CML
Contributor
In the spirit of set reviews. This can go on the front page if you like! Probably want to copy-edit first, though ... CML
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I Know I Haven't Played It Yet, But Modern Masters 2 Is AMAZING.
by: CML
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Of all the “positive content for the community” cranked out as clickbait for dismal ducats, set reviews are among the most pointless. In their sheer meaninglessness, their pretense of effort and thought, they rival the snake-oil pitches of Dr. Oz — except they sell less product.
Of course, these are the very qualities that make set reviews entertaining. Here are some truly prophetic ones. Select the text above each Constructed review for THE SHOCKING TRUTH about these Magic cards:
Blood Artist
Constructed: 1.0
There will be blood…in Limited. In Constructed, this just isn’t Disciple of the Vault, for which I am thankful.
Calcite Snapper
Constructed: 3.5
Convertible Turtle is awesome, and might even replace Wall of Denial in decks that can cast either. At first, I thought it was a weaker Wall for non-UW decks, but after playing with it, I am sold. Snapper stops 1-toughness guys from bashing, can attack for a ton of damage, and overall is just a very good card. I expect this to see play in many decks.
Stoneforge Mystic
Constructed: 2.0
This is unlikely to make a splash in Standard, but getting Umezawa's Jitte in Extended makes this quite interesting. I doubt that it makes something as clunky as Tatsumasa, the Dragon's Fang worth it, but even if it only can get Jitte, there are decks that are interested.
Delver of Secrets / Insectile Aberration
Constructed: 2.0
This might actually work, which is pretty sweet, since this is one of the many cards in the set with awesome flavor. Dropping one of these guys and Pondering should just about do it, and random flipping in a deck full of spells doesn’t seem out of the question. If there is an all-spell sort of deck, he could be a legitimate threat.
Skaab Ruinator
Constructed: 3.5
This thing is gonna ruin some hopes and dreams. Coming out early and often doesn’t seem unrealistic at all, and there are even multiple ways to achieve this goal. The first is Birthing Pod, since he even only costs three, and once sacrificed, can be easily brought back. Multiple 5/6’s on turn four and five is tough to beat, and that’s without the backup plan of recasting them if the opponent manages to kill both all your guys and the Pod itself.
The second way to maul them involves milling yourself, probably with Forbidden Alchemy and Dream Twist, and likely alongside Unburial Rites and other sweet Flashback cards. This deck seems a bit more creature-light than the ‘Pod deck, but between Snapcaster Mage, Skaab Ruinator, and possibly even Armored Skaab, you have a good start.
Either way, I expect there to be much ruinating over the next year, and it should be pretty sweet.
Griselbrand
Constructed: 2.5
Good branding will take you far, and Griselbrand is dominating the “sick reanimation target” market in Standard. Even in older formats, he probably wins, since drawing 7 cards tends to be good in most matchups. Not all, because aggro does still exist everywhere, but against control/midrange/combo decks, Griselbrand is your go-to Demon. Past reanimation, there is also the possibility of just casting this beast, even if that is somewhat less likely. I could see ramp decks or control decks maybe using this as a finisher, since you do have room for a sick 1-of in most decks. Either way, Griselbrand is a big game.
Terminus
Constructed: 2.5
I’m really liking these Miracle cards. Maybe it’s because I build clunky decks, but I look at some of them and find myself dangerously close to wanting them even at full price. I then look at the Miracle cost and am blown away, even on a spell as situational as this. Entreat the Angels certainly has more raw power, but Terminus isn’t too shabby. Final Judgment made the cut without the enormous upside of sometimes costing one mana, even if that was some time ago. This may not be Day of Judgment, but it’s something, and should heavily impact Block.
Temporal Mastery
Constructed: 2.5
That may seem like a conservative rating, but I’m a conservative guy. I love that this card was printed, both for excitement value and because it really showcases how Miracle does and doesn’t work. While I don’t think that there is NO risk in printing this, since this could be the card that gets Brainstorm banned, what it won’t do is get Personal Tutor banned. That combo is just the biggest trick I’ve ever seen, and I chuckle every time I hear about Personal Tutor being sold out. There are plenty of unfair things this card can do, and in Legacy, they might well happen a little too often.
