Kamigawa Silver Bullets?

[Notepad]

Well, Anthony Alongi (I think it was him...or Bleiweiss...) made a nice point that Clone will be a silver bullet against Kamigawa. How nice...blue finally gets some really awesome creature kill. /sarcasm.

Blue...gets...awesome creature kill. Combined with Soul Foundry, you can stomp a Kamigawa deck flat into the ground.

Then I started thinking of my white weenie deck, which I first built a long time ago in the days of the Dojo. There has been a Karakas in there since I could trade for one, always fearing the random power legend (Ihsan's Shade always was a scare for me). Karakas will be an ultimate power bounce card for white, if you can track them down. It may get more powerful if it gets errata, but it looks like it will only be creatures.

So....
...blue gets creature kill.
...white gets bounce.

Strange, but its there. Both awesome against the flood of legends from Kamigawa. Anybody else know of cards who will step to the forefront as silver bullets?

 

[Oversoul]

Tsabo Tavoc! Sad but true...

Seriously though, Kamigawa seems to lack the block focus that made Invasion-Mirrodin blocks severely vulnerable against certain cards...

 

[Rooser]

Yeah, Ovvy's right. This is the first time since masks that they haven't made the deck strictly mechanic based.

 

[Oversoul]

Ovvy, eh?

Anyway, to me this is good news and with the arrival of Raisin format (I'm not going to stop calling it that until...) it looks like positive changes are arriving, although the wall thing was more typical of what we're used to (stupid changes that don't do very much but cause annoyance).

I still haven't seen any truly broken cards in this set though, and since most of the last sets have had at least two, I'm a bit worried about that knee-jerk response to Mirrodin's being overpowered I mentioned earlier. Fortunately the set hasn't been outright bad either, and I don't think we're going to have to worry about another Mercadian-quality block (you know, with Sheltering Prayers and the like).

 

[Spiderman]

Originally posted by Rooser
Yeah, Ovvy's right. This is the first time since masks that they haven't made the deck strictly mechanic based.

Is that bad? I mean, they said that was the point behind the making of CHK...

 

[Oversoul]

I don't think it's bad. I think it's very good, like my last post says...sorta says, anyway...

But it's COK, not CHK, remember?

 

[Spiderman]

Ah. So YOU don't think it's bad... now to clarify whether Rooser agrees since it's hard to tell for me from his post....

 

[Oversoul]

I would think he would agree, since he's not a scrub...

 

[Rooser]

Ah, I've been summoned!

No, I don't think it's bad at all - in fact I'm glad it happened.

I just restated it because SeFro's original post seemed to be insisting that Kamigawa has mechanic hosers - much like how you could hose Odyssey's graveyard decks with Tormod's crypt, or hose Onslaught's tribal decks with Enginneered plague and Tsabo's Decree, or how you can hose Mirrodin block decks with Shatterstorm.

I don't feel that Kamigawa block decks will be hosed by "legend haters" because, like I said - this is the first time since masks that they haven't made the deck strictly mechanic based.

Does it all make sense now?

EDIT: In fact, I think most Kamigawa-heavy decks will be focused on the Arcane mechanics, in which case the only viable hosers will be in Kamigawa block itself, which in turn means that they'll be balanced, which in turn means that here's no magic silver bullet Seffy can summon up to ruin his casual group's fun.

 

[Oversoul]

And, I think, that more important than this...

It means that people will actually build decks instead of putting together cards with synergies that are so obvious. I think the most obvious ones were the five-color rainbow decks from Invasion, the Threshold decks from Odyssey, the Elf decks from Onslaught, and the Affinity decks from Mirrodin. Those decks were based completely on card interactions that were obviously put there intentionally by the designers. Now, for the first time since the Masquerade block, there will hopefully be a higher degree of creativity and ingenuity being employed...

 

[Spiderman]

Hey, I don't think it's bad; I think they should have alternated between mechanic and whatever-this-is-called, rather than keep it mechanic-driven for so long. It was just hard to tell from Oversoul's and Rooser's first two posts whether they being critical of the decision to design CHK that way or just making an observation.

 

[Oversoul]

I didn't think there was anything to indicate being critical...

I don't think blocks should be "mechanic driven" at all. It turned out badly pretty much every time, in my opinion...

You could say that they were getting better at it, I suppose. But the latest one was Mirrodin block, and it was perhaps the most unbalanced of all...

 

[Notepad]

What do you mean there is no overlying mechanic? Of course there are themes being forced on us. Do not believe the garbage wotc has posted about no themes driving anything.

First up, the legend theme. Look through a spoiler. If you aren't playing a bunch of legends in Kamigawa, you will die. Plain and simple. In fact, it will be very difficult to do so, as dang near every rare is legendary (even legendary enchantments). Every rare creature has been confirmed to be a legend. Bah!

