When you see a Crypt in play, its obviously easy to play around. Just stop dredging or dredge just enough to apply some pressure and force them to pull the trigger and then just rebuild.
Alternatively, if you don't play around Trap, they can really hinder your chances of winning.
Considering the usual speed of vintage dredge.dec, sometimes to wait for your turn to play a hate card is lethal.
Crypt in example, while extremly useful to fight dredge, has to be played on your own turn, even if its effect could be activated at instant speed : either you already played your crypt on your turn and then your opponent knows how to turn around, or you didnt play them at your turn and dredge wont let you time to play them, winning on their turn.
In comparison, cards like raveneous trap or faerie macabre can be played at "real instant speed" because your opponent discovers the hate during its own turn at the moment you played it. This is a pretty different situation than to know the hate in advance... I think that's the point he wanted to express.
Yeah, I've already been pointed at this mistake of mine - stupid of me, of course, but I haven't been following this spoiler season closely so I, like, opened the spoiler without suspecting anything and just went on. Well, at least I've errataed the videos already - the archetypes where this change somewhat mattera are the RG and BW.
Excellent research - I can see how this type of analysis will really improve your pick choices. I've come to believe that solid drafting is more about understanding the deck archetypes than anything else. It's a little frustrating that you included the cards you can't actually open in a draft in your analysis (cards 270-284 are not available in booster packs), but the logic still applies. While important - I suspect these cards don't fundamentally change the archetypes. Thanks for doing all the hard work.
Pretty sure Sarkhan will awaken the dragons. (Probably not by sleeping naked with some eggs.) Also pretty sure he will reject Bolas (who I'm pretty sure will get a new card in this block) and redeem himself.
Also, Ugin is the whitest of the white, he's essentially Falcor from The Neverending Story.
The GoT inspiration is not an assumption, it's a deduction. You keep talking like I'm saying, "Look, this is the GoT block!", which is not what I'm saying. MTG doesn't ever do rip-offs, so there's no way in hell they would make a "GoT block" whatsoever. They use various inspirations and work them into something entirely different. Plus, there's always the 3-4 years delay that makes impossible for them to really predict the zeitgeist. But mostly it's because they just don't do rip-offs. Just not.
For instance, Lorwyn was devised when Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy was still big. So they had hobbits in minds, and reportedly thought, "Hey, we also have hobbits in our little game! We wanted to call them hobbits, but then we thought better, remember? Let's revisit them and give them a proper hobbit-like identity! Also maybe Ents?"
I joked about marketing, but they don't use marketing strategies based on other properties. Mostly because they can't, they will always arrive 3-4 years later.
"Crypt and RIP are easier to play around since they aren't an instant-speed effect, giving you plenty of time to set up. " Really? Crypt says "t, sacrifice ~: Remove Target Player's graveyard from the game." What's not instant-speed about that? Did you mean something else?
Just a heads up in case you missed it, but Forbidden Orchard is now a 22+ ticket card. If you aren't playing them in an Oath deck where you need the creature generation downside as an upside, you are probably better off selling them and getting better mana fixing.
Ah I see! I forgot that Spirit Bonds has more text than just make a 1/1 spirit for W. Which is sad since I drafted and played with it last night and didn't realize that til now. Thanks for the clarification!
It is actually fine in English as terms go. Kuma did say it was a nitpick.
In Re block archetypes: I really really hope we never get another set like WWK or ROE.
GOT: Me neither. I did read the books but that was years before there was a TV show to talk about. I want to view the episodes some time but have yet to find a reliable way to do so. (NYPL has been a disappointment so far.)
Heck with the turkey man, i wanna see that chow chow / st. bernard mix with body armor and an axe in action (he is on the far right in one of the pictures). He needs a barrel around his neck.
I have already seen people super impose steven colberts face on the bear punching man while giving the bear a communist russia style hat.
I apologise for the terminology mix-up. I quite like the use of term wedge but I can see why it isn't appropriate for the Shards.
I have to agree with your set comparison and that we will probably be returning to Zendikar in the not too distant future. Particular given that from a storyline perspective the Eldrazi are still on that plane and that many of the planeswalkers are looking for a way to vanquish them.
I have yet to get into Game of Thrones, though I know I should get around to it, but from what I know of it I can definitely the comparisons.
hmmm...I think that's REALLY a stretch. Not saying it couldn't be true, but that sounds more like "people want an assumption to be true, so they conveniently make it fit". If marketing thought GoT was going to be big, then wouldn't it make more sense to aim for the generic fantasy look/setting? Especially since the last few years of sets have all had less conventional settings? I mean, why latch onto the dragon aspect?
Also, I wouldn't say for certain that "Dragons are back". The "time travel" aspect probably involves going back to when there were dragons, but no certainty that they will then bring them to the "present" again. Heck, for all we know, Sarkhan is about to go back in time and create some horrid paradox where HE is Ugin. I can already picture somebody in Creative patting themselves on the back for it...
I have to say I wasn't too excited about Morph returning. I was playing paper magic during Onslaught Block and it wasn't a mechanic that I found massively exciting. Though in fairness I didn't play much Limited, where the mechanic shined, while it was largely overshadowed by the Tribal themes in Constructed (with some notable exceptions - Exalted Angel in particular).
