Land destruction has to cost 4 mana or more these days.Originally Posted by Octopusman
WotC thinks even Stone Rain is too good these days.
It's mainly due to standard and Wizards wanting to cash in more on dual land variants.
I seriously doubt we get anything Legacy-playable in terms of LD anytime soon, considering even Sinkhole doesn't cut it nowadays. If anything, it would need to be something like a Ghost Quarter for nonbasics on a creature (for) when it ETBs.
Wouldn't ruin Standard since they run lots of basic lands, but it would definitely punish the greedy manabases of Eternal decks.
New playable LD is possible, but it will have to be as a rider on a turn 4+ card that has other good stuff going for it; think Acidic Slime or Goblin Ruinblaster, both quite Standard playable. Unfortunately they don't make a lot of those cards so it'll probably be a while before they "roll" something overpowered enough for Legacy.
YOU'RE GIVING ME A TIME MACHINE IN ORDER TO TREAT MY SLEEP DISORDER.
Don't know if Nivmagus Elemental has been discussed yet, but has anyone else noticed that he's actually sideboard-able against Hive Mind?
They don't think it's too good, they think it's too frustrating. They try to keep LD from being a standard playable deck. There have been some competitive standard LD decks when there were enough 2-3 mana LD spells, so every LD or psuedo-LD spell is closely scrutinized.
“It's possible. But it involves... {checks archives} Nature's Revolt, Opalescence, two Unstable Shapeshifters (one of which started as a Doppelganger), a Tide, an animated land, a creature with Fading, a Silver Wyvern, some way to get a creature into play in response to stuff, some way to get a land into play in response to stuff (a different land from the animated land), and one heck of a Rube Goldberg timing diagram.”
-David DeLaney
Yes, swiftly followed by the thoughts of how no one's meta seems to be overrun by hivemind to the point people sideboard for it
Matt Bevenour in real life
I actually was thrilled that they reprinted Smallpox in M12, and I wish hardcore that they'd bring back mana denial in a similarly skill-intensive way (maybe Pox so I can get foil ones, or like Tangle Wire or Tectonic Break or something).
I also wonder if they might be willing to reprint Destructive Force at a point when it too will be skill-intensive and not just a sidenote to titan.metagame--I grew up as a tournament player on Covetous Red, and I love stuff like that.
I don't want the fast mana->Plow Under->Tooth and Nail derpness of the twelvepost era, but resource denial is an important part of what distinguishes Magic from other less excellent games; I don't want it to degenerate into "make dudes, do combat." I play Magic over WoW for a reason.
Are you kidding? I expected way worse than this. I was expecting;
Rakdos Charm
BR
Instant
Choose one - Exile all cards from target player's graveyard; or destroy target artifact; or each creature deals 1 damage to its controller.
Haha, oh wow. I didn't expect it to be this terrible, but R&D defies expectations.
Choose one- Rakdos Charm deals 3 damage to creature that was dealt damage this turn; or target player discards a card; or each player sacrifices a permanent.
As is, this card is almost playable. Destroying artifacts and blowing up graveyards are two of the stronger marginal effects you can maindeck. If the third effect had been at all good in the general case the card might see Legacy play.
For my confessions, they burned me with fire/
And found I was for endurance made
3rd effect triggers Goblin Lackey, that shit is absolutely super duper playable in Goblin SBs, fucking wow.
It removes Umezawa's Jitte and Batterskull, shrinks Knight of the Reliquary to 2/2, shrinks Nimble Mongoose to 1/1 and shrinks Tarmogoyf to at most a 2/3 if all you have in your GY are lands and creatures usually and it increases the critical number of hate cards to ~8 when playing against Reanimator or Dredge.
I mean I agree the 3rd ability sucks short of the Goblin Lackey exploit, but if they had used deal 1 damage to all creatures in play as sort of the Rolling Earthquake/Pestilence hybrid between the two colors I think it could've been the best Charm in the set.
Well, Tarmogoyf is more of a 3/4 if you use this while having lands and creatures in your own graveyard.
The 3rd ability is a complete beating against Elves. I mean, on their combo turn they drop about a billion creatures into play before they get to their finisher (probably Emrakul). Wouldn't it be sweet to just blow them out when the annihilator trigger is on the stack? "Are you dead? Nope, you are"!
