Why we are disappointed in Ixalan's cards

Gunmix25

Gilesclone said:

Yeah, but Pyramid of the Pantheon is crazy overpowered.

We know this because we have experience playing with this.  

bk1234

[MOD MIC ON] Merged discussion on elite cards [//MOD MIC]

Gideon

@bken1234 why were these topics merged? This is now a confusing cluster F.

bk1234

Gideon said:

@bken1234 why were these topics merged? This is now a confusing cluster F.

Because it's the same topic by the same poster, just based on cards from the same set released later. It should have been a continuation or edit of the original post. In the future, please address mod decisions through PM. 

greven

I think creatureless decks will be more interesting now...

Kinesia

greven said:

I think creatureless decks will be more interesting now...

For me that is a big part of the problem.

Creatureless should be viable, sure...

But we have 4 tribes here and the only viable one is merfolk with hexproof (with potentially the occasional dino pet).

With the costs of creatures and the amount of destruction they aren't worth playing at all.

greven

Then explore and treasure mechanics should be an op mana ramp to keep up with the high cost cards. Sound interesting using them with gem changers and gem destroyer cards... Vraska will be op with the green ramps and black creature removals. Imagine when greg need 5 turns to cast a creature and then just destroy it with 3 mana lethal sting... removals will be op

Sirchombli

River's rebuke is op. So? The ai is still a nonce and will still durdle around for 6 turns trying to cast the ridiculously pricey creatures in the set. There will never be a perfectly balanced set. For starters, we all have a different idea of what that would even be. Constant complaints about power creep caused them to reign it in and we're still complaining about the handful of good cards in the set. I'm glad that I don't work for oktagon. Set isn't even out and the sky is falling 

Matthew

Sirchombli said:

River's rebuke is op. So? The ai is still a nonce and will still durdle around for 6 turns trying to cast the ridiculously pricey creatures in the set. There will never be a perfectly balanced set. For starters, we all have a different idea of what that would even be. Constant complaints about power creep caused them to reign it in and we're still complaining about the handful of good cards in the set. I'm glad that I don't work for oktagon. Set isn't even out and the sky is falling 

I wish I worked for them. I, at least, understand how the game plays. I understand the ebb and flow of a typical match. I understand that Vigilance is an all-but-useless mechanic in its current form. I understand the principles of card design well enough to know that direct translations of the paper cards into this game is a foolish endeavor that only works maybe 5% of the time.

The disappointment expressed by so many is not even remotely without cause. For me personally, Oktagon's apparent willingness to engage with the community is what's still got me hopeful about this game. I can't even remember the last time Hibernum actually made it known that they could hear us. But honestly, this set appears to have been developed in a complete vacuum, away from any other non-Ixalan cards, so if Rivals of Ixalan's PQ version is the same way, I'm not sure I'll be interested in sticking around.

FindingHeart8

Sirchombli said:

River's rebuke is op. So? The ai is still a nonce and will still durdle around for 6 turns trying to cast the ridiculously pricey creatures in the set. There will never be a perfectly balanced set. For starters, we all have a different idea of what that would even be. Constant complaints about power creep caused them to reign it in and we're still complaining about the handful of good cards in the set. I'm glad that I don't work for oktagon. Set isn't even out and the sky is falling 

I agree with you.  Multiple times I've strongly suspected Octagon made quick changes in-game to fit the whims of players on here, their only real source of verbal feedback.

The card grammar obviously needs to be cleaned up, but if that's all they do then this will be a blow to their revenue and reputation.  Their mistake here was thinking the loud voices for nerfing on these threads represented a call for a mass reduction in power instead of it being a handful of cards that were up for debate.

If you think about it...from their perspective, players complaining about cycling, and all of the cards connected to it could have lead Octagon to believe it was really the mechanics the player-base was dissatisfied with, and the cards being of lesser importance.  That could be an explanation for the obscurely complex new event rules, while the work on the cards have been sub-par at best.

I mean, or Octagon doesn't know how this game actually works, or sees this game as a sinking ship and is squeezing the game for cash before abandoning it and we're starting to see their lack of effort emerge, or just doesn't give a tinykitty about us...those are all plausible too but I choose to be optimistic about Octagon...at least until they've past the point of no return and this set is actually released.

TheDragonHermit

*support looses a sheild*
There are cards that will never see the light of day, what else is new? While looking through the cards I was underwhelmed by many but I could definitely see my self using some of the transformers, many of them are more than meets the eye. At a glance I could tell which PW gets what. So I would say this is par for what we have seen, maybe a bit more expensive, but it looks like there are a few different ways to get ramp, especially that nuts green transforming support.

babar3355

Gunmix25 said:

So ... you want to change these to fit the power creep you've been ranting about for months? Or am I missing something here? Because rarity should NOT imply power. Just an unusual effect that it does. WotC has already been pushing that perception for sometime now in regards to mythics and MP. 

