I love the first strike on that type of effect.Originally Posted by Reaver027
I wish Vampire tribal was a thing
Drana, Liberator of Malakir
1BB
Legendary Creature - Vampire Ally
Flying, first strike
Whenever Drana, Liberator of Malakir deals combat damage to a player, put a +1/+1 counter on each attacking creature you control.
At least they didn't fuck up the delta.. So many cards are just.. Not finished...
The lower part looks great, but I could do without the whole pink cotton mountain scenery.
Just look at this:
Much more focus on the actual Delta.
They just had to go and fucking ruin the Overgrown Tomb with a giant piece of shit Hedron in the middle of it, didn't they?
Well, it'll save me a lot of money at least but come on, stop with the fucking hedron canon, you don't need to shoot hedrons in the middle of every damn landscape that would be otherwise beautiful.
Seriously though, who's at fault here for their artistic revisioning of stuff like Bloodstained Mire (a swampy patch of ground stained with blood) turning into:
Once again, nailed it.
This is my big issue with many of them!
After all the awful hedrons... and the arts that do not match the names...
A lot of the artwork looks like it was submitted halfway through creating it.
You can present that art with any of the 4 directions as up and it would look pretty much the same...
I would not be surprised if a lot of this is actually concept art because the Expeditions, as others have speculated, were added at the last minute, after the deadlines for art submission for the main body of the set had passed.
It feels more like they reuse previously dismissed art from their portfolio. Otherwise, I can't explain the number of mismatches they produced with the expedition lands.A lot of the artwork looks like it was submitted halfway through creating it.
The set feels more and more like something they pulled out of their ass. The art direction atrocious - fuck Mister "I'm Bob Ross and hedrons are my little fucking tree"-art director.
Makes me wish the set would flop because it shapes up to become a supreme pile of shit, but it will break sell records on name and expedition lands alone.
You know, I know that in the grand scheme of things this matters little, but -- it's one thing when a deck can circumnavigate an interaction like protection. Like if Pyrite Spellbomb were actually tech for RDW against Silver Knight, or something like that. It's not terribly efficient but it is what it is. Devoid is kind of an icky whitewashing effect on cards wherein color actually would matter a damn, it's almost like decks without Swamps rocking Disfigure or whatever, right, because you're inviting a deck to do something outside its normal capacity by putting an alt-cost on it (just pay life! what could possibly go wrong). I'm not certain that just blotting out the color of an in-color effect while requiring it to be cast in-color isn't the same kind of weird ass-hattery; there are protection knights and other random things that get shivved by this card and it's not that it's the best way or the most efficient way, but that it's "in color but not" and it just feels goofy.
I don't think it matters in a real "ohshi this bad deck is Tier 2 now, get rekt PTQ Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch", it's just one of those oddball mechanics that chisels at some underlying Magic things that never really needed to be played around with, but I guess whatever, it's just a thing now. Like colored artifacts or cards with two fronts or what-have-you.
On a longer view, it feels like burnout, and I don't just say that because I don't feel great about the set or whatever, there's some stuff in it that kinda piques my interest. I just mean like, the ways in which cards are tinkered with feels like they're just changing stuff to change it, like they're going "what haven't we expressly messed with yet? what basic quality of the game just hasn't had like 5 ability words injected into its territory yet... oh, spell color. Every spell has a color.... BUT WHAT IF IT DIDNT OMG, PRINT IT"
Like the Benthnic Infiltrator made a Brutal Extraction...
Hm, Ghostfire has been around for quite a while killing protection knights and it wasn't a problem. Just saying.
You know, I know that in the grand scheme of things this matters little, but -- it's one thing when a deck can circumnavigate an interaction like protection. Like if Pyrite Spellbomb were actually tech for RDW against Silver Knight, or something like that. It's not terribly efficient but it is what it is. Devoid is kind of an icky whitewashing effect on cards wherein color actually would matter a damn, it's almost like decks without Swamps rocking Disfigure or whatever, right, because you're inviting a deck to do something outside its normal capacity by putting an alt-cost on it (just pay life! what could possibly go wrong). I'm not certain that just blotting out the color of an in-color effect while requiring it to be cast in-color isn't the same kind of weird ass-hattery; there are protection knights and other random things that get shivved by this card and it's not that it's the best way or the most efficient way, but that it's "in color but not" and it just feels goofy.
I don't think it matters in a real "ohshi this bad deck is Tier 2 now, get rekt PTQ Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch", it's just one of those oddball mechanics that chisels at some underlying Magic things that never really needed to be played around with, but I guess whatever, it's just a thing now. Like colored artifacts or cards with two fronts or what-have-you.
