Onslaught

[Lord_of_Me]

well it's been out for a week, has anyone got any of the cards yet? What do you think of them?

I'm getting some at the weekend, two theme decks and a booster or two

[Prometheus]

I don't have any of the cards yet, but I've been looking through the spoiler, and have noted some things I like and some other things I didn't. We'll start with mechanics:

Morph: Overall, I'm not in favor of this thing. It will probably be discussed at length elsewhere so I won't go into detail yet. I'm not saying that it's worthless, but the Morphing cards I saw were generally unimpressive in their Morphing abilities, and I'm just not scared of the hordes of 2/2 colorless typeless creatures you'll see floating around.

Tribal: only barely a mechanic anyway...more a theme for the block. There are some very cool things you can do with it, particularly if you have some of the 5-tap rares, but given that the average tribal creature (Wizards, Clerics, Goblins) isn't all that hard to kill, an aggressive stance with bigger creatures could overcome most of these and keep the tribal effect to a minimum.

Chain Spells: I don't think I'd ever use these unless I was also in the mood to play Primordial Ooze and Takklemaggot. They're just too weird.

Cycling: I'm all over this, particularly the cycling lands and the cycling spells that still do something when you cycle them. They also are heavily involved in my pick for Onslaught strategies. The main cards for the deck are Astral Slide, Lightning Rift, and Invigorating Boon. With multiple copies of each of these enchantments out you can remove multiple creatures the enemy possesses from the game for a turn, get a blast of direct damage (2-8), and get 1-4 +1/+1 counters every time you cycle a card. Even a mediocre creature setup can break through enemy lines in this scenario, and all you have to do to signal the attack is cycle a card, something that is often useful in and of itself anyway.

Gustcloak: a minor white-only mechanic that we've seen here and there before now, the small set of creatures that possess this are frightening. Able to harass the enemy with impunity, they would be an excellent way to chop down the tribal or face-down reserves of your opponent.

Single Cards:
Daru Cavalier -- most who play with me would already know this card has me written all over it.
Exalted Angel -- one of the very few cards that can actually come out faster due to Morphing.
Butcher Orgg -- another excellent way to chop down tribal reserves (or face-down cards...or anything else really) swiftly. Finally a decent Orgg.
Dragon Roost -- 5RR isn't that expensive for a 5/5 dragon token.
Quicksilver Dragon -- where did I put that flagbearer enchantment?
Fade from Memory -- a great way to deal with pesky graveyard utility cards hanging around from Odyssey. Cycles if you don't need it.
Entrails Feaster -- I need one of these. This just flat-out sounds fun. The more you kill the enemy...the more you kill the enemy.

[Lord_of_Me]

i agree with almost all of that, except i don't like cycling and really like tribal. The only cycling cards that i think are actually useful are the ones which have effects when you cycle them.
I'm already planning a big elf deck with a splash of white for loads of lifegain, wellwisher is genuinely scary.

[Fellfrosch]

You have to remember, Isimir, that Prometheus has never liked a set very much when it's released, at least in my memory. He thought the mechanics of Odyssey were pretty lame compared to Invasion, but now he likes them. You just have to give him time.

[Lord_of_Me]

but morph is pretty lame, sure some of the cards are useful but i just don't think that they're as good as everyone thinks

[Fellfrosch]

You can't look at morph the same way you look at Cycling or Madness or something like that, because speed and power and whatnot are beside the point. Morph is about the unknown, which includes surprise, bluffing, second guessing, and all kinds of head games. I don't think anyone can properly judge morph until they've been faced with two mysterious attackers and have to decide which one to block with which creatures--something I admit I haven't done, so I could be way off base. But you can't just dismiss a card because it doesn't have the raw power of another or becuse it doesn't fit an ideal mana curve. Sometimes a card is good simply because it makes the game more interesting to play.

[Lord_of_Me]

I've played a few games with morph cards now, and although they are interesting i'm still not finding them that useful or fun, although this might be because i don't have that many morph cards. I've also changed my mind about cycling and am finding that very useful.

There are also several incredibly broken cards in the set, Cryptic Gateway allows me to put beasts from the devastation deck into play for free!

[Prometheus]

Hehe. Remember that I have a strong bias against wimpy (1/1 or weak 2/2) creatures, and tribal involves a lot of them. Outside of the vastly overpowered 'tap 5 X card' monsters, most of the things tribal cards can do for you are easily obtainable elsewhere as well. I do like creature theme decks---I have a very strong (see mostly untested) angel/dragon + cleric/barbarian deck right now, but it doesn't rely on some of the weird stuff they have tribal doing in Onslaught. (Side note: I was really disappointed to see that Onslaught didn't have barbarians. I was looking forward to getting something better than Halberdiers to be the cheap basic barbarian card for my deck.) Overall tribal relies too heavily I think on the player being able to get out a large number of creatures of the same type, and I'm skeptical of how easy that will be to accomplish. The big thing it does do is provide a way for small weenie creatures to compete with the giants of Dominaria if they're allowed to grow in numbers.

