extreme one at that.


Edit: I think we're arguing about two different definitions of the word broken here. Arcane Savant as a card requires you to take so much care in designing the rest of your environment that it limits your options severely, similar to having a missing step in your home's staircase. Sure, the staircase works, it's not entirely nonfunctional, but the workarounds you have to employ to not ruin your day (in this metaphor, to avoid ending games through strategies that are difficult to interact with and trivially easy to assemble) are enough of a pain to be unsustainable. That's what some people me by broken. Others are using broken to mean that the card doesn't work at all, which is clearly not the case with Arcane Savant--it is a Magic card that does what you'd think it would do by reading its rules text, and it's possible to find an environment in which it's perfectly healthy. TL;DR some people mean "broken" as "not worth the steep cost."

 

[Velrun]

The way Arcane Savant is worded, when it enters the battlefield you may copy any card you've exiled with a card named Arcane Savant and cast that copy. Note that the original spell stays exactly where it was during this process. If the spell you're casting is Spitting Image, then you can target Arcane Savant to create a token copy of Arcane Savant. This token copy triggers its ETB ability, allowing you to cast a copy of Spitting Image, which you can use to target Arcane Savant once more. Repeat this process as much as you want and get an arbitrarily large number of 3/3s which you can then attack with next turn and win, similar to how you'd win with the Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker and Splinter Twin combo

That is what I thought too. I have already addressed that here

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'.

The key word is immediately.

Edit: I think we're arguing about two different definitions of the word broken here."

We are not arguing if it’s broken or not. Not at all. We are strictly talking about if the card is a bad design or not. Power level is of no concern to the conversation.

 

[Velrun]

None of the other cards that allow you to cast off-color spells allow you to do so without including that card in your deck, thereby putting yourself in a space where you either have to alter your mana base to accomodate said spell (typically worsening your mana base), or accept that you have a dead draw in your deck that you can't cast. In contrast, Arcane Savant places no burden on your deck at all. It allows you to run an off-color spell without compromising your mana base or your draws. It's not because it can cast off-color spells that Arcane Savant breaks the color pie imo, it is because it can do so at no cost to the integrity of your deck.

I know that. But that is not relevant to the topic. There is nothing you guys caught that I somehow missed. You didn’t find any detail that I somehow forgot. I got it all. And the card isn’t bad designed just because it is very good at cheating.

I feel like you guys are arguing just to argue.

If someone wants to define what is a good and what is a bad design philosophy you are allowed to lead with that before jumping to conclusions. We can argue that before we go straight to stating that one of the simplest cards in the last 8 years of Magic is a badly designed.

 

[sigh]

simple =/= good

 

[Velrun]

simple =/= good

Not good =/= badly designed

 

[sigh]

in this instance this is how you are using simple though, so, yes it does

 

[Velrun]

I feel like people are arguing just to argue and they are not reading what is written to them.
This is making me angry.
I'm out.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

As a preface, let me say that I am not arguing because I want to argue, I am arguing because we have a difference of opinion on whether Arcane Savant is a good design. Just because I don't agree with your opinion doesn't mean I don't read what you write.

If someone wants to define what is a good and what is a bad design philosophy you are allowed to lead with that before jumping to conclusions. We can argue that before we go straight to stating that one of the simplest cards in the last 8 years of Magic is a badly designed.

In my opinion, a good design respects both spoken and unspoken design restrictions, including adhering to the color pie, and adhering to expected power level in relation to both mana value and rarity of the card. A good design that breaks any of these restrictions should, in my opinion, do so at a cost. For example, Elvish Piper can put any creature onto the battlefield, including non-green ones that you could not normally cast in a monogreen deck and really expensive ones that cost way more mana than you would have available on the turn you can first activate the Piper. What's the cost here? Well, for one, you need to let a fragile 2/2 sit out on the battlefield for a turn before you get to do its thing, but also, you need to include the off-color card in your deck and draw both it and the Piper. Likewise, Arcane Savant cheats both mana cost and color pie. What's the cost? Well, you need to draft the off-color spell you want to cheat out. That's it. It doesn't ask you to include the card to be cheated out in your deck, you don't have to draw it, the Savant doesn't need to sit on the battlefield for a while, it just does its thing when you cast it. In my opinion, there aren't enough drawbacks for such a powerful reward, making it, again in my opinion, a bad design. In other words, I don't think it's a bad design because it is good at cheating, I think it is a bad design because it is cheating at no cost to the composition of your deck.