It's not that crazy in goblins. You're basically paying 2 mana instead of the mana cost of a goblin in your hand. You also lose synergy because the charm isn't a goblin.
However, since you also get the other utilities, I think that it might see play. There aren't very many matchups where having artifact destruction and graveyard removal are both dead effects. The charm is definitely going to have numerous applications in every game. The fact that you can also use the charm to deal them damage directly and sneak in a goblin is just icing on the cake. It's also an instant.
The direct damage also has applications against zombie tokens from dredge and storm players using empty the warrens.
Better than expected, I would say.
Dealing damage while running red shouldn't be too hard. The casting cost really sucks, though.
I have no idea if there's a decent way to abuse the last ability in its colors, but I doubt it's useful in Legacy.
EDH guys probably did probably just wet their pants, though.
There are a couple of creatures with X casting costs or multikicker... like Maga, Traitor to Mortals.
The trick is finding cards that are good with, and without him. Critters with alternative cc like Shriekmaw and Tombstalker could work well.
Considering he's got evasion, and lots of power that last ability can do a number of things like cast any morph creature face down for free.
Any guildleader would need to be completely ridonkolous to be playable in Legacy despite a CCDD (at least!) mana cost: there aren't many decks in the format that (a) can regularly afford to cast a 4-mana guy and (b) don't use more than a couple of off-colour or colourless lands.
I'd say the colour combinations with the best chances would be UW (Miracle or Stoneblade control) and the three from the BWG wedge (Rock-type decks). Three of those are out, Orzhov is still a possibility but I wouldn't get my hopes up.
YOU'RE GIVING ME A TIME MACHINE IN ORDER TO TREAT MY SLEEP DISORDER.
Holy shit Rakdos makes those other guild leaders look like bitches. Jesus, that guy's a fucking honey badger. The card is way better than anyone thought. Color me impressed.
"We are goblinkind, heirs to the mountain empires of chieftains past. Rest is death to us, and arson is our call to war."
This guy seems good enough to do for Rakdos what Jace, TMS did for blue; singlehandedly turn the color(s) around. At least in standard. He even turns rakdos charm's third mode into a ritual and he can potentially put large artifact creatures into play for free. All in all a really well designed card.
If Rakdos isn't a fake, he's pretty interesting. Not really great, but certainly the most mechanically flavorful guild-leader, and the one with most unique design. The other ones, save Jarad, look like phone-ins. The thing is, he's a trap. His reducing the cost of creatures when being aggressive lures players into making bad deckbuilding decisions, like making a deck with this guy and stuffing it full of fatties to take advantage of the ability. In addition to being very much a "win-more" scenario, it leaves you open to having a lot of dead cards in hand when everything doesn't go according to plan.
The real thing to look at is how he functions as, essentially, a 6/6 Flying, Trample for RRBB. That's nothing to sneeze at, and he could certainly top out the curve of a R/B Standard aggro deck. The problem is, he faces stiff competition in the form of Falkenrath Aristocrat. She immediately can impact the board, and has the means to protect herself as well. Ol' Rakdos here sits pretty for a turn, and can't protect himself. Yes, that is how stupid Magic: Entering the Battlefield has become...a 6/6 Flying, Trample for four mana, with a negligible "drawback", isn't absolutely astounding because he doesn't provide immediate value or protect himself. Still, it's at least some really cool design, which is always welcome in a color combo that typically receives nothing but derptastic aggro.
PS: One of Rakdos' clauses was supposedly the original guild mechanic, "paincasting". I'm not sure whether it was the reducing mana costs or the powerful effects that can only be cast if opponents have lost life, but both seem far more interesting than the godawful Unleash. Too bad Wizards got cold feet and replaced it at the last moment. Both would have been interesting, powerful, and much more in flavor.
Falkenrath Aristocrat still dies to lots of stuff, like oblivion ring and tragic slip. While I agree that haste is very nice, Rakdos can still impact the board immediately. After it resolves, you can cast another creature at reduced cost immediately, even before they have a chance to kill him.
I think that Rakdos has some limited potential in a competitive deck, but I agree that he's going to be a huge trap for most players.
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