Avacyn Restored spoiler discussion/speculation/etc

[Philip Dickinson]

naturally, spoiler available at:

http://mtgsalvation.com/avacyn-restored-spoiler.html

I'm going to hold off on the large volume of negative things that i obviously have to say for the time being. some basic observations:

• souldbond actually looks kinda fun in limited
• miracle seems super swingy (eg 7cc/2cc time walk)
• the flavour text is in line with other recent releases (ie fucking awful)

obvs the question really on everyone's minds is WHY ISN'T CUBE AVAILABLE ON MODO ALL THE TIME, but for the time being what do you think of the new set?

[Philip Dickinson]

also, this guy looks super sweet:

Demonic Taskmaster 

Creature - Demon 

Flying
At the beginning of your upkeep, sacrifice a creature other than Demonic Taskmaster.

Subservience to greater power is the only law in the pit.

4/3

Illus. Chris Rahn #95/244

[James Mills]

Agreed, cube should be on modo all the time and regularly updated.  

[Thomas David Baker]

The best games of Magic are those where which player seems to be winning changes several times.  Although I agree it is often unpleasant to be topdecked out of a game when you have carefully maneuvered into a position where you are winning and this will make that happen more often.  It will make playing to your outs more interesting.  The main problem with it is the judge calls but I guess we will get used to pausing at the draw step with the card just drawn clearly separate from our hand.  This reminds me of Simon's Flux mechanic where you kind of just had to trust your opponent when they said they'd just drawn it.  There won't be any "just trusting" at Competitive/Professional REL, though, I would think.

Doesn't Temporal Mastery go in any deck with Brainstorm in Legacy and become an unrestricted Time Walk?

[Paul Hodgson]

It'll probably get brainstorm banned tbh

Red miracle is a shoe-in for monoR but probably not a 4 of as having it in your opener is just sad times. Soulbond is basically banding 2.0 but actually good. I'm hoping the set is as good as Rise for limited, no where near enough cards spoiled to make a call yet.

[James Mills]

Banding was awesome!

[Philip Dickinson]

yeah everyone always says banding was bad an complicated but it actually just owned

[Simon O'Keeffe]

The problem with banding was that it was too strong.

It made it almost worthless to ever attack, leading to boring stalled games. I won many packs on MODO by just drafting White banding flyers in one of the Masters edition sets.

[Dan Barrett]

Yea, Miracles will lead to a lot more 2 and 3 of's in constructed I think.

[Thomas David Baker]

Is that right, though?  If the point is to get a powerful effect for less mana it seems like you would run all four (max chance to get the miracle) and then have to run something that makes having it in your opening hand not so much of a problem.  If you run less you just get less of the effect you (presumably) want.

Dan Barrett said:

Yea, Miracles will lead to a lot more 2 and 3 of's in constructed I think.

[Charlie Grover]

Yeah I don't really see the logic behind that statement. Might do in lower level events with players who put them in "because miss" but I don't think having few of them in your deck is good? Lower numbers mean you're probably more likely to see them in your opener than at all over the rest of the course of the game which is unideal with miracles.

[Dan Barrett]

I haven't done any maths to work it out, but maybe my initial thought was a bit silly, yea...

[Philip Dickinson]

the new planeswalker looks really fun, maybe i will actually play the odd game of standard while she is legal :3