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Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
GiftsForgiven said:
This card heavily incentivizes and rewards players for manipulating their opponent into a situation where they can 'blow them out by combat,' e.g make their doods indestructible after attacks/blocks. That's a situation that's more common in draft than cube, I think.
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Oh yeah, that happened sometimes in combat, but when your opponent has a removal spell in response it doesn't work, and the average case is still a 1 for 1 trade (Heroic Intervention for a creature), in which case I'ld much rather have something proactive like Clear Shot, that lets me attack instead of sit back on defense.

If you really want a protection spell, I think Vines of the Vastwoord is much better, even though it doesn't protect against mass removal, it's actively good way more often than Intervention.
 
ahadabans

ahadabans

I disliked it personally. But I'm not a huge morph fan (outside Exalted Angel). A 3/2 lifelink for 3WW that might kill something is pretty bad. A likelinking goblin piker for 1W is also pretty bad. Morphing and having it die is a lot of tempo loss. Even when it kills a big thing, you are left with a pretty janky body and it costed you 5 mana for what amounted to a doom blade.

I feel like the trigger has to be really really good, the upside of cost reduction on the body is above curve, or the card is playable sans morph. Very few morph creatures pass that bar for me.
 
shamizy

shamizy

Only Den Protector for me, not really a fan of the rest of the cycle. I feel like Regrowth + 3/2 evasive body well worth 5 mana investment, especially in green decks where ramp is prevalent. I feel less enthused about spending that much mana in other colors. Ire Shaman I guess was kind of cool, but I don't ever really want to spend all that mana playing + flipping when I could just play impactful red creatures at 3 or shoot people with burn.
 
GiftsForgiven

GiftsForgiven

shamizy said:
Only Den Protector for me, not really a fan of the rest of the cycle. I feel like Regrowth + 3/2 evasive body well worth 5 mana investment, especially in green decks where ramp is prevalent. I feel less enthused about spending that much mana in other colors. Ire Shaman I guess was kind of cool, but I don't ever really want to spend all that mana playing + flipping when I could just play impactful red creatures at 3 or shoot people with burn.
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I'm surprised you aren't into stratus dancer. It may be on the edge, but I'm totally cool with paying 5 mana for a 3/2 flier that also counters an instant or sorcery spell. It's kind of like a 'fixed' Glen-elendra archmage. It's not even that bad when your opponent knows it's coming, as it has that
'seal of cleansing' effect, in that it changes the flow of the game.
 
shamizy

shamizy

GiftsForgiven said:
I'm surprised you aren't into stratus dancer. It may be on the edge, but I'm totally cool with paying 5 mana for a 3/2 flier that also counters an instant or sorcery spell. It's kind of like a 'fixed' Glen-elendra archmage. It's not even that bad when your opponent knows it's coming, as it has that
'seal of cleansing' effect, in that it changes the flow of the game.
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I just don't like how it's such an easy read. Unless I'm playing against a UG deck, I'm going to almost always know that that U/x deck morph is a Dancer and unless I'm a specific deck like UR Spells, I'll just play around it. It has too much of its total value tied up in that morph ability for me. You can't proactively use it like Den Protector who can be flipped whenever most convenient. If you don't nab their spell, I don't think it does enough in most blue decks for me. I'd usually much rather play out a card that provides some immediate value or just leave the mana up for catch-all interaction instead of a Muddle the Mixture variant. I'd probably be more open to it if it were a Negate.

Blue decks just have better things to leave up with open mana most of the time. Say you untap with mana up and are hoping to snag a card. That 2/2 isn't going to providing you with any good blocks anytime soon versus a 1/3 which can gum up the board and let you leave mana up for interaction more easily. If you do get someone on a gamewarping instant or sorcery that's great, but I don't the majority of my players will fall for it.

On the flipside (heh), I don't really care if the Den Protector is killed in most cases because it's done its job by giving me back a card that I need and I can flip it whenever it's most convenient for me. Sometimes that's 5 mana in one shot to rebuy a 4 drop that was just killed, other times it's the 3 and 2 mana installment plan. Green decks don't really have a whole lot to do with open mana at instant speed so it feels like less of an opportunity cost. Also a more relevant creature type and evasiveness that can scale with +1/+1 counters to grow it (which we've gotten a lot more support for recently).
 
GiftsForgiven

GiftsForgiven

shamizy said:
I just don't like how it's such an easy read. Unless I'm playing against a UG deck, I'm going to almost always know that that U/x deck morph is a Dancer and unless I'm a specific deck like UR Spells, I'll just play around it. It has too much of its total value tied up in that morph ability for me. You can't proactively use it like Den Protector who can be flipped whenever most convenient. If you don't nab their spell, I don't think it does enough in most blue decks for me. I'd usually much rather play out a card that provides some immediate value or just leave the mana up for catch-all interaction instead of a Muddle the Mixture variant. I'd probably be more open to it if it were a Negate.

