Timewaster's Guide Archive
Games => CCGs => Topic started by: Prometheus on August 07, 2004, 06:39:01 PM
-
Well I finally saw an article with some real information about the upcoming Kamigawa block:
http://www.mtgnews.com/F/Topic/1091786138979_Comprehensive_Kamigawa_Block_Informa.html
So far it's looking good to me. Aside from the more average plains, the basic land art looks really good, and I think the flavor of the whole thing is very neat. It looks like despite the japanese flavor-theme they're not going to go heavily into Samurai and Ninjas, which is probably a good thing. (although I'd prefer new creature types like Samurai over the Mirrodin-introduced Archer.)
As for actual information about the mechanics of the block, there isn't much yet, of course. 'Something special' for the kami creatures doesn't explain much. I was interested to hear about the potential for a higher rate of Legends, something we haven't seen since Invasion.
I could personally do without the rabbitfolk, and if elves can take a vacation, I wish goblins would as well, but that's just me...
-
The Prerelease is September 18th and 19th.
-
The previews have started, and so have the unofficial leaks. Check out this crazy wacko loony toon card on mtgnews: http://cards.mtgnews.com/Cards/CK/Akki_Lavarunner.html
Oddly, EUOL and I had designed card concepts very similar to this for a CCG we were working on years ago.
-
so question... does it lose haste when it flips then? Or is that irrelevant because flipping doesn't induce summoning sickness?
-
I'm still not 100% sold on the Akki Lavarunner being a real card. I have a hard time believing that Wizards would format the card quite like that. The mechanics seem good though.
My best guess on how the card would work is that the Akki Lavarunner would 'lose' haste, as it would be a different creature after the flip. As you indicated, though, it wouldn't really be relevant. It's not entering play. Best guess...
They've started the official card previews now, and although everything they've put out is white, they look pretty cool. (not that white is bad, but 3 white cards out of 3 previews is just weird)
I remember coming back from one of the Mirrodin block prereleases and actually saying that a legends block would be a cool theme to go with. Quite the coincidence.
-
I'm willing to bet that it's a real card, and that there will be several like it (at least one per color), and that they will, in fact, be formatted that way. Care to make it interesting?
I imagine that they're touting white because they think they can finally make it a good color again. We'll see.
Yes, I remember you saying that a Legends block would be cool, and I remember saying that you were high. Guess I'll ahve to eat my words.
-
Hehe, no it's ok. Stuff like today's preview card makes me think it's the folks at Wizards who are high:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/daily/mf5
Fortunately, I doubt they'll have to ban this Time card too. Pretty sweet.
Update: In the interests of not double-posting I'll just modify this one for now. I just took a look at the mtgnews.com spoiler for Kamigawa, though, and this block is looking to be indescribably cool, and that's with only 30-some cards out so far.
Some currently listed cards to pay attention to:
* Blessed Breath - The Splice onto Arcane ability is a winner. Blessed Breath is itself is less important.
* Reciprocate - The signals we're getting from Wizards suggests that there will be a cycle of indestructible cards. The set has a built-in method for dealing with them. Not the best one I've ever seen, but it will be important to the set's viability.
* Hinder - They aren't reprinting Counterspell again. Get over it. That said, Hinder has a lot of advantages over its forebear, although the higher cost will keep it in the permanently weaker category.
* Cranial Extraction - It took me a bit to figure out why this was in Kamigawa and cheaper than I expected. The answer is in the new Legends rule. With Cranial Extraction you can clear the way for your Legend of choice to come into play and stay there uncontested.
* Struggle for Sanity - I pooh poohed this one initially. As the rest of the block unfolds, however, this could become extremely useful to cut down on their supply of Splice onto Arcane Spells and to combat the massive card drawing blue is sporting so far.
* Sakura-Tribe Elder - A card that has enough points in its favor to virtually dominate both Rampant Growth and Diligent Farmhand at what they do best? Yeah, I'll be scrubbing commons boxes for these.
There will be plenty more I'm sure, and the cards I didn't mention include many that will be devastating in play. The new environment continues to shape itself up, however, and I don't think I've ever seen a block with potential like this.
-
I was bumping around on the website for the Kamigawa Prereleases today, and I noticed that the price of the flights has been raised by $5 from $25 to $30. I also noted, however, that this is not the case for pre-registration by Pay-Pal. If you're planning to go, hopefully you'll see this and can save a couple bucks. Who else is planning to go, anyway?
I was trying to hold off double posting just to gush about the new set, but the spoiler at mtgnews is showing an awesome set coming out of the woodworks. There's a ton of powerful cards and interesting mechanics (as well as a lot of Legends, which is always good) but there's just as much flavor. This will be a good, good block, folks.
-
I think 8 days between posts is acceptable.
