Odyssey Set

[Gizmo]

So a while ago I was flamed away from being opinionated. Now Im flamed away for not offering opinions?

Way to go guys.

*** OPINION MODE ACTIVATED ***

I said there was a top 20 you could take any 3 from.

I dont think either Balancing Act or Terravore would be in that top 20. Or even in the next 20. Balancing Act might even make the worst 20. If it werent for the silly sac lands available right now, Act would be a 50p rare. Equally Terravore is good for the same narrow reason. Neither card will EVER have an impact in ANY other deck. And you can quote me on that.

Wild Mongrel has a very strong claim to being the best 2cc creature ever made. A lot of people think it IS the best 2cc creature ever, I disagree and think that title goes to either Lynx or Nantuko Shade, possibly River Boa gets the nod ahead of Lynx if you are devaluing Lynx because of mana requirements. Black Knight and White Knight wouldnt even make Top-10 of 2cc creatures. They were good, once, when the standard of creatures was relatively low. These days they are nothing special and Wild Mongrel CERTAINLY owns them in any number of ways, even without synergy with Madness or Flashback.

I think Call and Infiltrator are two cards nobody will argue with being in the Top-5. After that the suggestion Purple_Jester made sounds like a perfectly good Top-5 to me. Wild Mongrel is certainly more deserving than most cards and probably is a clear 3rd best Odyssey card. Mystic Enforcer is equally very powerful, so long as you have Threshold. If it were just a 6/6 Flyer Pro:Black for GW2 then I`d not hesitate to make it a Top-5 card, the Threshold IS a negative impact as it reduces the times when the deck will be struggling and it can call up the Enforcer to rescue it... often if you are in trouble the Enforcer is just a 3/3, your Werebear is just a 1/1 and you are toast.

Psychatog is an interesting one. Ignored, then loved, and now seemingly ignored once again. I wonder just how good it really is. Some cards skip from one good deck to another and become universally recognised as 'good cards'. Other cards make a huge impact but never repeat it... and those are obviously less strong as individual cards... like Frenetic Efreet, for instance. I think Psychatog might turn out to be another Frentic Efreet - a powerful card in a limited number of decks. Still it IS undoubtedly a strong card... and probably deserving of a place although I wouldnt say that position is untouchable.

But dont forget such cards as Beast Attack, Bearscape (most underrated card in T2 - used in the right deck it is the best card in T2), Devoted Caretaker, Nimble Mongoose, Reckless Charge, Syncopate...

 

[Gizmo]

Again, I ask you, where did I say that YOU said anybody's list was wrong?

"when you offer your opinion that someone else's choices are not the Top 5 (or 3, or whatever)..."

"it seems that you disagree with three of the choices being in the top 5..."

You KNOW me and Isty dont get on. So I was trying to avoid making any comment on how rampantly incompetent he was being once again. Yet you still chose to make it look like I had criticised Isty`s choices when that was exactly what my post had avoided doing.

A 'Bear' is a 2/2 for two mana. I dont think the colorless or otherwise casting cost has really ever been *widely* accepted as a criteria for being a bear. In common loose parlance anything that costs 2cc and has a power of 2 is open to comparison as 'a bear'. On #mtgwacky once I coined the term 'Raccoon' to describe 2/1 creatures, which were bear-esque but easier to kill. Although the term sat as a topic on the channel for a couple of days, it never really stuck.
Generally any 2cc creature with power 2 is 'a bear'.

 

[Spiderman]

Let's bear in mind that those comments were made a couple of posts AFTER my initial post in response to your initial post. And neither of them are saying that YOU said anyone else's list is wrong, they're saying that it seems, i.e., what I interpreted your post to say, that you disagree with someone else's choices for the top 5 so what are your choices? To me, it seems an innocent enough question. I KNOW you and Isty don't agree; therefore it's not really a surprise that you might disagree with his choices. But as I said, it would have been nice to have your input for comparison. I could care less whether or not you think there's some conspiracy on "making you look bad" (which in itself is pretty funny when you think about it, I'm just trying to get information.

And show me a flame in response to your INITIAL opinion. Flames only generate on subsequent posts.