There's no doubt that there is still some interesting design space surrounding the Morph mechanic though, so we'll see what happens.
If by download you mean upload you have a (relatively small) allotment on pure to save stuff which you can link to there. Otherwise you need to have a server to host images on. Uploading can be a little bit of a hassle if you don't know how to do it but it isn't all that hard.
As for linking images you must use a URL of the image and put that in the form box that opens when you click on the little painting icon in the rich text editor. You can copy/paste the URL from a browser or anywhere else once you have found it. (Alternatively you can use an IMG tag in the plain source (surrounded by greater than/less than symbols) to post your link manually. Again you need a URL, and you need to put the URL inside a SRC attribute.)
for example in my article a few weeks ago I posted a cartoon.
Go to a page where there's only a picture (you might have to do right click, "open image" on your browser), copy the address, past the address on the URL field of the "add image" function of the editor (the first icon of the second row, the yellow square).
If you upload all the images on your server space, you'll be out of space before you know it.
It's just "dragons are ancient, powerful creatures everybody worships and fears but thinks they were extinct many aeons ago, yet now they're back" (because, spoiler: they are). With Sarkhan in the role of Daenerys, which is probably going to hurt in certain demographics.
Of course there's also a base of "let's do a Mongol set". Not saying it's a set about Game of Thrones, I'm saying, considering they work several years in advance, this marks the point where R&D had started to watch Game of Thrones and/or the marketing department had started to think, "Dragons are going to be big again, let's do a dragon set asap".
Man, I really hope that Turkey Man winds up being a turkey. Not enough turkeys running around MTG.
I'm not too thrilled that Morph is returning. It wasn't particularly fun the first time around. Most of the cards wound up over costed because they also had Morph, or they were extremely good tournament staples because they were so much better than the other chaff. (I'm talking about you, Exalted Angel!)
Couldn't have said it better myself. :)
When you see a Crypt in play, its obviously easy to play around. Just stop dredging or dredge just enough to apply some pressure and force them to pull the trigger and then just rebuild.
Alternatively, if you don't play around Trap, they can really hinder your chances of winning.
It is good to keep the training spontaneous. - James Cullem
Considering the usual speed of vintage dredge.dec, sometimes to wait for your turn to play a hate card is lethal.
Crypt in example, while extremly useful to fight dredge, has to be played on your own turn, even if its effect could be activated at instant speed : either you already played your crypt on your turn and then your opponent knows how to turn around, or you didnt play them at your turn and dredge wont let you time to play them, winning on their turn.
In comparison, cards like raveneous trap or faerie macabre can be played at "real instant speed" because your opponent discovers the hate during its own turn at the moment you played it. This is a pretty different situation than to know the hate in advance... I think that's the point he wanted to express.
I was not aware of that. I'll have to weight my options, now.
I bought them back during Kamigawa when they were like .5 each
He means it isn't instant-speed to cast, I think.
You can play around Crypt by attempting to destroy it before you go dredge further.
I really love these articles. It's nice to get a deeper look at PCT.
Yeah, I've already been pointed at this mistake of mine - stupid of me, of course, but I haven't been following this spoiler season closely so I, like, opened the spoiler without suspecting anything and just went on. Well, at least I've errataed the videos already - the archetypes where this change somewhat mattera are the RG and BW.
Excellent research - I can see how this type of analysis will really improve your pick choices. I've come to believe that solid drafting is more about understanding the deck archetypes than anything else. It's a little frustrating that you included the cards you can't actually open in a draft in your analysis (cards 270-284 are not available in booster packs), but the logic still applies. While important - I suspect these cards don't fundamentally change the archetypes. Thanks for doing all the hard work.
Pretty sure Sarkhan will awaken the dragons. (Probably not by sleeping naked with some eggs.) Also pretty sure he will reject Bolas (who I'm pretty sure will get a new card in this block) and redeem himself.
Also, Ugin is the whitest of the white, he's essentially Falcor from The Neverending Story.
The GoT inspiration is not an assumption, it's a deduction. You keep talking like I'm saying, "Look, this is the GoT block!", which is not what I'm saying. MTG doesn't ever do rip-offs, so there's no way in hell they would make a "GoT block" whatsoever. They use various inspirations and work them into something entirely different. Plus, there's always the 3-4 years delay that makes impossible for them to really predict the zeitgeist. But mostly it's because they just don't do rip-offs. Just not.
For instance, Lorwyn was devised when Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy was still big. So they had hobbits in minds, and reportedly thought, "Hey, we also have hobbits in our little game! We wanted to call them hobbits, but then we thought better, remember? Let's revisit them and give them a proper hobbit-like identity! Also maybe Ents?"
I joked about marketing, but they don't use marketing strategies based on other properties. Mostly because they can't, they will always arrive 3-4 years later.
"Crypt and RIP are easier to play around since they aren't an instant-speed effect, giving you plenty of time to set up. " Really? Crypt says "t, sacrifice ~: Remove Target Player's graveyard from the game." What's not instant-speed about that? Did you mean something else?