-
Surprisingly, I've been very underwhelmed with what I've seen in the previews--with the exception of the "flip" creatures (which have been officially confirmed) none of the new mechanics really catch my interest. Admittedly, all of the preview cards so far have been the crazy wow cards for the set, showing off all of the rules they've decided to break, which doesn't give you a good idea of what the set is really going to be like.
I loved Mirrodin, though, and of course I love Magic in general, so I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and I am planning on going to the Prerelease. Where and how does one preregister?
-
My reluctance to double post has less to do with the number of days since the last post and more to do with the number of times that I've posted 2-3 times in the CCG thread with no response.
But anyway...the site that you can preregister at seems to be down right now, so the exact link will have to wait. It should be at www.theblackrose.com though, the site for the local tournament organizers. The payment method specified is PayPal.
You're right about not really having seen the core of the set, I'll admit. I still think what we've seen is pretty cool, but that is skewed by the fact that a large portion of what we've seen has been rares. The mechanics other than the flip cards that are interesting to me are Splice onto Arcane and the Arcane spell subtype in general, along with the other things that are coming with it. I really like the idea that there is a separate set of spells for the kami, and I've been well pleased by the interactions those spells have had across all the different colors.
-
Splice onto Arcane looks like it could be cool, but all of the cards I've seen (admittedly unofficial) have a splice cost identical to their normal casting cost. Maybe I'm just dumb, but I fail to see the point of combining spell effects instead of just letting them resolve separately. Unless protection from colors is really big in Kamigawa (and counterspells are really weak).
-
I didn't see it at first either. If you look at the Splice wording, though, you only reveal the splice spell. It isn't expended. You're only tacking its effect onto the other Arcane spell. In some ways, it's a funky form of buyback, but one that I like quite a bit.
-
Aha, you're right. That's suddenly adds a whole new twist to things, doesn't it?
-
Well, we got our look at the set. The mtgnews site is up to 250 of 306 cards, I've got the bulk of my Prerelease Tactics article ready to go, and I'm still liking the look of the set quite a bit. I'm trying to remind myself not to pick my deck's colors before I see my Prerelease card supply, but black is looking very good right now.
Blue's commons, unfortunately, are still only about half revealed, so I can't really tell how that color will be yet.
-
White is also looking good, with Bushido helping to make the weenies pretty fast. Red has a couple of good commons, but I don't know about the color as a whole.
Unfortunately for me, I've decided not to go this time around--I was all set to press the "pay now" button to preregister, but in the end I just don't think I have the money to spare (Dawn's little adventure a few weeks ago caused a lot of big hospital bills that we, obviously, hadn't budgeted for). I was really looking forward to a day of gaming to take my mind of off work (I was there until midnight today), and I feel bad leaving Nate alone, but I don't see any way around it. So have fun, and I look forward to the strategy article (and, eventually, the results article).
-
I've gone alone before, so if it happens again, I'll be alright, and your reasons for not going are valid, to be sure. If anyone else is still in the area and is considering giong, I'd be interested in carpooling for the sake of friends and efficiency, though.
It feels so weird to write a Prerelease Tactics article for a block we haven't seen yet, since I just know I'm making a fair number of errors. Just how costly is the blue focus on returning lands to your hand? Beats me. It'll be coming out one way or another, though. I've been at this long enough that even if I'm horribly wrong on some things I'll be right on a lot of others. That and I think scrutinizing the format so closely helps me out while I'm deckbuilding as well.
I wonder where the rabbitfolk that were I mentioned as a rumor in the original article went? The Kitsune have really long ears and could be mistaken for bunnies, I guess.
-
Chris and I and fuzzyoctopus and her husband and Mr. M and his wife are all going to the prerelease--however, I have no idea of who's riding with whom, so I'm not much help in that respect.
-
There's a new prerelease tactics article up (http://www.timewastersguide.com/view.php?id=844&dep=2).
Just fyi
-
For the record, the mutation of my apostrophes into capital 'O's with dots above them isn't my fault. I don't even know how to make that mark.
Predictably, there's another nine cards out on the rumors site after I had to send in the article, but I checked, and they haven't been confirmed as commons. I rather suspect that some of the whites I put down as commons aren't...I think there's too many of them. Rumor pages are just kind of like that.
As far as traveling to the Prerelease, I'd be happy to carpool with someone, either driving or riding. I'm currently planning to drive up alone, and that isn't any fun.
-
That would be you using Word instead of a text editor. It likes to make "Smart quotes" which are only "smart" in the sense that they hurt.... I mean, in the sense that only Word seems to understand them. Text editors interpret them as other parts of the ASCII Set.
I confess I didn't have time to read the whole article, as it only came in at 11 and I was in the middle of work, which I stalled in order to get articles up. I did it for you guys. Don't say I never gave you anything. Hopefully the edits will clear those up.
-
Thanks SE.
