Uncategorized

AVR Review: Wrap Up

And so, it has come to this:

http://xkcd.com/1022/

Hopefully you are reading this after reading my set review, or at least the parts that interested you. Here are my impressions after a few drafts and constructed testing. Again, I’ll go in color order, and then give my final notes:

[card]Defy Death[/card]: Costing five is more problematic than I thought, as is double White. Its main function is redundancy.

[card]Entreat the Angels[/card]: Strictly nuts. I’m beginning to suspect Miracles may have been a mistake. More on this in Red.

[card]Restoration Angel[/card]: Yeah, it is as nuts as you thought. Decks can and should be built around this.

[card]Silverblade Paladin[/card]: It’s nuts, and will shine in various decks. Another card I feel I underrated.

[card]Terminus[/card]: Costing six is a little worse than I had first thought, but the Miracle does make up for it. Very swingy, perhaps more so than [card]Entreat the Angels[/card].

[card]Deadeye Navigator[/card]: I still don’t believe in this guy.

[card]Tamiyo, the Moon Sage[/card]: I underrated her. She is Tidings, Icy, and a game winning ultimate in one. She’s worthy of a five mana investment.

[card]Blood Artist[/card]: Kill him on sight.

[card]Killing Wave[/card]: Again, much better than I thought. Combos well with [card]Blood Artist[/card]+Tokens.

[card]Bonfire of the Damned[/card]: Not quite as threatening as [card]Entreat the Angels[/card], but still broken. I missed on this because I didn’t take into account what happens when you reach critical mass with Miracles + instant speed card draw/looting. Bonfire is absolutely dominant in limited, so thank goodness it is a mythic. In constructed its existence is a huge boon to control. An excellent card and perhaps the card I most underestimated.

[card]Mad Prophet[/card]: I underestimated him as well. It took me one draft to realize he’s nuts. The ability to loot the first turn is worth half a card, and it is worth it in the case of a looter to pay one more mana for haste. Mea Culpa.

[card]Pillar of Flame[/card]: I was so attached to the rhymes I missed the fact that this is the Shock that Red needs. Yes, undying dudes, annoying one drops and [card]Moorland Haunt[/card] all make Pillar useful. Exiling dudes is key vs. Zombies as well. A four of in a lot of Red decks at this point.

[card]Tibalt, the Fiend-Blooded[/card]: Tibalt is still awful and I defy anyone to prove otherwise.

[card]Vexing Devil[/card]: This is still worse than [card]Lava Spike[/card]. At best their close to equal.

[card]Zealous Conscripts[/card]: Hard to believe this was once a bulk-rare. This + [card]Cavern of Souls[/card] is the answer to Planeswalkers, so much so I’d be afraid of even threatening to ultimate. Also, quite good vs. titans. [card]Zealous Conscripts[/card] is as good as people think [card]Vexing Devil[/card] is.

[card]Revenge of the Hunted[/card]: Apart from instantly killing/bouncing the creature, has anyone ever recovered from this as a miracle in draft/sealed?

[card]Scroll of Griselbrand[/card]: This works during an opponent’s draw step. That is all.

[card]Alchemist’s Refuge[/card]: I’ll grant that allowing you to cast a dude, untap, and swing/cast another dude is very good vs. control.

I’m a little embarrassed about not realizing instantly that [card]Pillar of Flame[/card] filled a hole for Red, but apart from that I’m happy with my initial thoughts. Miracles are very hard to judge at first glance.

Other thoughts:

The biggest problem with [card]Flowering Lumberknot[/card] is that the soulbond guys in Green are generally too good to pass, so this often is unplayable. If the soulbond guys were worse, Lumberknot would be better.

In general it feels like there are a ton of blowouts in Avacyn Restored limited. The lack of removal means that if you get going early with soulbond or bounce, it is very hard to respond. We’ll see what happens in Barcelona.

Small rant:

There was a time long ago when you could win off of hand destruction. People didn’t like losing because their cards were taken from them and hand destruction was weakened and phased out as a strategy. [card]Rising Waters[/card] won a Pro Tour, but it turns out people don’t like it when they can’t untap their lands, so that has been phased out of Magic. Similarly, people don’t like it when their lands get destroyed, and so [card]Stone Rain[/card] and its ilk have been banished. Now WotC has come to understand that people do not like it when they cannot play their spells due to countermagic, and so Cavern has come to protect the creatures. Magic is a competitive game and stopping your opponent from resolving spells is a great way of preventing your opponent from winning. Hand destruction, mana denial, land destruction, and countermagic all do this in different fashions. All have been nerfed, or outright removed. Perhaps because I learned Magic when all these things were possible, this current world of simply casting trumps seems somehow lesser to the game I learned. Ben Stark has a slightly different criticism in that the game has become dumbed down, and he might be right. If Magic is chasing the largest audience via the lowest common denominator, then there might be more players and more packs sold, but off a lesser game. Unlike many of the people involved in this discussion, I do not have game design experience, so I can speak only as a player. I feel at some point the pendulum must swing back and we’ll refer to this as the age of… the Titans? Who knows?

Alright, time to head out and draft. I hope everyone enjoyed the review. I’ll close with my top 10:

10. [card]Wolfir Silverheart[/card]
9. [card]Desolate Lighthouse[/card]
8. [card]Bonfire of the Damned[/card]
7. [card]Pillar of Flame[/card]
6. [card]Zealous Conscripts[/card]
5. [card]Temporal Mastery[/card] (Power Formats)
4. [card]Entreat the Angels[/card]
3. [card]Restoration Angel[/card]
2. [card]Griselbrand[/card]
1. [card]Cavern of Souls[/card]

[card]Terminus[/card], [card]Sigarda, Host of Herons[/card], and [card]Wolfir Avenger[/card] just missed the cut.

OK, I apologize to anyone who read though all of this, as well as all the links. I promise to be less verbose with M13. 🙂

Seth Burn
Sethburn on twitter.

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments