Fortified Village, etc.

shteev

How exactly do the new Delirium based supports like Fortified Village work?

It's really not worth my time and effort to find out.

soultwist

If there are "delirium" conditions it changes 3 to green or white on entry. After that its just a support that turns two gems a different color.

I only know cause I mastered one.

With the OR I assume it would only do one color if both are less then 5 but I really didn't pay any attention.

On a related note (for all cards that change gem colors):

Does it seem odd (or a bug) that with a "change one green and one white" that it could pick a current white gem and change it green? Doesn't seem like your getting full value that way.

shteev

Who cares. They suck. Nobody will play with them. It was a waste of time implementing them, tbh.

shteev

How about they cost, like 7 mana? They'd still be worse that all the BFZ dual lands at 5, and also Shambling Vent and Lumbering Falls which include useful creature abilities.

Delirium is a pretty weird effect to put on them, tbh. I get the idea that if you're behind on the board, it weights the board back in your favour slightly, but it's a pretty tiny advantage, Delirium just doesn't happen often without you building around it (and who's going to build around these cards??), it does it at the end of your turn which let's your opponent take advantage of the new board state first, and if this is your SECOND copy you are playing, well then you've had one copy in play for a while so your Delirium probably won't trigger.

Pqmtg-

shteev wrote:

How about they cost, like 7 mana? They'd still be worse that all the BFZ dual lands at 5, and also Shambling Vent and Lumbering Falls which include useful creature abilities.

Delirium is a pretty weird effect to put on them, tbh. I get the idea that if you're behind on the board, it weights the board back in your favour slightly, but it's a pretty tiny advantage, Delirium just doesn't happen often without you building around it (and who's going to build around these cards??), it does it at the end of your turn which let's your opponent take advantage of the new board state first, and if this is your SECOND copy you are playing, well then you've had one copy in play for a while so your Delirium probably won't trigger.

Not sure you're managing your gems so easily, but delirium happens all the time for me without me carefully setting it up.

shteev

Pqmtg- wrote:

shteev wrote:

How about they cost, like 7 mana? They'd still be worse that all the BFZ dual lands at 5, and also Shambling Vent and Lumbering Falls which include useful creature abilities.

Delirium is a pretty weird effect to put on them, tbh. I get the idea that if you're behind on the board, it weights the board back in your favour slightly, but it's a pretty tiny advantage, Delirium just doesn't happen often without you building around it (and who's going to build around these cards??), it does it at the end of your turn which let's your opponent take advantage of the new board state first, and if this is your SECOND copy you are playing, well then you've had one copy in play for a while so your Delirium probably won't trigger.

Not sure you're managing your gems so easily, but delirium happens all the time for me without me carefully setting it up.

I find that interesting. Which cards do you get Delirium on regularly? I have a devil of a time trying to trigger it at the right time on Descend upon the Sinners. Do you play it on spells? Or permanents that remain in play and have plenty of chance to activate?

shteev

I'll tell you something else... I'm constantly turning off Fertile Ground when there aren't a lot of green gems on the board, and saving if for when I have a couple of them or a Natural Connection. If there are only a few green gems on the board, you're far more likely to give away a potential green match than you are to get a free one yourself, which is not something you want to do against Kiora, certainly.

span_argoman

shteev wrote:

Pqmtg- wrote:

shteev wrote:

How about they cost, like 7 mana? They'd still be worse that all the BFZ dual lands at 5, and also Shambling Vent and Lumbering Falls which include useful creature abilities.

Delirium is a pretty weird effect to put on them, tbh. I get the idea that if you're behind on the board, it weights the board back in your favour slightly, but it's a pretty tiny advantage, Delirium just doesn't happen often without you building around it (and who's going to build around these cards??), it does it at the end of your turn which let's your opponent take advantage of the new board state first, and if this is your SECOND copy you are playing, well then you've had one copy in play for a while so your Delirium probably won't trigger.

Not sure you're managing your gems so easily, but delirium happens all the time for me without me carefully setting it up.

I find that interesting. Which cards do you get Delirium on regularly? I have a devil of a time trying to trigger it at the right time on Descend upon the Sinners. Do you play it on spells? Or permanents that remain in play and have plenty of chance to activate?

shteev, which planeswalkers do you play? If you're playing mainly Kiora (or any other green planeswalkers) then it's understandable why you don't see Delirium often.

I don't play Delirium cards cause I drew Corrupted Grafstone, but there have been sufficient cases where I'm glad to see Corrupted Grafstone cause the board was in a Delirium state.

shteev

span_argoman wrote:

shteev, which planeswalkers do you play? If you're playing mainly Kiora (or any other green planeswalkers) then it's understandable why you don't see Delirium often.

So the Delirium card in particular I have been testing is Descend upon the Sinners because I have one and it's awesome. Now you're right, normally in QB or PvP I would always play mana generating cards like Nissa's Pilgrimage, or Prairie Stream... however, when I got the card, I instead headed into story mode, and because those levels are fairly easy, I deliberately played with only Shrine of the Forsaken Gods as my only mana acceleration, so I was never turning gems white. Descend upon the Sinners almost never gave me angels.

span_argoman wrote:

I don't play Delirium cards cause I drew Corrupted Grafstone, but there have been sufficient cases where I'm glad to see Corrupted Grafstone cause the board was in a Delirium state.