In Standard, this won’t be ruining anything. It looks like it could be good, and definitely worth trying, but the sky is most certainly not falling. The highest potential seems to lie with a UR deck featuring this and the Loothouse, plus possibly Thunderous Wrath, just trying to go deep on Miracles. Whether that much durdling actually accomplishes anything is yet to be seen, and I’m interested to watch what happens.
Thopter Foundry
Constructed: 1
This looks like an engine card, but I don’t see the reliable pieces being available. Not sure exactly what would take to make this work, but it probably isn’t worth it.
Thunderous Wrath
Constructed: 2.5
This is very different from most Wraths. Not only does it only kill one creature instead of many, it also deals damage to the face (clearly, this line of comparison is the most useful one I could take). Many people have examined the pros and cons of Thunderous Wrath, and mostly what it comes down to is that it is likely worth overpaying the times you have to hardcast it in order to underpay when you Miracle it. The effect is powerful and will rarely lack a good target, since most decks that play this are going to be happy enough dealing 5 to the opponent, so I think this will see quite a bit of play. In Legacy it is way easier to use but also less powerful relative to the format, though it still might be better in Legacy than it is in Standard.
Tibalt, the Fiend-Blooded
Constructed: 2.5
As I’ve myself said numerous times, this guy is more impressive than he looks, solely because he is a two-mana Planeswalker. It’s very hard to evaluate a Planeswalker that cheap, and I expect him to perform above expectations, though at this point people possibly are expecting more due to many voices saying that same thing. Either way, despite the fact that his first two abilities don’t affect the board at all, he provides enough value at a low enough cost that I really do think he’s going to see play. Owen went into more detail in this article, and I agree with his perspective.
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These were all written by one of the greatest Magic players, writers, streamers, and commentators of all time. I love set reviews.
But I digress. Tibalt, the Fiend-Blooded! What kind of dunce would talk up such a piece of crap, let alone write an entire article about it?
My point is: I have no idea what’s going on — and neither does anyone else! This is fine. Magic would be a less fun game if the speculation had any meaning.
In that spirit, I freely admit I have yet to play a single game of Modern Masters 2. I will probably play it tomorrow, which is Friday. At that point, I might know enough to think I can write a set review. At this point, I know I don’t know enough to write a set review. But if everyone else is writing set reviews to talk up cards and design “triumphs” that might work (or might be Vampires in the Modo Cube), why not write a set review full of absurd and knee-jerk judgments — equally ignorant, but more entertaining?
Here are the faults I see with Modern Masters 2.
— Let’s get the obvious stuff out of the way: if you’re trying to lower the price of mythic Eldrazi, you ban Show and Tell in Legacy. Barring that, you reprint them in Modern Masters 2. If you’re trying to design a great Limited format, you don’t toss in a 15-mana spell. These two purposes are sometimes at odds with one another, and it’s probably worth it to ban Show and Tell, I mean, reprint Emrakul. If you’re not under that constraint, though — and Modern Masters draft is much better than average retail Limited because Wizards puts fewer constraints on its design — then you can cut these cards for being too powerful …
… and you can cut these cards for being unplayable.
(And maybe Dark Confidant, Kozilek, and Ulamog. If you’ve never experienced the joy of making a 0/1 Tarmogoyf in the Modo Cube, I highly recommend it.)
Now, to appease the peanut gallery, here are some cards that look like really awesome inclusions.
Would that Wizards had put this much thought into the Modo Cube.
All of these cards are awesome, and many of them are from Ravnica block — the real Ravnica block — considered to be the best Limited format of all time by anyone who has drafted a set that came out before Innistrad. The bouncelands in particular bring great joy, though I worry that the format will be too fast for them. An alternative to the bouncelands would be to cut all the fixing, which did not make FRF-KTK-KTK worse than KTK-KTK-KTK, and also worked out fantastically in Return to Ravnica block.
