Ixalan Review

Mburn7

Some of you may remember me being one of the voices saying to wait until Ixalan was out for a while before judging it.

Well its been a while and here's my judgement, and it turns out a lot of the criticism was pretty accurate.  (Sorry for the yelling)

Clans and Keywords

Merfolk/Buff:  They seemed interesting with the buff interactions talked about in the blogs.  Turns out there are only 2 cards in the entire set that have the buff keyword, and one of them only gives unblockable.  Merfolk otherwise turned out pretty decent in control, and some have decent buffing power, although the best one is still probably the Harbinger of the Tides from Origins.

Vampires/Reinforce:  I am eating my words pretty hard right now.  I had thought that the reinforcing focus of the vampires would be extremely powerful.  Unfortunately there are only 2 cards in the set that actually reinforce things (I'm sensing a theme here), and one of them is a vampire only.  The vampires overall are pretty meh.  1 or 2 of the mythic ones seem pretty decent, though. 

Dinosaurs/Enrage:  There are 6 creatures with enrage, and the abilities aren't bad.  Biggest issue is that the planeswalker specifically made for enraged dinosaurs can't use 3 of them.  Oh well.  The dinosaur tribe is actually pretty nice and diverse otherwise.  Most of the mythics are pretty good (apparently the green avatar is great). Now that Gishgath is fixed, he's pretty nice too.

Pirates/Treasure:  Not gonna lie, I like the pirates.  Sure most of them are overcosted and underpowered, but the higher rarity ones are pretty sweet.  Treasures are mostly useless and definitely poorly implemented (you get nothing if they are destroyed by a spell or effect), but they are easy to get and I have Captain Lannery Storm, and she's fantastic.  No bias here though, I swear.  There's also way more of them then the other tribes and abilities, so there's a lot of ways to splash them around.  The paid-for exclusive mythics are pretty sweet too, for those of you with deep wallets.

Explore:  Every clan explores, although there really aren't many cards that do it and only 3 do it reliably (one of which is a masterpiece, the other 2 are rares).  The ability itself is pretty nice.  Mana or buff, both options are pretty good.  Just wish there were more consistent ways to get it off.

Events

Across Ixalan:  When the biggest complaint about an event is that it's too easy to get the rewards, its a pretty solid event.  The 20 crystal buy in is definitely worth it.  The node mechanics are pretty cool, the objectives are challenging, but definitely doable (and if you can't, who cares!).  I say just double the points needed for each progression tier and keep everything else the same.

Race to Orazca:  I love the idea of clan-specific nodes.  I like the node buffs.  I like the idea to make the node buffs permanent supports, so you don't keep forgetting why things are happening at the start of every turn.  I do not like all the bugs.  The buff supports should not be targetable.  (The other bugs in the event are well documented and not really concept related, but still pretty bad).  Also (as everyone has been quite loudly proclaiming), the secondary objectives suck.  Like, really bad.  Like Oktagon went through the forums entire history and picked every single objective that we ever hated and put them all in an event.  Seriously.  All of them.  I was expecting OG Terrors in the Shadows (whats wrong with "cast X or more [clan]" and "cast X or more [mechanic]"?) and we got OG Emrakul's Corruption.  Not cool Oktagon.

Planeswalkers

Since I'm not spending any real money on this (or any game really), I haven't used any of them.  So far Vraska seems pretty good.  Huatli seems pretty ok.  Jace seems good, but he's not out yet, so I dunno.
In 2-3 months when they all come out in the vault and I get them for crystals.

Summary

Overall, I like the idea behind Ixalan.  The power level is mostly fine for me.  I wish the keyword abilities made more of an appearance, though.  Hard to build an entire deck around an ability if only 1 card has it.  The biggest issue I have with it is the bugs.  Tons of cards are bugged.  When the set came out, pretty much every mythic and rare seemed to not work, and every day I find new cards that just don't work how they're supposed to (today was Savage Stomp and Emperor's Vanguard).  The entire reason we were ok with waiting so long for the set was so that there would be no major bugs.  Turns out, it needed a lot more time (and a bettor translator).  I will commend Oktagon for their conceptualization of the set.  The abilities are (mostly) well thought out (the mostly is because of the vampires' need for way more creature slots), the power creep is scaled back quite nicely (maybe a little too far, but only a little), and the events are definitely unique.  If the bugs and stuff can be worked out, I like the direction we're heading in.

bk1234

This is a good review and I agree with most of it, I am especially pleased with the power level -- I think the last minute changes tipped me from "what the heck" to "ok, I can live with this". 