As far as justifying my skepticism of Morphing goes, it has a lot to do with how I envision Morph deck games proceeding. The scariest Morphers are those which do something special if not blocked. Forcing the damaged opponent to discard two cards for instance. The problem I see is that unless your Morphers outnumber his creature force, (I'm assuming this force is composed of fairly normal creatures most of us would have used previous to Onslaught, or creatures similar to them. My favored Daru Lancer is a great Morph blocker.) an assault still isn't worthwhile. The average Morph card is either weak or expensive to Morph. Unless the game has gone on a long time (giving your opponent time to build defenses) you won't be able to fork out the Morph cost for more than one strong or two weak creatures. Thus, you may kill one of your opponent's blockers or get a sneaky blow in, but if your opponent has a defense like the ones I make, your Morphed creature is probably very close to the only one you have left. Even if your opponent has to discard, he's still in the superior position. I see a different scenario if you have tons of extra mana or if you outnumber your opponent with your Morphers, but I choose not to rely on such fickle factors. A well designed Morph deck with some selected non-Morphing cards to draw your opponent's attention could avoid this problem I suspect, but if played against an average defense from an average position with an average mana supply, I see a Morph deck losing due to mana scarcity. The Cyclo-Deck I discussed above could easily handle a Morph attack if it was at all set up. If the Cyclo Enchantments I had out were mostly Astral Slide or Lightning Rift, I'd cycle a card (keeping one always in my hand for that purpose) I'd Slide or Rift a few of his attackers before I blocked, spoiling the surprise factor and taking the heart out of the enemy assault. Alternatively, if Invigorating Boon was my dominating Cyclo-Enchantment, I could simply add +1/+1 counters to the creatures I expected to come under heavy assault, hoping it would be enough to put the beat-down on whatever it was those creatures blocked. While it wouldn't be a perfect solution to the Morphing enigma (don't get me wrong, I think Morphing has some strong points to it...I'm only expressing some of my reservations) I expect the (nonexistent) Cyclo-Deck to work well against a Morph deck.

Like Fell said, though...it's all just theory at this point.

[Lord_of_Me]

the best morph card that i've seen so far was disruptive pitmage which had a "counter target spell" ability, this would be a useful surprise in a control deck but other thatn that a lot of them are pretty dull

[Fellfrosch]

I think Prometheus is envisioning a very different use for Morph than I am--it's not hte kind of thing I would build a deck around, the way I would build one around Threshold or Cycling tricks. It's purpose is not to be a game-winning mechanic, but to make the opponent have to guess instead of plan. That said, you would have to have a lot of Morph creatures to really make them work, so a certain element of "Morph deck"ness would have to be present.

As for Isimir, I'm not sure how to address his point because I'm not sure what it is. Morph creatures aren't fun and have no interesting abilities? Sure, if you say so.

[Lord_of_Me]

well, the ones i have aren't that good, they'r all just boring beasts that would be better played without bothering with morph, but this is probably just the ones i have

[Fellfrosch]

I'n not one to talk anyway, since they haven't even sent me any cards yet. They gave me some MLB cards and some Harry Potter cards, but nothing for Magic. I guess Magic doesn't really need the hype--thousands of people on the internet review it for free, so why bother with review product?

[Lord_of_Me]

i actually think that morph is o.k now, it's fun when you morph a card into a 7/6 towering baloth!

[Prometheus]

The reason I focused on Morph's value as a deck focus is somewhat along the lines of what Fell pointed out. If you only have a few Morph cards, the surprise factor goes way way down and your opponent can begin to plan for how to deal with the Morpher all over again. This problem is aggrivated in repeated play situations, where the opposing player can begin to know what creature to expect you to pull out of the Morphling. If they're scared of it, they'll kill the Morphling as soon as possible. If not...well they won't have to divert many resources to counter your waste of a card. Outside of a 'Morph Deck' the mechanic actually gets worse, as opposed to things like Flashback, Incarnation, or Domain, which can be used effectively even as single cards with little to no support. Threshold was somewhat the same in this respect. If your deck didn't throw stuff into the graveyard at a somewhat reliable rate, your thresholding Dragon Hatchling, for instance, could end up being a 2/2 red flyer for the entire game, or Khamal's Desire would lack the +3/+0 effect in needs to be worthwhile. Boring.

So...is there room for casual use of Morph? It's hard to say without trying it out. Having a few weaker Morphlings mixed in with one or two Towering Baloth could potentially be quite useful, as Isimir pointed out. One or two Morphlings gaining an advantage from their Morph mechanic probably won't be all that devastating however, especially given the inordinate mana costs most of the better Morph cards suffer from. I'd rather have Gustcloak, a Butcher Orgg, (who incidentally does automatically what most red Morphers try to trick out of the enemy) a nasty 5-tap tribal, or a quad of Daru Cavalier. Or even an Entrails Feaster, although I can't claim to know why on that count.

[Lord_of_Me]

how many gustcloak creatures are there? I've got two, gustcloak runner and (i think) gustcloak harrier