Magic: The Gathering,GO TEAM MS!

[popsofctown]

I'm like 90% of the time too lazy to pick out the best basics. But when I do, I care more about liking the art than the size of the art, and on average I dislike the art on full-art basics compared to standard ones. Guess the artists WotC thinks need the biggest moment happen to be the same ones I'm not into.

Well some of it is about the themes of the sets that provide full-arts being wonky, I don't like the weird zendikar stuff going on zendi lands.

[InflatablePie]

I considered getting the Veronique Meignaud Mountains as regular versions (think they were printed in Planechase?) but to be honest they look weird

[InflatablePie]

Nissa/Omnath/Hydroid Krasis

I'd say the card that'd be most likely to not see play of that bunch is the 3x Omnath

does Omnath win you games on a mull to four in game three? didn't think so

[popsofctown]

In a way Leafkin Druid is an MvP there too (though having some way of converting it to longterm advantage was important)

[InflatablePie]

the real MVP is the new mulligan system tbh

5 land/Leafkin/Hydroid Krasis, mull (because basically-six-land is bad against control even w Krasis)
no land... mull
two UR lands and green cards... mull
that four, lava coil, fry, and some seventh card idr (Krasis or Omnath I think)

also yeah I'm starting to hate Cavalier of Gales all of a sudden, it's gonna be a third Cloudkin unless I can think of a fun miser card, for now

or I can play a 25th land but that seems questionable with 12x dorks

[InflatablePie]

not sure why Wishful Merfolk of all cards has catapulted my hype for this set into the stratosphere but here we are

also



>food token

[edit] aww they're just tap sac pay 2, to gain 3 life boooooo
[edit2] I guess artifact is relevant.

[popsofctown]

Food tokens is not something I expected to see in this set. Some critics of Kaladesh meta insisted that energy, with the design approach to energy used in Kaladesh, was flawed, because it had you combine cards that overly generously pay you the alternate currency with no way of spending it (the banned cards, Attune with the Aether and Rogue Refiner), and cards that give you a good way of spending it. That hurts deck diversity because there is less flexibility within the archetypes, the strongest pays-currency cards are must plays, and the spend-currency cards would have to be very evenly balanced against eachother to each see equal use (which didn't appear to even be a design goal of Kaladesh, so there was always a best energy sink). There's other cards that are meant to play with eachother and affect deck diversity this way, like tribal, which gives me

some

skepticism to this argument (this argument is categorically different from, Energy is a fine mechanic they just costed all the cards wrong), but concern that you would leave some of your alternate currency unspent led to a lot of extra redundancy on the energy sinks which perhaps isn't mirrored the same way for other synergistic decks. If you cut a vampire lord for Duress or a 5/5 pro green zombie, your 2/2 Vampire doesn't get to be a 3/3 if you don't draw any other vampires matters cards, it hurts just a little. But if you cast 3 Rogue Refiners then draw no on theme cards besides a meta card that you put in place of a mana sink, the 6 energy is a 0/0 creature with "can't attack or block".

Food is only trivially different from energy. Clues and Treasures both have inherent uses, you can let players redeem them for effects that are even more valuable just to have fun with the design space, but it's clearly just useful to have a clue or a treasure. Food is worthless. Good players know that gaining life is close to worthless. So right away from the first cards they're showing us ways to "spend the energy", playing a 3 mana walker and getting five loyalty and a 3/3 the first turn is an outsized result if you can "spend" a food token.

We probably won't literally see "Search your library for a basic land card, reveal it to your opponent, put it into your hand, then shuffle your library. Create a Food token." But I'm anticipating a figurative one, and good payoffs, and then being disappointed with how flexible deckbuilding is(n't).

[Inferno390]

This could very well be the set that makes me go big in commander

Several of the cards already look good for my Muldrotha deck
And thanks to Dominaria and Guilds, I can probably whip out a dank Knight Tribal deck

[McMenno]

I already like it 10x better than energy because food tokens are artifacts and can thus be interacted with

[InflatablePie]

Theros and Zendikar! Hell yeah.

[InflatablePie]

Food is worthless

the new Golden Goose of Paradise or whatever seems dece (deece? Do we spell it properly or phonetically? This is taking longer than just adding the extra syllable)

[chamber]

Good players know that gaining life is close to worthless.

And great players know that it's not always worthless. As a sole effect, it needs to give much more life than cards tend to to be worth the card, but as a rider effect it can be worth a lot. And even then, sole life gain effects can be worth it. They published win rates for cards on MODO back in the day and Dawnglow Infusion had one of the highest win rates for cards from shadowmoore.