Indeed they will. Any token that dies hits the graveyard before vanishing.
You don't want to use Orchards since giving them creatures that block Ichorid and other tokens is bad for you.
I'm also not sure, but I think if their spirit tokens die it will exile your bridges as well.
Just a heads up in case you missed it, but Forbidden Orchard is now a 22+ ticket card. If you aren't playing them in an Oath deck where you need the creature generation downside as an upside, you are probably better off selling them and getting better mana fixing.
Would Forbidden Orchard work in place of Mana Confluence? Trying to be even more budget and I already own the Orchards.
Ah I see! I forgot that Spirit Bonds has more text than just make a 1/1 spirit for W. Which is sad since I drafted and played with it last night and didn't realize that til now. Thanks for the clarification!
Bah, this is my favor PRE and I fell asleep and missed it. :(
It is actually fine in English as terms go. Kuma did say it was a nitpick.
In Re block archetypes: I really really hope we never get another set like WWK or ROE.
GOT: Me neither. I did read the books but that was years before there was a TV show to talk about. I want to view the episodes some time but have yet to find a reliable way to do so. (NYPL has been a disappointment so far.)
Heck with the turkey man, i wanna see that chow chow / st. bernard mix with body armor and an axe in action (he is on the far right in one of the pictures). He needs a barrel around his neck.
I have already seen people super impose steven colberts face on the bear punching man while giving the bear a communist russia style hat.
'MURICA!
Thanks Kuma.
I apologise for the terminology mix-up. I quite like the use of term wedge but I can see why it isn't appropriate for the Shards.
I have to agree with your set comparison and that we will probably be returning to Zendikar in the not too distant future. Particular given that from a storyline perspective the Eldrazi are still on that plane and that many of the planeswalkers are looking for a way to vanquish them.
I have yet to get into Game of Thrones, though I know I should get around to it, but from what I know of it I can definitely the comparisons.
hmmm...I think that's REALLY a stretch. Not saying it couldn't be true, but that sounds more like "people want an assumption to be true, so they conveniently make it fit". If marketing thought GoT was going to be big, then wouldn't it make more sense to aim for the generic fantasy look/setting? Especially since the last few years of sets have all had less conventional settings? I mean, why latch onto the dragon aspect?
Also, I wouldn't say for certain that "Dragons are back". The "time travel" aspect probably involves going back to when there were dragons, but no certainty that they will then bring them to the "present" again. Heck, for all we know, Sarkhan is about to go back in time and create some horrid paradox where HE is Ugin. I can already picture somebody in Creative patting themselves on the back for it...
Yes, Turkey Man FTW!
I have to say I wasn't too excited about Morph returning. I was playing paper magic during Onslaught Block and it wasn't a mechanic that I found massively exciting. Though in fairness I didn't play much Limited, where the mechanic shined, while it was largely overshadowed by the Tribal themes in Constructed (with some notable exceptions - Exalted Angel in particular).
There's no doubt that there is still some interesting design space surrounding the Morph mechanic though, so we'll see what happens.
If by download you mean upload you have a (relatively small) allotment on pure to save stuff which you can link to there. Otherwise you need to have a server to host images on. Uploading can be a little bit of a hassle if you don't know how to do it but it isn't all that hard.
As for linking images you must use a URL of the image and put that in the form box that opens when you click on the little painting icon in the rich text editor. You can copy/paste the URL from a browser or anywhere else once you have found it. (Alternatively you can use an IMG tag in the plain source (surrounded by greater than/less than symbols) to post your link manually. Again you need a URL, and you need to put the URL inside a SRC attribute.)
for example in my article a few weeks ago I posted a cartoon.
http://outofthebrokensky.com/mtgo/cartoon-v3tov4.jpg
To make it show in your article you could write (in the plain source)
<img src="http://outofthebrokensky.com/mtgo/cartoon-v3tov4.jpg" />
Go to a page where there's only a picture (you might have to do right click, "open image" on your browser), copy the address, past the address on the URL field of the "add image" function of the editor (the first icon of the second row, the yellow square).
If you upload all the images on your server space, you'll be out of space before you know it.
It's just "dragons are ancient, powerful creatures everybody worships and fears but thinks they were extinct many aeons ago, yet now they're back" (because, spoiler: they are). With Sarkhan in the role of Daenerys, which is probably going to hurt in certain demographics.
Of course there's also a base of "let's do a Mongol set". Not saying it's a set about Game of Thrones, I'm saying, considering they work several years in advance, this marks the point where R&D had started to watch Game of Thrones and/or the marketing department had started to think, "Dragons are going to be big again, let's do a dragon set asap".
Man, I really hope that Turkey Man winds up being a turkey. Not enough turkeys running around MTG.
I'm not too thrilled that Morph is returning. It wasn't particularly fun the first time around. Most of the cards wound up over costed because they also had Morph, or they were extremely good tournament staples because they were so much better than the other chaff. (I'm talking about you, Exalted Angel!)
Still the set seems exciting enough so far.
Great job compiling all of the info!