The prerelease was last weekend. That means a prerelease wrap-up, plus some thoughts on the new cards.
I worked a new location this year. Legion Events held a second prerelease at Pegasus Games in Madison. Pegasus is one of the local stores, so you could argue that it is a direct competitor to Misty Mountain, the Legion-affiliated store that holds the usual prereleases. That’s not the way Steve Port, TO extraordinaire, thinks. His goal is to grow the player base, not set store against store.
Overall, I think that worked. We had a small turnout, and almost all of the players were regulars at Pegasus. More importantly, few were Misty regulars. I only recognized a couple players as prerelease regulars. One played at Pegasus because it was a shorter trip. She had played in the midnight release at Misty, and played at Pegasus the next day simply because she could sleep in an extra half hour. Of the others, we stole, at most, a small handful from Misty and the regular release. The rest probably would not have played in a prerelease if we had not held one at Pegasus.
It was not a big turnout. We had ten players in the main, eight playing open dueling, and we had one draft fire. Not great, but it was the first time, and we did not have a chance to do much advertising. Should be better in April.
With that few players, I did not have to work very hard. I had the normal number of calls — all pretty simple. A player flipped a card shuffling. Players were uncertain about whether you count the fetched land with Exploding Borders (you do — you resolve the steps in the order they are written on the card.) I got to explain a few cards — but very few. This set is a lot easier to understand, at least for most players, than layer-centric Lorwyn.
Not a lot of interesting stories, either. We had a few epic battles, but most were pretty straightforward. It was limited, and creatures battled creatures. The set looks like fun — but until I draft it, I can’t really say all that much.
We had one player with Wall of Reverence and not a ton of aggressive cards. He gained a ton of life. Every round went to time — but since we were just playing four rounds, that was not too bad.
The draft was won by a player drafting five-color good stuff. The mana fixing was certainly there, but I don’t know whether that means much. That same player drafted five-color earlier that week, and I beat his deck. The five-color could be more player preference than a deck that was actually there.
Besides, it was the prerelease. You draft the rares, then read the rest.
The change from tournament packs to boosters was not a big issue. The decks seemed fine either way (and with six packs, they should be.) Logistically, it took a bit more effort to make sure that we had lands available, but we had planned that out ahead of time. We had land available, and simply set piles on the tables where we used to pool land. No problem. On the plus side, the deck registration sheets now have columns for total and played lands, so that makes it simpler to explain deck registration.
In the actual event — well, logistics for a ten player event is not hard.
We registered pools, not decks. I doubt that anyone would have added cards to their pools even if we hadn’t, but registering pools just gives players a bit more assurance that they won’t be cheated. It also lets us go find a decklist when a player gets pounded by an opponent’s bombs, and wants to know whether the opponent really opened them.
The slow day meant I had plenty of time to think about the set. I have lots of opinions, but a lot of others have already listed most of them.
Let’s start with Thornling.
Patrick Chapin mentioned that indestructibility in a format with this many remove-from-the-game effects is not what it once was. In this environment, indestructibility is only slightly better than regeneration. (Better, mainly because Wrath of God still exists, but only just.) Obviously, this card would have been a lot better with Shroud or even protection form color X on command — but those are “not in flavor for Green.”
One good thing about Thornling — it means that Green, for the first time in a very long time, has the creature with the most separate abilities. That is strange — in past sets, Blue usually held the record for abilities per creature, while other colors were a step behind, and Green looked like it was all Portal reprints. This time things are a bit closer to balanced — not really balanced, but closer.
This time, White got the only plain vanilla creature — the only creature with nothing but flavor text in the rules box. Well, technically every color did, but I’m not counting Fusion Elemental — the dude that is not covered in chainsaws.
Assuming I counted correctly, Blue creatures have an average of 1.9 abilities per creature, White creatures have 1.8, and Green creatures have an average of 1.3 abilities per creature — 1.1 if you take Thornling out of the mix. Green is still lagging badly, but it is still in sight at the finish.
It’s been worse.
Here’s the breakdown of number creatures with a given number of abilities, for those interested. Note that a disadvantage is still an ability — and that’s one reason I tend not to count Black cards in the comparison. “Cannot block” is nothing to brag about.