A number of pros rated DGR draft very highly, presumably because color-screw made the matches so swift they could work on set reviews, and so devoid of strategy they were really in the mood to churn these set reviews out. I still don’t know how “good” most of the cards in Dragon’s Maze are — I’ve drafted them, I’ve put them in my deck, and I’ve played them, but I’ve never played them, if you catch my drift. Tangentially, when a friend first asked me if I’d “seen Dragon’s Maze,” I thought he was talking about an Asian porn site and not a Magic set. These days, what’s the difference?
Getting back on topic, here are some dumb bombs. There is no demand for Comet Storms or Battlegrace Angels; you can’t even call them that horrible epithet, “EDH Staple.” Thus, there is no reason to reprint them, though I guess if EDH players don’t want them, there is no reason to not reprint them too:
Someone should do an as-fan for bombs for each format. If you’re looking for a technical definition of “bombs,” “cards I hate unless I have them” is a good place to start. For more information, please consult the EDH forum on MTG Salvation.
Here are some unplayables at rare and uncommon:
“Inexorable Tide” sounds like the name of a racist Alabama fraternity, and wasn’t so inexorable in SOM. I’m surprised there’s no poison theme with all the pump and double strike, but it is a pleasant surprise. Moving on, a friend once argued Kamigawa was better than Mirrodin because “Kamigawa was stupid and beautiful” and “Mirrodin was stupid and ugly”; Taj-Nar Swordsmith is certainly both. On the other hand … Devouring Greed. (Q: What do you call it when a company makes millions per year off its intellectual property and budgets $250,000 per Pro Tour as prizes?)
Here are some unplayables at common:
Shrivel is like one of those cards you tell your friend to take out of his Cube because “nobody ever plays it” and he insists it’s “good sideboard tech” — it was bad in ROE Limited, and it’ll be bad again here. Simic Initiate and Thrive have the same problem. I would prefer Copper Carapace were Cardboard Carapace.
Last, here’s a card I hate because protection is bogus:
And that’s it.
Some of these evaluations might be right. If they are, I apologize.
As for ideas for cards to add:I have none let me know your thoughts in the comments below!
Seriously, Modern Masters 2 looks — I mean, is — incredibly superlative. It looks like Wizards has done a great job of addressing the complaintswe I had with Modern Masters (The Original Series):
— Fewer dirty bombs (Oona, Queen of the Fae, Adarkar Valkyrie, Sword of Fire and Ice)
— Fewer goddamn Swords (Sword of Fire and Ice, Sword of Feast and Famine)
— More archetype overlap and fewer underpowered and/or overly narrow cards (Dreamspoiler Witches, Pyromancer’s Swath, Stingscourger)
Since I already know what all of the cards do, and have played with nearly all of them, Modern Masters 2 is easier to write about than sets with new cards, sets that contain trash like Blood Artist and powerhouses like Calcite Snapper. MM2 was also (let’s not forget) easier for Wizards to design. I see a lot of fun designs in the Riptide Lab custom-card thread, but I can’t claim to have any clue how to make a set from scratch. I can claim, though, to have made a Cube, more or less the same design exercise as MM2.
MM2 has a great deal of design affinities (pun intended) with my Cube, and many of the other cubes on Riptide Lab. The power level is flatter, the mechanics are less linear andseem to go well together, the colors lack the autistic preoccupation with exact number-of-cards balance, and there are a lot of cards from Ravnica block (the real one).
What if Wizards made sets that were (hopefully) this good, all the time? No longer would Cube be the “thinking man’s EDH”; no longer would we lament the release of Stillborn of the Gods. Theprobable quality of MM2 strongly suggests common criticisms of retail Limited are both correct and consciously ignored by Wizards, for most original releases. It also suggests they could make every set incredibly fun. At that point, why not hold a GP Vegas for every new release? The odds on Dragon’s Maze were bad, but they might at one point have been better than Keno.
