is it me or is foretell lacking oompfh?

andrewvanmarleandrewvanmarle Posts: 850 Critical Contributor
in MtGPQ General Discussion
I did some experimenting with foretell, and I found a few things that make foretell from a great mechanic a meh mechanic.

1. you can't have more than one of the same foretell gem on the board.meaning that you have to hold on or just plainly pay for the extra copies that you draw

2 there are very few cards that help breaking the gems.there is korvold, ignite and unbridled mana conversion and that is it. trying to break a fooretell gem (especially in an off color) is a pain to do, and doesn't help you win the game.


Comparing this to aftermath ( the closest mechanic i think) where you could fill the board with aftermath gems that would break in one hit, this is about 10% as powerfull.  

Am i missing something? 
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Comments

  • jtwoodjtwood Posts: 920 Critical Contributor
    It’s okay. There are some fun interactions caused by being able to foretell by exiling from any zone. For example, Immersturm Predator can “eat” a foretell creature with its first ability and then immediately foretell it again with its attack trigger. Also, Karn’s 1st will foretell. 

    But it definitely doesn’t seem to have that Song-loop characteristic to it. Which is fine. Not every mechanic needs to be broken. 
  • HomeRnHomeRn Posts: 298 Mover and Shaker
    I want to say that the classic green nuke spell, The Great Aurora might have a very good synergy with foretell.  Mostly because of how the order of destruction happens...
    Creatures are destroyed first, then all non-vanguard supports; which probably means all foretell supports get popped all at once... which means "one big turn" depending on the order of the foretell cards.
    Just as a disclaimer, I haven't really tested this - just came to mind and I don't have time right now to try this out (or any good foretell deck to utilize).
  • jtwoodjtwood Posts: 920 Critical Contributor
    edited 1 March 2021, 13:55
    HomeRn said:
    I want to say that the classic green nuke spell, The Great Aurora might have a very good synergy with foretell.  Mostly because of how the order of destruction happens...
    Creatures are destroyed first, then all non-vanguard supports; which probably means all foretell supports get popped all at once... which means "one big turn" depending on the order of the foretell cards.
    Just as a disclaimer, I haven't really tested this - just came to mind and I don't have time right now to try this out (or any good foretell deck to utilize).
    Good point
    @Tezzeret mentioned this to me recently, and also pointed out that Ondu Inversion should have the same result.

  • jtwoodjtwood Posts: 920 Critical Contributor
    edited 1 March 2021, 16:04
    And then Nalthazaar goes and points out that Korvold busts the whole thing wide open, which is so obvious that I'm upset I didn't notice it earlier. That's why he gets paid the big bucks, I suppose. :wink:

  • TremayneTremayne Posts: 1,235 Chairperson of the Boards
    And shatter storm in legacy.
  • madwrenmadwren Posts: 2,083 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited 2 March 2021, 02:27
    I think Foretell is fine, though I wish we could make multiple tokens. I wonder if they tested it that way and it crashed the game from trying to return a whole slew of cards to hand simultaneously (for example if you Great Aurora the board). 

    There are a number of cards that seem very strong, like Starnheim Unleashed, Tales of the Ancestors, Rise of the Dread Marn. I don't have any of them yet but am looking forward to it eventually. 

    The fact that any exile effect can make them is pretty fun.  For example, I ran Ashiok1 against a foretell deck and quickly got tired of my abilities putting little foretell tokens on the board.  It's also fun against Kaya when she generates the tokens for you. And of course, using Karn as mentioned.

    As jtwood said, not every mechanic needs to be broken. It's a functional effect with some solid cards at low tiers and potentially very powerful ones at high tiers. 

    It's also a very intuitive mechanic. Herald feels far more clunky to me. 

  • andrewvanmarleandrewvanmarle Posts: 850 Critical Contributor
    I'm not looking for it to be broken mind you (no fair JTwod), but I have a feeling that playing foretell without any gem popping abilities or felf support destroy is just counter productive.

    It needs too much comboing to work.

    It would be lods better if you could make multiple gems for the same card. and I think the shield count is too high to play with anything but support poppers.