-
Pretty good appraisal of the set, I think, though you may have been a little harsh on Splice--while it's true that no sealed deck is likely to produce a worthwhile "splice engine," I think that even one spell spliced one time is still some good card advantage--it's a spell that you get to cast twice for no extra cost (once for splice and once for real). Splicing it multiple times is just gravy.
My other issue with the review is that you never mentioned (or at least I didn't see it) the black card Thief of Hope. As prevalent as spirits and arcane appear to be, there is almost no card I'd rather open than Thief of Hope--it has the game-breaking simplicity that all of us overlooked in Disciple of the Vault, plus it's relatively well-costed for black and replaces itself when it dies. If you have a few spirits and arcane spells it will probably be helpful, and if you have a lot of spirits and arcane spells it will be absolutely ridiculous. Not to mention the fact that it's in black, which seems strong in Kamigawa, so any deck you put it in will be well-supported with creatures and removal.
Other than those two notes I agreed with pretty much everything you said. Dang, I wish I was going to this thing.
-
I knew I was being hard on Splice spells, but I stated beforehand that I was going to be. I thought about that for a while, and even though I can see people splicing at the Prerelease, when it came to judging cards I couldn't afford to take that into account. How does one pick a Tier for a card when you have no idea how many times it will be used? Add into that the fact that even someone that tries hard to splice a lot will frequently cast a splice spell only once to provide a base for another splice spell to splice onto, and it becomes too complicated. My solution of informing the reader that I was going to judge them harshly, as though they could only be used once, was the best solution I could come up with.
You're probably right about the Thief of Hope deserving a mention. By the time I got done with all 110 commons, however, I could barely think straight. When I made my list of gamebreaking uncommons, I focused mostly on those cards that would really break the game in ways that Thief of Hope can't.
I think that Thief of Hope doesn't quite merit a comparison with the Disciple of the Vault. The Disciple of the Vault earned the bulk of its reputation from affinity decks that had vast numbers of artifacts that they could sacrifice on demand as a game-finishing blow. The Thief of Hope requires you to play spells, not just put them into play, and since they're Spirits instead of artifacts, this will always cost mana. The Thief of Hope fills much the same function and has a large number of merits that the Disciple of the Vault does not have, but it isn't quite the same thing.
-
A direct comparison to Disciple of the Vault was probably inaccurate, since most of its glory came from constructed decks. It was still very good in limited, though, and my point was not so much to equate the cards as to equate the opinions players have about them--when Mirrodin first came out people undervalued the Disciple, and I would say that they are now undervaluing the Thief of Hope in the same way. I don't know your definition of "gamebreaking," but I would rather have the Thief than any of the uncommons you mentioned (assuming I had the spirits and arcane spells to back it up, which I'm assuming a lot of sealed decks will). I could be wrong, of course, but I wanted to put the thought out there.
One thing that you and I agree on, I see, is that Green seems oddly lacking this time around. Maybe it's just that we're misinterpreting the set--it could be that there's a really obvious Soulshift engine just sitting there in the common green cards, or something else that you can't realy see until you get the cards in hand. I would say, however, that green looks to be the set's weak color at this point.
-
It's too late for anyone going to the Prerelease, I expect, but I browsed through the spoiler one last time only to discover that two cards I'd known about had finally gotten their rarity listed, and are now posted as common, both of which are important.
Frostwielder - Our Tim for this set. One damage is plenty to kill many creatures. With Soulshift running rampant through the environment, removing creatures from the game is probably a good idea too. Otherwise, this is a little weak compared to the Vulshok Tim we got in Fifth Dawn.
Sakura-Tribe Elder - Green gets another Tier 1 common here. Any card that can Rampant Growth for the same cost and provide a chump-blocker depending on the situation is incredible. It's not an exciting card, but it definitely is a major power boost for green to have this guy in the common slot, especially alongside Kodama's Reach.
-
Hey Prometheus,
I've typed up my deck and sideboard for you (actually, I made Chris do it), but I don't know where to send it (I don't have your email address).
If you want to email me your email address, please send it to
kristina at kuglerworld dot com because my main email isn't working (stupid Hotmail!)
Thanks!
-
Say, what is the fear ability?
Also, I find the red creature "Frostwielder" rather ironic. A red creature that can control frost... yeah.
-
Fear means that creature can only be blocked by balck or artifact creatures.
-
Aha, well met ferocious D.
-
Red using frost is a little bit odd, since a large number of Red's spells are fire based. Red itself isn't a fire magic color (at least not all the time) but a color centered around destructive impulses and a 'I want it now' attitude.
The Frostwielder is part of the carryover of Tim from blue to Red that they started as long ago as Judgment, so mechanically it fits.
It's still a little strange to see Red using Frost, but under Wizard's current vision of the color wheel, there isn't any conflict. If you want a flavor reason for it, you could justify it based on high snowy mountains.