All this analysis proves that my Cube is incredibly great and Modern Masters 2 is the greatest set of all time. FNM tomorrow will be fun. Vegas will be a blast. But what I’m most looking forward to is playing with Graft on Modo v4.
@CMLisawesome on Twitter
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I Know I Haven't Played It Yet, But Modern Masters 2 Is AMAZING.
by: CML
—
Of all the “positive content for the community” cranked out as clickbait for dismal ducats, set reviews are among the most pointless. In their sheer meaninglessness, their pretense of effort and thought, they rival the snake-oil pitches of Dr. Oz — except they sell less product.
Of course, these are the very qualities that make set reviews entertaining. Here are some truly prophetic ones. Select the text above each Constructed review for THE SHOCKING TRUTH about these Magic cards:
Blood Artist
Constructed: 1.0
There will be blood…in Limited. In Constructed, this just isn’t Disciple of the Vault, for which I am thankful.
Calcite Snapper
Constructed: 3.5
Convertible Turtle is awesome, and might even replace Wall of Denial in decks that can cast either. At first, I thought it was a weaker Wall for non-UW decks, but after playing with it, I am sold. Snapper stops 1-toughness guys from bashing, can attack for a ton of damage, and overall is just a very good card. I expect this to see play in many decks.
Stoneforge Mystic
Constructed: 2.0
This is unlikely to make a splash in Standard, but getting Umezawa's Jitte in Extended makes this quite interesting. I doubt that it makes something as clunky as Tatsumasa, the Dragon's Fang worth it, but even if it only can get Jitte, there are decks that are interested.
Delver of Secrets / Insectile Aberration
Constructed: 2.0
This might actually work, which is pretty sweet, since this is one of the many cards in the set with awesome flavor. Dropping one of these guys and Pondering should just about do it, and random flipping in a deck full of spells doesn’t seem out of the question. If there is an all-spell sort of deck, he could be a legitimate threat.
Skaab Ruinator
Constructed: 3.5
This thing is gonna ruin some hopes and dreams. Coming out early and often doesn’t seem unrealistic at all, and there are even multiple ways to achieve this goal. The first is Birthing Pod, since he even only costs three, and once sacrificed, can be easily brought back. Multiple 5/6’s on turn four and five is tough to beat, and that’s without the backup plan of recasting them if the opponent manages to kill both all your guys and the Pod itself.
The second way to maul them involves milling yourself, probably with Forbidden Alchemy and Dream Twist, and likely alongside Unburial Rites and other sweet Flashback cards. This deck seems a bit more creature-light than the ‘Pod deck, but between Snapcaster Mage, Skaab Ruinator, and possibly even Armored Skaab, you have a good start.
Either way, I expect there to be much ruinating over the next year, and it should be pretty sweet.
Griselbrand
Constructed: 2.5
Good branding will take you far, and Griselbrand is dominating the “sick reanimation target” market in Standard. Even in older formats, he probably wins, since drawing 7 cards tends to be good in most matchups. Not all, because aggro does still exist everywhere, but against control/midrange/combo decks, Griselbrand is your go-to Demon. Past reanimation, there is also the possibility of just casting this beast, even if that is somewhat less likely. I could see ramp decks or control decks maybe using this as a finisher, since you do have room for a sick 1-of in most decks. Either way, Griselbrand is a big game.
Terminus
Constructed: 2.5
I’m really liking these Miracle cards. Maybe it’s because I build clunky decks, but I look at some of them and find myself dangerously close to wanting them even at full price. I then look at the Miracle cost and am blown away, even on a spell as situational as this. Entreat the Angels certainly has more raw power, but Terminus isn’t too shabby. Final Judgment made the cut without the enormous upside of sometimes costing one mana, even if that was some time ago. This may not be Day of Judgment, but it’s something, and should heavily impact Block.