It reminds me a lot of when Kaladesh came out and compared to SOI, it just seemed so weak and gimmicky. Well AKH / HOU was a really powerful set so anything compared to it isn't going to seem so strong. 

We complained about not being able to use KLD mechanics because there weren't enough cards -- but when AER came out we had a much bigger card base and it was ok (energy is, to this day my favorite and most effective mechanic -- but it takes a lot of AER cards to make it sing). 

As far as events go, I am right there with you as well -- but want to add that taking away rare coalition rewards is a mistake that punishes mid level and new members so I don't agree -- these players depend on events to build their collection and need rares to be competitive as they move through tiers. Top tier players don't need the rares, most of us save our crystals and already have half of the collection of rares -- it doesn't hurt us -- the rich will continue to get richer and the bottom will continue to suffer. 

Besides RtO, I'm content -- not overjoyed and not upset with Ixalan, I'm content with what's come out and I am intrigued about what is coming. 

DBJones

This is a very solid summary of Ixalan, nicely done! I'm hoping they're planning on using all the same mechanics in Rivals, so we'll have more access to them. My only real issue (besides the bugs) with the cards themselves is the imbalance in cost between creatures and kill spells. It was already bad, and this set increased the average creature cost significantly, but kill spells are still similarly priced or cheaper. Personally, I prefer cheaper, weaker creatures, Graven Abomination is the creature I use most.

gogol666

I mostly agree with the review, but on the comments about the power cost ratio: if I can be fine with the new direction (paying a more for less) in my opinion the costs are not distributed correctly across the set. An example is the dinos where there many at 17 all with which 6/6 and the abilities get worse with increasing rarities. Then we have 4/4 with better abilities for 9 mana. 
An additional negative remark is related to the flipping supports: when they flip they count as a new cast and the other side is sent to the graveyard. The flip side always loses shields on usage, which makes them almost useless since they convert gem on top of their effects and they start with very few shields. All that said they seem to have a great potential: dowsing dagger is very powerful for instance.
Last but not least, Race to Orazca requires the players to fight 55 matches: even fit the best player thus means about 8 hours of play. Many solutions have been proposed in other posts, but to me the simplest is shortening the event to 2 days and making it start with a single charge. Thus would make the total matches 30 for about 4 hours in 2 days.
Overall I think the set requires a few changes to be really fun, but the changes are easy to implement.

Bil

I also agree with most of those points.
   The main problem is obviously the neverending RTO event and the secundaries asociated. The specific rules are fine by me but the idea of the indestructible supports on loyalty gems could be better to avoid the conflict with other supports.
   I kind of like spending less time on daily farm so across ixalan id fine by me ... But i understand some might consider it is too easily earned rewards.
   About cards i might say that :
->  I really think the uncommon cards could be a bit better to be at least worth playing ...
-> Most of the rares are playable except for the flipping supports that are disapointing and buggy (interesting idea but wrong design i might say). 
->The mythic pool of cards is too unequal ... Some are pretty nice but some are really bad ... (Even worse than rares actually) ... That should be more balanced.
-> the masterpieces are awfull ... Almost none could fit in a deck.
 -> generally speaking the self destruct mechanic is too present among the cards ... It should be used with moderation.

  Overall i really like the ideas that were introduced in ixalan, particularly about the specific rules in events ... but the design of event nodes and cards looks somehow a bit clumsy (without being unbearable neither as far as I'm concerned).
   That is just a personal feeling though.

  

andrewvanmarle

Bil said:

   I kind of like spending less time on daily farm so across ixalan id fine by me ... But i understand some might consider it is too easily earned rewards.

  

Well pooh to them I say. This is a game not a daytime job. Actually I allready have one of those, and it -is- time comsuming. So i'm really happy to see the direction across ixalan took. I play it daily now, sometimes beyond progression depending on my time. it kinda took over for training grounds for me.

FindingHeart8

andrewvanmarle said:

Bil said:

   I kind of like spending less time on daily farm so across ixalan id fine by me ... But i understand some might consider it is too easily earned rewards.

