quote:

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Originally posted by MeddlingMage:
Battle of Wits and Gilded Lotus are back!

~MM

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Hurray for 250 card deck with a ton of shuffle effects! Yay for that...

Not a fan of BoW, but gimme about 50 Gilded Lotus.

Gilded lotus
Akroma's Memorial
Mutilate
Serra Avatar

Maybe
Serra Avenger, but that doesn't see play at all anymore
Vampire nighthawk
Tormod's Crypt
Rancor

quote:

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Originally posted by WeedIan:
Wow! Rewind!

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not the first time this has happened. without other good instants, it wont really do much.

__________________
"He fights you not because you have wronged him, but because you are there."

[16:17] <@BrassMan> what do you need new tech for?
[16:18] <@BrassMan> gush is unrestricted

quote:

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Originally posted by caquaa:
Was really hoping noble hierarch would make it into the set. Seems like a missed opportunity to reprint it really. Beyond that, there might be an extra card on the spoiler since there appears to be 5 cards listed between 175 and 180 on the spoiler.

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quote:

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Originally posted by thror:
not the first time this has happened. without other good instants, it wont really do much.

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quote:

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Originally posted by hilikuS:
Is Stone Rain too powerful for standard or something? Craterize is stupid...

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They banned printing it after they received word that Bernieb almost has more than 51% of all printed versions and they don't want to lose the rights on it.

__________________
/Thunder in the wind/No rain/Peace mourns its passing/

quote:

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Originally posted by hilikuS:
Is Stone Rain too powerful for standard or something? Craterize is stupid...

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Sort of.

This quote is very, very old but gives lots of insight:

quote:

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Randy Buehler:

I don’t mind playing with land destruction spells...

Even then, however, I felt a little bit guilty deep down inside because I could tell that my opponent wasn’t having any fun sitting there...

In my current role of lead developer for Magic, I’m no longer primarily concerned with who wins, but rather with making sure the whole experience of playing Magic is fun. The guy who wins usually does have more fun than the guy who loses a Magic duel, but it’s not always completely lopsided. When I lose because I’m attacked with an enormous dragon, I usually can’t help but smile. Dragons are cool and fun, even when my opponent has them. Land destruction, on the other hand, is rarely either cool or fun...

This is why, as long as I’m on watch here, you won’t see us printing land destruction cards at particularly aggressive casting costs. We don’t want a dedicated land destruction deck to become a regular feature of tournament play...

blowing up every single land the opponent plays as soon as he plays it just isn’t fun. Magic should be more interactive than those decks allow it to be.

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Ghost Quarter and Tectonic Edge are the two most recently printed playable LD cards and these were primarily for utility, taking out manlands, rather than denying your opponent mana. 4-cost is where WotC has deemed reasonable for LD. A big problem is that green continues to get one-mana guys and they print lots of R/G lands, so while Stone Rain costs 3, it's very easily a turn 2 land destruction spell. So, on the play, you can keep your opponent off two lands for most of the game.

Proponents of LD will decry this action and claim that this is the fault of the meta and players can act appropriately and play aggro decks with very low curves, so now we have hyper aggro and LD as two formidable decks in the environment and control players are left with two daunting matchups. So, WotC has just killed control. So, let's ramp up control and give them back early, powerful counterspells like Force Spike, Counterspell, and Remand.

Very quickly, it's an arms race where the end is something like Legacy. Standard is meant as the most popular, and most accessible format, especially for newer players. You might not do particularly well with a homebrew Vampires, Humans, or Zombies deck in Standard, but you'll still likely get to cast your creatures and the game will be much closer than if you're sporting an Angel deck and get rocked by Ponza.

You know how frustrating it is when you fail to draw any more lands or you're forced to mulligan down to ridiculously small opening hands to get more than one land? This sentiment is echoed in LD, where players don't lose to another player killing them, they lose to an opponent just preventing them from doing anything. There was a survey done some time ago where WotC asked players their least favorite strategies to play against and counter-heavy decks (8+ counterspells) and LD were the top offenders.

Players have a much more enjoyable experience if they feel they had a chance to cast and resolve their spells, even if it gets stopped. I play a creature and you Doom Blade it. I Incinerate your creature. I play another creature and you Dismember that one. You play a creature and I can't stop it. You win. I'm not happy with the loss, but I got to play two creatures and a removal spell, and your draw was just slightly better.

This is what LD feels like to those same players:

Opponent: kill your land, attack
Victim: I can't do anything
Opponent: kill your land, attack
Victim: I still can't do anything
Opponent: kill your land, attack
Victim: I could do SO much if I had a third land! I'll discard my four-drop.
Opponent: Kill you? GG?
Victim: Sure, GG... I guess.

Your opponent got to do lots of stuff, and you sat there doing nothing but playing land and discarding when your hand gets too full. There's very little interaction there, on par with playing a basketball game with someone who is a foot taller than you and manages to block your every shot, steal the ball, and outscore you by double digits. Playing HORSE is far preferrable to watching someone do circles around you and play their game while you can't make a point, even if HORSE is a dumbed-down version of 1 v. 1 basketball.