Aether vial: yes you're correct,  you have no idea of its shield strength. For all we know this could very well be a delayed albiet stronger version of Talent of the Telepath but regards to your hand and not from your library. If it does come in play with a large shield... rotating creatures in hand to be loaded can provide a Solid triple drop. This can be a solid tactic especially when facing an opponent that can pick off 1 by 1 but not 3. We have all been there. Not to mention that reinforce tactics have come back so this card helps to drop three or more like-creatures you've been loading up to reinforce. 

Curse of predation doesn't need any bump on how much it should change stats. What you're suggesting IS OP. But I do agree that the shield loss should be removed. Double strike with thus card even at +1/+1 per hit is nasty enough to be honest. If you don't think so... then may I suggest you don't  play Solemn recuit if you think it's that bad. That card is a mainstay power house for obvious reasons... this MP makes it more so... but the shield bit is problematic for sure.


Electrolyze.... you are correct in how this MP is not very effective against creatures; non-token creatures that is. At 7 mana this is a fancy removal card meant to be used against tokens. This card simply slaughters anything we've got with the exception of desolation twins and Kiora's third loyalty octopus' ... if I left anything out, it wasn't intentional.  Anyways,  almost every  reinforced token creature is good as dead. Great card to add to removal IMHO. I have vindicate and Slaughter pact... no reason this can't add flavor.  Lol


Flutterstorm has do much potential... I disagree about 2 mana being insignificant... ESPECIALLY if oktagon is going the higher cost route. In the long term this card will be important. Is sphinx tutelage is bad for its 2 mana ability? I sure as heck don't think so.  Anyways... again I agree whole heartedly that the shield loss hurts far more than what is gained. 


Sanguine is amazing.... I wouldn't call it niche. Vraska with Nissa's renewal, season's past and RE? Sorin and Approach of the second sun? And I'm curious is Oketra's blessing or something or other... the one that heals you fully counts too. Anyways. There are some pretty good tricks that can be achieved. I again agree that the shield loss is a bit of over kill 

Food for thought.... maybe the shield dropping has to do with increased mana costs making support removal that much more difficult in the near future... in essence maybe Oktagon had the foresight to nip this problem in the bud early? Granted it doesn't help NOW, but later on I can see it

Where do I start.... Can you show me 1 single post where I have "been ranting about" power creep?  You got the wrong guy.  I occasionally rant about broken cards like HuF and Omni, or broken mechanics like cycling. But I think they did a decent job of raining in power creep post SOI.  KLD was less powerful than SOI, AKH was less powerful than KLD (excluding cycling), and HOU is less powerful than AKH.  We actually seemed to be getting in a pretty good range.  In fact, I complained that the new HOU creatures are generally too weak...  This is how power creep should be reined in... by incrementally removing it so that you don't just have 1-2 useless blocks after a particularly powerful block.        
I absolutely hate this non-sense about rarity not implying power. In general should a 10 mana common creature be stronger than a mythic, but with less complicated language? What an utterly mindless thought process.  "Well, I love my 10 mana 8/8 trampling flyer.. but I just got a 10 mana mythic one that is a vanilla 6/6 except when he attacks I get to spin my phone around 3 times. If it lands face up I get 1 free rune!"  You can't honestly think that higher rarity cards should not on average be better than their lower rarity counterparts, as long as they have some strange additional feature that may not make sense or be relevant.... right?  Please tell me you understand this!  The language might make it niche in general, but it should not be inferior in virtually all circumstances.

And please stop pretending that MTG and MTGPQ are the same thing.  We are restricted to 10 cards and many fewer mechanics.  You can't splash or sideboard a few key uncommons that might help you against certain decks.  You get 10 cards per deck.  This means that their will always be superior and dominant cards.   Anchor to the Aether should never be used instead of Galestrike... Galestrike is simply better. 

Sorry.. but MP's should be elite tier cards even if they are niche.  Many of these are unplayable.

Aether Vial... as someone already mentioned there are lots of far better ways to fill your hand with creatures. But removing the self destruct would completely change that.

Curse of Predation:  Well, I guess it's a good thing that I never use Solemn Recruit. But sorry, there are better pump cards to get your solemn recruit into fighting shape.. not to mention you would typically run it in a deck where loyalty pumps cause much bigger gains.  If you really think 13 mana for a card that pumps a full board by +3/+3 for (guessing 3 turns?) is a great investment, then I recommend you re-examine your tool box and see if you might have missed something.