  

Well pooh to them I say. This is a game not a daytime job. Actually I allready have one of those, and it -is- time comsuming. So i'm really happy to see the direction across ixalan took. I play it daily now, sometimes beyond progression depending on my time. it kinda took over for training grounds for me.

agreed, the developers have made this game challenging enough, they need do no more of that.  This game does feel like a part time job sometimes... -_-

babar3355

Well I mostly agree. 
-Dino's are decently strong but not very synergistic. 
-Pirates are pretty solid both as splash cards and as a theme deck (although you really need the mythics). 
-Merfolk are completely terrible with no synergies.
-Vampires are ok... not amazing.  They would be really solid if there were more token generators like you said.

But from a creature standpoint, they seemed to just be throwing spaghetti when it comes to power level.  As @gogol666 already mentioned there is a big disconnect between vanilla cost and P/T across Ixalan. Also, inexcusable things like giving a creature vigilence until the end of your turn...

RtO was completely awful and I will not be playing it again with the same objectives.  
AI is fun... I am surprised that they made it so easy to get max progression, but Im not really complaining...

Yeah bugs galore.  Insane amounts of bugs.  And those miss-descriptions make me cringe.

Oh, and I don't really think they needed to descale the power creep from AKH/HOU block.  They took out the 12/12+ creatures and really capped it at about 8/8 in HOU and AKH.  That seems about like the right spot unless you want Origins to simply be the strongest set, which I think is a terrible idea.  Now they made some big time mistakes with cards like HuF and Omniscience, but that's a different type of design flaw.

Furks

I mostly agree. There seems to be a somewhat similar problem as with kaladesh, where the synergies only really became viable after the second expansion. I think that a lot of the ixalan cards have potential but just need more cards to enable them. If only there were a few more rare/uncommon dinosaurs, pirates and merfolk to build around. The mythics are there, its just that the rest of the deck is pretty weak... For now ... 

speakupaskanswer

Great review! I have to agree the most with the Merfolk issue. They are just terrible and a wasted opportunity. Except for the mythics, I can't get much out of this set and I was really looking optimistically forward to it.

madwren

Pirates - enjoying them. They have the most fun effects and the three-color spread helps immensely. Captivating Crew is a hoot.

Vampires - With the right deck, having a lot of success with them. They're being underrated. I like Mavren Fein, and Sanctum Seeker looks strong.

Merfolk - Useless. I have Kopala, still useless. Harbinger remains the best merfolk. The biggest problem with merfolk is that their colors happen to be in the colors of brokenness (blue/green), so I always wind up removing merfolk and gravitating towards cards of higher power and greater efficiency, and before you know it, poof, I'm running either Rashmi or Cycling and dropping GRs like hot potatos.

Dinosaurs - Enrage is sort of pointless, which basically just reduces dinos to large creatures that aren't quite as good as large creatures from previous sets. There's potential, and since I lack any of the power dinos I haven't played with them so can't judge fully.

Across Ixalan - Fantastic event. Love it as both a competition and as our Standard Training Grounds. It's so nice to be able to take test decks into it and experiment instead of trying to run frelling merfolk against Olivia or Part the Waterveil or Pig or Deploy or whatever.

Race to Orazca - We've all made our feelings known.

I was down on it at first, but for a first effort I think it was a good try. The fact that they reduced the casting cost of so many cards from the preview was undeniably a positive. I also think some cards will improve when Rivals comes out.

Still, I feel that they made the rookie mistake of confusing complexity with quality.  Turning every card into a Moebius Strip of possible interactions, many of which aren't templated consistently or don't act the same as other, similar cards, only causes frustration. A lot of times, it feels like they're trying to convince us that three nickels are worth a quarter. It isn't. Just gimme the darn quarter.

Kinesia

Furks said:

I mostly agree. There seems to be a somewhat similar problem as with kaladesh, where the synergies only really became viable after the second expansion. I think that a lot of the ixalan cards have potential but just need more cards to enable them. If only there were a few more rare/uncommon dinosaurs, pirates and merfolk to build around. The mythics are there, its just that the rest of the deck is pretty weak... For now ... 

Yes. I was trying to make an Explore deck and it needs more cards in different colours. Most of the explore cards are once off "enter the battlefield" and if I use all those I have almost NO slots to do necessary creature destruction or card draw to keep my own creatures going because they have no tricks except for explore! 
We only have 10 slots.
In blue green running 5 creatures (most of which get destroyed immediately...)

