MTGNexus

So, there are a few generic cards that seem good but almost none of them have anything to do with any of the themes this year. It kind of makes me sad that the themes themselves and the legends associated with them feel like they are a little weak. Its not that strange for there to be a few good standalone cards in a set but it makes me a bit sad that I feel like a lot of the cards that should work with the commanders feel like they didn't measure up.

This is not me saying that there aren't commanders who look interesting so much as me saying that a lot of the support cards that should work with the commanders that are new cards don't feel like they are quite powerful enough or that they are just genericly ok cards that don't seem to really be cards that go in a specific deck.

Holy crap, Marisi is the warrior legend I always wanted.

Full Flowering might be useful in my Ayula deck.

Edit: Also eyeing Ohran Frostfang and Selesnya Eulogist.

ISBPathfinder wrote: ↑

4 years ago

So, there are a few generic cards that seem good but almost none of them have anything to do with any of the themes this year. It kind of makes me sad that the themes themselves and the legends associated with them feel like they are a little weak. Its not that strange for there to be a few good standalone cards in a set but it makes me a bit sad that I feel like a lot of the cards that should work with the commanders feel like they didn't measure up.

This is not me saying that there aren't commanders who look interesting so much as me saying that a lot of the support cards that should work with the commanders that are new cards don't feel like they are quite powerful enough or that they are just genericly ok cards that don't seem to really be cards that go in a specific deck.

So far the pattern seems to be 4 new cards per deck that explicitly work well with the new commanders - morphs, flashback, populate, morph synergy, flashback synergy, token production, etc. Which is lower than I'd like, but there were a decent number of those things beforehand. well over a hundred legal morphs, and around a hundred cast-from-grave spells I could find.

I think madness is going to be the biggest clincher - if there's only 4 new madness cards, I'll be a bit bummed, since the madness pool is fairly weak currently, and has only 43 legal cards. I'll still probably play the deck, but it will annoy me.

DirkGently wrote: ↑

4 years ago

ISBPathfinder wrote: ↑

4 years ago

So, there are a few generic cards that seem good but almost none of them have anything to do with any of the themes this year. It kind of makes me sad that the themes themselves and the legends associated with them feel like they are a little weak. Its not that strange for there to be a few good standalone cards in a set but it makes me a bit sad that I feel like a lot of the cards that should work with the commanders feel like they didn't measure up.

This is not me saying that there aren't commanders who look interesting so much as me saying that a lot of the support cards that should work with the commanders that are new cards don't feel like they are quite powerful enough or that they are just genericly ok cards that don't seem to really be cards that go in a specific deck.

So far the pattern seems to be 4 new cards per deck that explicitly work well with the new commanders - morphs, flashback, populate, morph synergy, flashback synergy, token production, etc. Which is lower than I'd like, but there were a decent number of those things beforehand. well over a hundred legal morphs, and around a hundred cast-from-grave spells I could find.

I think madness is going to be the biggest clincher - if there's only 4 new madness cards, I'll be a bit bummed, since the madness pool is fairly weak currently, and has only 43 legal cards. I'll still probably play the deck, but it will annoy me.

I think they went too diverse with the legends and tried to have a mix of things. Like Morph ended up being wayyyyyyyyy too shallow if you ask me. I would have preferred all the legends deal with morph and support morph and then also have more cards worth playing in commander who had morph. I felt like they just didn't go nearly deep enough into morph to support it as it needs to be supported. Then we got to flashback and I felt liek there just isn't sufficient cards in commander to fully support flashback and one of the commanders directly dealt with it but the others just seemed like Jeskai things. I feel again like they didn't go deep enough into their mechanic and making it work.

So, I guess my take away right now is I feel like they didn't commit deep enough. I am not opposed to getting goodstuff commander stuff but if you are going to make a theme commit to it plz.

There are only so many legends you can make for each mechanic. You have your "new school" mechanic plus draw/copy face cards, and then you have your secondary legends which you can do whatever with. It's nice, supports more diverse building. Plus when you look at the lists, it seems they learned from C13 and the decks don't feel like a horrible hodgepodge of three different brews battling it out for 99 space. I still don't get why there's a Zetalpa in the flashback deck, but those are isolated situations.

ISBPathfinder wrote: ↑

4 years ago

I think they went too diverse with the legends and tried to have a mix of things. Like Morph ended up being wayyyyyyyyy too shallow if you ask me. I would have preferred all the legends deal with morph and support morph and then also have more cards worth playing in commander who had morph. I felt like they just didn't go nearly deep enough into morph to support it as it needs to be supported. Then we got to flashback and I felt liek there just isn't sufficient cards in commander to fully support flashback and one of the commanders directly dealt with it but the others just seemed like Jeskai things. I feel again like they didn't go deep enough into their mechanic and making it work.