Blue decks just have better things to leave up with open mana most of the time. Say you untap with mana up and are hoping to snag a card. That 2/2 isn't going to providing you with any good blocks anytime soon versus a 1/3 which can gum up the board and let you leave mana up for interaction more easily. If you do get someone on a gamewarping instant or sorcery that's great, but I don't the majority of my players will fall for it.

On the flipside (heh), I don't really care if the Den Protector is killed in most cases because it's done its job by giving me back a card that I need and I can flip it whenever it's most convenient for me. Sometimes that's 5 mana in one shot to rebuy a 4 drop that was just killed, other times it's the 3 and 2 mana installment plan. Green decks don't really have a whole lot to do with open mana at instant speed so it feels like less of an opportunity cost. Also a more relevant creature type and evasiveness that can scale with +1/+1 counters to grow it (which we've gotten a lot more support for recently).
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That's a fair assessment. I guess it all hinges on how effective the counter is in the cube, right?
 
japahn

japahn

Velrun said:
Morph would have been sooo cool at 2 mana for 1/1s instead!
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I was thinking that yesterday, I want to have a morph module, but grey ogres are too bad. I was actually considering errataing morph to 2 mana 2/2, do you think that could break it? Even 2 mana 1/1 sounds better than 3 mana 2/2.
 
shamizy

shamizy

japahn said:
I was thinking that yesterday, I want to have a morph module, but grey ogres are too bad. I was actually considering errataing morph to 2 mana 2/2, do you think that could break it? Even 2 mana 1/1 sounds better than 3 mana 2/2.
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I think you want 2 mana 1/1 as the going rate, free bears for everyone is a little much. The shitty Gray Ogre body serves to push you towards flipping because no one wants a vanilla 3 mana 2/2.
 
ahadabans

ahadabans

I'd like to see something modular. Like you can choose to make a 2/1 for 2 or a 1/3 for 2. Both reasonable bodies for the cost and they appeal to aggressive/control strategies respectively.
 
Velrun

Velrun

Well

What we want from morph is the cool mechanic, the element of surprise, the guessing game and the effect you can abuse if you get it a little too early. (You are allowed to get it too early because you already invested mana on previous turns)

What we do not want: Efficient beaters

Therefore I would go with 2 mana 1/1's. It might still not be fast enough but making them 2/2 won't solve this.
 
ahadabans

ahadabans

I want more from morph personally. The element of surprise isn't enough.

I want to be able to play it as a morph and use it for something besides a lightning rod. Both a Goblin Piker and a Lumengrid Warden suck as cube cards. They aren't worth a slot in your deck. So morph should be a "perk" you get, just like any other card with those stats and cost which provide you something else. Like Abbot of Keral Keep is a piker that also gets you a card later and has prowess. A morph would be a piker early and then something else later.

That wouldn't break morphs. It would just make more of them worth playing.
 
GiftsForgiven

GiftsForgiven

I think you guys are looking at Morph from the wrong angle. It was never meant to be a proactive 'thing' to alter a draft for in of itself- it was a solution to the potential awkwardness of drafting a 3-color set, as it allowed players who drafted a tricolor deck (most players) and who could not find the proper colored mana to still play their grey ogres- albeit at a greater cost. It was never meant to be pushed heavily for constructed play (deathmist raptor aside,) which is why so few morph creatures are really relevant for cube: Cubing is not about drafting draft decks, it's about drafting constructed decks, and morphs suffer when exposed to the realities of a tightly-constructed format.

I would most likely compare morphs to the basic landcycling cycle of cards from conflux (e.g, Absorb Vis). It's not an 'archetype,' it's a solution to a draft problem. This is why I don't think you're ever going to get what you want out of morph as it is in it's current state.
 
Dom Harvey

Dom Harvey

Contributor
That doesn't explain morph in Onslaught and Time Spiral; in Onslaught at least, it heavily warped the draft

I really wanted to make Deathmist Raptor work but the tools just aren't there
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
ahadabans said:
I'd like to see something modular. Like you can choose to make a 2/1 for 2 or a 1/3 for 2. Both reasonable bodies for the cost and they appeal to aggressive/control strategies respectively.
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This sounds like a terrible idea to me. First, there is a very good reason why there's a uniform definition of what a face-down creature is. Having to remember / indicate which of the two modes you chose on each and every morph will get annoying fast. Second, the 1/3 option kills aggro. I mean, they'll have a burn spell or two, but when you can just block a Goblin Guide with a defensive two-drop every time because you happen to run a lot of morphs? Also, the 1/3 option straight up murders the 2/1 option. I don't like it.

In short, if you want to make morphs more playable, I would go for one clear definition of what a morph is. Be it a 1/1 for {2} or a 2/2 for {1} (don't do 2/2 for {1}, it's a dumb idea), as long as it's consistent.