Second, the Arcane advantage theme. You don't think people will just let this slide, do ya? Its not anything like Affinity, but splicing and cohesion in spells will make abusing arcane primary in playing CHK decks. How can you not want to abuse Glacial Ray when you can splice it onto so many things? A far superior version of Lobotomy comes to mind...

Third, there are a few tribal affinities in the set. Not actual affinity, but some crossovers that will make tribal a little important, and thus drive things. Samurais want to pack together. Demons want to interact with Ogres for some reason. And lastly, those stupid Arcane spells want to interact a whole lot with Spirits, too.

And before you think I was wrong about this set being havoc on the combat phase, go check out the fact that Propaganda has been moved to white and in the uncommon slot. Yes, not only will white weenie get a tribal boost in this set, but it also gets a new color-wheel movement of propaganda. How lovely...

 

[Reverend Love]

I’m just watching, breath held, hoping to see some more hasted Legends. So I can tweak and rebuild my Patriarch's Legendary Bidding deck.

I agree infinity%+1 with Oversoul. No more connecting the dots and building the deck WoTC wants us to utilize. The argument that WoTC, though overly synergistic cards were force-feeding players has gained traction. It'll be a lovely change from the days of reading a card, and deducting that if not used in it's predetermined manner, the card would suck grossly, and delegating it to a cardboard box never to be seen again because of that fact.

 

[Spiderman]

How can you not want to abuse Glacial Ray when you can splice it onto so many things?

So far, it can only be spliced onto other Arcane cards which should just be a "handful" (16+). Whether there's gonna be a card that gives Arcane to cards, that's another matter

 

[Oversoul]

Originally posted by SeFRo
What do you mean there is no overlying mechanic? Of course there are themes being forced on us. Do not believe the garbage wotc has posted about no themes driving anything.

First up, the legend theme. Look through a spoiler. If you aren't playing a bunch of legends in Kamigawa, you will die. Plain and simple. In fact, it will be very difficult to do so, as dang near every rare is legendary (even legendary enchantments). Every rare creature has been confirmed to be a legend. Bah!

Second, the Arcane advantage theme. You don't think people will just let this slide, do ya? Its not anything like Affinity, but splicing and cohesion in spells will make abusing arcane primary in playing CHK decks. How can you not want to abuse Glacial Ray when you can splice it onto so many things? A far superior version of Lobotomy comes to mind...

Third, there are a few tribal affinities in the set. Not actual affinity, but some crossovers that will make tribal a little important, and thus drive things. Samurais want to pack together. Demons want to interact with Ogres for some reason. And lastly, those stupid Arcane spells want to interact a whole lot with Spirits, too.

And before you think I was wrong about this set being havoc on the combat phase, go check out the fact that Propaganda has been moved to white and in the uncommon slot. Yes, not only will white weenie get a tribal boost in this set, but it also gets a new color-wheel movement of propaganda. How lovely...

I can definitely see the inordinate number of legendary cards having effects on Kamigawa Block Constructed and Standard. But beyond that, will it have all that significant of an effect?

 

[Rooser]

I think Seffy inadvertantly proved my point. I didn't say Kamigawa was mechanic free, I just said it didn't have one universally hosable theme. By pointing out so many diverse mechanics, you've demonstrated that there probably isn't one kill-all silver bullet card out there. Yeah, there's a lot of legends, but Tsabo Tavoc isn't going to touch Splice decks. Yeah, you can mess with soulshift by running stuff like cremate, but then you'll get trounced by undercosted legends.

I also said that I thought the splice/arcane mechanics were probably going to be the most popular, but because they are completely new, the "hosers" for them haven't even been printed yet.

Also, I think we'll have plenty more than 16 arcane spells. Given that the narrative for the block is Spirits v. Non-Spirits and that Arcane magic represents "Spirit Magic" it's probably safe to assume that half of the instant-sorcery pool will be arcane.

 

[Oversoul]

I agree, but many of these cards aren't going to have any such impact on Type 1/1.5 even if they are all over Standard. What cards will affect those environments?

 

[Rooser]

The good ones, duh.

I'm not to sure if any cards will havea significant impact.

Nowadays, the only way to leak into older formats is to be:

A) High powered
B) A new mechanic

Since Odyssey, this is what new stuff has shown up:

Flashback Cards (B)
Nantuko Shade (A)
Wishes (B)
Fetchlands (A)
Blistering Firecat (A)
Affinity (A/B)

I'm sure there will be some Kamigawa cards in Vintage and Raisins, but very few.

Seffy, however, was talking about your casual group - which can mean different things to different people, but it mostly just means, wacky multiplayer. When his friends dare to try the new mechanic, Seffy wants a simple one card answer he can throw into his existing decks.

And all I've been trying to tell him is that there isn't one.

 

[Oversoul]

Well, you missed Psychatog, madness, storm, Trinisphere, Chrome Mox, Mindslaver, Crucible, and some minor stuff like incarnations and Skeletal Scrying...

But I agree with the point you're making. The hoser to use against the new decks people will be using is now, rather, to use better decks...