It's not that its "a hard ask" to get three mana for a spell in vintage, obviously. It's just that the effect you get from Treasure Cruise isn't worth spending three mana in that format because of the opportunity cost. Hell, you can draw two cards AND get an extra mana _for free_ in Vintage.Originally Posted by TsumiBand
To use a Legacy metaphor, there are plenty of decks that are happy to cast a four mana spell, but nobody plays Ernham Djinn.
To pick up that metaphor: no one invests 4 mana for a spell to see it removed for one mana. If you invest 1 mana to draw 3 cards it's hard to make up for the actual impact or to prevent it without a bad Investment made in mana and/or cards from the other side of the table.
www.theepicstorm.com - Your Source for The Epic Storm - Articles, Reports, Decktech and more!
Join us at Facebook!
^Finally, a reasonable use for the card.
Check out my Legacy UBTezz Primer. Chalice of the Void: Keeping Magic Fair.
-----
Playing since '96. Brief forced break '02-04. Former/Idle Judge since '05. Told Smmenen to play faster at Vintage Worlds.
-----
Most of the 'Ban brainstorm!' arguments are based on the logic that 'more different cards should get played in Legacy', as though the success or health of the format can be measured by the portion of cards that are available and see play. This is an idiotic metric.
As expected. However, I think Empty the Pits is promising even though it looks bad at first sight.
So, what you're saying is that grinding on the Cock.de against randoms for a few hours counts as hardcore testing, but our common sense is completely garbage? Cool.
Anyway, I did grind on the Cock.de, and I'm here to say it's good as nothing more than a one-or-two-of. My buddy sleeved up Miracles, Stoneblade, RUG, and RU, and I have to say it reminds me a lot of the old Raindance builds. Only instead of reliably digging for a Blastoise on turn two, you're getting a maybe-flipped Delver and a whole lot of fluff.
The problem is all the black mana you cannot reduce on top of being totally useless in combat as those Token come into play tapped. The closest comparison i guess is Entreat and even casted from your hand, EtA offers a much better effect for the mana payed. Being an instant and able to remove two cards to pay for a tapped Zombie blows compared to 4/4 flying Angels, even if we ignore that the Miracles costs are worlds better.
www.theepicstorm.com - Your Source for The Epic Storm - Articles, Reports, Decktech and more!
Join us at Facebook!
To paraphrase Zilla,
"My opinion is more valuable than actual results because __________."
If you can fill in that blank with a defensible argument, we will be sure to take it into consideration.
I did not say hardcore testing. I did not say that I used Cockatrice. You are either attempting to put words in my mouth or mischaracterize my tests. In fact I did neither of these.
"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."
"Politicians are like diapers. They should be changed often and for the same reason."
"Governing is too important to be left to people as silly as politicians."
"Politicians were mostly people who'd had too little morals and ethics to stay lawyers."
I think it compares more to EtW, but is basically worse almost all the time. Being instant and Delve are pretty interesting though. I know I'm going to pick up a playset, but that's because I have a fetish for goofy combos and transformational sideboards.
I think the biggest thing is the deep seeded emotional understanding that the right play is the right play regardless of outcomes. The ability to make a decision 5 straight times, lose 5 times because of it, and still make it the 6th time if it's the right play. - Jon Finkel
"Notions of chance and fate are the preoccupation of men engaged in rash undertakings."
I feel the exact opposite and see it as a black Entreat. EtW is a card for quick ambushs fueled by an aggressive strategy with cards in hand; Empty the pits however feasts on your filled graveyard late in the game to create an suprising eot alpha Strike for BBBB.
At this point this thread and the Spoiler thread overlap and I think we should use this thread soley for discussing the articles content and not for cards from Khans. :)
www.theepicstorm.com - Your Source for The Epic Storm - Articles, Reports, Decktech and more!
Join us at Facebook!
Yes, I had difficulty figuring out where the accusation of method was coming from as well.
Evidence will always hold more weight than 'common sense'. If memory serves, a lot of pro players around the time of Onslaught took a look at Astral_Slide.dec and declared it a pile, yet it spent the majority of that Standard season as a defining control deck. Bidding decks were a joke until they weren't; Zombies, Beasts, Goblins, they all took a turn with the card. Cards are pretty regularly undervalued; Goyf and JtMS come to mind, but barring those insanely potent cards, virtually every Equipment card that we've come to depend on in Legacy for years always took time to breach the gap. People bitched about every Sword of P and Q, Batterskull was hotly contested as an auto-in for any deck with SFM, I think even Jitte was scoffed at for a while because it was an equipment and common sense was informing people that equipment was still bad. Stoneforge Mystic changed the narrative a lot in this regard, but then again, Batterskull was post-SFM's acceptance date, so go figure.
Pardon my tangent, but accepting common sense over evidence is driving a ton of bad reasoning in this 'age of information' we find ourselves in. Evaluating Magic cards is not even a blip on that radar, but for my part I don't know how a person could possibly value the data of someone who eyeballs a card over someone who actually sleeved it up and tried it out. (Inb4 some strawman argument about the shittiest Black commons for the last 15 years don't need to be tested; I'm not talking about the obligatory 4/1 forthat somehow brought balance to the Force for a decade. And you know what? If you can win with that guy, and put up real data with a real decklist, people will run that 4/1 for 6. Magic players don't mind being proven wrong by results; if we did, the game would still look like it did 15 years ago. Maindeck that Lava Tubes!)
Why don't we agree to teach the controversy and let everyone decide their own truth?
Too much evidence can make someone feel icky if it doesn't align with their gut feelings. We wouldn't want that.
Besides, do you expect everyone to test each terrible black common just to confirm it is terrible? Do I really need to jam Bog Hoodlums into BUG Delver to confirm it will be terrible in Legacy?
