Unreleased and New Card Discussion

[Guardman]

I think we just have very different definitions of Group Hug decks. I've never actually seen a group hug deck win the game or really care about winning. It is always about helping whoever they think should win, win the game or just making sure no one can win (and on the flip side that no one loses). It's why I dislike Group Hug so much. They don't play to win. They play to choose who wins. And Phelddagrif is the prime example of a Commander designed to do that.

I've been in those sorts of games and it's extremely lame, but again that seems so obviously like a player problem, not a card problem. If you don't like Narset because she creates bad games, that's a card problem, because the card when effectively utilized creates (subjectively) bad games. But there's nothing about Phelddagrif that makes him create bad games. I mean, the experience would be equally stupid if someone was playing any commander while intentionally throwing the game. Phelddagrif just happens to be among those most frequently saddled with those players.

Some people are just not going to play the game in a way that gels with the experience you want. That sucks, but don't go blaming innocent cardboard hippos over it.

Fair enough. I've played against a bunch of different players who play like that and they all seem to use Phelddagrif as their commander of choice. I've never not played against a Phelddagrif commander deck that isn't played like that. So when I see Phelddagrif, I know its going to be a bad game.

[DirkGently]

Fair enough. I've played against a bunch of different players who play like that and they all seem to use Phelddagrif as their commander of choice. I've never not played against a Phelddagrif commander deck that isn't played like that. So when I see Phelddagrif, I know its going to be a bad game.

The last game I played like that was against K&T, though I've seen a fair number of Phelddagrif decks like that too. I don't think there's really an obvious choice for intentional kingmaker decks off the top of my head - K&T is pretty huggy, but it's not completely symmetrical so they usually fall into camp #1 (of the list on my previous post which I edited too slowly for your response).

Maybe one day we'll get:

Urg, patron saint of dumb games
Legendary Creature - Slime
At the beginning of each end step, each opponent draws five cards, creates 5 1/1 red goblin creature tokens, and puts any number of lands from their hand onto the battlefield.
"Why are you mad at me? Don't you like drawing cards?"
1/4

Then Phelddagrif can stop being unfairly besmirched.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

@Guardman

Gonna agree with Dirk here on principle: the 99 determine the deck and how it plays, not the commander. Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain for example can do loads of stuff, but odds are the person playing it is playing the same tired artifact storm deck. That's not on Jhoira though, she can be izzet planewalkers just as easily. It's on the 99 cards she's with.

To malign Phelddagrif as group hug would be like calling your Etali deck akin to the stupid etali decks that chain out combats steps ad nauseum in their best narset impression. It clearly isn't that deck though your commander being Etali hasn't changed. But it would definitely be unfair of me to assume that it was just because the last 4 etali decks I've encountered are less inspired than your build.

[pokken]

Imposing Grandeur is just so unutterably horrible at 5 mana. Let people wheel their hands then let them go off while you spent all your mana on this trash?

Yeeck. Cathartic Reunion better 99 out of 99 times

[Cyberium]

The rest of these I agree with, but who is in their right mind looks at this and says "frog tribal"

I mean, I'm sure someone is going to do that, but this card is a monster in a self mill deck.

Heck, you could entirely cut out the on attack ability and it would still be decent.

Well, it IS frog tribal, but fair point that it could also be used as a payoff for self-mill. That said, I still doubt I'd be interested since it kinda wants a high permanent count for a good hit rate, at least for a value plan. There's probably some combo version that dumps its library and then casts its combo pieces but that obviously doesn't appeal to me either.

But I was a bit unfair, I'll revise to 2/5.

There isn't enough good frogs to make a viable frog deck, so self-mill sounds like a more plausible idea.

Grolnok reminds me of Varina, Lich Queen. She doesn't need to be a zombie tribal, despite having the word "zombie" in her text, but most new players would be attracted to that word.

[Mookie]

Imposing grandeur looks...terrible to me? It's 5 mana, your opponents don't have to do it, and unless you've got cmc 7+ in the CZ, it's worse than a 5-mana wheel for you. Also, y'know, it's actual group hug since you might help someone wheel into the card they need to win...