    I mean just try to destroy a supprt by matching. gems, it's almost impossible.....
  • TezzeretTezzeret Posts: 51 Match Maker
    has anyone ran into Greg foretelling his cards?
  • TremayneTremayne Posts: 1,235 Chairperson of the Boards
    @Tezzeret - now you mention it, no I haven’t. But I’m not sure I have seen foretell cards all that much yet.
  • jtwoodjtwood Posts: 920 Critical Contributor
    Tezzeret said:
    has anyone ran into Greg foretelling his cards?
    Greg doesn't exile cards from his own hand. If Greg is going to foretell any cards, we will have to make him do it with things like Karn's 1st or abilities like Tectonic Giant/Immersturm Predator (in Standard).
  • Mburn7Mburn7 Posts: 3,397 Chairperson of the Boards
    jtwood said:
    Tezzeret said:
    has anyone ran into Greg foretelling his cards?
    Greg doesn't exile cards from his own hand. If Greg is going to foretell any cards, we will have to make him do it with things like Karn's 1st or abilities like Tectonic Giant/Immersturm Predator (in Standard).
    Doesn't Greg sometimes cycle now?  I would assume Foretell would function similarly in Greg's programming (although my assumptions about logical programming are usually incorrect here)
  • madwrenmadwren Posts: 2,083 Chairperson of the Boards
    Yes, Greg can cycle. Haven't seen him foretell, though.
  • TezzeretTezzeret Posts: 51 Match Maker
    jtwood said:
    Tezzeret said:
    has anyone ran into Greg foretelling his cards?
    Greg doesn't exile cards from his own hand. If Greg is going to foretell any cards, we will have to make him do it with things like Karn's 1st or abilities like Tectonic Giant/Immersturm Predator (in Standard).
    well I thought the same thing with cycle then Gregory started cycling cards one day!!
  • jtwoodjtwood Posts: 920 Critical Contributor
    Tezzeret said:
    jtwood said:
    Tezzeret said:
    has anyone ran into Greg foretelling his cards?
    Greg doesn't exile cards from his own hand. If Greg is going to foretell any cards, we will have to make him do it with things like Karn's 1st or abilities like Tectonic Giant/Immersturm Predator (in Standard).
    well I thought the same thing with cycle then Gregory started cycling cards one day!!
    Yes, but that was after years of cycling going unused and after we asked repeatedly for the AI to not be worthless... and it still cycles poorly
  • TezzeretTezzeret Posts: 51 Match Maker
    if Greg played as Gregory  or Gregarious  this game would be hard AF lol.

    I was just curious if they built foretell  with Greg in mind from the beginning. I haven't really faced ANY fortell  cards yet..... honestly  I have barley seen ANY new cards
  • jtwoodjtwood Posts: 920 Critical Contributor
    Tezzeret said:
    if Greg played as Gregory  or Gregarious  this game would be hard AF lol.

    I was just curious if they built foretell  with Greg in mind from the beginning. I haven't really faced ANY fortell  cards yet..... honestly  I have barley seen ANY new cards
    I already submitted this question for the Q&A. We will see if they answer. 
  • Mainloop25Mainloop25 Posts: 1,658 Chairperson of the Boards
    Tezzeret said:
    if Greg played as Gregory  or Gregarious  this game would be hard AF lol.

    I was just curious if they built foretell  with Greg in mind from the beginning. I haven't really faced ANY fortell  cards yet..... honestly  I have barley seen ANY new cards
    They really haven't given us a reason to play them yet.
  • Mainloop25Mainloop25 Posts: 1,658 Chairperson of the Boards
    The main problem with Foretell is the difficulty in getting the Foretell to trigger. It's pretty difficult to pop a support with 3 shields reliably at all, and there aren't enough cards that destroy your own token supports. With Food, they give us a lot of cards that "eat" food tokens. I don't know if this set gets an expansion, but it would be cool if they give us more cards that help the Foretell trigger more.
  • madwrenmadwren Posts: 2,083 Chairperson of the Boards
    Mainloop25 said:
     I don't know if this set gets an expansion, but it would be cool if they give us more cards that help the Foretell trigger more.
    Or retool older cards. An unfortunate side effect of the extreme segmenting of support types is that cards like Dreamshaper Shaman and Enigmatic Incarnation often wind up having too narrow use cases.


  • BongoTheGreyBongoTheGrey Posts: 64 Match Maker
    In paper Magic the idea behind foretell is to speed up the process of casting foretell cards. You foretell a card by paying 2 mana and then you can play the foretell card by its original mana cost minus the 2 that you payed in advance. That means that you can also play that foretold card any time you want. You decide when.

    In PQ that's clearly not the case and is not a mechanic that really benefits its player. The foretold token would go to any gem on the board and sometimes can be really hard to cast so there goes the functionality of using the foretold card whenever you want. You cannot plan in advance by foretelling a card since you never know when the shields will break. Sometimes you can foretell a card and never get to break the shield during the whole match so I don't really know what's the purpose of foretell in PQ.

    The only foretell card where I really get some value out of foretelling the card is the Masterpiece Pact of the Titan since the foretold token has some additional effect. Every time the token is matched I get to create a 5/5 giant wizard token. Other than that card, if you don't play foretell with Korvold (which is rotating out of standard next fall) there is not much sense on playing those card at all
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