Electrolyze:  You missed Sandwurm Convergence tokens..  You know what spell deals with all of the token stacks INCLUDING Octopi, Deso Twin, and SWC?  Galestrike, unsummon, anchor, and about a dozen other bounce spells.  I guess if you are running mono-red and convinced your opponent is a tokens only deck, this is the card for you.  What an amazing masterpiece! Also your vindicate and slaughter pact can handle all of the above stuff.  It seems you are just being argumentative to pretend like you would ever use this card.

Flutterstorm: You realize it only drains mana.. it doesnt increase the cost of the cards.  No idea why you are comparing it to sphinx's tutelage.  If you are saying it combo's well with sphinx's tutelage, I marginally agree.... it now takes 4 additional mana per turn instead of 2...  Which I guess is good against an inept AI.  Then again, pretty easy to win without this clunky combo, and you still have the ridiculous self-destruct feature.

Sanguine - Well sounds like we agree on everything but the meaning of the word niche.  Can we just agree you wouldn't throw it in a random zombie deck?

As for the food for thought, I would love if they removed KLD... but even once we get down to Origins and the new sets, I don't think most of these will see any playing time.  Frankly you shouldn't take the equivalent of a permanent and make it non-permanent for no real reason like they have.  There are plenty of ways to deal with supports... even those way more powerful than these rotten ones.

Gunmix25

babar3355 said:

And please stop pretending that MTG and MTGPQ are the same thing.  We are restricted to 10 cards and many fewer mechanics.  You can't splash or sideboard a few key uncommons that might help you against certain decks.  You get 10 cards per deck.  This means that their will always be superior and dominant cards.   Anchor to the Aether should never be used instead of Galestrike... Galestrike is simply better. 

You do know that it is Oktagon's goal to sync with WotC views right? This is something that has been mentioned by Oktagon more than a few times in Q&As. They plan to adopt this idealism... so it isn't me matching MTG and MTGPQ... it's Oktagon. moving on.

Aether vial turns out to be the dud we all feared it would be. 1 shield starting. OUCH. useless indeed.

Curse of predation: Nope, toolbox is fine. Didn't miss a thing. We will have to agree to disagree... we share different tactics and I'm sure you and I have various ways to reinforce units. If I can get LoE to 714/714 I am sure you could too via a different route.

Electrolyze: you completely missed my point in your rant. I said it's nothing more than a specialized token removal. Yes, there are better cards... but I didn't really need to point that out since I said Specialized... meaning special situations. It's more or less a fancy flavor card. 

Look, I wasn't trying to tick ya off... but nothing hurts in trying to see a different side of a coin without having to resort trying to change a quarter into a 10 dollar bill because it just doesn't have enough oomph. just sayin'

 

ZW2007-

Curse of predation: Nope, toolbox is fine. Didn't miss a thing. We will have to agree to disagree... we share different tactics and I'm sure you and I have various ways to reinforce units. If I can get LoE to 714/714 I am sure you could too via a different route. 

I will say that Oath of Ajani is probably strictly better than curse of predation, without even knowing curse of predations shield count. In order for curse to match oath's etb, it has to have at least 6 shields to begin with since each creature getting +1/+1 will drop a shield off it. If it has 6 shields, that means your three creatures will get +2/+2 over two turns, assuming your opponent didn't knock a shield off it after the first turn. Oath also has overload 1 and gives more +1/+1 counters if you can fuel it. Oath is also two colors so it's more versatile and it costs 3 mana less. Also Oath is a rare vs an MP (or are they called elites now? I like masterpiece better). We'll have to wait for some poor sap to pull Curse and report its shield count but I doubt it will be 9 or higher.

Brakkis

Curse of Predation's only problem is its self-destruct. That feature isn't a part of it in paper and there is absolutely no need for it in this game. It doesn't balance the card out. It strictly makes it worse than other, similar, cards that are lower rarity.

Sanguine Bond likewise doesn't self-destruct in paper but I can see it getting out of hand quickly in PQ. It comes down to how many shields it starts with whether it's any good or not.

Aether Vial is right out bad. Nearly every other mana generator card is better than this thing.

Electrolyze is way too weak for being a Masterpiece.

Flusterstorm doesn't drain nearly enough to be worthwhile, and mana drain itself is a fairly weak mechanic. Even increasing the overall cost of a card is too easily overcome by the AI just cascading through it and it's a better mechanic than drain. 

Really, only the creatures in the new Masterpieces look halfway decent and they could have most certainly chosen better ones than they did. Any of the Praetor's or Spirit Dragons would have been leagues better for Masterpiece creature choices.

Marvaddin

I have to agree, most masterpieces... Ah! Now they are called Elite cards. Anyway, these cards for this set are really mostly disappointing.

Why do Oktagon really think supports should vanish in thin air? Those cards are supposed to be permanent, ya know? I agree that this could be used for some, but they are implementing it in tons of supports. To me, 1 shield of a support is expected to be lost, so most supports with 1 shield are garbage. Claustrophoby? Not worthy. Hixus is ok, as it's almost a win condition (even more vs the AI, which never subs creatures), but better playing more ASAP. 2 shields? Weak supports. Reliable? 3 or more.