Similarly, seeing your opponent counter four straight spells is frustrating for far more players than the players who get joy out of spending four turns just drawing cards and countering spells.

So, WotC has nerfed both LD and counterspells so that 3+ is seen as an appropriate cost for a hard counter(see Cancel/Rewind), 2 for a weak counter (see Essence Scatter/Negate in M13) while 4 is okay for LD (Demolish and Craterize and Bramblecrush).

quote:

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Originally posted by bstrom213:
No sweeper in white (or any other color for that matter)? Returning of the same Mx duals? Zero reprint of any constructed format playables? Less than exciting new cards outside of edh? Unless they have a longer term plan for return of ravnica, I would have to call this an epic fail. But at least we know that they are trying hard to keep edh cost down

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quote:

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Originally posted by bstrom213:
No sweeper in white (or any other color for that matter)? Returning of the same Mx duals? Zero reprint of any constructed format playables? Less than exciting new cards outside of edh? Unless they have a longer term plan for return of ravnica, I would have to call this an epic fail. But at least we know that they are trying hard to keep edh cost down

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Planar Cleansing and Mutilate arent sweepers?

M10 dual lands arent constructed playable? Oblivion Ring, Duress and Rancor arent? Sublime Archangel, Thragtusk and Thundermaw Hellkite arent exciting new cards for constructed? Are we looking at the same core set?????

__________________
"He fights you not because you have wronged him, but because you are there."

[16:17] <@BrassMan> what do you need new tech for?
[16:18] <@BrassMan> gush is unrestricted

As a whole its probably not bad but it seems underwhelming.

quote:

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Originally posted by thror:
Planar Cleansing and Mutilate arent sweepers?

M10 dual lands arent constructed playable? Oblivion Ring, Duress and Rancor arent? Sublime Archangel, Thragtusk and Thundermaw Hellkite arent exciting new cards for constructed? Are we looking at the same core set?????

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quote:

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Originally posted by bstrom213:
If you don't understand what I am saying, then I can't talk to you

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Your making no sense, you say no constructed playables, yet I see stuff for standard and legacy at the very least, and most of the standard stuff is probably good enough for Modern to, and that's not even getting into reprints.

You either have not looked at the set list or you have your expectations way to high, either way sucks to be you, rest of us will enjoy what WoTC printed and have fun.

Oh, and none of this even takes into account EDH, which has even more new toys or reprints of old ones for newer players.

But they had to bring back the duds as well. Wit's End? Battle of Wits? Silklash Spider? I mean they might be good or wehatever in sealed/limited but as far as constructed, ack. Ugh.

~Revenger

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M13, while not 'omg super awesome', does EXACTLY what a core set should do. PROVIDE A FOUNDATION for the standard format. 5 Good dual lands. Cards for aggro and control. Cards for Timmy, Johnny, and Spike.

When the current core set just becomes a rehash of all the greatest hits, we'll know wotc is in trouble. This is not that core set.

__________________
"He fights you not because you have wronged him, but because you are there."

[16:17] <@BrassMan> what do you need new tech for?
[16:18] <@BrassMan> gush is unrestricted

quote:

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Originally posted by bstrom213:
If you don't understand what I am saying, then I can't talk to you

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I don't think anyone understands what you are saying. You said:

[QUOTE]Originally posted by bstrom213:
No sweeper in white (or any other color for that matter)?

To which Thror correctly points out that Planar Cleansing is in the set and is a white sweeper. Mutilate aand Magmaquake are sweepers that fit in style with their respective colors.

Returning of the same Mx duals?

What were you expecting? The Shocklands were almost assuredly out. We can complain all we want about WoTC focusing on getting new players instead of making Magic the way we want but that's their strategy. They've said time and time again that the new players didn't like the Painlands and I doubt we'd see Shocklands in a core set before they tried returning the Painlands first. Besides, if they slow roll the Shocklands in Return to Ravnica, the M10 style lands work perfectly well along side them. Sacred Foundry followed by Glacial Fortress sounds pretty sweet.

Zero reprint of any constructed format playables?

To which again, he listed a number of them.

Less than exciting new cards outside of edh?

Again, he listed three pretty interesting rares and even left out the new Ajani. What more were you expecting? New Titans?

quote:

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Originally posted by bstrom213:
I guess I just expected more since they printed grim lavamancer in M12 and nantuko shade in M11. Now that they said they will reprint to help launch modern and make it more accessible, I expected at least a dark confidant or a vendilion clique reprint (even if mythic), but we just got serra avenger and some edh stuff that weren't even that expensive.

I do however have to give them credit for the non crappy dragon though.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Zeckk:
Listing nantuko shade as an exciting card diminishes your credibility. M13 is fine as a set. Nothing amazing, but there's definitely decent additions to standard and legacy in the set.

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Shade was exciting, just wasn't playable any longer due to the change in creature power since it's first run.

Think the problem some have now, is realizing that, and also realizing most reprints outside of the super expensive ones, will simply be lackluster.

I think M13 did it's job just fine, it is defiantly better then M12 which basically had Lavamancer and Titans and not much else worth while.

While probably being below M11, and defiantly is below M10, which still has reigns on being the best of the M series.

Hope M14 has something amazing being an Anniversary set.