Critical Miss: {T}

[Mysnomer]

Eesh, I kinda didn't want to get into an extended Magic debate, I go to MtGSal for that. Suffice it to say that I am unsatisfied with the current state of competitive Magic, the design philosophy that seems to be in vogue, and the turn the story has taken (as a subset of this, the decline in the quality of block novels, but now I digress). I will respond to some key points, however.

That's not broken. That's synergy, and it's something cards desperately need today. The fact that Wild Mongrel was dominant is far from it being broken. Broken cards win games by themselves. Jace the Mind Sculptor is broken.

Have you ever tried playing a deck with 26 islands, 26 plains, 4 Jace the Mind Sculptors and 4 Squadron Hawks? Broken cards don't win "on their own", they simply cause you to put out your other win conditions much sooner than normal.

Haha, yes, I see. You can misconstrue the true meaning of what I said until it sounds absurd, very commendable. Your political prospects are bright. Obviously, you will need to play other cards, but Jace protects himself, keeps your opponent off threats once you've cleared their board, and then wins the game with his final ability. In one card, you have a win condition, disruption, and protection. And then, if you have the game well in hand anyway, you use Brainstorm every turn at no cost, to make sure that doesn't change. To quote the bard, "Bah-roken."

For the record, now I'm going to do something stupid and build a deck with 52 basic lands, 4 Wild Mongrels, and 4 Treasure Hunts. I'll let you know how it goes.

Actually, with Preordain, Distortion Strike, and a Singleton Seismic Assault, you could have a weird but interesting deck.

Wild Mongrel just plays well with other good cards. Perhaps his level of synergy is too high, but it's still preferable because if you have a Wild Mongrel, but they've impaired your ability to pay madness costs, or destroyed your draw engine, all you have is a bear.

Wild Mongrel and Psychatog decks dominated Odyssey Standard so much that absolutely everything was dedicated to the Dog, dedicated to the Tog, or a hardcore anti-deck that countered those strategies. They can be stopped, but so many cards in a counterdeck need to be ready to stop them that they broke the format.

Yes, as I admit, his synergy was too good. But he was not broken, he was not overpowered. The mechanic of Madness and its reliable access to cheaper versions of spell along with benefits like card advantage or creature pump is what made U/G Madness dominant.

On the other hand, if they have a JtMS, or a titan, or an Eldrazi, or a Baneslayer angel, you better deal with it, or they win. See the difference? Mongrel is part of a chain in which any link can be attacked to reduce the power of the others, but modern monsters are self-contained victory conditions.

Those cards cost enough mana that they deserve to be good. They're too good, but not as broken as Wild Mongrel. The rest are expensive and easier to neutralize than Wild Mongrel. BS Angel and the titans have too many abilities but aren't broken, and there is nothing wrong with the power level of the Eldrazi.

You think six mana deserves to win you the game? Let me repeat my issue: just by playing these cards, alone, you have gained an advantage. And if you just keep turning them sideways, they continue to put you ahead, all by themselves. But of course, you aren't playing them by themselves, you're playing them with other cards. If there was any sort of drawback to the titans, anything interesting to balance them, most of my complaints would disappear, but no, they require no thought or skill, and their design is incredibly lazy. Blue doesn't get a 6/6 for six with a great ability and protection tacked on, it just shouldn't happen.

To be fair about the Eldrazi, they only bother me because of the multitude manner of ways we have to cheat things into play (eg: Summoning Trap)

PS: If the options are between the devil who costs $80+ a piece, and the devil who is an uncommon, I'll take the uncommon. At least then everyone can compete at the same level, without worrying about the size of your wallet.

If they print broken cards at common, they're still broken. Wizards thinks they can get away with making mythic rares more powerful because they only print half as many as the number of rares. That's why we've seen more broken cards at mythic lately, but they sometimes make mistakes. Skullclamp was a broken uncommon, and it simply made the game unfun.

I didn't say it was good, I said it was preferable to the current state of affairs. That's why it's called the lesser of two evils. Also, at least during Odyssey, there was a choice between Mongrel and the toothy Doctor, now it's just The Birds...Hitchcock was right.

 

[Evil Smurf]

so that guy got an Erin card. Nice.
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