So, I guess my take away right now is I feel like they didn't commit deep enough. I am not opposed to getting goodstuff commander stuff but if you are going to make a theme commit to it plz.

I think it's largely a desire to cast a wide net. If the whole deck is pure morph synergy, and you aren't interested in morph, you're not buying.

(It's worth pointing out that Rayami does have stealthy morph synergy. You can play a big morph with sweet keywords like belltoll dragon and never plan to morph it. When it dies under Rayami, you still get hexproof/flying AND your opponents won't see it coming. They might try to remove Rayami and get rekt if you have a sac outlet. Can't think of any similar synergy for the other legends, though)

I do wish more of the new cards synergized, but I still think you can put together a fine morph/flashback deck with the existing stuff - you probably just won't dedicate 40+ slots to morph/flashback cards, which is fine.

Populate I think will be totally ok - Ghired is pretty solid with no support whatsoever.

DirkGently wrote: ↑

4 years ago

I think it's largely a desire to cast a wide net. If the whole deck is pure morph synergy, and you aren't interested in morph, you're not buying.

(It's worth pointing out that Rayami does have stealthy morph synergy. You can play a big morph with sweet keywords like belltoll dragon and never plan to morph it. When it dies under Rayami, you still get hexproof/flying AND your opponents won't see it coming. They might try to remove Rayami and get rekt if you have a sac outlet. Can't think of any similar synergy for the other legends, though)

I do wish more of the new cards synergized, but I still think you can put together a fine morph/flashback deck with the existing stuff - you probably just won't dedicate 40+ slots to morph/flashback cards, which is fine.

Populate I think will be totally ok - Ghired is pretty solid with no support whatsoever.

I get the wide net idea. The problem is that most of these concepts the face card legends were named for don't have enough support for commander. So, now I get the feeling that the main theme commanders mostly don't have the support they need. The populate commander is probably fine but I also kind of feel he could be fine completely self contained. I am just disappointed that they didn't commit to things harder.

It makes it a lot easier to buy singles this year as there just aren't many cards with synergy with each other. Pick the commander you want and buy the two cards that have synergy with them and you are set.

lyonhaert wrote: ↑

4 years ago

To be blunt, I think Doomed Artisan is kindof a waste of cardboard and somebody's brain time.

And what cards do you considered NOT a waste of cardboard and brain time? Do tell.

DirkGently wrote: ↑

4 years ago

So far the pattern seems to be 4 new cards per deck that explicitly work well with the new commanders - morphs, flashback, populate, morph synergy, flashback synergy, token production, etc. Which is lower than I'd like, but there were a decent number of those things beforehand. well over a hundred legal morphs, and around a hundred cast-from-grave spells I could find.

I think madness is going to be the biggest clincher - if there's only 4 new madness cards, I'll be a bit bummed, since the madness pool is fairly weak currently, and has only 43 legal cards. I'll still probably play the deck, but it will annoy me.

I think WotC doesn't want to risk a deck being too narrowed, or it would not be able to reapply to other archetypes. As it is, we can use a lot of cards from each deck outside of their designated theme.

That is an amazing, if costly, snake lord!

I am so far more interested in getting these decks than I have been in a couple of years. I'm pondering between Marisi, Atla Palani and my old Gahiji to lead my Naya rattlesnake/goad/enrage type 'passive aggressive' deck, since all three kind of cover different aspects of that.

I've liked the design of pretty much all the legendaries we've seen so far, even if good chunk of them haven't been my cup of tea (granted, my current Sultai and Jeskai decks are rather rock-solid so it'd take something crazy-awesome to dethrone those).

Well, I like them all more than the hot mess that was c18. That's a plus.

It hurts me to say that so far the Naya legends look the best. What has become of magic.

So is Gerrard, Weatherlight Hero the new "Eggs" commander or is it Atla Palani, Nest Tender? Arf arf.

Atla Palani, Nest Tender seems to be a way more mana efficient Mayael the Anima, plus it's impossible to miss and you don't have to worry about creature density thresholds.In fact you can just run a few creature if you want.

Some excellent synergy with Nesting Dragon and you could combo this with creatures that put lands into play like Wood Elves, Ulvenwald Hydra for example. If you had a sacrifice outlet you could just keep cycling through you deck with landfall and ramp creatures.
In a creature light version you could even run Wheel of Sun and Moon to keep looping these infinite to ramp out all the lands from your deck.

If you wanted to you could just have a deck that only had a couple of combo creatures, say Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker and Zealous Conscripts. Just make two eggs and win.