I mean... How is creature synergy going to work with the amount of destruciton anyway? Especially against Bolas? (if he was -5 instead of destroy it would help so much)

I can play the new "give hexproof" spell, but I DONT HAVE ENOUGH SLOTS.

there are so many cool bits and pieces but you can't actually fit them together, there isn't the glue, the cards that provide _2_ things and so free you up a slot.

babar3355

After getting lucky and pulling Marven Fein, I change my answer to vampires are also pretty terrible.

Can I create a pretty effective vampire tokens with starfield of Nyx lock deck?  Sure I can.  Is it any better than just killing them with any other creature or spells once they are locked down? Nope. In fact its harder to set up and requires more pieces that could be used to enhance the reliability of a different finisher.  Boo.

Mburn7

babar3355 said:

After getting lucky and pulling Marven Fein, I change my answer to vampires are also pretty terrible.

That's been the general consensus from what I've heard.  Its just too hard to reinforce creatures reliably without losing them. 

My prediction would be that vampire reinforcing would be powerful if used with other (bigger) creatures.  But since there's only 1 card that can do that, and its a 16 mana spell, its just not feasible.   I was expecting a ton more options (that seems to be the reoccurring theme with this set)

If there are a half-dozen spells that reinforce creatures you control, Mavren would be a solid card.  As is he's just meh

wereotter

babar3355 said:

After getting lucky and pulling Marven Fein, I change my answer to vampires are also pretty terrible.

Can I create a pretty effective vampire tokens with starfield of Nyx lock deck?  Sure I can.  Is it any better than just killing them with any other creature or spells once they are locked down? Nope. In fact its harder to set up and requires more pieces that could be used to enhance the reliability of a different finisher.  Boo.

The easiest way to play Mavren Fein is to also play a common card, Legion Conquistador, and then an uncommon, Queen's Commission. Once you can start casting Legion Conquistadors every turn or every other turn, you can build up a nice army of life linking vampire tokens. The problem really only comes from not drawing Mavren, or if he gets removed before you can get your combo online.

I think the lack of creature slots more than anything is hurting vampires. They were kind of the swarm mechanic tribe from Ixalan, and cards that care about how many times they've been reinforced was a good attempt at making that matter, but does fall a little flat once you consider how much work it is to actually accomplish it. Especially when some cards need you to reinforce the creature two or three times before it has an effect. It's simply too easy to remove the creature before they get that far.

Kinesia

If there were less creature destruction perhaps you could reinforce things? Hmmmm....

khurram

If there were more ways to reliably reinforce things in ixalan instead of just casting the conquistador, perhaps then you could reinforce things? Hmmmm....

I don't understand this.

A set is released with mostly underwhelming and sucky cards. And people agree on this too. But their solution?  "If the cards sucked all around in other sets too then we'd enjoy playing ixalan"

Mainloop25

Kinesia said:

If there were less creature destruction perhaps you could reinforce things? Hmmmm....

Or more hexproof, or some other mechanic that makes you immune to destruction? I would prefer that to getting rid of cards.  

wereotter

Kinesia said:

If there were less creature destruction perhaps you could reinforce things? Hmmmm....

I’ll agree, even in standard, there’s an over-abundance of destruction effects. Not counting wrath effects, or simple damage spells (which also kill) there are 22 cards just in standard that destroy or exile a creature. 

That is definitely something that hurts vampires. Not to mention the impact it makes on the value of defender or berserker creatures. Targeted creature removal is much more powerful here too considering one “destroy target creature” spell can take out something that represents an infinite number of creatures. By that I mean one Turn to Frog can destroy a whole pile of zombies, which makes it already a lot stronger, but with creature limits, one spell takes out at least a third of your opponent’s board.

Creature removal was rarer when the game was just Origins, but now it’s possible the mechanics no longer work with the saturation of kill spells. I’m not saying this absolutely needs to be the solution, but something that would help vampires I’m this case was if a kill spell had to be used for every time a creature is reinforced before it dies.

gogol666

What if destroy/exile only removes one of the reinforcements?

Kyphonis

I get the feeling you would suddenly have blue become excessively more powerful than some already complain that it is due to bounce effects. It would massively disrupt the balance of power kill already has. Basically the trend to increase the cost of kill above a single swap (or a lucky cascade) has slowed it enough for me. Mavren Fein may be slow but I’ve had no problem grinding with him. Slower speed just means prepare for a grindier match. A bit annoying but workable.