What are we looking at on Planar Genesis?
Is this pseudo counter spell broken, useless or something in between?
Is this pseudo counter spell broken, useless or something in between?
Sets (MH3) Modern Horizons 3 Previews
- Thread starter TrainmasterGT
- Start date
I feel like this is mostly because Energy and Colorless Mana both require a ton of support to make work well, both in limited and constructed. The other two horizons sets were working with more modular synergies (like “discard,” “artifacts,” and “tokens”) that are both easy to support and easy to overlap with specific designs. While Energy and Colorless Mana Matters both have the potential clean and open-ended designs (some of which we’ve seen in this set!), their status as critical mass mechanics compounded with their limited existing card pool means that it is harder to implement them into the set well without their inclusion feeling forced. To WOTC’s credit, I think they’ve done a better job than I was expecting with both mechanics. Colorless is not nearly as overbearing as I thought it would be, and the energy stuff is leaning towards the “modular” design approach rather than the “critical mass” approach. That said, the two mechanics are still eating up most of the set, which makes the whole product a bit less interesting for people who don’t find those themes resonant.
MH1 had snow, which is really similar to colorless. It also has goblins and ninjas which aren't really modular either. MH2 was far better though!
I do really like the abzan color combination in MH3. Modified is one of the most interesting mechanisms of the past few years and I really like how they tackle it here
I feel like generally, there's enough material to build most types of conventional cubes largely however you would like it, so I think it's better for these sets to support more niche archetypes that are harder to integrate, like snow or energy.
But it does also mean this set is falling very flat for my personal use case. I don't plan to add energy even though I like the mechanic a lot (and if I should use it for another project I'm sad it's generally just being supported in jeskai). The colorless eldrazi don't appeal to me, but even more than that, I get disappointed at all the other eldrazi that have cast triggers, meaning I can't use them for blink synergies either (except Nulldrifter, which is a cool design, and I'd love to see more evoke eldrazi). I'm not going to add any DFCs. I generally dislike archetypes based on +1/+1 counters because of the play patterns they encourage, and anything that explicitly cares about equipment is a hard sell, doubly so for auras. In terms of payoffs I mostly only like the ub card-draw based ones.
But it does also mean this set is falling very flat for my personal use case. I don't plan to add energy even though I like the mechanic a lot (and if I should use it for another project I'm sad it's generally just being supported in jeskai). The colorless eldrazi don't appeal to me, but even more than that, I get disappointed at all the other eldrazi that have cast triggers, meaning I can't use them for blink synergies either (except Nulldrifter, which is a cool design, and I'd love to see more evoke eldrazi). I'm not going to add any DFCs. I generally dislike archetypes based on +1/+1 counters because of the play patterns they encourage, and anything that explicitly cares about equipment is a hard sell, doubly so for auras. In terms of payoffs I mostly only like the ub card-draw based ones.
Honestly, I like that MH3 isn't chock-full of stuff for the people who are already eating good (in the cube context, at the very least). Don't worry, we'll get plenty of cards that work well with more traditional cube archetypes in the *checks notes* three sets that we're going to get after MH3 this year. It's only fair that we let the people with an interest in cubing with less typical archetypes have their turn at the firehose.
EDIT: I want to like this lady, but man, did they have to say "permanent"?
EDIT: I want to like this lady, but man, did they have to say "permanent"?
Last edited:
More synergies that way!EDIT: I want to like this lady, but man, did they have to say "permanent"?
I personally think Gatewatch/two-set block era was the worst-designed in Magic's history, and the sales plateau it saw in the wake of expeditions in BFZ kind of validates that. The early 2000s were kind of rough, but at least they went back-and-forth with interesting sets: the Masques block may have been the weakest single year of Magic in the game's 30+ years, but it was sandwiched by interesting designs on either side via Urza's and Invasion. Odyssey through Kamigawa aren't my favorites, but there's a great set for every mediocre to bad one.
But after Tarkir? There's only a handful of individual cards I like from Battle for Zendikar, Shadows Over Innistrad, Kaladesh, Amonkhet, and Ixalan, and even fewer mechanics or themes worth paying attention to. My Cube reflects this too!