In reality though, morph, by WotC's own admission, requires you to heavily redesign how your limited environment looks. When 2/2 for {3} is the baseline, you can't have creatures, especially at common, that beat that baseline 100% of the time. Why draft a morph, after all, when you can draft a 2/3 for three? That's going to beat every morph in the set! When you look at Khans of Tarkir, you'll notice that there are only seven cards at cmc 3 or below that can kill a morph and live, and only one of them is a common (go on, have a guess!) and a further 3 are at uncommon. For reference, Battle for Zendikar also has only 8, but 3 at common and 4 at uncommon, and Kaladesh has a whopping 14 (not counting vehicles), 4 at common and 6 at uncommon. Note: I only looked at 2/3 or better stats, not at any other mechanics (like 2/X's with first strike) for this count.

Now look at your own cube and calculate the percentage of cmc 3 or below drops that can kill a morph and live. I'ld say chances are you are trying to add the mechanic to a hostile environment. I don't even know if 1/1 for {2} is going to fix that, since at least as a 2/2 it has a somewhat meaningful body. 1/1 is so anemic...

Perhaps the neater solution is to go ham on colorless support, with cards like Vile Aggregate, Tide Drifter and Ruination Guide, but unfortunately, Wizards hasn't really gone out of its way to print a lot of those. Maybe a morph support package in blue-green? Or maybe ahadabans had halfway the right idea and 2/1 for {2} is an acceptable stat to cost ratio? Or both, of course :)
 
ahadabans

ahadabans

Truth is, morph is probably a terrible idea. Wizards has printed 194 morph cards based on a quick gatherer check. How many of those end up in cubes? I've seen a lot of people force otherwise unplayable cards just to try and get a reasonable count of morphs, but they are just not very good cards. a 2/2 for 3 is only going to be a relevant body in a Squire cube. By comparison, there are only 39 cards with "cycle" and 119 cards with "scry", yet both those are in virtually every cube and in larger numbers than morph. Morph kind of blows.

Maybe 1/3 is a bit too good? Maybe 0/3 instead and 2/1 are the modes (both for 2). As far as having more than one morph stat, so what? How many different size tokens are you already tracking? That would be very easy to implement.

Again, the body has to be good for this to be playable at any reasonable power level. Otherwise any morph card rests entirely on it being playable straight up (making morph pointless) or the flip trigger/cost reduction makes it super worth paying 3 for a limp 2/2 and risking a big tempo loss. That's not a bar very many cards will meet. 100 years could go by with new sets being printed and we probably won't ever get enough morphs to make it a real theme in even a lower powered cube. The only way it will ever be a thing is by drastically changing how it works.
 
Chriskool

Chriskool

I *really* like morph in KTK draft, and I've explored the mechanic somewhat from a theory perspective. I imagine morph in cube to have an early game "rock-paper-scissors" based on a power-toughness matrix. Morph is interesting in KTK because of how creatures' power-toughness interacts with (1) each other and (2) removal spells. The assumption here is morph will always be disappointing if the entire creature power-toughness design does not take it into account. My design would be something like the following:
  • 1/1 for 1 mana (missing in KTK)
  • 2/1 for 2 mana (prevalent in KTK)
  • 1/3+ for 2 mana (scarce in KTK)
  • 0/5+ for 2 mana (prevalent in KTK)
  • 2/3 for 3 mana
  • 3+/2 for 3 mana
  • morphs with 3+/4+ stats and morph costs of 5+
  • morphs with x/1-2 stats and any morph cost
  • morphs with 1-/x stats and any morph cost
Average removal cannot kill morphs for less than 3 mana. Cards like Smite the Monstrous, Suspension Field, Barrage of Boulders and Disdainful Stroke feed into this sort of power-toughness matrix. Probably, removal at 2-mana that can kill morphs should be sorcery speed, be narrow OR have restrictive mana costs (multicolored or two of the same color). Might also be interesting to play removal like Make Obsolete or Lava Dart.

I do not imagine this cube to be very high-powered in a velocity sense; the games need to make it to turns 6-8 on average and extend well into the teens to leverage the "excitement" of multiple face-down morphs. My bucket list is to try this in a grid, but I've not put too much thought into it beyond sketching out a 4-color Khans-inspired grid (that I've never tried to play once).

EDIT: Should've read Onderzeeboot's post first as it says very similar info :) Getting back into-non-junk-post mindset is hard...
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Chris: MTGO Academy said:
EDIT: Should've read Onderzeeboot's post first as it says very similar info :) Getting back into-non-junk-post mindset is hard...
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To be fair, that post was much longer than my usual, so I can forgive you for skipping it ;)

@ahadabans: If you absolutely have to go with two different options (which I still don't feel is worth it), 2/1 and 0/3 seems much fairer than 2/1 and 1/3. Keep in mind this will probably still strenghten control decks, since morphs already play a good long game, and 0/3 blocks pretty well in the early stages.
 
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