lol I'm just saying it's not like he got the idea from nowhere. As much money as they are demanding for these decks, they could toss fetches in there. IMO
Double checking on things, they were in standard at the time because Khans was the first time the ally fetch lands had been printed, thus bringing them into Modern for the first time.
And I think heath is the cheapest BECAUSE it was put into that clash pack.
Oh i've been in general agreement with all y'all. It just bugs my design sensibilities that they put in snarls, and then don't bother to enable them in anyway like including the cycle of common snow duals, or dominaria duals, or even the cycling duals. (that's not even counting the shock lands) You want me to reveal a forest from hand - freaking give me more forests in my deck! Even if they're cheap-common-crap!
Heck from what I can tell, it looks like the rare cycling (2) dual lands were only ever allied colors. Why not go ahead and just make and release a set of enemy cycling (2) dual lands?
Mana bases are always the most expensive part of every deck and the biggest hurdle for every newbie getting into the game. But when your decks are hitting $80+ we're past newbie friendly - may as well stuff in the expensive shit.
Double checking on things, they were in standard at the time because Khans was the first time the ally fetch lands had been printed, thus bringing them into Modern for the first time.
There is also the fact that..its not Blue or Black.
Oh i've been in general agreement with all y'all. It just bugs my design sensibilities that they put in snarls, and then don't bother to enable them in anyway like including the cycle of common snow duals, or dominaria duals, or even the cycling duals. (that's not even counting the shock lands) You want me to reveal a forest from hand - freaking give me more forests in my deck! Even if they're cheap-common-crap!
Okay so, even if you put the 10 Snarls in, then put in both the Snow and Dominaria Typed ETB tapped Duals you are going to have issues Navigating the land drops. That is why the Snarls were unplayabe in standard even when you had the Triomes because what you are putting down next is gonna be tapped so either way you are taking a bit of a tempo loss.
Verdant Catacombs is one of the less expensive ones as well and was in a FNM Vampires deck or whatever it was. Though Marsh Flats is cheaper, but I don't remember if it was in any prcon products.
Verdant Catacombs is one of the less expensive ones as well and was in a FNM Vampires deck or whatever it was. Though Marsh Flats is cheaper, but I don't remember if it was in any prcon products.
After double checking the printings, Modern Masters 17 and Modern Horizons 2 had reprints of the Enemy and the last Allied reprints look to be Khans block.
AKA
WOTC is retarded about printing fucking land cycles.
After double checking the printings, Modern Masters 17 and Modern Horizons 2 had reprints of the Enemy and the last Allied reprints look to be Khans block.
AKA
WOTC is retarded about printing fucking land cycles.
The worst decision Wizards ever made was putting all the value on lands, the most necessary building block to almost every single format and they're painfully hard to replace in formats that don't rotate. You can always find a substitute for Goyf or a way to answer it, but if your mana base is shit you're going to feel like a retard.
Even precon products are made shit by mana bases more than anything.
I'll go to bat for The Celestus, the passives on it are frequently good and it's a solid one of in Standard/Explorer control decks. It probably isn't bad in Commander either but intentionally inflicting keeping track of day/night on your table is right up there with Smothering Tithe-esque taxation in terms annoying passive aggressive bookkeeping, but not in this case actually as rewarding.
Okay so, even if you put the 10 Snarls in, then put in both the Snow and Dominaria Typed ETB tapped Duals you are going to have issues Navigating the land drops. That is why the Snarls were unplayabe in standard even when you had the Triomes because what you are putting down next is gonna be tapped so either way you are taking a bit of a tempo loss.
I played with a playset on arena for a bit in Izzet Creativity in Explorer (and maybe Izzet Dragons in standard until the Innistrad slowlands came out?) because I ran out of wildcards and had them lying around so I ran them instead of fast lands. IIRC Mathematically, in a two color deck, they aren't much worse than fast lands in a deck running like 8 relevant lands/60 cards between literal basics and shocks but of course it FEELS much worse when your keepable hand is shit up by running them over fast lands, the possible upside of them coming in untapped after turn 3 mostly never matters (because if you have 2 lands in hand past turn 3 you are either way ahead, about to die from uncastable spells, or flooding) and giving away information about your hand never feels good.
I'll go to bat for The Celestus, the passives on it are frequently good and it's a solid one of in Standard/Explorer control decks. It probably isn't bad in Commander either but intentionally inflicting keeping track of day/night on your table is right up there with Smothering Tithe-esque taxation in terms annoying passive aggressive bookkeeping, but not in this case actually as rewarding.
Celestus and the one that has an Exile effect are about the only 3+ CMC mana Rocks I think are playable in a generic deck. Especially if you are playing 5 Colors and have access to Birds of Paradise, The Heirarchs, Ornithopter of Paradise, the 2 CMC Land Ramp spells, Delighted Halfling...and kind of Deathrite Shaman.