Flusterstorm doesn't drain 2, it's 2 for each card you played. It can be 0 (it still loses a shield?), it can be 4, 10, etc. Fraying Sanity looks more realiable, unless u play a loop deck, and in this case, u wouldn't need this anyway,

Aether Vial is completely ridiculous. IF, and this is a big IF, IF it dont get destroyed by your opponent, considering u paid 7 mana, u will need like 5 turns to have more mana than if u had played Manalith. BUT, and this is a big BUT, BUT Manalith is a common and also may give mana to other card types. With a destruction effect, Aether Vial should enter the game with 4-5 shields minimum.

Electrolyze? It can deal 2 damage for each reinforcement a creature has. And twice! So, it's the perfect card to kill any creature (reinforced or not) with 4 HP, or 2 creatures (reinforced or not) with 2 HP. Yep, we should see lots of reinforced creatures in Ixalan, and even more with those mana costs, huh? C'mon, what were the devs thinking? If you will eliminate an enemy creature, you will do it usually the first turn after it came. One word: unbelievable.

Sanguine Bond: also destructs itself. For each life gain you PW has. Life gains are usually small. Are they thinking everyone have / use Olivia? If you do, you wouldn't really need this. And still, this one costs 15 mana. Nuf said.

Long story short, even the creatures aren't really powerful, unless u build a deck around them. And what are those LANDS Knight of the Reliquary talks about? In fact, the single one that could make an entry in almost all of my decks is Swords to Plowshares. 1/10 of a bunch of Mast... no, Elite cards that we won't even get.

wereotter

Kinesia said:

greven said:

I think creatureless decks will be more interesting now...

For me that is a big part of the problem.

Creatureless should be viable, sure...

But we have 4 tribes here and the only viable one is merfolk with hexproof (with potentially the occasional dino pet).

With the costs of creatures and the amount of destruction they aren't worth playing at all.

So far from my playing today, I don't see this to be the case. One of the nice things this time around is they've made cheaper, and lower rarity cards staples to executing tribal strategies. For example, I've been playing Legion Conquistador in my new vampire builds specifically because it's easy to reinforce, and it's inexpensive. When you look at what Mavren Fein, Bishop of the Bloodstained, and Sanctum Seeker, they all care about how many times your vamps have been reinforced. The key cards to make the decks interesting are higher rarity, but the pieces to make it work are low rarity and low cost. This means vampires can be a viable deck, but will require white to work. I've been able to do it to good effect with with Nahiri for legacy vampires bringing in cards like Stensia Masquerade and standard vampires. The only real weakness here is you have to use Sorin, and not as many of the vampires here have lifelink, forcing you to get more creative with how to adjust for his lower life total.

Pirates was the other tribe I've played with. I did pull Captain Lannery Storm, and it's been pretty powerful to see how well they do once you start finding treasures. It was becoming a meme on here, but Wily Gobin is actually a really good card for pirates as it's cheap, it provides at least its own casting cost back once the treasure is matched, and it triggers Capt. Storm. It's very easy with her in the first creature slot to give all your pirates at least +4/+0 every turn, even more if you cast creatures that find treasures (see my earlier praise of Wily Goblin) or spells to find them. This makes spells from this set pretty great when paired with her. Pirate's Prize, Contract Killing, and Heartless Pillage are all good spells for pirate decks. Revel in Riches looks like the other primary card to really make a pirate deck come together. Again a deck that needs certain cards to really be interesting, but can be played, even without them.

Dinos, I think will be harder to make into a thing, partially because the tribe is split between humans that care about dinos, and the dinos themselves. I'll be tinkering with this more later and see if I can figure anything out.

Gilesclone

Sorin has his own lifelink.  That’s why he’s the pony king.

Kinesia

Gilesclone said:

Sorin has his own lifelink.  That’s why he’s the pony king.

You and your horseplay...

Bil

The bad thing is most mechanics introduced rely once again on mythic engines. Mavren fein and lannery are good examples.
 Mythic sun dinos also make the whole tribe reliable except for the red one wich is ****. 
Once again, a few bombs in the set, if you miss them you miss the set potential and get plenty of underpowered cards. 
Balancing is the key of interesting deckbuilding, but if theres no balance into the block itself there cant ca any balance beetween the sets.

A dino deck with wakening sun avatar, HUF and red hour is just a triple lol ... And its standard ...

SOI has been considered overpowered but it was at least coherent ... All the cards were OP.
In fact since amk ive got the feeling there is even more disparity than before. OP cards are worse than ever, and the rest of cards are no match for them at all. 

This might just be a personal feeling though.