On a longer view, it feels like burnout, and I don't just say that because I don't feel great about the set or whatever, there's some stuff in it that kinda piques my interest. I just mean like, the ways in which cards are tinkered with feels like they're just changing stuff to change it, like they're going "what haven't we expressly messed with yet? what basic quality of the game just hasn't had like 5 ability words injected into its territory yet... oh, spell color. Every spell has a color.... BUT WHAT IF IT DIDNT OMG, PRINT IT"
But I have to admit it upsets me a little bit, too, that they mess with some fundamentals of Magic with this set.
(Sidenote: In my opinion it was wrong the first time to print the Eldrazi. Emrakul made quite a mess, but not because he/she/it is colorless.)
Maybe it is a question of does it work to mix alien things into a fantasy game?
The Phyrexians were also quite alienlike last time, and I didn't really like it.
This actually makes a lot of sense. It wouldn't make any sense to have your cash-grab full art fetch mythic mythic rares to be rough, out of focus, seemingly random images of stuff that I guess sorta kinda maybe has a similar color pallet to what your lands should have.
Meanwhile, new tap-basic duals have some pretty amazing art on some of them. It totally lines up with the theory that the full arts were jammed in last second.
Because they totally don't shit on the fundamentals of Magic on a regular basis whenis involved.
I wonder how many "Plan B"s they have when they realize a set is going to suck.
My problem with Devoid is that it (as of half the set being spoiled) doesn't seem to matter... at all...
ohshi this bad deck is Tier 2 now, get rekt PTQ Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.
At least Ingest makes the conditional cards work, so I get it even though I don't like it. But why do I care that the cards have no color?? What benefit does this provide? What strategy or cool deck can I explore because of it?
I'm actually a huge fan of Devoid existing. I like Ghostfire and stupid crap like Gathan Raiders that can be played without ever having to spend colored mana on it. I also understand that Devoid gets around color protection, my comment above was more about standard and limited (even though I don't play either) where protection is largely a lost mechanic. I want them to print some relevant Devoid cards for Legacy (something relevant BEB cannot touch, or Anarchy, or Mom).
This looks like a Molten Caverns. I see no blood, I see lava. I see no mire, I see caverns. Jeremy Jarvis is the art director. What can I say, good artist, terrible manager?They just had to go and fucking ruin the Overgrown Tomb with a giant piece of shit Hedron in the middle of it, didn't they?
Well, it'll save me a lot of money at least but come on, stop with the fucking hedron canon, you don't need to shoot hedrons in the middle of every damn landscape that would be otherwise beautiful.
Seriously though, who's at fault here for their artistic revisioning of stuff like Bloodstained Mire (a swampy patch of ground stained with blood) turning into:
Once again, nailed it.
I'm still praying for the "give everything devoid" card.
Fuck it, I tweeted MaRo. I hope you guys also ask him about the terrible art direction.
Welp, I hope you're happy.
It's for Eldrazi flavor and there are cards that care about colorless creatures and spells.
It's said Eldrazi predate the colors of magic.
Should have costWelp, I hope you're happy.
, Aladdin's Ring-style. Could Battle for Zendikar be a return to Fallen Empires? :) It's getting closer by the card.
I know Ghostfire is a thing, but Ghostfire was also a singleton in a set dedicated to what-ifs and maybe-nots and time travelly parallel universes and shit. A fair number of those cards are still more or less stranded, right -- not all the things have a block where they land and make sense or are clearly intended to reflect.
I mean the occasional sideboard techy thing is one thing, just seeing a whole keyword dedicated to undermining color is a little bit urksome. It's like the corollary to colored artifacts, or whatever. Colored artifacts didn't break anything but it's always a bit awk to see them, because the idea with artifacts was always that they were just stuff that was lying around and wasn't created to be cast by just a single color of mana. Now there are colorless objects that require colored mana to cast, so it's like... well okay great?
It's like when they dick around too much with exile (hey wait a minute) and you start going... oh, well, if you do that, it's not really exile anymore, it's just another graveyard. The line between game zones gets a little more worn out as they can be used for similar purposes. It seems like we typically disdain this kind of shenanigans if it's too numerous, but the one or two instances of guys that fetch things from exile or the one 3/3 owl that casts itself from exile, we don't usually care about that. Wishes are fine; an entire block of "get cards from your sideboard" would just be bad news.
Again it doesn't matter because I don't think the dynamics that it undermines are done in a powerful way or in a game-changing way, at least not as far as Eternal is concerned. It's like Unleash or Bushido, who gives a shit about it, it just exists. I dunno, I mean it just kind of begs the question in my mind, as to "why *this*?" What's gained by de-colorizing colored effects while still locking them into their place on the color wheel, exactly; Devoid counterspells can't be Pyroblasted, I guess? Black can finally answer those pesky White Knights with targeted removal?
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Reply With Quote