Edit: That is why I think the sliver precon has some pretty decent ramp/land package, it has 3 Visits, Natures Lore and Arcane Signet.
Okay so, even if you put the 10 Snarls in, then put in both the Snow and Dominaria Typed ETB tapped Duals you are going to have issues Navigating the land drops. That is why the Snarls were unplayabe in standard even when you had the Triomes because what you are putting down next is gonna be tapped so either way you are taking a bit of a tempo loss.
The worst decision Wizards ever made was putting all the value on lands, the most necessary building block to almost every single format and they're painfully hard to replace in formats that don't rotate. You can always find a substitute for Goyf or a way to answer it, but if your mana base is shit you're going to feel like a retard.
Even precon products are made shit by mana bases more than anything.
This. IMHO rare lands should be extremely janky specialty lands (say something for a single tribe - like Sliver hive) if even that. I'd be completely open to no lands above uncommon.
That's what cracks me up when MaRo is talking about trying to get newbies into the game and every time he talks about "people like to win" I want to go, "do you think the $100+ price tag to be competitive might have something to do with spoiling the newbie experience there Mark?"
This. IMHO rare lands should be extremely janky specialty lands (say something for a single tribe - like Sliver hive) if even that. I'd be completely open to no lands above uncommon.
That's what cracks me up when MaRo is talking about trying to get newbies into the game and every time he talks about "people like to win" I want to go, "do you think the $100+ price tag to be competitive might have something to do with spoiling the newbie experience there Mark?"
It's also just a shitty experience for new players cracking a pack and getting a land as your rare when you don't know how important they are or you do and you crack one in a draft and have to first pick it just because of the money. Sure, fixing in drafts is good, but first picking it is almost always unfun.
At least with specialty lands you can look at it and think the effect is cool, which is why they're ok at rare or mythic, but the triome lands at 9$ each is dumb.
It's also just a shitty experience for new players cracking a pack and getting a land as your rare when you don't know how important they are or you do and you crack one in a draft and have to first pick it just because of the money. Sure, fixing in drafts is good, but first picking it is almost always unfun.
At least with specialty lands you can look at it and think the effect is cool, which is why they're ok at rare or mythic, but the triome lands at 9$ each is dumb.
Yeah when I hear the "new players enjoy winning" I want to correct it to "they want to feel like they could have won" - I mean when I do jumpstart with some kids, I usually either let them beat me or make sure to keep the game as close as possible to keep them interested.
Well what's the one card all newbies have access to and plenty of? basic lands. And newbies will never feel like they can play the game if they keep looking at the manafixing they need to be competitive and realize they have to take a student loan out to get it. I know they probably couldn't do it now, but if it was up to me, every basic would have cycling and be indestructible (at least they've been doing that of late and making all land hate focus on nonbasics). Heck if they want to really make things more fair for newbies, put all the nonbasic hate down at common just so even if little Timmy has no hope of winning FNM, he can at least be a pain in the ass to all the entrenched rich assholes by constantly hosing them. (but then mana is the best and worst part of the game)
Magic's fun and I enjoy the deckbuilding - but I'll also literally play almost any other game before it.
Ngl this whole LOTR thing really deflated my interest in MtG.
It doesn't help a lot of the crew I play with are huge consoomers and they keep wanting to buy the lastest EDH precon.
Thankfully since we mostly play on cockatrice I can just pretend they aren't actually spending money in the year of our lord 2023. Too bad I still have to deal with them pulling some BS like copying some "fun deck they saw on youtube". Let me tell you I am sick of Kaervec "wa I am a political deck now". I am 99% sure some Youtuber shill is responsible for this and I hate that person immensely.
Tried playing Arena again, and I have to ask, why are the only limited formats Kami and LotR? LotR feels like a shitty limited format and Kami is boring as I haven't played since Brother's War and would like to try the newest Standard set instead of a set I can't even really play on Arena. Though I think the shuffler is in my favor at least as I'm a returning player and I'm getting playable hands which lets me go 7-X in drafts instead of opening constant dead hands that flood after winning a few draft runs.
Also, I wish there was a way to hid Alchemy in every way because it's a format I don't ever wish to play as it takes a mediocre Standard/Historic format and makes it super gay.
They only have 2 formats (well, more with all the Bo1/Bo3/AI drafts) because the limited playerpool after the first week or so is small and the queues get really bad as it is.
lol I'm just saying it's not like he got the idea from nowhere. As much money as they are demanding for these decks, they could toss fetches in there. IMO
Especially considering how much the clash packs were almost a joke back in the day.