Here's another question: what in my initial post/question warranted your following sarcastic post after it?

Spiderman:

So what you're saying is that the other three cards are not part of the top five in Odyssey. So what do you think they are?

Gizmo:

I chose not to offer an opinion.

Im sorry if I broke the strict posting guidelines.

I`ll remember to correctly and concisely answer all questions posed in future.

That seems to be the whole problem right there.

And speaking of bears, I thought the whole term was coined after "Grizzly Bears". I have never heard it used in reference to the Knights before, even though they were from the same set. With that reasoning, it follows that Bears is used in reference to a 2/2 creature for one color and one colorless (isn't there a Voting thread about this?), and generally for no special abilities, although I realize that seems to have changed.

 

[Chaos Turtle]

I was going by "2/2 for 2" as a definiton for bear. And if those cutesy little black and white knights think they can take on Wild Mongrel, tell them to BRING IT ON!!! I have plenty of cards in my hand, and I'm perfectly willing to discard them to teach a couple of uppity bears a lesson.

 

[Spiderman]

Didn't someone do a history of Magic terms? That would be interesting (well, to me )...

 

[Istanbul]

Originally posted by Gizmo
You KNOW me and Isty dont get on. So I was trying to avoid making any comment on how rampantly incompetent he was being once again. Yet you still chose to make it look like I had criticised Isty`s choices when that was exactly what my post had avoided doing.

And, evidently, not doing a very good job.

So I'll politely restrain myself from mentioning how you don't know what you're talking about.

 

[Istanbul]

I maintain that the Knight twins are good because of what they are: two mana and no further investment for a 2/2 creature with some decent abilities.

Mongrel is good. Very good. With Madness, even sick. But you must realize that in combat, you attack with your Mongel...I block with one each of the Twins...and there's card disadvantage involved in throwing three cards out of your hand to kill the Twins. 3 cards to kill 2 creatures is not so hot. So yes, Mongrel would own the Twins in combat, at the cost of half of your maximum hand size. (And if you don't happen to have three cards in hand, well...oops.)

I do recall specifically saying that Balancing Act and Terravore would drop significantly in value after November (which would be when the sac lands go out of Type 2). Terravore won't suck altogether in LD decks, but Balancing Act will be nearly unusable.

Psychatog is good because it's in the right environment, and its two abilities are synergistic. In any other block, it'd be decent. (With evasion, it'd be *sick*.) In this block, it's a powerhouse.

Mystic Enforcer is good, no doubt...but Top 5? I question that.

Bearscape's chief problem is that it's in the wrong color; in black, it'd be great. In green (which isn't a great fan of filling up its graveyard, unless you count Wild Mongrel and similar cards), it's not in flavor for the color.

The other 'forgotten' cards Gizmo listed (Beast Attack, Syncopate, etc.) are good, but I doubt they make Top 5.

 

[Spiderman]

I maintain that the Knight twins are good because of what they are: two mana and no further investment for a 2/2 creature with some decent abilities.

Oh, I don't argue that they're not good. I just think because of the double mana cost, they're better off being compared to something like Longbow Archers that has a similiar mana cost than something that doesn't (or back to why I brought it up in the first place, what's a 'Bear' and what's not).

It's like how rakso judges whether new cards were good for The Deck in his control articles on Star City; the mana requirement was one of them.

 

[Adso_dMelk]

... What 'bout that Top 5 "List" ?

I think maybe you should make 3 lists:

Common Top 5
Uncommon Top 5
Rare Top 5

You guys just started a new thread about Torment Top5... and now you want to get rid of this one?

Oldguys, come on! You can do it!

 

[Spiderman]

Who says we want to get rid of this one?

Those lists might be good, but the problem with them is that where do you stop? Do you do it by color? What about Top 5 for Constructed? Sealed? Standard? Type 1? Extended? MP? Etc...

I'm guessing the original intent of this thread was to try to find out, overall, what some good cards are in Odyssey besides Shadowmage.

I'm not saying don't do it commonality; I'd probably find it useful if not anyone else. I'm just saying you can make a lot of Top 5 lists