MTGNexus

I'm hoping at some point we get a Snuff Out update that trades "can't be regenerated" for hitting any creature. That's always been on my list of undervalued removal, especially in Commander.

Woah, I hadn't seen the new full art basics yet. Those are stunning, holy cow.

DirkGently wrote: ↑

2 years ago

Woah, I hadn't seen the new full art basics yet. Those are stunning, holy cow.

They're definitely interesting, but at this point we've seen full-art basic lands like minimum twice a year for the past several years. At this point, it feels like they've lost a lot of their novelty.

DirkGently wrote: ↑

2 years ago

Woah, I hadn't seen the new full art basics yet. Those are stunning, holy cow.

They're definitely interesting, but at this point we've seen full-art basic lands like minimum twice a year for the past several years. At this point, it feels like they've lost a lot of their novelty.

wildfire393 wrote: ↑

2 years ago

They're definitely interesting, but at this point we've seen full-art basic lands like minimum twice a year for the past several years. At this point, it feels like they've lost a lot of their novelty.

that's true, but most of those have either been in supplemental, non-draftable sets like secret lairs and unsanctioned, or been pretty vanilla. The only ones that come close imo are the theros full arts, which were a while ago, and a very different style than these. The black and white sketchy style is really vibing with me.

wildfire393 wrote: ↑

2 years ago

They're definitely interesting, but at this point we've seen full-art basic lands like minimum twice a year for the past several years. At this point, it feels like they've lost a lot of their novelty.

I love seeing more full-art lands, seeing as they generally look better than "regular" lands. So what if they're not as novel, just means more people can make their manabase look nice.

Yeah, I dunno. Between Snow Full Arts in MH1, Theros full art Pokemon Energy, Zendikar Rising full arts, special Snow Frame basics in Kaldheim, and AFR D&D Flavor Text basics, it feels like we've been really inundated with "special" basic lands lately, to the point where it's hard to get excited about new ones. And that's just in the past like, 2 years and a little change? And I'm not even taking into account stuff like the Jumpstart themed basics and the 2XM VIP Full arts and a couple of Secret Lairs either.

Like, if you like them, great, more power to you. They just aren't doing much for me.

I feel the same way, it's really hard to et into the new basics. Part of my problem is I'll get interested in the odd new one like the ones from the new Innistrad. Then I'll remember I'll need to get a bunch for decks and lose interested.
Another problem is that we've just gotten so many cool basics in the past year or so that they don't feel special anymore

motleyslayer wrote: ↑

2 years ago

I feel the same way, it's really hard to et into the new basics. Part of my problem is I'll get interested in the odd new one like the ones from the new Innistrad. Then I'll remember I'll need to get a bunch for decks and lose interested.
Another problem is that we've just gotten so many cool basics in the past year or so that they don't feel special anymore

I don't love the gimmickiness of the latest batches, just because it makes it hard to mix and match across sets. It's especially glaring in a return set, because these don't really go with the lands from either Innistrad before. Maybe once the collector hype around unique land styles dies down, we'll get some full arts with more interoperable thematics.

BeneTleilax wrote: ↑

2 years ago

motleyslayer wrote: ↑

2 years ago

I feel the same way, it's really hard to et into the new basics. Part of my problem is I'll get interested in the odd new one like the ones from the new Innistrad. Then I'll remember I'll need to get a bunch for decks and lose interested.
Another problem is that we've just gotten so many cool basics in the past year or so that they don't feel special anymore

I don't love the gimmickiness of the latest batches, just because it makes it hard to mix and match across sets. It's especially glaring in a return set, because these don't really go with the lands from either Innistrad before. Maybe once the collector hype around unique land styles dies down, we'll get some full arts with more interoperable thematics.

I think you're right about the lands feeling really gimmicky and hard to match. For commander, I'll probably just stick to what I have a lot of in BFZ basics. So then it's easier to keep a theme

All of the extra arts/borders are neat! For collecting. My decks no longer look clean/uniform…or that I am playing MTG, I'm returning to grabbing just regular art, regular border cards for sets going forward. Probably the cheapest option for singles, too.

Well, it seems we now finally have Purple mana!

The IMH sketch lands are cool in a Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark kind of way, but I've been playing p3k basics for years and I just can't change at this point.

DirkGently wrote: ↑

2 years ago

Woah, I hadn't seen the new full art basics yet. Those are stunning, holy cow.

Yeah, they are quite striking. Some of that may just be new-ness, which is fair. But the colored outline with the rest of it being black and white is quite stunning.

I'm just not sure if they would fit in a deck I have right now or not.

here we go again

Once again, we return to the spoiler season from whence we came. Flashback, transform, and investigate appear to be returning, and we also have some new mechanics.

Coven requires 3+ creatures with different powers, but the payoff varies by card. Doesn't seem that difficult for most creature-based decks to do, but it's not trivial either.
Disturb looks like flashback for creatures, mixed with transform. Again, depends on the card, but it works well with blink effects.
Day // Night is just making the werewolf trigger into an explicit mechanic. It's always been a little clunky in EDH, but I will call out that it only cares about players casting spells on their own turn, which is different from the old trigger, and makes it a bit more likely to flip into night.

As for notable cards....

