Marit Lage: a firecracker with a too slow burning fuse

andrewvanmarle

Marit is a bit of a dud, not even worth being scared for. 

Starting of with the conclusion: there are many faster and cheaper ways to get a big creature on the board

Speed: you 25 snow gems at the beginning of your turn. Meaning you need more to factor in the other player's turn

Getting that much snow takes many turns even when flickering the kraken.

Cost:
Playing the support costs only 10 mana, but getting all that snow to fall means (for example) a 25 mana kraken, a 12 mana thassa and a spell that makes snow (most are 9 mana)
That is 56 mana for a 20/20

Other disadvantages
You can't cast more than 1 marit per turn, you can't cheat marit out with any of the regular methods (graveyard or green fetch spells), marit is not a snow creature. 

All in all not such a big bang for the amount of effort.

A few things would help:
Marit popping up when there is enough snow regardless of the moment
Increase the snow generating power of the support (both of them) to 3 per turn, making it be able to really help itself wake up.... 

Tremayne

@andrewvanmarle - nice analysis of what have sadly turned out to be a disappointing MP. 

I think that if the check for 25 snow gems was performed at the end of your turn, then this MP would be a lot more threatening.

Off topic - haven’t you just summed up what is wrong with so many mechanism in MTGPQ? Effort vs. Reward.

andrewvanmarle

@Tremayne , 

Thank!  Yeah I worked dilligently with Nalthazar to make this thing work. She needs a ver specialised deck with Koma and the kraken to maximise the result from all that efffort.

I though of end of turn too, but then you could still only summon one per turn (or... the support should be marked as not  reinforcing)

if marit is summoned at any time with 25 snow gems, she coud even appear on the opponents turn. or you could hoard a few of her cards and play multiple on your turn....
That way she woul be really threatning. 

Also she should be marked as a snow creature. (i've killed her a few times with dead of winter, which is really unthematic.


edit:

Yeah most of the mechanics are built in a too parasitic way with mythics and masterpieces as the main motor.

Energise: you needed dynavolt tower, or one of the other mythics to be able to have enough gems to make enough use of it.

Snow: three MP creatures, a mythic creature and a mythic land are the reliable cards. most other are just one shotters.

etc

I didnt understand why we didnt get snowcovered lands in kaldheim for instance: convert 2 gems to x and create 2 snow gems (for instance)

Tremayne

@andrewvanmarle - regarding the lands - I actually think that Oktagon has included those effects in Replicating ring and Shimmering Vale. By making them colourless we avoid having a lot of semi-identical lands. 

But Blue has a very powerful snow generator in Graven Lore (rare). But, yes the most reliable snow generators are in MP and Mythic (as usual and I suppose understandably).

I wonder if black is also well off with Draugr Necromancer and creature destruction, but what does black need snow for if you do not have Dead of Winter. Maybe some Blue/Black shenanigans is possible to make Marit work better, killing opponent’s creatures during his turn would help maintaining the 25 snow gems.

andrewvanmarle

Tremayne said:

@andrewvanmarle - regarding the lands - I actually think that Oktagon has included those effects in Replicating ring and Shimmering Vale. By making them colourless we avoid having a lot of semi-identical lands. 

But Blue has a very powerful snow generator in Graven Lore (rare). But, yes the most reliable snow generators are in MP and Mythic (as usual and I suppose understandably).

I wonder if black is also well off with Draugr Necromancer and creature destruction, but what does black need snow for if you do not have Dead of Winter. Maybe some Blue/Black shenanigans is possible to make Marit work better, killing opponent’s creatures during his turn would help maintaining the 25 snow gems.

I get the reasoning, but that means an extra support that just makes snow, instead of conversion ánd snow  (i mean those new monocolor land could have been snowcoverend, no?

I disagree with yje understandable part of the generators being MP or mythic. I found that a mistake is Kaladesh too, it means that the mechanic doesnt work unless you have a big big colection.


Gameplay wise i'd rather see the generators be no more than rare, and the effects that make use of the mechanic be mythic and more based on the effect.


Dead of winter is a good example of that. It doesn't generate snow itself, but has an immense effect based on the snow generated.

Tremayne

@andrewvanmarle - sorry, my remark that it was understandable that reliable snow generators was Mythic or MP, was sarcastic remark that once again Oktagon pull this stunt. I suppose they think they get more revenue this way (and the may be right).

Regarding the lands, then from a deck building perspective your are totally right. 

Just to clarify, My perspective was only from opening boosters. It is annoying to have to collect five rare lands that only differs on the colour they generate gems in, whenever a new set drops. (I suppose this pattern is to help new players get started). From a collectors perspective, I think it would be good if each set had an uncommon land that only convert to your PW colours would be nice (and also reduce the power of multicolour, but that is for another thread). Then a mythic land could be colour specific and do something extra, like we have seen recently.

andrewvanmarle

LOL, we need a sarcasm tag with green lettering 


Hmmmm i agree with the collectors and pack opening stand point, but hey, when the first momoland came out i'd  been chasing them all..

We have 3 sets of mono lands in standard atm (and one incomplete set). I wouldnt have minded the newest set to have snow connected to it

Anyway, this is a difference of perspective I guess.


So, Back to Marit Lage: may we have a change or two to make her as scary as she is on the picture?

jtwood

I agree that Marit Lage is disappointing

But even admitting that, let me seriously ask: Does it have to be good in MTGPQ just because it’s exciting in Paper?

By contrast, I bet we could easily find a lot of powerful MTGPQ cards who are disappointing in their Paper form. But we wouldn’t ask Paper to change the card.

andrewvanmarle

@jtwood

I don't play paper so I have nothing to compare against.

I'm comparing the card to other options in - this- game to get a big scary creature on the table.

Thematically (I did some lore reading) she should be really really scary. And she is bigger than emrakul, that says something.

I would like marit lage awakening be as scary as a ticking time bomb.
Right now that honor goes to Angel of destiny and quartz wood crasher.


"An entity so powerful that she had to be imprisoned deep under the ice."

Big whoop...... 

Stormcrow

Of course Marit Lage is disappointing. In paper it's a 20/20 indestructible creature, so it's very hard to remove and if it successfully gets through with an attack just once you're probably dead. Not only is prevent damage not as good as indestructible (since it can still be just plain old "destroyed") but to equivalently scary to the paper version, it should be 100/100. Or at least ~60/60, to be more in line with the usual power/toughness increases creatures get when translated from paper to PQ. But any creature which gets taken from paper to PQ with no P/T increase is gonna be basically a dud or at least very underwhelming, and Marit Lage is no exception.

madwren

At least it'll be solid in the Doomskar event, where every game I've had the board locked up with snow relatively quickly. 

andrewvanmarle

madwren said:

At least it'll be solid in the Doomskar event, where every game I've had the board locked up with snow relatively quickly. 

Where it is the last place you want to play it, since you need to kill 4 of the same creature..... 

jtwood

andrewvanmarle said:

madwren said:

At least it'll be solid in the Doomskar event, where every game I've had the board locked up with snow relatively quickly. 

Where it is the last place you want to play it, since you need to kill 4 of the same creature..... 

Agreed

madwren

andrewvanmarle said:

madwren said:

At least it'll be solid in the Doomskar event, where every game I've had the board locked up with snow relatively quickly. 

Where it is the last place you want to play it, since you need to kill 4 of the same creature..... 

Needing to kill 4 of the same creature wouldn't preclude you from having a powerful finisher, any more than other "do 4 of something" objectives preclude you from playing with powerful finishers.

andrewvanmarle

True, but in that case I'd play dead of winter since you can easily control it.