Considering the downsides, I think I'd need a cmc 9+ commander to want to use it tbh. Not a lot of those around.

I think the use case is you have a commander with MV 6+ (ideally one with discard synergies), and you expect your opponents to be running cheaper commanders (MV 2-4). If you're the only person wheeling, I think it looks pretty good. Drawing your opponents 7 cards with something like Reforge the Soul is a pretty significant downside.

[pokken]

I think the use case is you have a commander with MV 6+ (ideally one with discard synergies), and you expect your opponents to be running cheaper commanders (MV 2-4). If you're the only person wheeling, I think it looks pretty good. Drawing your opponents 7 cards with something like Reforge the Soul is a pretty significant downside

I get it, it just costs 5 And if you lowered the cost to 3 or 4 to make it reasonable it'd potentially be too strong with stupid cost reducing generals like Dargo, the Shipwrecker or Maelstrom Wanderer (who might as well cost 4 or 5 in his typical deck ).

I get where they are trying to go with keying off of mana value rewarding people for having more expensive commanders (which they have been pushing the opposite direction wth nonsense overpowered 2-drops like Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy for so long it's kinda a day late and a dollar short).

It's just a bad design because - for the reason Cyclonic Rift was busted in Tiny Leaders, and allowing Wear // Tear to be all three mana values in Miracles meta. Keying off of mana value is doomed to be exploited in unpleasant ways.

It is vaguely possible there is a sweet spot I guess, but frankly I'd be fine if they just abandoned wheels for a while.

[RedCheese]

None of these cards inspired interest. Wizards lost its magic with commander product IMO

[Hermes_]

the new art for Swords to Plowshares is sweet.

SPOILER

Show

Hide

And you can have my tribal soldier token deck when you pry it from my cold dead hands same with my ur dragon and rats lol

[BeneTleilax]

I think it's meant to enable discard payoffs as well as give CA. It's just absurdly niche, because how many high-cmc discard matters generals are there in red? Absurdly niche seems to be the theme of the vampire deck though, and this is hardly the worst offender. I'm in favor of the high-cmc matters stuff, yes, it will be abused, but it may well nudge the format in a better direction.

[Cyberium]

the new art for Swords to Plowshares is sweet.

SPOILER

Show

Hide

And you can have my tribal soldier token deck when you pry it from my cold dead hands same with my ur dragon and rats lol

It's a good art, but doesn't seem to fit the card name?

[BeneTleilax]

It's a good art, but doesn't seem to fit the card name?
Post Reply Previous topicNext topic

To the left, his comrades in arms ride their horses into battle, to his right, they lead cattle-plows.

[Sporegorger_Dragon]

Hah! The Timothee Chalamet vampire turns all your vampires into Sengir Nosferatu!

I always liked that card; I feel that they designed it to replace/as an alternative to Skeletal Vampire in decks that utilized black, but it never caught on.

[Lifeless]

None of these cards inspired interest. Wizards lost its magic with commander product IMO

This was the inevitable result of churning out multiple decks per set.

[MAGUSZANIN]

I also think it has to do with them attempting to tie the decks to the set mechanics. Blood is a limited mechanic, and is dramatically unlikely to be anything else, and yet a significant fraction of that deck interacts with the mechanic, including the face Commander.

For all the complaints about tribal decks, at least the depth of tribal mechanics and cards is quite good. There are reasonable reprints and designs to be had from that. The same cannot be said for blood necessarily..

We see exactly the same kinds of problems with ikoria with mutate and the madness deck from Shadows. More open-ended mechanics have it less bad, with things like foretell at least mostly being worded in such a way as to work with any spell, but they did not do that with most of these and the decks suffer for it.

[Hermes_]

so there's already a change for one card: Kamber, the Plunderer , The official text on Kamber states "a creature an opponent controls dies" rather than "a creature dies" which obviously changes how the card functions.