Temporal Mastery
Constructed: 2.5
That may seem like a conservative rating, but I’m a conservative guy. I love that this card was printed, both for excitement value and because it really showcases how Miracle does and doesn’t work. While I don’t think that there is NO risk in printing this, since this could be the card that gets Brainstorm banned, what it won’t do is get Personal Tutor banned. That combo is just the biggest trick I’ve ever seen, and I chuckle every time I hear about Personal Tutor being sold out. There are plenty of unfair things this card can do, and in Legacy, they might well happen a little too often.
In Standard, this won’t be ruining anything. It looks like it could be good, and definitely worth trying, but the sky is most certainly not falling. The highest potential seems to lie with a UR deck featuring this and the Loothouse, plus possibly Thunderous Wrath, just trying to go deep on Miracles. Whether that much durdling actually accomplishes anything is yet to be seen, and I’m interested to watch what happens.
Thopter Foundry
Constructed: 1
This looks like an engine card, but I don’t see the reliable pieces being available. Not sure exactly what would take to make this work, but it probably isn’t worth it.
Thunderous Wrath
Constructed: 2.5
This is very different from most Wraths. Not only does it only kill one creature instead of many, it also deals damage to the face (clearly, this line of comparison is the most useful one I could take). Many people have examined the pros and cons of Thunderous Wrath, and mostly what it comes down to is that it is likely worth overpaying the times you have to hardcast it in order to underpay when you Miracle it. The effect is powerful and will rarely lack a good target, since most decks that play this are going to be happy enough dealing 5 to the opponent, so I think this will see quite a bit of play. In Legacy it is way easier to use but also less powerful relative to the format, though it still might be better in Legacy than it is in Standard.
Tibalt, the Fiend-Blooded
Constructed: 2.5
As I’ve myself said numerous times, this guy is more impressive than he looks, solely because he is a two-mana Planeswalker. It’s very hard to evaluate a Planeswalker that cheap, and I expect him to perform above expectations, though at this point people possibly are expecting more due to many voices saying that same thing. Either way, despite the fact that his first two abilities don’t affect the board at all, he provides enough value at a low enough cost that I really do think he’s going to see play. Owen went into more detail in this article, and I agree with his perspective.
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These were all written by one of the greatest Magic players, writers, streamers, and commentators of all time. I love set reviews.
But I digress. Tibalt, the Fiend-Blooded! What kind of dunce would talk up such a piece of crap, let alone write an entire article about it?
My point is: I have no idea what’s going on — and neither does anyone else! This is fine. Magic would be a less fun game if the speculation had any meaning.
In that spirit, I freely admit I have yet to play a single game of Modern Masters 2. I will probably play it tomorrow, which is Friday. At that point, I might know enough to think I can write a set review. At this point, I know I don’t know enough to write a set review. But if everyone else is writing set reviews to talk up cards and design “triumphs” that might work (or might be Vampires in the Modo Cube), why not write a set review full of absurd and knee-jerk judgments — equally ignorant, but more entertaining?
Here are the faults I see with Modern Masters 2.
— Let’s get the obvious stuff out of the way: if you’re trying to lower the price of mythic Eldrazi, you ban Show and Tell in Legacy. Barring that, you reprint them in Modern Masters 2. If you’re trying to design a great Limited format, you don’t toss in a 15-mana spell. These two purposes are sometimes at odds with one another, and it’s probably worth it to ban Show and Tell, I mean, reprint Emrakul. If you’re not under that constraint, though — and Modern Masters draft is much better than average retail Limited because Wizards puts fewer constraints on its design — then you can cut these cards for being too powerful …
… and you can cut these cards for being unplayable.
(And maybe Dark Confidant, Kozilek, and Ulamog. If you’ve never experienced the joy of making a 0/1 Tarmogoyf in the Modo Cube, I highly recommend it.)
Now, to appease the peanut gallery, here are some cards that look like really awesome inclusions.
Would that Wizards had put this much thought into the Modo Cube.