We on this forum (rightly) complain about how wordy cards are these days, but this era was born from a period of self-indulgence where "just because you could doesn't mean you should" was no longer part of the conversation.
Restrictions breed creativity and brevity is the soul of wit, but it truly feels like this was the era where the designs started losing any sense of consideration for the larger game they were a part of, and it's not really a surprise this era had unprecedented bannings in constructed formats as a result.
Design trends that I think are net negative for the game from this period:
1. Partner, planeswalkers as commanders, and other cards that explicitly mention EDH
2. Planeswalkers as the central card type
3. The beginning of enablers and payoffs being the same card
4. Eminence, which is stupid enough that it gets its own spot even though it's part of no. 1
5. Energy
6. God cards that come back forever
7. Devoid
8. Making Eldrazi feel small
9. The start of DFCs everywhere (meld is cool though)
10. Colorless mana being its own thing without giving it enough of a unique mechanical identity
11. Repeating design mistakes of the past (Ixalan draft, parasitic mechanics, etc.)
12. Block counters and other things that require punch-outs
This doesn't mean I'm an outright hater! I love that we got snow in MH1, but that doesn't surprise me that the lessons learned from Coldsnap didn't convince them it was a bad idea to repeat the design philosophy for colorless. Energy is bad, but that doesn't mean there aren't interesting applications for it, and that goes for a lot of these.
So yes, it's a little annoying to me that some of my least favorite mechanics of all time from worlds that I actively didn't like are front-and-center here. Even though the designs are much more clever than the first go-around on an individual level and are thus more tempting to break into my Cube, and feel like they understand that you can't just design a "neat mechanic" but need to inspire curiosity and interest when you make cards, something that was lost from 2015-2018 more often than not.
My favorite cards from this period of Magic history are almost all from a place that now the Cube community looks to with the greatest skepticism: the Commander decks.
And aside from Daretti's trinket text, they don't feel like they're of this era.
With the return to Dominaria, and the end of the two-block structure, it feels like Magic got a bit of its mojo back. Seeing what I consider to be miserable mechanics from a limited and design POV returning with both the best and worst of modern design sensibilities...it's interesting.
From a Cube perspective, now that the whole set's spoiled (or at least leaked), I'll probably be including 20+ cards for this one, just as I did for the last two Modern Horizons sets. I may even dip my toe into energy...beyond my beloved Assaultron Dominator who is self-sufficient enough and doesn't imply additional energy shenanigans. The limited should be fun considering how good their hit rate is over the last five years. But I don't think I'm going to suddenly reappraise this fallow period of Magic with higher regard just because they made a few individual cards "work" with them.
But after Tarkir? There's only a handful of individual cards I like from Battle for Zendikar, Shadows Over Innistrad, Kaladesh, Amonkhet, and Ixalan, and even fewer mechanics or themes worth paying attention to. My Cube reflects this too!
We on this forum (rightly) complain about how wordy cards are these days, but this era was born from a period of self-indulgence where "just because you could doesn't mean you should" was no longer part of the conversation.
Restrictions breed creativity and brevity is the soul of wit, but it truly feels like this was the era where the designs started losing any sense of consideration for the larger game they were a part of, and it's not really a surprise this era had unprecedented bannings in constructed formats as a result.
Design trends that I think are net negative for the game from this period:
1. Partner, planeswalkers as commanders, and other cards that explicitly mention EDH
2. Planeswalkers as the central card type
3. The beginning of enablers and payoffs being the same card
4. Eminence, which is stupid enough that it gets its own spot even though it's part of no. 1
5. Energy
6. God cards that come back forever
7. Devoid
8. Making Eldrazi feel small
9. The start of DFCs everywhere (meld is cool though)
10. Colorless mana being its own thing without giving it enough of a unique mechanical identity
11. Repeating design mistakes of the past (Ixalan draft, parasitic mechanics, etc.)
12. Block counters and other things that require punch-outs
This doesn't mean I'm an outright hater! I love that we got snow in MH1, but that doesn't surprise me that the lessons learned from Coldsnap didn't convince them it was a bad idea to repeat the design philosophy for colorless. Energy is bad, but that doesn't mean there aren't interesting applications for it, and that goes for a lot of these.
