Sorry this is coming to you late I have been a sleep for about two days fighting off pain and a fever.
Card quality is a source of much debate because it runs so close to card quality and tempo. I will even go as far to say that they are often the same. Over the years card quality has been a lot of different things. But, I believe card quality is the weight of the cards ability against its mana cost in the given environment.
Let’s look at some hypothetical examples.
Image via Wikipedia
Tempo in Magic the Gathering is what two or more players enter in while attempting to gain control of the game. It is a race that revolves around who can play better cards or more cards faster. Basically it is a race about gaining the upper hand. In other words the player who is winning the race usually sets the tempo of the game. The reality of it though is the tempo of a game can be one sided, balanced, or up and down like a roller coaster.
I’ve been talking with a lot of newer players lately. They’ve been bringing it to my attention that many of them don’t understand simple concepts or maneuvers that effect the balance of power between players. These concepts or maneuvers, as I like to think of them, are card advantage, card quality, tempo, and board control. All of these can be quite simple to explain and quite difficult to master. Part of that might be because they are often so closely related that a player might not be able to tell them apart. For example at times it isn’t that difficult to confuse card advantage with card quality. Which in turn could also be tempo. But wait a minute, we are getting ahead of ourselves. Lets talk about what each of them is before we get carried away in debates.
Card advantage is a series of plays, or a play where a player has gained an advantage in the number of cards drawn and or used from their deck. In short card advantage is staying ahead of your opponent by drawing more cards than your opponent, or making plays that force you opponent to use more cards than you.
The classic expression 2 for one can easily be applied to card advantage. It makes perfect sense to everyone, I hope, that if one player plays 2 cards for every one of the opposing players he will not have cards for long.
I have taken the time to find some examples of card advantage.
The Silence of the Lambs (Image via RottenTomatoes.com)
Wow, I just saw this article written by Joelcool7 at gamrConnect. Basically, the article states Hollywood is going after board game licenses for movies. One of the games he mentions is Magic the Gathering. I didn’t like that fact that Joel lumped MtG into the board game genre, but he didn’t really speak about MtG either. He just mentioned that there is a possible movie out there.
Joel’s article talks about how board games lack plot. Well, That is actually a good thing. A good story isn’t about plot alone. In fact, a good story is really told by the characters. If a writer doesn’t develop the characters the plot will fail. Stories are far more about a balance between plot and character with character carrying the weight.
Lets look at a couple of movies and see if I can get my point across. The Expendables was an intense action packed movie with a lot of characters. Who were played by some really big names (Jet Li, Sylvester Stallone, Mickey O Rourke, Dolph Lundgren, and Jason Statham). I liked it. It would have been a lot better if it was 45 minutes longer and all the characters had a chance to develop. Better yet, start with 3 characters and introduce the rest in a sequel. In the Expendables the plot was there but there was just not enough time to develop the characters.
The Silence of the Lambs is probably the best plot verse character success I can think of. The characters DR. Lecter and Clarice played by Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster have plenty of time to develop. As a watcher you really get to know them and you want to feel what at least one of them feels. Understanding a characters feeling in a story gives the viewer a more enjoyable experience.
In the world of Magic the Gathering the characters already have so much detail it’s a no brainer to turn this IP into a movie. The only question is with so much story development already done, where would you start the movie? I would love to see the Brothers War saga turned into a movie or three. It would be far more realistic for WotC and oh we will say Paramount (first to pop in my mind) to start with some of the more recent planeswalkers. The Shards block storyline would make a good storyline. Who would play Nicol Bolas?
I am pretty excited about this. And it is not all speculation as this article from MTV’s Movie Blog seems to indicate.
It looks like we are in for some really cool promos at the theaters in the future.
Two days ago, I wrote about White and how it received some really great new creatures giving White Weenie a fighting chance again. Today, I am going to focus on Liliana of the Veil. She is pretty amazing. Being the other 3 drop planeswalker in the game I expect to see some great things from her. I was hoping that her +1 ability that forces each player to discard a card would be able to take advantage of Flashback. It seems that the best card to do that with is Unburial Rites. Which is not the best idea. It could work, but it would be difficult to make a good combo with the two in T2. Here ability to target player sacrifice a creature does have some promise though. The combination of hand control and and board control is an excellent representation of black and a better combination. Her last ability “-6: Separate all permanents target player controls into two piles. That player sacrifices all permanents in the pile of his or her choice.” is going to be used. It kind of reminds me of Fact or Fiction, but only because the player has to chose his pain.