If you get Free-Range Chicken, Mesa Chicken or Chicken Egg off your reveal, then the age-old question is that it was in fact the egg that came first.

darrenhabib wrote: ↑

4 years ago

If you wanted to you could just have a deck that only had a couple of combo creatures, say Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker and Zealous Conscripts. Just make two eggs and win.

Don't even have to have the two eggs first. Just need a way to kill the eggs and have 4 to spend. Kiki-Jiki can make a copy of Atla that has haste for making the second egg to get Conscripts. Or, Conscripts can untap Atla for making the second egg to get Kiki-Jiki.

Atla seems a candidate for Thornbite Staff plus Ashnod's Altar to put the whole deck on the field.

lyonhaert wrote: ↑

4 years ago

darrenhabib wrote: ↑

4 years ago

If you wanted to you could just have a deck that only had a couple of combo creatures, say Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker and Zealous Conscripts. Just make two eggs and win.

Don't even have to have the two eggs first. Just need a way to kill the eggs and have 4 to spend. Kiki-Jiki can make a copy of Atla that has haste for making the second egg to get Conscripts. Or, Conscripts can untap Atla for making the second egg to get Kiki-Jiki.

Atla seems a candidate for Thornbite Staff plus Ashnod's Altar to put the whole deck on the field.

Thornbite Staff plus Ashnod's Altar does seem pretty pretty busted.
You could use Thermopod/Phyrexian Altar along with Heartstone for the same effect as Ashnod's Altar.

Unfortunately Kiki-Jiki can only copy non-legendary creatures, but if you happen to hit Conscripts first then you can untap Atla as you pointed out.

At no point did I imagine we'd get a second version of Chainer in Chainer, Nightmare Adept. I think I need to wait until I get some C19 cards before I rebuild Marchesa. :whistles_innocently:

darrenhabib wrote: ↑

4 years ago

If you get Free-Range Chicken, Mesa Chicken or Chicken Egg off your reveal, then the age-old question is that it was in fact the egg that came first.

Dude, ifyou get chicken egg out of an egg idk WHAT that means. Chickens were actually an unnecessary part of the reproductive process all along? Or maybe that you don't really have eggs, but a strange set of matryoshka dolls.

My Squee, the Immortal deck just got a giant fist bump from Skyfire Pheonix. Its a bit unfortunate in that now he can go infinite with the sac for red mana effects even though there aren't that many of them.

Jivanmukta wrote: ↑

4 years ago

It hurts me to say that so far the Naya legends look the best. What has become of magic.

And I like the U/x generals the best this time around (particularly Elsha and Volrath). The world is truly ending.

...yup, so building Chainer discard/reanimator that just intends to churn through my deck on the way to locating a win condition (Chainer giving haste to reanimated things certainly helps get damage across).

Frees a fair amount of deck space when I have to worry less about 1.) discard outlets 2.) reanimation sources AND 3.) haste outlets. Still need to play some, obviously, but way less than if I attempted a similar deck with another commander.

Jivanmukta wrote: ↑

4 years ago

It hurts me to say that so far the Naya legends look the best. What has become of magic.

Airi wrote: ↑

4 years ago

Jivanmukta wrote: ↑

4 years ago

It hurts me to say that so far the Naya legends look the best. What has become of magic.

And I like the U/x generals the best this time around (particularly Elsha and Volrath). The world is truly ending.

What... What is this madness?!

[mention]Jivanmukta[/mention] You clearly need therapy. I know a good therapist at the Seat of the Synod that can help you overcome this terrible, terrible mental plague you've contracted. Jin-Gitaxias specializes in counseling (read: lobotomy) techniques.

[mention]Airi[/mention] About time!

The new Chainer is actually really, really cool. The C19 design team really smashed this set with awesomeness, in my opinion. We've got a ton of Weatherlight throwbacks and Phyrexian villains to choose from and I love it. The new Greven seems particularly powerful with Chandra's Ignition. And the new Volrath is freaking awesome. LOVE this set.

Chainer is neat and I would probably have built him, except Greven, Predator Captain was spoiled immediately after and that's the BR legend I've been waiting for. I played Commander Greven il-Vec for a long time and the new iteration looks consistently better. Hits like a truck, has built in evasion, and draws cards.

The flavor text on Aeon Engine is proof WotC knew about the Paradox Engine ban in advance. Grab your tinfoil pitchforks and fasten your rusty hats!

It's a toss-up between Rakdos and Naya for nicest alt legends. Sultai got the short end of the stick with new legends, but had the coolest theme-centric new designs. Jeskai got that Future Sight/Vedalken Orrery thing, which is my bet on most popular commander from the set. So ultimately all the decks have something going for them. A return to form after the C17/C18 slump, hopefully they'll keep this up.