So yes, it's a little annoying to me that some of my least favorite mechanics of all time from worlds that I actively didn't like are front-and-center here. Even though the designs are much more clever than the first go-around on an individual level and are thus more tempting to break into my Cube, and feel like they understand that you can't just design a "neat mechanic" but need to inspire curiosity and interest when you make cards, something that was lost from 2015-2018 more often than not.
My favorite cards from this period of Magic history are almost all from a place that now the Cube community looks to with the greatest skepticism: the Commander decks.
And aside from Daretti's trinket text, they don't feel like they're of this era.
With the return to Dominaria, and the end of the two-block structure, it feels like Magic got a bit of its mojo back. Seeing what I consider to be miserable mechanics from a limited and design POV returning with both the best and worst of modern design sensibilities...it's interesting.
From a Cube perspective, now that the whole set's spoiled (or at least leaked), I'll probably be including 20+ cards for this one, just as I did for the last two Modern Horizons sets. I may even dip my toe into energy...beyond my beloved Assaultron Dominator who is self-sufficient enough and doesn't imply additional energy shenanigans. The limited should be fun considering how good their hit rate is over the last five years. But I don't think I'm going to suddenly reappraise this fallow period of Magic with higher regard just because they made a few individual cards "work" with them.
The worst part was that they basically didn't make any interesting Planeswalkers during this time period! It would have been one thing if all of the Planeswalkers during this time period had been certified bangers with unique play patterns like Liliana of the Veil, Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Elspeth, Sun's Champion, but that's not what we got. They were almost all forgettable 5 and 6-mana cards that had cookie-cutter abilities like Chandra, Flamecaller, Ajani, Unyielding, and Vivien Reid. The best and most impactful Planeswalker from this time period, Teferi, Hero of Dominaria, is a snoozefest to play against. "Thankfully," he's fallen off in recent years, but that's still an indictment of that era of design.
Part of the problem was that WOTC intentionally throttled the power level of sets for several years so that they wouldn't need to print hate cards into standard. One of the reasons why Standard was so tumultuous for this entire era was because the answer cards were purposefully bad, and hate cards were mostly non-existent. As a result, bans became necessary to weaken strategies that would have had clean answers in-game only a couple of years early. When WOTC finally course-corrected in 2019, this also created issues as the newly implemented play design team was over-ambitious in their ability to create balanced, powerful cards. While they were able to use the lessons from the 2015-18 era to create two of the best sets of all time in the form of Throne of Eldraine and Theros: Beyond Death, they also accidentally printed a bunch of overpowered things to make up for the relative slump.
I truly believe most of the game's problems today, including the near-death and painfully slow recovery of Standard, the overwhelming popularity of Commander, and the switch to a high-output product model can all be attributed at least in part to the dip in quality of the game that occurred after Khans block but before Guilds of Ravnica. A lot of the things that we don't like about the game today would not have been necessary if these sets had lived up to their predecessors.
However, there is one silver lining: these sets were really where WOTC learned how to make consistently good limited environments. Draft environments like Hour of Devastation and Eldritch Moon walked so Throne of Eldraine, Neon Dynasty, and Outlaws of Thunder Junction could run!
Look, as funny as it is to run Dark Depths as a super team buff...
OK, actually, no, that's funny as hell. I'm more annoyed because it counts Battles and Planeswalkers, which both start with a bunch of counters by design. Funny Hydra Lady actually likes invading random planes with the Superfriends more than Hydras, apparently.
I forgot those card types exist. I wanted to have a laugh with some Vivid lands.
It's OK, we make Cubes.
Another wordy, but sweet card. Scute Swarm was always an intriguing card, but 2cmc makes this a lot more palatable. I like that it plays well on curve, but also provides a little extra something as you get later in the game and have mana to burn and bodies on the ground
Playing this on a mana elf on turn two before your second land drop is a nice play. Get an insect first and then bodies that help pay for the copy cost
So this one is interesting to me. I think it's very easy to say "it gets the 1/1 at baseline for a landfall trigger" and then the rest of the card is simple to grok, it's just going to be that first reading during draft that gets people.