Liliana is pretty wicked good. There is already a really good BUW control deck built around her and there will be more. here is a link to that deck list WUB. Since that is a really great deck I will focus on a simpler deck for a thirteen year old player.
4 Distress
4 Despise
24 Swamps
My sideboard is yet to be determined
Now that I have built this deck I am thinking it might have too much hand disruption. What about you? Do you think it has too much? Here is what I like about this experiment. It has good creatures for a themed deck. It has a descent amount of control. Right from the start. There are just enough mechanics like , discarding, planeswalkers and Grave titan triggers to make this deck a good teaching deck. Wouldn’t be great if on the first turn you cast despise and surgical extraction? While it won’t win a PTQ it is a great deck for my son to have fun with at FNM.
Black has a lot more cards to offer from Innistraad. We will look at them tomorrow, along with some red cards. I am hoping to design a new version of Red Deck wins this week. Any ideas as to what I should play?
Hey again, welcome to Revising Standard. In this set of articles we will always discuss the impact of the most recent set. The goal is to make this a living document that changes as the format matures. I will attempt to update each article by using the comments section of the blog.
The first installment of Revising Standard will discuss some of the impact Innistrad has on Magic the Gatherings standard or T2 format. More specifically we will start discussing how white is being influenced or becoming an influence.
White has long since been known for its one and two drop creatures. It also has a history of having one or two good reset buttons at any given time. White is often splashed or used as a support color. In fact blue and white have become a tradition among the deck archetypes of our day.
Today we look at Lands and Artifacts. I won’t be discussing the new lands, because they are all good. I will primarily focus on artifacts. Most of the artifacts and multicolored cards. No, playing around onto the cards. Continue reading »
We are quickly approaching the end of this review. Just one day left, after today. Today we get to talk about White. It seems that White gets the most bang for its buck in Innistraad. Whit is full of card quality in both the constructed and limited environments. Since, this is only a small review I will only cover a handful of these cards.
It is day four of my set review. For those of you who have not read these daily reports yet, here is what I am doing. I am reviewing each color and sharing with you my top picks. I am not a pro player by any means, I am just a judge who enjoys writing and playing Magic the Gathering along with many other games.
On to the cards
Bloodcrazed Neonate 1r
Creature – Vampire Common
Bloodcrazed Neonate attacks each turn if able.
Whenever Bloodcrazed Neonate deals combat damage to a player, put a +1/+1 counter on it.
While elder vampires select their meals with care, the newly sired frenzy at the first whiff.
Illus. Cynthia Sheppard 2/1
This guy is not super, but he gets an honorable mention because he grows and he is common.
Curse of Stalked Prey
1r
Enchantment – Aura Curse Rare
Enchant player
Whenever a creature deals combat damage to enchanted player, put a +1/+1 counter on that creature.
“Innocent thorns can fill the air with your bloodscent. Don’t stray from the path.”
–Elmut, crossway watcher
Illus. Christopher Moeller #136/264
Will this card make it into constructed – yes. It will Goblins or red deck wins a boost in their speed. Oh and combine this with Bloodcrazed Neonate and you have a Vampiric nightmare.
Brimstone Volley 2r
Instant Common
Brimstone Volley deals 3 damage to target creature or player.
Morbid – Brimstone Volley deals 5 damage to that creature or player instead if a creature died this turn.
Illus. Eytan Zana #132/264
I like Brimstone volley because it will be fairly easy to deal 5 damage. Why because creatures die in Magic the Gathering.
Pitchburn Devil 4r
Creature – Devil Common
When Pitchburn Devils dies, it deals 3 damage to target creature or player.
Illus. Johann Bodin #156/264 3/3
Our friend here is nothing special for a 3/3. But when he dies he becomes a lightning bolt. So he has potential. He might see play in constructed. I believe you will most certainly see him in limited. I expect him to be picked as early a the third pick in a draft. Really tough to say when a card will be pick but this guy brings some serious card quality to the limited format.
That is all for now. tomorrow we move on to White and everything it has in store for us.
While looking at green I have concluded that green is just kind of blah. Now, I don’t mean that in a negative way. Green in Innistrad is just so similar from card to card that only a few cards stand out. We will get to those in a moment. Green has a couple of recurring themes that happen too frequently. They are +X/+X where X is number of creatures in your graveyard and werewolves. They both happen so much that it waters them down. I do not really like the fact that Green is full of transforming cards, and I even dislike the trigger for them more.
On to the cards.