If you still disagree, that's okay, we can agree to disagree. I don't think there is a need to be angry just because we have different opinions. After all, that is exactly why we come to this forum, to discuss about all things Magic.

 

[Velrun]

Sure. But I'm out.
I personally do not think the card is a bad design. It might be bad for most of your cubes. But that's the beauty of Cubing.

 

[Mown]

I could put arcane savant in my cube list and it would probably be a healthy addition.

idk it's kind of a dumb card, but it's a draft-only card so I think that's perfectly fine, if it has any adverse effects on the game it's because you elected to put it into your cube, or if the original draft format didn't support it, which I don't think was the case. It's just some spice. And I don't think costing a slot in your deck makes it more "in pie" to cheat colors than costing a draft pick.

disclaimer i like to argue

 

[LadyMapi]

At low-ish power (aka most creatures are at the power level where Kicker creatures are reasonable), how toxic is this foxy friend?

 

[ravnic]

Why do you want that card? The cool artwork shouldn't be the reason alone. I think that is a really unfun card. On board trick that is either not that big of a deal or super, super annoying, rarely anything between.

 

[TrainmasterGT]

At low-ish power (aka most creatures are at the power level where Kicker creatures are reasonable), how toxic is this foxy friend?

I think this card is cool, but I would need some more context for the environment other than "low-ish power" to properly evaluate whether or not this might be a reasonable inclusion.

 

[Karshtakavaar]

If you're full-on battlecruiser, every game gets to 8+mana and removal is scarce so big Timmy plays get to shine I imagine Eight-and-a-Half-Tails is pretty unfun. Don't know if you've ever played against him in low powered EDH but its that sort of scenario he likes.
If constant board development and tempo matter, keeping mana open once you drop him has a real cost and there might be some fun tension there.
I suspect he's just a bad Mom who sometimes enables an alpha strike in faster environments.

Edit: If this is for your 2/3/7 cube, he'll be toxic

 

[ravnic]

Looking for a colorless artifact.dec payoff, I stumbled across this card here, that I knew of once but then forgot it existed for a couple years or so.



Is it good? Let's assume you have ~12 cards in your 40 that you could cast of it? It also has that weird surveil ability attached, that clearly has some value just by preventing you from drawing lands later in the game.

Also, rules question, can I cast morphs of this? I would love that.

Edit: "If the top card of your library has a morph ability, you can cast it face down from the top of your library, even if it’s normally not a colorless card.(2019-07-12)"

Cooool.

 

[sigh]

That morph tidbit alone makes that a really neat card, let alone all the other stuff it can do. Honestly a pretty great card if you have any artifact archetypes. Especially if the archetype is like RW, this could really help with getting cards drawn when and how you want.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Also, rules question, can I cast morphs of this? I would love that.

I run it in my Kadena, Slinking Sorcerer deck for this very reason

 

[ravnic]

In a cube with 20 Prismatic Vistas, this card should be really solid, right?

Edit: I guess it's still not that great.

 

[TrainmasterGT]

In a cube with 20 Prismatic Vistas, this card should be really solid, right?

Edit: I guess it's still not that great.

I mean if it can consistently be 2-mana divination it's pretty good. I'd play it in a low-power environment where it's always "turned on" for sure.

 

[Velrun]

In a cube with 20 Prismatic Vistas, this card should be really solid, right?

Edit: I guess it's still not that great.

20 x
20 x

 

[Jason Waddell]

I've tried Grim Discovery a bunch of times and always been disappointed by its power level.