All of these cards are awesome, and many of them are from Ravnica block — the real Ravnica block — considered to be the best Limited format of all time by anyone who has drafted a set that came out before Innistrad. The bouncelands in particular bring great joy, though I worry that the format will be too fast for them. An alternative to the bouncelands would be to cut all the fixing, which did not make FRF-KTK-KTK worse than KTK-KTK-KTK, and also worked out fantastically in Return to Ravnica block.
A number of pros rated DGR draft very highly, presumably because color-screw made the matches so swift they could work on set reviews, and so devoid of strategy they were really in the mood to churn these set reviews out. I still don’t know how “good” most of the cards in Dragon’s Maze are — I’ve drafted them, I’ve put them in my deck, and I’ve played them, but I’ve never played them, if you catch my drift. Tangentially, when a friend first asked me if I’d “seen Dragon’s Maze,” I thought he was talking about an Asian porn site and not a Magic set. These days, what’s the difference?
Getting back on topic, here are some dumb bombs. There is no demand for Comet Storms or Battlegrace Angels; you can’t even call them that horrible epithet, “EDH Staple.” Thus, there is no reason to reprint them, though I guess if EDH players don’t want them, there is no reason to not reprint them too:
Someone should do an as-fan for bombs for each format. If you’re looking for a technical definition of “bombs,” “cards I hate unless I have them” is a good place to start. For more information, please consult the EDH forum on MTG Salvation.
Here are some unplayables at rare and uncommon:
“Inexorable Tide” sounds like the name of a racist Alabama fraternity, and wasn’t so inexorable in SOM. I’m surprised there’s no poison theme with all the pump and double strike, but it is a pleasant surprise. Moving on, a friend once argued Kamigawa was better than Mirrodin because “Kamigawa was stupid and beautiful” and “Mirrodin was stupid and ugly”; Taj-Nar Swordsmith is certainly both. On the other hand … Devouring Greed. (Q: What do you call it when a company makes millions per year off its intellectual property and budgets $250,000 per Pro Tour as prizes?)
Here are some unplayables at common:
Shrivel is like one of those cards you tell your friend to take out of his Cube because “nobody ever plays it” and he insists it’s “good sideboard tech” — it was bad in ROE Limited, and it’ll be bad again here. Simic Initiate and Thrive have the same problem. I would prefer Copper Carapace were Cardboard Carapace.
Last, here’s a card I hate because protection is bogus:
And that’s it.
Some of these evaluations might be right. If they are, I apologize.
As for ideas for cards to add:
Seriously, Modern Masters 2 looks — I mean, is — incredibly superlative. It looks like Wizards has done a great job of addressing the complaints
— Fewer dirty bombs (Oona, Queen of the Fae, Adarkar Valkyrie, Sword of Fire and Ice)
— Fewer goddamn Swords (Sword of Fire and Ice, Sword of Feast and Famine)
— More archetype overlap and fewer underpowered and/or overly narrow cards (Dreamspoiler Witches, Pyromancer’s Swath, Stingscourger)
Since I already know what all of the cards do, and have played with nearly all of them, Modern Masters 2 is easier to write about than sets with new cards, sets that contain trash like Blood Artist and powerhouses like Calcite Snapper. MM2 was also (let’s not forget) easier for Wizards to design. I see a lot of fun designs in the Riptide Lab custom-card thread, but I can’t claim to have any clue how to make a set from scratch. I can claim, though, to have made a Cube, more or less the same design exercise as MM2.
MM2 has a great deal of design affinities (pun intended) with my Cube, and many of the other cubes on Riptide Lab. The power level is flatter, the mechanics are less linear and
What if Wizards made sets that were (hopefully) this good, all the time? No longer would Cube be the “thinking man’s EDH”; no longer would we lament the release of Stillborn of the Gods. The
All this analysis proves that my Cube is incredibly great and Modern Masters 2 is the greatest set of all time. FNM tomorrow will be fun. Vegas will be a blast. But what I’m most looking forward to is playing with Graft on Modo v4.
@CMLisawesome on Twitter
