Re: Is White getting better?
Posted: Fri Mar 18, 2022 6:03 pm
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Crystal. But what you are ignoring, is that in my post, I stated that more docksides are inevitable. I was also saying that I'm happy when white gets cards like Skyclave because they are at least playable. Hence why I used quotation marks around the word broken. The ultimate goal is to get to the point where all colors get the same power level of cards. Would I prefer that Wizards stop printing busted cards in all colors so all colors are balanced? Absolutely. But we all know that's not going to happen. So why not let white in on the game before the decade is over.BeneTleilax wrote: ↑2 years agoRight, but that's still a definition you only gave after I made my post saying I didn't want more broken cards. I was responding to Pokken there, who wanted a white Dockside. I agree with you on everything of substance, it seems. If you're more interested in picking apart my posts than finding common ground, then I don't really see what either of us have to gain.
If your definition of "broken" includes Apparition and Lion Sash, then by all means, I want more of those for white. Maybe they would be broken by someone's standards from 2014, I have yet to meet that person in the present day. I don't want more Docksides, in any color. Does that make sense?
OK. Broken cards are a mistake not the intention. Let's go with that. I like Mark Rosewater, and Verhey and the rest of them. I think they do try to make balanced cards. Why are none of the broken cards white, regardless of whether they were intended to be broken? Maybe, and this is just me speculating, it's because card draw, treasure creation, unconditional tutoring, mana generation, and any and all common methods of making a busted card are just not in pie for little ol white.Wallycaine wrote: ↑2 years agoI think a pervasive, and incorrect, view is that Wizards prints "broken" cards on purpose, so they just have to do that on purpose in white. But that's not how any of this happens. If it was, why would Dockside Extortionist, the card being cited over and over again as an example of a broken card, have been purposefully put in a commander deck, rather than at mythic in a supplemental set? One of those choices makes Wizards *way* more money, since Wizards sells the decks of Mystic Intellect for the same price as any other Commander 2019 deck, but can move way more supplemental products if there's a chase mythic in it.
So it's perhaps worth examining that assumption. Wizards is continually trying to balance between making cards interesting without making them broken, and there's going to be misses in both directions. So yes, broken cards may continue to happen, but they're not going to be able to be "aimed" at a particular color because *they're not aimed at all*.
Because white's been the latest color to be buffed for EDH (it's been fine, and often dominant, in every other format) and they've learned from prior instances. I remember when UG was considered a trap in EDH, because they had no decent spot removal for creatures. Do you agree with their decision to take off the safety rails for that color combination? Even five years ago, red was the "worst" color, and they did better, but do you think either the color or the format is better for Dockside or Underworld Breach? The method for improving a color/color pair is not infusing it with random busted cards.
Firstly, take a chill pill. Secondly, Sram is a moderate deck by most standards that runs budget crap like Accorder's Shield and folds to one edict effect. Thirdly, I don't know where you're getting the UG is weak in EDH from, since blue has always been good in EDH. Green may have been weaker ten years ago, but blue has always been good. A precon could beat a Sram deck. As far as safety rails go, those went away right around the time green started drawing cards off of creatures. In fact, I bet the Wilhelt precon has a better chance of winning than the average Sramstorm deck.BeneTleilax wrote: ↑2 years agoBecause white's been the latest color to be buffed for EDH (it's been fine, and often dominant, in every other format) and they've learned from prior instances. I remember when UG was considered a trap in EDH, because they had no decent spot removal for creatures. Do you agree with their decision to take off the safety rails for that color combination? Even five years ago, red was the "worst" color, and they did better, but do you think either the color or the format is better for Dockside or Underworld Breach? The method for improving a color/color pair is not infusing it with random busted cards.
If nothing else, it would produce the strongest power divide yet between the most expensive decks and the average, as the color increasingly depends on broken (not "broken" since you apparently define those terms differently) mythics, rather than strategic and deliberate expansion across rarities, to compete. If you want to play broken white cards, run Sramstorm. It already exists. It's repetitive, expensive, uninteractive, and dependant on drawing key busted cards. Everything you seem to want for the color as a whole.
Ah, so in Mirrodin. Also, UG was considered a trap combination back in 2014. Blue was always strong, but needed support from a color that had decent spot removal, with the exception of glass-cannon decks like Azami. You had Edric, but he was in the same place as Sram now, but with wraths in the place of edicts.
Some thoughts:Why are none of the broken cards white, regardless of whether they were intended to be broken?
Yep, I'm an evil monster who wants no testing, You've exposed me to the world. No matter what I say, you'll have what you think is a crushing comeback, and so will I. To me, Mirrodin proves my point. To you it's the nail in my coffin. We can dance around all day. You think you're right, I think I'm right. I don't hate testing cards. I just think that Wotc should apply the same metric to all cards.BeneTleilax wrote: ↑2 years agoAh, so in Mirrodin. Also, UG was considered a trap combination back in 2014. Blue was always strong, but needed support from a color that had decent spot removal, with the exception of glass-cannon decks like Azami. You had Edric, but he was in the same place as Sram now, but with wraths in the place of edicts.
At least now you are clearly arguing that they should stop testing and balancing white cards on the whole, rather than claiming you're just in favor of more strong, interesting cards like Lion Sash. I want more Lion Sashes and Apparitions, and less broken cards in any color. I think that's a reasonable aspiration, as a player.
I agree. Bit o history on me. I used to play a lot of Historic. I mean, a lot. Like grinding to Mythic as a bad player lot. My favorite deck? Sultai Control with Uro. While playing that deck, every chance I'd get, on reddit or twitter or wherever, I'd argue we needed an Uro ban. I was thrilled when he got the axe, even though he was the lynchpin card of my favorite deck. I knew he was warping the format around him and he needed to go. I was a true monster then for sure. Turn four Nissa, Who Shakes the World. Good times. For me anyway lol.BeneTleilax wrote: ↑2 years agoI want to make balanced cards, and think we as players can most effectively argue for balanced cards.