I miss the brawl decks. I really wish WotC had gone with those rather than these commander decks. I don't need full on 100 card monstrosities every single set. Just give me a nice 60 card core that I can build out from and will bloat my collection less. (I will still make an argument that brawl is one of their better on-ramp ideas - second only to jumpstart.)
ESPECIALLY if you're not going to throw in any quality reprints - which would be the only thing a full on 100 card commander precon would have in its favor.
Oh and @Rich Evans Ayypologist - I'll grant that you were right to a point. It looks like this set is selling like gangbusters. But at a glance it's hard to see that it's doing well among the LotR fandom. A lot of the buying seems to be speculators chasing the serialized one ring.
I think it's doing just fine among them - they're buying a little bit here and there for novelty at the walmart checkout. It's not like the main purchasers of the WH40K decks were 40K people. Some did, sure, but the main bulk was enfranchised magic-people. Once something reaches a point of demand existing for a second (or third, etc) run, you'd may as well consider it to be a success for the company.
Throughput on the LOTR stuff is still high even now that the Ring has been found. Yes, Collector's have dropped off considerably because that shit is whale-bait for the especially retarded whales, but the draft environment is pretty fun (even if green sucks) and a lot of people can be convinced to throw out $7-8 for a set booster because look! Names I recognize! Again, the 'blowback' campaign just doesn't really work when you can quietly buy the product without anyone knowing. The survey is mildly amusing, because it just makes me wonder what they're planning to screw around with next. I view that thing far more as them rubbing it in that they made some characters kangz and that the product was still a huge success than as a hedge of sorts.
That thing's whole value is the Heath (which was in standard, as you established) and CoCo (which wasn't -as- expensive then). I think Siege Rhino was maybe a few bucks when it was the entirety of standard, even if it's today a quarter.
I've never understood the clamboring to make 'good' 5c manabases in commander precons.
The 3c tapped cycle and the Vivids are good - for casual play. If you dump fetches and triomes into a 5c deck, that deck immediately becomes the must-buy one of the cycle. Stores get these things in complete cycles, which means that every other member of the cycle becomes a dud that sits on the shelf and hemorrhages the store money while the popular one sells out and fat retards continue to bitch at shopowners to GET MORE!!!!!!!!
I don't like fetches. Shuffling takes forever. They turn EDH into 5c copy-paste goodstuff soup (garnished with thoracle consultation), where to play 'at a low-to-moderate power level' you are asking new players to shell out potentially hundreds to thousands of dollars. Meanwhile, $30 decks exist aplenty that can use political maneuvering (or cards like, say... blood moon) to fucking shit on the wallet warriors who proceed to cry like toddlers that their expensive piles of soon-to-be-printed-to-worthlessness cardboard have gotten them nowhere.
There is nothing more fun than throwing down a Back to Basics effect on your garden-variety 5c player, and then asking them "So, how much does your deck cost?" when they complain about it. Attack them the entire game with low-to-the-ground threats while saying "Yeah, I mean, aggro just can't work in EDH, everyone combos off so quickly" while admiring their expensive board of mountains. You might get a table-flip, even, provided they have the physical strength to do that (rare). They don't run enchantment hate, because why would you need interaction when the deck is designed to solitaire combo as most of the 5c goodstuff does?
I say don't reprint them specifically so that the manchildren can continue to throw their money away while everyone else either plays without them or just proxies them. I think these commander masters premades are perfectly fine decks - they're just being sold at way too high of a pricepoint. They have no audience - enfranchised players want better cards for the money, and new players don't want to spend that much on a product when maybe 2? years ago the company was selling $20 beginner-EDH decks that were pretty damn good. Not unlike the unique LOTR cards, so long as any of them don't pop off in older formats/cubes (Forth Eorlingas!), the shit I actually want from these decks will be at most five bucks because of stores cracking precons / their being in collector boosters.
As commander masters spoilers have begun in earnest, how’s everyone feeling about it? I think the set is shaping up to be iconic masters tiers of interest, with most of the cards I’ve seen being only moderately in need of reprints… even if it looks like it’ll be a fun time to draft.
Good set, bad price point. Baldur's Gate II. Stores aren't going to stock on it as much because it's such a huge risk for such small profit - if you fail to sell a box, you're sitting on a pretty decent chunk of change. However, I think the set itself will be a smash hit for WOTC.
I think low preorders will lead some stores to speculate big on it, the same retarded whales who dumped half their pension into LOTR collector's boosters (thank you for the $1 Boromirs) will go COMMANDER MASTERS IS A GOOD INVESTMENT!!!! CASH BAD ME SMART!!!, and then WOTC dumps the rest on Amazon a year from now, next Prime Day. People complain about the dump, but more because they're being limited to 3 boxes per person than that they're worried about how this model is pricing small, local stores out.