Not too bad this time.
Another set of comparisons — number of instants verses sorceries. Blue has five instants and one sorcery. White has four instants and a sorcery. Green has three and three. That’s not dreadful — except for the fact that Green’s basic landcycler is another stupid lifegain card. I have a casual lifegain theme deck — not really sure that that card will see play even there.
Some comments on individual cards — and I’ll try to stay away from cards that other people have already commented on excessively.
Compare this card to Rush of Knowledge.
Soul’s Majesty: 4G, Sorcery, Draw cards equal to the power of target creature you control.
Rush of Knowledge, 4U, Sorcery, Draw cards equal to the highest converted mana cost among permanents you control.
See the difference? If I have a pair of 5/5s in play, and I cast Rush of Knowledge, I will draw cards even if you Terror one of my creatures in response. Soul’s Majesty targets, meaning that if you can kill my creature, the spell is countered on resolution due to lack of targets. (Or, to use a last-century term, it fizzles.)
Moreover, the Green card is a rare, and the Blue one was a common, but there are probably Limited considerations for that effect. Maybe.
The target thing is just a small difference, but it may well be the difference between Constructed playable and junk rare.
Ruptured Spire
I found this card really interesting on two different levels.
First, I love the fact that this is a really good mana fixer in the common slot. That has implications for Limited, of course. I like the fact that, as common, new players will have easy access to these. I always hated to have to tell new players that their multicolored decks could not work well enough to beat anyone unless they invested real bucks in City of Brass / painlands / etc. Too many new players ended up dropping because they could not / would not invest in lands. As a result, they kept losing and quit the hobby to do something less painful, like javelin catching.
As a judge, I was looking through the cards for props to use in teaching new judges the rules. Some new judges learn layers faster seeing cards with layered abilities than just reading the rules. From that perspective, Ruptured Spire is interesting. It does not have layer effects, but it does have the four most common types of abilities. They are static (comes into play tapped), triggered (when it comes into play, sacrifice…), activated (tap: add one…) and a mana ability.
Why Thallids? Does anyone, anywhere, really like the fungus folks? Is it the same people who supposedly like coin-flip decks? We have all these nice new remove-from-game cards now — can’t we use them on those people and then get rid of Thallids?
You know, we may finally have gotten rid of coin-flip cards. There are none in Conflux, and none in the current standard at all. Maybe they are gone.
I’m feeling like you do when you have had a really bad headache for hours, and it feels like the aspirin has finally kicked in — that hesitant, careful moving to see whether it is really gone, or just hiding.
/me moves head slightly, then again.
No pain. Seems like our long coin-flip migraine is finally gone. Now let’s oust the Thallids.
Mythic Rares
Looking over the lists, I’m seeing a lot of marginal rares, but some good Mythics. I’m not talking about Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker — which I want for my Nicol Bolas EDH deck. Nicol seems very good, but also very expensive. Instead, I am looking at cards like Mirror-Sigil Sergeant. I can see one reason for making him Mythic — he is going to be amazingly annoying in Limited. On the other hand, he looks annoyingly good in UW control. Only good thing is that he might not be an automatic four-of. Might be a zero-of, but if you can hit the casting cost and still protect him for at least a turn, you should have inevitability.
Given my track record, of course, Mirror dude will probably prove unplayable. The fast decks are already fast, and adding Conflux probably won’t slow them down.
This seems like a flashback to old battles — something from my post-traumatic stress syndrome. Once again, the largest creature in the game is not Green, but Blue. Why Blue? I understand that this is another creature in the series of Krakens, and krakens are Blue. My question is — why? Why not give Green uncastably large creatures that can really only be played if you plan on reanimating them? I will admit that Green had gotten a 13/13, but it was a plain-vanilla 13/13. No shroud, no trample, no evasion. The Blue version gets it all.
Yes, color pie — but Wizards let mana fixing bleed all over everything. Why not let Green have something playable — something that costs more than three mana, that is.
I’m rambling. I had another point to cover, but I have now spent 8 hours trying to remember it, and I can’t deadline is here.
Maybe next week.
PRJ