Good call.
Yeah, I think you're right about that. One of my favorite avenues they've gone down are cards like Teleportation Circle. Love me some flicker value in mono-w.BeneTleilax wrote: ↑2 years agoGood call.
MaRo also hinted that white was getting more land recursion, which might give it a way to ramp. On the other hand, I reckon it's one of the worst ways to go about it, as it would make the color dependent on fetchlands to ramp. They'd need to print more affordable fetch-like lands, like Fabled Passage, at least for white, to avoid it being a monkey's paw solution.
Yeah, it's why I've build Feather around flicker effects. My only worry is that the strength of white's flickers might cap the power of their ETB effects, which are an increasingly important part of creatures in this format. Spirited Companion, Solitude and even the humble Dawnbringer Cleric are a good sign, though.
I don't think they print broken cards on purpose (and I ever claimed that), but I do know for a fact that they "push" cards on purpose. And you end up with a broken card when it is pushed and they go too far. White needs more pushed cards that could end up broken. They need to take risks and print higher powered cards in white.Wallycaine wrote: ↑2 years agoI think a pervasive, and incorrect, view is that Wizards prints "broken" cards on purpose, so they just have to do that on purpose in white. But that's not how any of this happens. If it was, why would Dockside Extortionist, the card being cited over and over again as an example of a broken card, have been purposefully put in a commander deck, rather than at mythic in a supplemental set? One of those choices makes Wizards *way* more money, since Wizards sells the decks of Mystic Intellect for the same price as any other Commander 2019 deck, but can move way more supplemental products if there's a chase mythic in it.
So it's perhaps worth examining that assumption. Wizards is continually trying to balance between making cards interesting without making them broken, and there's going to be misses in both directions. So yes, broken cards may continue to happen, but they're not going to be able to be "aimed" at a particular color because *they're not aimed at all*.
Pokken, Hullbreacher got banned. We don't need more Hullbreachers, in any color. Also, they seem to be backing off FIRE, although they haven't admitted it yet, likely for internal ass-covering reasons.
The point is more that they seem to think powerful effects have to cost more in white, which is a problem with why white pushed cards end up medium.BeneTleilax wrote: ↑2 years agoPokken, Hullbreacher got banned. We don't need more Hullbreachers, in any color. Also, they seem to be backing off FIRE, although they haven't admitted it yet, likely for internal ass-covering reasons.
They likely could print a Hullbreacher card that just limited its abilities to not function on your own turn. Doing so would disable most of the playable wheel cards from functioning without somehow jumping through the extra hoop of giving them flash. If you can take the proactive play of wheels away from Hullbreacher the pool of egregious cards shrinks a lot and also forces you to potentially try to break it with cards used less frequently on their own merit like Teferi's Puzzle Box which could still be powerful with what I described but generally isn't a card that is worth playing on its own merit.BeneTleilax wrote: ↑2 years agoPokken, Hullbreacher got banned. We don't need more Hullbreachers, in any color. Also, they seem to be backing off FIRE, although they haven't admitted it yet, likely for internal ass-covering reasons.
You know, I 99% agree with your post, but this one's going to be very hard, I suspect. Opposition Agent is just such a stupid card. The main way I can think of making an anti-search effect that's both relatively reasonable and not strictly worse than Agent is by making it one or two mana. And even then, I think for it to be actually reasonable at such a cost, it'd need to be symmetrical, which means Agent would still be better in 99% of cases. The Agent being asymmetrical, having flash, and also functioning as a Praetor's Grasp on top of interfering with search effects is ridiculous. If it lacked any one of its clauses, it'd be a lot less ridiculous. If it lacked any one of its clauses and also cost 4 or 5 mana, it might even be a completely reasonable card. As is? As is, the fair version of Opposition Agent is Aven Mindcensor, a card that already exists and frankly should have been as far as asymmetrical search hate got pushed.NZB2323 wrote: ↑2 years agoGive white an answer to searching that isn't worse than Opposition Agent.
I do really like Glorious Protector but I also have issues with it from the standpoint that decks that are heavy on creature strategies often don't play at instant speed very well and keeping up four mana turn after turn is really hard for a number of those decks. In that sense I have a hard time running those sort of cards because the decks that are naturally very reactive and play at instant speed often don't take advantage of this type of card very well but the decks that do often have a hard time keeping the mana up to do so.NZB2323 wrote: ↑2 years agoI really love Glorious Protector as a new white card. It's a great answer to one of the most broken cards in the format - Cyclonic Rift.
Most of the issues with hatebear concepts is that they are often all or nothing type of cards that when they whiff or aren't hitting the right player you are left with a bad bear creature. I would love to see more hatebear concepts that are possibly less intense in nature but make up for their all or nothing nature. That could be as simple as investigating on ETB or something of the sort but the fact that hatebears are often vanilla cards outside of their effect is in my opinion one of the biggest reasons they aren't played more. Most of them are very narrow in what they interact with and most of them don't generate value back (or do so in narrow conditions) for you but just try to hold opponents down.NZB2323 wrote: ↑2 years agoHow about instead of printing broken cards for white they give white answers to broken cards. Don't like Dockside Extortionist? Give white a Collector Ouphe with flash. It's already in white's color pie, like Stony Silence and would be a nice answer that isn't broken.
Give white an answer to searching that isn't worse than Opposition Agent.
Give white a hatebear with flash that says players can't take extra turns. Give white a hatebear with flash that exiles a graveyard. Give white a better version of Alms Collector. (Maybe make it cost less mana)
If white is the color of balance let it balance out the most busted cards in the format.