Card Text:
Partner with Laurine, the Diversion (When this creature enters the battlefield, target player may put Laurine into their hand from their library, then shuffle.)
Lifelink
Whenever a creature an opponent controls dies, you gain 1 life and create a Blood token. (It's an artifact with "1, Tap, Discard a card, Sacrifice this artifact: Draw a card.")

https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card ... eid=546983

[Cyberium]

so there's already a change for one card: Kamber, the Plunderer , The official text on Kamber states "a creature an opponent controls dies" rather than "a creature dies" which obviously changes how the card functions.

Card Text:
Partner with Laurine, the Diversion (When this creature enters the battlefield, target player may put Laurine into their hand from their library, then shuffle.)
Lifelink
Whenever a creature an opponent controls dies, you gain 1 life and create a Blood token. (It's an artifact with "1, Tap, Discard a card, Sacrifice this artifact: Draw a card.")

https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card ... eid=546983

Is this like the first time since Marath that they errata this early?

[plushpenguin]

nah there was hostage taker day 0 errata.

[BeneTleilax]

Is this like the first time since Marath that they errata this early?

If you count the precons with the set (which you should, I think, given how fast they are tying them together), I do think this is the set with the most day 0 errata.

[5colorsrainbow]

Its gonna likely get worse, we are gonna start seeing the sets that they made when first going into lockdown, with some of this years stuff having been finalized and locked in around then.

[Gamazson]

so there's already a change for one card: Kamber, the Plunderer , The official text on Kamber states "a creature an opponent controls dies" rather than "a creature dies" which obviously changes how the card functions.

Card Text:
Partner with Laurine, the Diversion (When this creature enters the battlefield, target player may put Laurine into their hand from their library, then shuffle.)
Lifelink
Whenever a creature an opponent controls dies, you gain 1 life and create a Blood token. (It's an artifact with "1, Tap, Discard a card, Sacrifice this artifact: Draw a card.")

https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card ... eid=546983

A significant as that change may be to gameplay, why not leave it as is? It's hardly an ability that will warp the entire meta.

[Guardman]

so there's already a change for one card: Kamber, the Plunderer , The official text on Kamber states "a creature an opponent controls dies" rather than "a creature dies" which obviously changes how the card functions.

Card Text:
Partner with Laurine, the Diversion (When this creature enters the battlefield, target player may put Laurine into their hand from their library, then shuffle.)
Lifelink
Whenever a creature an opponent controls dies, you gain 1 life and create a Blood token. (It's an artifact with "1, Tap, Discard a card, Sacrifice this artifact: Draw a card.")

https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card ... eid=546983

Well the good news is that this isn't an actual errata, but them attaching the wrong image in the article and the cards in the set will have the correct text. I would've preferred the original spoiled one, but eh. It was a long shot for my Toggo, Goblin Weaponsmith Rakdos Treasure anyways even with it technically fitting the theme of making a ton of artifact tokens.

[DirkGently]

I like the design well enough for the partners, but damn they just seem so weak. Kamber doesn't even drain, he just gains? Two mana activation cost? Ouch. Why would I play that over Marisi, Breaker of the Coil for a goad commander? And for the UW pair, 4 and 5 is just kind of a ton and the payoff of a decently sized creature without evasion and a citadel siege...meh.

I mean I'm not really complaining since I don't mind sitting out for a bit, but it doesn't inspire me to build anything.

[Lifeless]

Yeah, Marisi is really the gold standard in Goad. I highly doubt we'll see anything more efficient than him anytime soon, although in the grand scheme of things Goad is a pretty safe mechanic to push.

I'm glad to see that this was a spoiler image issue and not an errata\print issue. I was thinking yesterday that they should really compensate people with replacement cards in the rare event a card has to be changed immediately after printing, but I guess that's a debate for another day.

[ilovesaprolings]

I really like what they did with vampires in this set&commander decks. The printed a lot of fair cards and introduced an interesting submechanic (blood tokens, which play nicely with madness too). Too bad many cards are just limited fillers, there is not enough to make an interesting vampire blood token deck. In the end Edgar Markov is just simply too good to pass.