What I'd say to this is that there's a very big difference between Corrupted Grafstone which you play and then will perform it's action every turn, and Descend upon the Sinners, or Game Trail, on which the Delirium will trigger once when you play it. Game Trail costs 5 more than Cinder Marsh... it has one more shield, sure, but that's hardly worth 5 mana. So I'm paying a pretty big premium for that Delirium effect.

Pqmtg-

shteev wrote:

Pqmtg- wrote:

shteev wrote:

How about they cost, like 7 mana? They'd still be worse that all the BFZ dual lands at 5, and also Shambling Vent and Lumbering Falls which include useful creature abilities.

Delirium is a pretty weird effect to put on them, tbh. I get the idea that if you're behind on the board, it weights the board back in your favour slightly, but it's a pretty tiny advantage, Delirium just doesn't happen often without you building around it (and who's going to build around these cards??), it does it at the end of your turn which let's your opponent take advantage of the new board state first, and if this is your SECOND copy you are playing, well then you've had one copy in play for a while so your Delirium probably won't trigger.

Not sure you're managing your gems so easily, but delirium happens all the time for me without me carefully setting it up.

I find that interesting. Which cards do you get Delirium on regularly? I have a devil of a time trying to trigger it at the right time on Descend upon the Sinners. Do you play it on spells? Or permanents that remain in play and have plenty of chance to activate?

Generally depends on hero colours. Red and black gems are almost always scarce when i play those colours.

span_argoman

shteev wrote:

span_argoman wrote:

shteev, which planeswalkers do you play? If you're playing mainly Kiora (or any other green planeswalkers) then it's understandable why you don't see Delirium often.

So the Delirium card in particular I have been testing is Descend upon the Sinners because I have one and it's awesome. Now you're right, normally in QB or PvP I would always play mana generating cards like Nissa's Pilgrimage, or Prairie Stream... however, when I got the card, I instead headed into story mode, and because those levels are fairly easy, I deliberately played with only Shrine of the Forsaken Gods as my only mana acceleration, so I was never turning gems white. Descend upon the Sinners almost never gave me angels.

Personally I'm not sure Descend upon the Sinners is that awesome cause while it's 9 mana cheaper than Crush of Tentacles, it summons 8/8 less and the token doesn't have Reach which the developers have said is one of their higher costed abilities. It also doesn't ignore immunity to effects like Crush of Tentacles does so I'm guessing it doesn't work on Runaway Carriage. Plus the summon is dependent on Delirium.

That aside, yes if you want to have Delirium more consistently trigger you probably want to be having gem converters to other colours which do not affect your mana gain. To this end, I would think Ally Gideon would benefit quite nicely from Delirium cards. Tezzeret, Garruk and Ajani will probably be fine too.

shteev wrote:

span_argoman wrote:

I don't play Delirium cards cause I drew Corrupted Grafstone, but there have been sufficient cases where I'm glad to see Corrupted Grafstone cause the board was in a Delirium state.

What I'd say to this is that there's a very big difference between Corrupted Grafstone which you play and then will perform it's action every turn, and Descend upon the Sinners, or Game Trail, on which the Delirium will trigger once when you play it. Game Trail costs 5 more than Cinder Marsh... it has one more shield, sure, but that's hardly worth 5 mana. So I'm paying a pretty big premium for that Delirium effect.

From what I understand of the developer's costing of cards, the two biggest things that are making a difference in the summon costs are probably the rarity and effect.

The Origins gem converters which are common cost 6 mana. They convert a colour and one of its opposing colour.
The SoI gem converters are uncommons costing 10 mana. So for and increase in rarity and 4 mana you get the switch from converting an opposing colour to a complementary colour and the Delirium effect.
The BFZ gem converters are rares costing 5 mana. So for the increase in rarity and loss of the Delirium effect you get a discount of 5 mana.

If I had to hazard a guess, the Delirium effect is probably costed at 2 and the increase in rarity leads to a discount of 3.
This would mean the cost of converting a complementary colour instead of an opposing one is 5.

paralistalon

Ugh, the land supports in SOI are horrible! The delirium bonus isn't too good because even with the 3 gems it adds, it makes it much less likely that you're going to get a cascade out of it. MAYBE the one that can add red gems could be useful to a Koth player, but still...

shteev

span_argoman wrote:

Personally I'm not sure Descend upon the Sinners is that awesome cause while it's 9 mana cheaper than Crush of Tentacles, it summons 8/8 less and the token doesn't have Reach which the developers have said is one of their higher costed abilities. It also doesn't ignore immunity to effects like Crush of Tentacles does so I'm guessing it doesn't work on Runaway Carriage. Plus the summon is dependent on Delirium.

I hate to say it, but if you're going to compare cards to Crush of Tentacles, you're going to find that almost every card in the game is unplayable

I agree that Descend is much worse than Crush, but I don't think that makes it bad. I play it as a board reset and consider the angels a cheeky bonus, and I'm generally happy with it.

span_argoman wrote:

That aside, yes if you want to have Delirium more consistently trigger you probably want to be having gem converters to other colours which do not affect your mana gain. To this end, I would think Ally Gideon would benefit quite nicely from Delirium cards. Tezzeret, Garruk and Ajani will probably be fine too.

I agree here too. I'm currently testing Descend in Ajani with cards like Fertile Growth and Mina and Denn.

But consider the cards we're talking about in this thread, the Fortified Village cycle. There's no point playing UB mana converters just so that when I cast my RG mana converter I get Delirium. That's why I consider Delirium such an odd choice for these cards.