That's normally enough to bounce something from my Cube, but I actually really love this ability / the gameplay this supports. My Cube is desperate for 2-drop token generators, and this is amazing for that. It also has exciting, story-worthy upside in the alternative case as a pseudo five-drop.
This goes against many of my rules -- including not saying what Bestow does! -- but the gameplay it provides is such a perfect fit for my Cube I have to overlook its glaring flaws, I think.
I know it's a rare but, I feel like if any card using a set mechanic can't include the reminder text it needs to be redesigned.
Summerheart Nantuko
Enchantment Creature - Insect Monk
Bestow
(reminder text)Landfall - Whenever a land enters the battlefield, create a token that's a copy of enchanted creature or a 1/1 green insect creature token.
1/1
Numbers can be adjusted, but by making the bestow more expensive, you don't have to add this mana gate that only applies in one case and you can save many words.
While not 100% about the MH3 previews, I wanted to showoff a test draft where some of the more recent cards have helped make creature combo decks a thing! Check this one out:
It's a Storm deck, that has two ways to go off and both of them are pretty wildly different. Yet the deck still seems cohesive thanks to some recent additions including some notable ones from MH3.
1. The once again classic way with
Free spells and rituals/fast mana. You'll win with Tendrils of Agony + Yawgmoth's Will, nothing groundbreaking.
2. The creature way, and this is where it gets spicy.
This deals 2 damage per sacrifice and is easily lethal if your life total isn't too low. If it is, well you just got a lot of Storm count from casting Gravecrawler, so that Tendrils of Agony will do the trick too!
Here the Roots act as a mana engine thanks to these token producers. Earthcraft would have done the same, but you know what? I didn't see it this draft! It adds redundancy and can get you a strong board thanks to Gravecrawler loops. Lots of spells matter payoffs make tokens and this is a great way to use them to go off. Warren Soultrader can also cash in the tokens for mana, really making it an all star. Yawgmoth casually draws you a million cards from the tokens. Finally, Chatterstorm acts as both a win condition and an enabler, by providing fodder.
I drafted something similar in Erik Twice's cube, so I'm thinking it definitely has legs. Having Storm decks care about creatures and the board is fantastic for both the gameplay and draft portion.
I get that this is mostly for more degenerate cubes out there, but even in a fair context, the Soultrader and Apprentice are going to rock. I am once again hyped!
| | | | | |
| |||||
It's a Storm deck, that has two ways to go off and both of them are pretty wildly different. Yet the deck still seems cohesive thanks to some recent additions including some notable ones from MH3.
1. The once again classic way with
Free spells and rituals/fast mana. You'll win with Tendrils of Agony + Yawgmoth's Will, nothing groundbreaking.
2. The creature way, and this is where it gets spicy.
This deals 2 damage per sacrifice and is easily lethal if your life total isn't too low. If it is, well you just got a lot of Storm count from casting Gravecrawler, so that Tendrils of Agony will do the trick too!
Here the Roots act as a mana engine thanks to these token producers. Earthcraft would have done the same, but you know what? I didn't see it this draft! It adds redundancy and can get you a strong board thanks to Gravecrawler loops. Lots of spells matter payoffs make tokens and this is a great way to use them to go off. Warren Soultrader can also cash in the tokens for mana, really making it an all star. Yawgmoth casually draws you a million cards from the tokens. Finally, Chatterstorm acts as both a win condition and an enabler, by providing fodder.
I drafted something similar in Erik Twice's cube, so I'm thinking it definitely has legs. Having Storm decks care about creatures and the board is fantastic for both the gameplay and draft portion.
I get that this is mostly for more degenerate cubes out there, but even in a fair context, the Soultrader and Apprentice are going to rock. I am once again hyped!
I'm kind of confused by this. Daretti seems like a pretty clear case of enabler and payoff by being a Trash for Treasure that can discard your reanimation target, Foundry is kind of in the gray zone, not to mention that you're maybe the biggest Inti stan on this board to my knowledge, which is like the quintessential card for modern design trends, including being a self-enabling payoff.
I'm not feeling this one. Am I wrong? Convince me to play it.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Play it! Or else!