Djeru, With Eyes Open & The Locust God Bundles (1/18/18)

Brigby

Hi Everyone,

Djeru, With Eyes Open and The Locust God are back again as special Mythic Card Exclusive Bundles. This time around though, they're available at a discounted price of 25% off! They'll be available January 18th to January 24th.

You can check out their bundle details below:

Djeru, With Eyes Open

White Super Pack
 160 Mana Jewels 
150 Mana Crystals
 10,000 Mana Runes 

The Locust God

Red Super Pack
 160 Mana Jewels 
150 Mana Crystals
 10,000 Mana Runes 

Matthew

Unfortunately, the only way I would buy either of these cards is if they had been completely reworked already so that they didn't suck :-/

Djeru's ability is a complete moot point because as a blocker, he's liable to get run over as soon as you cast him. I think this card would be better if they had designed it like they did Hixus. In paper, Hixus is a creature, but they converted him into a support for PQ. This card is a good example of how they could follow that pattern.

And the mana cost for Locust God is about 40% too high, rendering him pretty pointless. There are other cards that can fill the "overpowered mythic fatty" role much more efficiently than he can.

James13

Djeru is appropriately harder to break, in my opinion.

If you think about it, there are ways to mitigate the vigilance downside.  It's not overly hard, just not a single step to use him effectively.  And with a blanket -10 damage reduction I think that's fair.

I don't have him yet, but I do see how I could make him work if I wanted to.

We already have Gideon's Intervention, which would do better than than you propose in support form.

Matthew

There are really only two cards that can make him worthwhile, at least in my opinion (Gideon's Intervention and Haze of Pollen), and both of those make his ability rather pointless. I prefer to use those 'single step' cards that you mention; I find that cards that can stand on their own are worth more in the long run. Combos are great, but simpler is better if you're going to set up a combo. Djeru doesn't offer simple solutions, so much as he does convoluted ones.

James13

You can grant flying to enemy creatures or tag them with skeleton key.  Additionally, a "defender" subtype will not make him a blocker as vigilance has lower priority.  One suggestion would be Oketra with Saving Grace.

There's a bunch of creative solutions to make him work.

Matthew

Creative, yes, but I still maintain that they're convoluted. With only ten cards to include in the deck, space is at a premium, so I like to make sure that whatever I'm including is always going to be useful.

I will admit though that I hadn't considered Saving Grace. That is an interesting counterpoint to offer, and it's definitely worth testing out.

wereotter

I use Djeru, and have to say he's better than he appears. First, he doesn't fly, so any flier coming at you gets its damage reduced by 10, really handy if you're playing off against Olivia since she'll only be able to do you 1 damage. Second, even if he does block and dies, his damage reduction applies on all other creatures attacking you that turn, effectively making him about the same as Gideon's Intervention but only for you. He can potentially block you from taking any damage at all for a turn.

Also, he's been good in PvE events where your opponent's loyalty ability is to just deal you damage directly.

As a question for the devs, now that we're recycling these, what are the chances of getting older paid cards back? There were many paid mythics that are staples in legacy formats that anyone joining the game in more than a year now won't have access to unless they manage to craft it, and since legacy isn't divided by set, the chances of getting what you need are small.

FindingHeart8

Both of these cards are probably better suited for beginner-mid level players.

@wereotter

I just hope they don't bring back Olivia, she's a staple for black/red and one of the best black/red legacy staples (if not the very best).  I don't want to see any more decks playing her than I have to, and I would feel really really bad for any newer players who missed the offer or started playing after but now has to enter the fray against a sea of Olivia decks.

IM_CARLOS

Emrakul is more devastating in my opinion. It net's you or AI another turn. And a turn with BfB, HUF or deploy is more than enough...
Or combine it with spot removal against GR... 

wereotter

FindingHeart8 said:

Both of these cards are probably better suited for beginner-mid level players.

@wereotter

I just hope they don't bring back Olivia, she's a staple for black/red and one of the best black/red legacy staples (if not the very best).  I don't want to see any more decks playing her than I have to, and I would feel really really bad for any newer players who missed the offer or started playing after but now has to enter the fray against a sea of Olivia decks.

I missed getting her since I was a brand new player when she was on offer for sale, and I didn't have an idea of both her power level or the scarcity of mythic rare cards at the time, so for me, it's been over a year of playing against her without having her. I can see not wanting to have her even more wide spread than she is, but lacking her also is a bit of a handicap when it comes to trying to play legacy events to the point that now I just refuse to do it.