• Tovolar, Dire Overload looks like a very solid commander for werewolf decks.
• Sigarda, Champion of Light continues her theme of helping out humans.
• Jadar, Ghoulcaller of Nephalia introduces our new token-downside mechanic. A bit weaker than Ophiomancer, but still looks solid for aristocrats strategies.
• Overgrown Farmland (and the rest of its cycle) look excellent in EDH. Presumably not worth running in cEDH settings due to entering tapped in the early game, but if you expect the game to go long, the downside is pretty negligible.
• Enduring Angel is cool. I won't necessarily say it is amazing, but granting hexproof is a pretty nice upside.
• Wilhelt, the Rotcleaver is a fun zombie tribal commander. Definitely fuels the feeling of being attacked by an inexhaustible horde.
• Curse of Obsession looks to be the first curse with an upside. On the other hand, making the control player discard their hand is pretty brutal. Looks solid.
• Saryth, the Viper's Fang looks awesome for my Samut deck. Untap abilities are always appreciated there, and giving pingers deathtouch is quite nice. Plus, you can untap things to give them hexproof.

Visions of Dread and its ilk, their flashback cost clearly wants us to play higher cc commanders. Of course, it's preferred that cards being playable without flashback cost.

Tovolar, Dire Overlord

I started playing MTG long after Innistrad first came out, but even I was miffed once I found out about Ulrich of the Krallenhorde // Ulrich, Uncontested Alpha being the only legendary Werewolf for about.... five years? Especially when Vampires got Edgar Markov back in 2017. A long awaited fix has arrived at last. What makes me laugh the most about this little saga is the fact that Ulrich seems like a weak card even in 60 card formats. Good riddance to him, and thank goodness we have Tovolar now.

Moreover, this was my biggest concern/hope with the set. Now that it's out of the way, this set gets 5/5 stars from me. Tovolar, Dire Overlord is literally all I wanted from this set. Everything from here on out is just gravy. Which is of course why Wotc spoiled it on the first day, so kudos to them.

I like this werewolf design. Effectively negates the big downside of werewolves during your turn as well as flavorfully giving you a wolf run.

So are we just getting precons with every single set now? Jesus Christ this firehose of products…

DirkGently wrote: ↑

2 years ago

So are we just getting precons with every single set now? Jesus Christ this firehose of products…

Yeah thats been the case for a little while now. The idea is lite-precons every set with a major commander release once a year. Strixhaven was it this year.

It is a bit inundating yeah. Its made me get a lot more picky about what I buy. I haven't touched anything at all from the D&D sets for example. They just jump the shark for me in a way I don't like, so I'm hands off. No shade to anyone else that wants to play them though.

DirkGently wrote: ↑

2 years ago

So are we just getting precons with every single set now? Jesus Christ this firehose of products…

Strictly speaking, I believe they are in place of the old planeswalker decks / intro decks. The presence of unique cards (that are actually relevant, unlike stuff like Ajani's Aid) is slightly annoying though, since it makes it harder to ignore them entirely.

DirkGently wrote: ↑

2 years ago

So are we just getting precons with every single set now? Jesus Christ this firehose of products…

I used to jump at every rumor/spoiler/news about a new set, new cards, new art, until WotC broke my knee with this flood of products.

Not saying they're bad cards or bad flavor, but one can only be stimulated so much per season. They can't just give new cards every other month while players are still studying and brewing new decks. We only have so much time and attention space.

Tovolar, Dire Overload is indeed all anyone could want from a Werewolf Commander...

- He neatly melds the new and the old design of wolfing out. He's not quite Immerwolf in the command zone but he's darn close as long as you can keep a board presence up.
- Coastal Piracy on both sides (for tribe only) is a fine Lord effect, one that's probably better for the instant-hungry, board-wipe vulnerable nature of his deck and way better than "just" +X/+X and some keyword.
- Oh, and on his backside he holds his rallies at the local Kessig Wolf Run which is an awesome Voltron ability to have but also helps ensure you'll get a card or two out of combat.

I'm also unreasonably excited for Galvanic Iteration for Sevinne - that's pretty close to the perfect Sevine card. Shame Sevinne can't double-dip on Disturb but hey, what can you do?

I have a werewolf tribal deck that isn't commander and not looking to make it one so I its been interesting looking at this set in a non-commander eye (though I wanna make Lonis so I am gonna be looking at the clue stuff).

And as much of a joke as wizards making commder that draw you cards, Tovolar was needed since werewolves didn't have much draw card in the deck and can almost be a down side as if you draw too many cards you risk discarding something you might need or having to transform your creatures back to humans.

Mookie wrote: ↑

2 years ago

DirkGently wrote: ↑

2 years ago

So are we just getting precons with every single set now? Jesus Christ this firehose of products…

Strictly speaking, I believe they are in place of the old planeswalker decks / intro decks. The presence of unique cards (that are actually relevant, unlike stuff like Ajani's Aid) is slightly annoying though, since it makes it harder to ignore them entirely.

No that exactly right, from feedback they found that a lot of new players come to the game through a friend/family member and as most people now play commander most new players want commander decks in order to play with friends.

Its also let the design team have more commander focused cards made without it taking up a slot in the main set such as Ranra being the foretell commander without needing to have him work in the normal Kaldheim set.