[popsofctown]

I already like it 10x better than energy because food tokens are artifacts and can thus be interacted with

You can't actually meaningfully interact with something that took virtually no resources to create, though. There's a reason Deathrite Shaman was banned rather than a meta full of removal to removes Deathrite Shaman for tempo brought him in check: there's no such removal, he's too cheap to get interacted for actual profit.
If they give us strong AoE artifact destruction and the Food designs are so clunky that the food tokens stay out very frequently before they're cashed it's possible there's counterplay but I'm not holding my breath.

Good players know that gaining life is close to worthless.

And great players know that it's not always worthless. As a sole effect, it needs to give much more life than cards tend to to be worth the card, but as a rider effect it can be worth a lot. And even then, sole life gain effects can be worth it. They published win rates for cards on MODO back in the day and Dawnglow Infusion had one of the highest win rates for cards from shadowmoore.

It's close to worthless, not worthless.

You agree that it is always better to have a card than it is to have something that is purely lifegain. We agree on that. You are trolling me a little bit about some edge case in Shadowmoor but you seem to acknowledge that is the exception.

This new planeswalker can make your food token into a 3/3. By some rules of thumb 1/1 doesn't count as a card, but a 3/3 definitely counts as a "card."

That makes me presume there will be other trade in offers that also convert your food token to some form of a "card". That is obviously a huge trade up. So unconverted Food tokens will feel bad. They won't feel as bad as unspent energy, that is true, I agree, there is still something you can do with the Food token. But the same overall pattern is here, the pattern of I -really- need to convert this, I better run lots of enablers.

[Inferno390]

Food tokens could be good ways for control deck to close out games too

[chamber]

My point isn't that pure life gain isn't worth a card, its that it's normally not printed at a rate that makes it worth a card. If you printed a w cost card that gained you 20 life, it would be so powerful it destroyed all aggro as an archetype. Short-cutting all lifegain is bad is a very simplistic way to look at things.

[popsofctown]

Food tokens could be good ways for control deck to close out games too

That's probably the healthiest scenario and I'm hoping for that, that could actually be a fun meta. If you're always the slower deck and food tokens help you stall into topdecks of huge spells like Command the Dreadhorde you can run fewer enablers and be more flexible. And those are the decks that can run deck manipulation too.

In the case of energy the main reason we didn't see that is because the only aggressively costed energy cards had midrange or aggro effects attached to them, so control just wasn't an option. That won't automatically be the case here, it will depend what they print.

[popsofctown]

My point isn't that pure life gain isn't worth a card, its that it's normally not printed at a rate that makes it worth a card. If you printed a w cost card that gained you 20 life, it would be so powerful it destroyed all aggro as an archetype. Short-cutting all lifegain is bad is a very simplistic way to look at things.

Well it would be worth 3 cards against aggro (which is playing Risk Factor and getting 3-for-1'd, or more indirectly trading cards for damage in other ways, like spreading out with creatures that can be swept together) and worth 0 cards against control and maybe on average you play it. Pure lifegain cards are hate cards that are not worth a card if they don't get to cancel out the effect they need to cancel out.

"20 life" is actually the amount Patrick Chapin said offhand that he would happily have his opponent gain if he could draw an eight card playing Blue-White control.

[McMenno]

maybe I should've said, less parasitic since it can interaact with artifact stuff from other blocks

so far all foodcards have been either incidental (bake into a pie) or have a built-in use for food (savvy hunter). I guess that part kind of is like energy

[popsofctown]

maybe I should've said, less parasitic since it can interaact with artifact stuff from other blocks

so far all foodcards have been either incidental (bake into a pie) or have a built-in use for food (savvy hunter). I guess that part kind of is like energy

Yes. Saheeli already looks like it might be neat.

[popsofctown]

Man, the cards for the new Brawl format are pretty formulaically "cost at exactly one more mana than this effect should cost".

I doubt Brawl takes off.

[DeathNote]

It will if it supports multiplayer instead of 1v1

[popsofctown]

People will just play EDH. Why would they play Brawl instead of EDH?

Because they want power to be tampered down and smoothed out? These are not the people that want that. These are the people that laugh at the idea of banning Sol Ring amongst themselves.

I am not seeing it. I recognize that multiplayer is wildly popular. But I see a more popular multiplayer format that won't ever let this one rise for breath.

[chamber]

It seems like it was made in an attempt to bring EDH players to Arena, arena only supports very few cards atm so classic EDH wouldn't work there.

[hasdgfas]

It seems like it was made in an attempt to bring EDH players to Arena, arena only supports very few cards atm so classic EDH wouldn't work there.

They were not originally going to bring it to Arena, so I don't think that's the case.

[DeathNote]

Then it will fail. As an EDH player, I would love to play brawl in a multiplayer format on Arena. If they are just expecting me to play Brawl in a 1v1 setting, then no thanks.