FindingHeart8

I missed getting her since I was a brand new player when she was on offer for sale, and I didn't have an idea of both her power level or the scarcity of mythic rare cards at the time, so for me, it's been over a year of playing against her without having her. I can see not wanting to have her even more wide spread than she is, but lacking her also is a bit of a handicap when it comes to trying to play legacy events to the point that now I just refuse to do it.

I really empathize where you're coming from, I too was (moderately) new then, enough to underestimated how good she was when she was offered for sale and past up on that whopper of an opportunity.

It's a tough call, the trade-off being that now you own the card, but so does many more of the opponents you'll wind up facing.

My take was it's better that opportunity not come around again, because chances are while she would be a staple in all of my black/red decks and even the playing field there, it would put the rest of my decks of other colors at a disadvantage.  Black has some of the easiest removal in legacy (2nd to blue bounce, which is less effective since Olivia has haste).

In the end, I would likely have more fun in legacy events overall if I didn't have to face Olivia more frequently then not being able to abuse her myself.  But that's just my 2 cents in the matter.

ElfNeedsFood

I’m just hopeful I’ll get a second swing at buying Imminent Doom. Still kicking myself for not buying that one. 

bk1234

Matthew said:

Unfortunately, the only way I would buy either of these cards is if they had been completely reworked already so that they didn't suck :-/

Djeru's ability is a complete moot point because as a blocker, he's liable to get run over as soon as you cast him. I think this card would be better if they had designed it like they did Hixus. In paper, Hixus is a creature, but they converted him into a support for PQ. This card is a good example of how they could follow that pattern.

And the mana cost for Locust God is about 40% too high, rendering him pretty pointless. There are other cards that can fill the "overpowered mythic fatty" role much more efficiently than he can.

I bought Locust God the first time and it's an amazing card. I bought Djeru this time and I'm having a lot of fun with it. 

Just for reference, Locust God is in 6 of my decks -- Omni is in one -- the former is much more fun -- and considering with one decent loop you can easily get his tokens over 20 (and they have haste) I don't think the casting cost -- that's almost 30 strength in one turn -- but wait, do that with J2's ult out...

Suck is last word I would use. 

Theros

bken1234 said:

Matthew said:

Unfortunately, the only way I would buy either of these cards is if they had been completely reworked already so that they didn't suck :-/

Djeru's ability is a complete moot point because as a blocker, he's liable to get run over as soon as you cast him. I think this card would be better if they had designed it like they did Hixus. In paper, Hixus is a creature, but they converted him into a support for PQ. This card is a good example of how they could follow that pattern.

And the mana cost for Locust God is about 40% too high, rendering him pretty pointless. There are other cards that can fill the "overpowered mythic fatty" role much more efficiently than he can.

I bought Locust God the first time and it's an amazing card. I bought Djeru this time and I'm having a lot of fun with it. 

Just for reference, Locust God is in 6 of my decks -- Omni is in one -- the former is much more fun -- and considering with one decent loop you can easily get his tokens over 20 (and they have haste) I don't think the casting cost -- that's almost 30 strength in one turn -- but wait, do that with J2's ult out...

Suck is last word I would use. 

The locust is very good. With loops containing discards and dark petition, you should be able to return to the battlefield many copies of Locust itself in one turn. 

Matthew

bken1234 said:

I bought Locust God the first time and it's an amazing card. I bought Djeru this time and I'm having a lot of fun with it. 

Just for reference, Locust God is in 6 of my decks -- Omni is in one -- the former is much more fun -- and considering with one decent loop you can easily get his tokens over 20 (and they have haste) I don't think the casting cost -- that's almost 30 strength in one turn -- but wait, do that with J2's ult out...

Suck is last word I would use. 

I guess I should clarify my definition of cards that "suck". Essentially, that can be summed up as any cards I wouldn't consider using in competitive events.