GODDAMMIT I SAID INB4!! INB4!! I already called it!!!Why don't we agree to teach the controversy and let everyone decide their own truth?
Too much evidence can make someone feel icky if it doesn't align with their gut feelings. We wouldn't want that.
Besides, do you expect everyone to test each terrible black common just to confirm it is terrible? Do I really need to jam Bog Hoodlums into BUG Delver to confirm it will be terrible in Legacy?
IIINNNN BBBBBBB 4444444
Respect the slang!
In seriousness though, I think what should happen is that card strength should be -- and typically is, I think -- evaluated by the scientific method. Question (Is CARDNAME good?); Hypothesis (I posit I can take advantage of CARDNAME in a meaningful way); Testing (I played 43 games with CARDNAME in the maindeck of Tight Sight); Analysis (CARDNAME significantly improved Tight Sight's odds of success against Balancing Tings and Teen Girl Squad but did nothing to stop Tymaret.dec).
Since the burden of proof is always on the asker, then, it pays to be discerning -- however, it also implicitly means that anyone who has gone through the rigamarole of testing a list with Vindictive Mob as a target for Entomb -> Exhume is in a better position to talk about its effectiveness than someone who hasn't. It does not mean we are required to run the gamut of cards to prove whether or not they work; it just means that we should accept results that hold up to scrutiny.
Which, coincidentally, is exactly why you should all believe me when I tell you that Knight of the Holy Nimbus is a fucking wrecking ball when the opponent's removal all requires
Well at any rate, I am rather disheartened that the look of the format is about to become even more retrenched in an azure hue. The one thing blue has never had in Legacy was true card draw. If the current crop of blue-centric aggro-control decks are able to maintain card advantage into the late game without sacrificing much of anything, I suspect that the available avenues to fight them will narrow considerably once players learn how to reconfigure those decks to fully take advantage of this new strength.
"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."
"Politicians are like diapers. They should be changed often and for the same reason."
"Governing is too important to be left to people as silly as politicians."
"Politicians were mostly people who'd had too little morals and ethics to stay lawyers."
Exactly. These recent printings just make the best color in the format even better. It's like Delver all over again.
Why do blue decks not only get the most efficient 1-drop creature, the most efficient card filter, the most efficient tempo play (Force) but also the most efficient draw spell now as well?
It's as if Wizards designers looked at UW Miracles and Ux Delver decks and said "These decks are great and top8 every event. They play the best cards in the format. Why don't we add something to make them even better! A way to refuel with card draw in the late game? Brilliant! Let's add that to the next set!"
It's like donating $10 million to a rich Arab oil sheik. WTF, wizards?
Because, you know, for a modern example, Standstill didn't exist. Conditional and only useful in certain decks? Sure, but the same can about Treasure Cruise. Crappy though the examples may be looking back, blue has always had card draw. It's just been a long two or three years since anything was cost-effective enough to match the speed and utility of the meta.
StandstillStandstillStandstill
I might not have noticed if a solemn attempt hadn't been made earlier to turn the thread into "Stop Saying Sultai".
There are a host of reasons why these aren't even functionally equivalent for the purposes of comparison. By themselves, Delve as a mechanic has already proven its playability previously via Tombstalker, and the sheer usefulness and ease of chucking cards into the graveyard is pretty well trotted tech - Goyf relies on it, Past in Flames and Ill-Gotten Gains operate on that theorem, Snapcaster says OHAI and on and on. It doesn't prove the card itself is any good, but if the card were a cake there's proof of solid ingredients.
I think there's little else that can be constructively be said about the cards in Carsten's article besides "shut up and shuffle up". Carsten enjoyed success playtesting the card; you've said that your experience on Cockatrice was not as positive; what actually remains is to get larger samples of people that will do likewise and have them report back.
No, they aren't functionally comparable, but they don't need to be for the simple statement of "blue did have playable draw". That was the only point I was trying to convey. That this isn't somehow breaking the mold. This isn't some "what the fuck" from beyond the grave. It's another option.
Standstill is conditional. No doubt about it. But so is everything else, and is Treasure Cruise really that significantly less conditional than the other options? Yes, it's a fairly simple task to land a Tombstalker if you put your mind to it, but that doesn't mean it can be run without a significant amount of planning and consideration. Everything from its high CMC to whether you need to draw cards in the first place to whether you need your graveyard whole to whether you have a graveyard at all. And even if you come away from that with thumbs up, is it even better than the options? 2U for draw three does seem great, but if it truly is, why not run Thirst for Knowledge or any of the other comparable candidates?
Most of my posts are written from work where I'm bored and starved and angry and tired, so I apologize for any posts that don't come across well. But part of what I was hoping to imply with that initial sneer was that Cockatrice is a poor excuse for anything even remotely close to "testing" and has only slightly more merit than outright goldfishing. Events will solve this. Anything up until then is just picking team Jacob or team Edward and being a bunch of assholes. Which I freely admit that I am.
Sometimes I struggle to understand your meaning. Then I realize I'm thinking too hard...Standstill
Standstill
Standstill
I legitimately tried to figure out how that card was relevant to Legacy or this conversation for a couple minutes.
Yaaay! We're all friends again!
And Starship Troopers fucking rules.
So my only interest inis in how to beat it, but as long as we're picking teams and being assholes my guess is the delve cards are played as a 1- or 2-of in blue decks without Tarmogoyf. I know they'll see play cause I read it on theSource.
It simply annoys me that those cards are blue. INB4 "color balance doesn't matter", ok, right , but then they could have been black, fine?
Yeah where's demonic tutor with delve?
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Reply With Quote