-
Well, I just wanted to be difficult. =P
-
I've been buying a pack or two every now and then. I cleaned the Reston Target out of them this afternoon by buying one. I need lots of Kami. Because Devouring Rage is a really cool card.
As an additional cost to play Devouring Rage, you may sacrifice any number of Spirits.
Target creature gets +3/+0 until end of turn. For each Spirit sacrificed this way, that creature gets an additional +3/+0 until end of turn.
That for 4R. It's an arcane instant (which means you can slip in other effects too if you have the manna and the right cards).
What's cool about that is the Soulshift ability. I got a Vine Kami which has soulshift 6. I reckon I start put a bunch of Kami out there, sacrifice the cheap ones first, then play the ones with big soulshift numbers later, meaning I get all my spirits back. Since I also have Through the Breach, (put a creature from hand into play with Splice onto Arcane 2RR), for 9 manna I can do a hefty amount of damage, all of it instant so it can be done after blockers are declared and before damage is assigned. put on a lowly 1/1 and sacrificing all the big creatures just to get him through, or else putting it on something with trample, and boom, I win. It's even better when I instants to recover the spells or duplicate their effect.
Sorry, I sound like a nerd and a tournament goer, it's just never been so obvious to me how a card can be abused if you just have the manna.
Edit: just thinking about that, I realize that I couldn't use the splice to arcane, because it would use a different target, so the converted manna cost of the whole process would be 10 manna, instead of 9. More, obviously, if I was digging in the graveyard and used more than one Through the Breach -- though the future Through the Breaches might possibly be able to use the splice.
-
I think this is why the canonical black graveyard recursion was a little low in Kamigawa. Soulshift appeared frequently in green and a little in white to make up for it. Consider Hana Kami for a build like that, since it can fetch an Arcane spell out of your graveyard for you. Abusing Soulshift isn't really the way I would go for a Spirit deck myself, but it is interesting.
-
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/daily/mr158
I guess it was only a matter of time...the Prerelease is January 22nd-23rd.
-
ok, you know what they've done with that, haven't you? Commited me to buying boxes of boosters, that's what.
-
At least they aren't ninja monkeys. Just think how much worse it could be...
-
maybe in an unglued expansion...
and who's to say they aren't. If you go through the spoilers and find any creatures with an ape or monkey AND a ninja assignment, I may need to find those cards specifically. However, since the main green creatures this time are snakes, that seems unlikely. However, monkeys feature big in Chinese and Japanese astrology, so I'm not writing them off.
-
The Prerelease is on Saturday. I'll be heading up with one or two guys I know through work, but the time is undecided yet.
I'll get a Prerelease article out as well, along with a little bonus material because I've been so lazy in recent times.
-
if you can have it ready for Thursday that would be ideal.
-
I'm so tempted to go. I wonder what I could work out to pay for it....
-
sell organs
-
There's actually an organ store down the street from my new house, so I figure they have the local market all wrapped up. I could go back-alley and try to sell them illicitly, but I doubt I could fit an organ under my coat.
-
sure, just use smallones. Like rabbit kidneys or something.
-
I'm not acquainted with that model. Is it pipe or electric?
-
I believe that biologists think of it as more pipe than electric.
-
That's probably best. I doubt there's much of a market for pieces of robot rabbits. Bionic bunnies, though, are another thing altogether.
-
yeah, clockwork/steam driven rabbits are more chic these days.
-
Two days until the Prerelease of Betrayers of Kamigawa. Ninja coming along with the rest of the band this time...looks like a blast, and I think I've already found my most-sought-after rare for the set.
I should have a Prerelease Tactics article up again tomorrow afternoon for anyone who's interested.
-
reference: http://www.timewastersguide.com/view.php?id=960
It's up. go forth and win one for TWG with my ninja!
-
Changes in the spoiler since the posting of my article (not my fault):
* Day of Destiny is a rare, not a common...big surprise.
* Psychic Spear has a casting cost of B. That one is going to be good.
And...that's about all. There are still tons of cards that have an unknown rarity, and so I can't say that they are commons to complete my article. A real bummer...maybe Wizards is getting better at locking down on card information? (Not that it didn't stop mtgnews.com from getting all 165 cards in some form of reliability.)
-
In a good white deck, Hundred-Talon Strike is one of the best defensive instants I've seen in a while--when you splice it, you can actually cast it for free by tapping the creature you'res casting it on. (As long as you wait until after blockers are declared, a blocker deals damage whether it's tapped or not.)
It occurs to me that Champions black has some excellent commons with Fear--this could make ninjas pretty easy to sneak through. More of a draft strategy than sealed deck, but I thought I'd throw it out there.
Also, is it just me or does this set have a ton of cycles? I counted at least five, and that seems high to me. Maybe I'm remembering wrong.