Regarding The Locust God, there are two other cards in particular that are much better at driving loops: Baral, and Rashmi. Their abilities allow a deck to go from theoretically to literally infinite. They also don't have to rely on other broken cards to do so (though I can't deny that cards like Rishkar's Expertise certainly do help in that regard). To further put that into perspective, let's take your proposed number of 20 tokens from the God. In the time it takes me to draw 20 cards (the requisite number to create an insect stack that large) while using Baral (or to fetch them with Rashmi), I can easily have 4 or 5 copies each of Gaea's Revenge and Samut hit the board, which deals far more than the 20 damage coming from the insect tokens. For the sake of accuracy, I tested this out prior to making this comment, so rest assured that I did not just pull those numbers out of my rear.

Now, I do love me some J2 (I don't think he gets nearly enough love), but typically I will have won the match already by the time I reach the 21 loyalty points required for his ultimate. If you're waiting around that long just to combo his ultimate with the draw loops you're talking about with The Locust God, then really you're just prolonging the match for the fun of it. There's nothing inherently wrong with that. But I learned a long time ago that if you want top-tier placement, you need to minimize the match length as much as possible.

As for why you choose to include Locust God over Omniscience, that baffles me, unless it's because you simply enjoy a match that's a challenge. I get that. I just choose to play those kind of matches in Training Grounds when I'm bored, or when I'm spitballing for new deck ideas. But if I had Omni in my collection, you better believe I'd be abusing the pucky out of it pretty much anywhere other than Training Grounds because I like to win, and Omni is absolutely a "win button" in the hands of an actual human.

That brings us to Djeru. As I admitted above, I hadn't thought of pairing him with Saving Grace; that does bear consideration. But even in that one case, I still don't think he's worth getting because giving him Defender with that card puts him squarely in the way of any creature that might be coming at me. At that point, you've put a countdown on his existence.

I think he would be much better if he had Regenerate and/or Hexproof. Currently though, there are only two ways to give Regenerate (Consecrated by Blood, and G1's abilities), and five very expensive ways to grant Hexproof (Sphinx of the Final Word, Sigarda, Heron's Grace, Heroic Intervention, Lumbering Falls, and the Masterpiece Trifecta of Helmet, Greaves, and Gauntlet). Invulnerability is another way that you could make him more resilient, but given the overabundance of creature removal in most decks, that's really a moot point. And on the topic of creature removal, mythic creatures tend to be the ones Greg targets first, so Djeru's also got a target on his head in addition to being a blocker.

All that being said, this has made me see how they could potentially be fun cards to play with. But I would hesitate to call them "amazing". I feel like they're more suited to dinking around in TG just to see what you can slap together. If I were to even consider getting these two offers, it would only be because of the additional currency that's bundled in with them.

bk1234

@Matthew Baral and Rashmi are great. They’re even better with Locust God. 

I use him in Blue HoR and in 2 levels of RotGP. 

I also have an insane legacy deck for TotP. 

Just thibk you shouldn’t judge a card so harshly if you’ve never played it. 

wereotter

Considering you an pair Locust God off with a lot of amazing draw and hand cycling spells, it's really not hard at all to draw 20 cards.

I run it as my go-to Nissa 3 deck and when you pair it off with other cards in the deck (New Perspectives, Hieroglyphic Illumination, Day's Undoing) as well as a few cards that can help get him into play faster, I use Rishkar, Harvest Season, Shefet Monitor, and Ramunap Excavator, it's not at all difficult to both get past his high casting cost and abuse his abilities.

James13

bken1234 said:

@Matthew Baral and Rashmi are great. They’re even better with Locust God. 

I use him in Blue HoR and in 2 levels of RotGP. 

I also have an insane legacy deck for TotP. 

Just thibk you shouldn’t judge a card so harshly if you’ve never played it. 

Rashmi is fetch, not draw.  It can be an important distinction depending on how you've built the deck.

bk1234

James13 said:

bken1234 said:

@Matthew Baral and Rashmi are great. They’re even better with Locust God. 

I use him in Blue HoR and in 2 levels of RotGP. 

I also have an insane legacy deck for TotP. 

Just thibk you shouldn’t judge a card so harshly if you’ve never played it. 

Rashmi is fetch, not draw.  It can be an important distinction depending on how you've built the deck.

Locust God works with fetch and draw. 

James13

How odd.  Usually draw triggers don't work with fetch.  Not owning that card I didn't realize it used different logic.

EldrosKandar

James13 said:

How odd.  Usually draw triggers don't work with fetch.  Not owning that card I didn't realize it used different logic.

If I'm not mistaken, Sage of Ancient Lore works similarly.