New Phyrexia Previews

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
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Wizards came up with an awesome set for New Phyrexia.... too bad all of their secrecy on the name of the set/previews/etc. is now unraveled. The entire spoiler has been leaked online.... along with a card that Oversoul might love more than Street Wraith.
Well obviously this is something I'm going to want a playset of (actually, a few playsets of). Will the mana cost count as 0 or as 1? If it's 0, this is quite the boon to Ad Nauseam. Actually playing the spell decreases the depth to which Ad Nauseam can dig, but still, it improves speed and doesn't get in the way of digging (even if it counts as costing 1, it should still be handy) very much since it's a 1-cost spell. Cooler than Street Wraith? I'm not sure about that. But it certainly has my attention.

Anyway, back to power creep... Diabolic Edict is pretty good right? There's now a Diabolic Edict that deals 1 damage in the addition of the sacrifice clause, for BB instead of 1B. Not that's it's overpowered I guess, but making cards strictly better is lazy design. In this case I don't see why they didn't just reprint Diabolic Edict.
This is possibly notable for another reason. Although Edict is certainly a creature-centric spell, it's arguably outside the general trend of power-creep in the direction of stronger creatures. If (and this is a big if) the heightened level of power creep we've been seeing with creatures and creature-based cards extends to other cards as well, this has some interesting implications. As probably everyone here has seen at some point, it's been theorized many times that as the cardpool grows (not applicable to rotating formats, but whatever), the number of broken cards that slip through the cracks in design and get added make combo decks stronger (an overpowered draw spell might help a control deck to find some key removal, but it helps a combo deck to kill your face). Barring extensive bans/restrictions, this would lead to combo dominating the whole game. Of course, in some sense, this has already happened. Unban/unrestrict everything and any sane player would predict that combo would become the only game in town. If they start doing power-creep on spells that have nothing to do with creatures, it's practically guaranteed that combo will get beefed up the way aggro (and aggro-control) have been getting beefed up in Legacy. If that happens, something is getting banned. Possibly multiple somethings. But will it be the brand new supercards or the old standbys? Judging from how the DCI has been operating lately, I'm guessing it will be the old cards. If so, which ones?

Of course, this is all highly speculative. Perhaps WotC will be careful and clever enough to continue the power-creep policy, but avoid making combo stronger. They could limit the power creep to newer versions of cards that historically were used in control decks, for example (a better version of Diabolic Edict certainly isn't going to make combo dominate, for example).

Hm...I don't like this Phyrexian mechanic at all. I know they are using it for full on flavor effect. But it's definitely a black mechanic. The ability to do anything but at steep cost is a purely black mechanic. I don't think it should have been allowed to creep into the other colors.
I disagree. I mean, I understand the sentiment. But steep costs are, and have always been, all over the place. I think your qualm is really based on the idea that the cost is paying life specifically. Trading life for something has been used more in black cards than cards of the other colors. But even though paying life is usually thought of as a black mana concept, it's not always that limited and doesn't need to be, especially if it's part of some larger theme. Dumping cards from one's hand to fuel powerful spells/permanents is usually in the black mana realm as well, but madness and threshold, because they were broad mechanics meant to be big parts of the sets where they were used, also applied that to the other colors. Cycling seems like a blue sort of thing, but it was applied to cards of all colors.

The flavor here seems to justify applying it to all colors of mana. I don't see a need to limit it to black.

Plus if you thought Vintage or Legacy storm was powerful before...it just got propelled to the number one spot with this new mechanic.
ANT is sort of my pet deck for Legacy, even though I have no time to actually play it in tournaments right now (I moved to Seattle where I could have more opportunities to play in tournaments, but I'm so busy with school that I have no time to; nevertheless, ANT is what I would play if I had time to attend tournaments). I feel qualified to state that while storm is viable in Legacy right now, it's not that much of a powerhouse (nor was it before Mystical Tutor was banned, but whatever). I might even go so far as to say that storm isn't even the best combo deck right now (Belcher is looking pretty good, and even though it often uses storm as an alternate kill, it's definitely not a storm deck). In a typical Legacy game, you're much more likely to have your whole strategy shut down by Counterbalance while you're beaten to death by creatures than to eat a 20-point Tendrils.

While I don't play Vintage, I would also say that storm isn't that scary in Vintage either. It seems decent enough (actually, I think Belcher is probably better right now in this format as well). But there are just so many powerful decks that are fast, disruptive, and consistent. Tezzeret, Dredge, and MUD seem more like decks that define the format than any storm-based deck.

Considering that they banned a key component of the best storm deck in Legacy even though the deck wasn't on top (although to be fair, it was dominating in some local metagames where it was used more, from what I understand), if some new card or cards does push storm to the top, I'm sure they'll just ban some stuff again.
 

Shabbaman

insert avatar here
The last time this happened some people got themselves in a serious ****storm...
Wizards responds in style... they've banned four magic players. I know (of) two of them, Wafo-Tapa and Matignon are pretty famous.

In other news:

For me, Phyrexian Obliterator serves as a perfect flagbearer for what New Phyrexia is doing. It's a callout to a famous Phyrexian card. It's very powerful standing on its own. And, most importantly, it feels just a few steps over the line of what Magic cards should do.
 

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
Shabbaman said:
Wizards responds in style... they've banned four magic players. I know (of) two of them, Wafo-Tapa and Matignon are pretty famous.
Wow... *very* poor decision on Matigon's part. I'm glad to see he owned up to it though.
 

Ransac

CPA Trash Man
Wow.... banning the current World Champion..... arguably the top two french players.... this is quite a blow to Magic: the Gathering.


Ransac, cpa trash man
 

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
I don't think so. It reflects more on the person's decision making abilities outside of Magic playing; it wasn't during a game or within the framework of such.
 

Shabbaman

insert avatar here
Well, banning high profile individuals has some impact... Also, consider this: these players had the full card list weeks/months in advance of their opponents. That's a lot of time for additional playtesting.
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
Yeah, doesn't really seem like a blow to the game as a whole.

Also, consider this: these players had the full card list weeks/months in advance of their opponents. That's a lot of time for additional playtesting.
Yeah, that's a good point. Not that it would do anything with regards to leaks, but maybe they should make a point of not having the people with early access to full set lists be some of the same people playing in tournaments, at least in some formats for some window of time...
 
M

mythosx

Guest
I'm glad they banned those guys. It's like steroids....of the nerd world. But in all seriousness, in a lot of mental games such as video games, competition is a little tainted as the top players are sometimes apart of the development process. It's hard to beat a Daigo Umehara if they incorporate his feed back into how Street Fighter should work. These guys were given an advantage already and as if it wasn't enough the broke the trust that went along with it to help their friends. If this in the financial world it would be akin to insider trading.
 

Mooseman

Isengar Tussle
I know a retailer who got the pre-release kit and opened it before the prerelease and proceeded to post pictures on line...... oops.
Needless to say the retailer was banned from buy directly from WoTC, running sanctioned events and playing in events for like 4 years.
WoTC is a bit tough, but it is their company (Hasbro) and it is against their rules for releasing the product/information.
I remember back in the day, when there were no spoilers at all and I would only find out the prerelease card when they shipped it to me about Wed before the prerelease weekend.
 

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
I remember back in the day when there weren't any spoilers *or* widespread Internet capability *or* prereleases and the only way I would find out is when the packs shipped to the store :)
 
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