My gripe with Scars of Mirroden

[LotusHead]

1 Mox Opal: Mythic? Really? "Wow, remember that game where my opponent played Mox Opal, and it just totally made that game totally memorable/swingy/splashy/timmy!?" Gimme a break
2 Scars Dual lands.  They don't really fit in this set at all.  Mirroden had Talismans to supplement Myr, but these lands seem like a waste of time when drafting, but I can see their appeal in Standard.
3 Cards reminiscent of cards from Mirroden (Spellbombs, Replica's, Locus ). These are all totally weak sauce.  Glimmerpost will make excellent Wasteland Proxies, but that's about it.
4. Some equipment seems beyond weak.  Makes me wish there was a rare common slot.  "it's a common, but it rarely shows up cuz it sucks so bad"
5. Comparison to original Mirroden block.  Sure, WOTC is trying to make sure that Scars isn't as completly wacky crazy broken as Mirroden was, hence no Affinity, Artifact Lands or even +1 counters, but sheesh! Would having a spell that says "Draw 2 cards" be that out of line? (yeah, there's that one equipment)


Bomb rares all seem fun, but feel free to add to this list.  I come at it from a Drafting/Vintage/standard point of view (in that order).

[BC]

I had some pretty high hopes for this set.  Unfortunately, they are all left miserably unfulfilled.  This entire set is fucking weak. 

Fuck you, Wizards.  You have sullied the name of one of the best blocks ever with this weak-ass trash.

Also, as the cards were being spoiled, these boards were lively with predictions and discussion of possibilities.  Now nobody has anything to say (unless it's about Gush).  Nor should they.  This set will have virtually no impact whatsoever on Vintage.

[Cyberpunker]

Sword of Body and Mind is pretty good though.
I'm happy about Memnite!

[DubDub]

Sword of Body and Mind is pretty good though.

In Vintage?  For what?

My gripe is:



Not a Wizard?

[Sextiger]

There are tons of good wizards but anything with synergy/tribal elements is usually too expensive/janky. 

[TheShop]

yeah...I still have hope that I will get a core lock component out of this block and at least the majority of the artifacts done have colored costs...(gayest thing ever).  Is it just me, or do the casting costs in this set seem abnormally high on average?  Not like rise where the big spells cost 15, but like there seem to be a lot of 4 drops and higher.

[wiley]

My gripe is with their smith cycle.  Why do blue and black not have a mana activation?  None of them would be broken without a mana activation, and the white and red ones would actually be playable if there weren't an activation cost.

It just seems really awkward to mess up a good cycle like that (well good if there were no activation cost on any of them).  The white one could have made a new version of crushing chamber possible :/

[BruiZar]

Wizards is just getting Better at balancing new cards. Its not all bad in scars. Mirrodin block had a lot of sleeper cards. In scars there are a bunch of cards worth playing. Steel hellkite, riddle smith, ratchet bomb, copperhorn elf, infect creatures, portal and koth  are some of the more interesting cards. There are a few others that interest me but the powerlevel of the set is on a different level of that of mirrodin 1. 

[Sextiger]

The main problem with this set is the nostalgia factor and the power creep of recent years.   If Mindslaver was never printed and had just come out now, would we all be shitting ourselves about some 10 mana artifact that doesn't win the game? Probably not. 

[Troy_Costisick]

Is it just me, or do the casting costs in this set seem abnormally high on average?  Not like rise where the big spells cost 15, but like there seem to be a lot of 4 drops and higher.

I think that's to protect against Mox Opal and Everflowing Chalice being legal in Standard at the same time.  They haven't printed any real mana acceleration in years.  They stuck their toe in the water with SSG in Planar Chaos, but since then, nothing was really added that could produce more mana than it cost until Chalice.  I think they're really worried about combo's tendancy to take over a meta, so they're moving all the good cards into higher casting cost territory to keep that from happening.  As a result, we're seeing great cards like the Titans and Wurmcoil Engine at 6 mana and not much in the 1-3 mana area.

[Norm4eva]

Without having played the new set yet, I agree in that most of the stuff in this block looks really.... safe.  This feels like an attempt to step-down from some of the power creep over the last few years, as there has been a lot of it.  Green creatures have slowly become the most thug-ass broken weenies in the game, in that they don't require a tribal set-up (in point of fact, Green's flapship tribal critters - Elves - well, they're Elves).  Marmogoyf and Wild Nacatl define a lot of Legacy; a 3/3 for 1 and a 4/5 for 2 are nothing to poop on, even if they are in the strictest sense vanilla.  (If GMC is too big to fail, Tarmogoyf is too big for vanilla.)

From a casually-serious Legacy player's perspective, there's about 4 cards that I'm at all interested in acquiring.  In my mind that's the only really playable 'keyword' in the set, as Proliferate and Infect have a cheesedick synergy that requires them both to be naturally overcosted on virtually every card they show up on.  Oh well; Galvanic Blast, Mox Opal and Memnite will trickle into my Tier 17 Affinity deck, and I might pick up some Leonin Arbiters for kicks.  Looks like a pretty safe season of Standard, maybe I'll blow the dust off a Lorwyn Kithkin deck and pretend I know how to compete in Extended.

[DubDub]

Is it just me, or do the casting costs in this set seem abnormally high on average?  Not like rise where the big spells cost 15, but like there seem to be a lot of 4 drops and higher.

I think that's to protect against Mox Opal and Everflowing Chalice being legal in Standard at the same time.  They haven't printed any real mana acceleration in years.  They stuck their toe in the water with SSG in Planar Chaos, but since then, nothing was really added that could produce more mana than it cost until Chalice.  I think they're really worried about combo's tendancy to take over a meta, so they're moving all the good cards into higher casting cost territory to keep that from happening.  As a result, we're seeing great cards like the Titans and Wurmcoil Engine at 6 mana and not much in the 1-3 mana area.

Are you completely ignoring Noble Hierarch?  Or the 'mana generating' ability of Bloodbraid Elf?  Obviously Pyretic Ritual sucks horribly, but 'accelerating out a fatty' hasn't completely gone away, it's just morphed into 'cheating something into play' (see Vengevine).

[Ten-Ten]

A far as Scars go for standard it looks ok but seems bad elsewhere. Even Molten Psyche,I think, would have been considered for type1 if it were instant speed, now that Gush is unrestricted.
This of course will not stop me from exploring some cards like Mox Opal, Liquidmetal coating,memnite,Infiltration lens, and Venser, the Sojourner.
I try not to compare any new set with past sets and keep an open mind for new cards and keyword abilities.
I have to wait and see whats in store in the following expansions. Contraptions? Maybe there will be a use for Steamflogger Boss 

[LotusHead]

Trinket Mage is uncommon?

Why? Why WOTC?

all the broken 1cc and 0cc artifacts in the set?

Why?

[Wagner]

My biggest issue is... no Leeches!

You do a whole set with tons of poison counters, yet don't include a single countermeasure, or even reprint the only very inefficient one that exists.

[honestabe]

@  Wagner, I agree.  Every game I lost was to poison counters, and my life was above 20 multiple times when I died.  I had a couple of the 4/3s for 3BB who drain life for 4, and the drain life that costs X and the life i gained was completely irrelevant.

I also found metalcraft to be clunky, and I felt as if Myrs were be stuffed down my throat.

[thecman]

@  Wagner, I agree.  Every game I lost was to poison counters, and my life was above 20 multiple times when I died.  I had a couple of the 4/3s for 3BB who drain life for 4, and the drain life that costs X and the life i gained was completely irrelevant.

To me at least, the fact that it can't be undone the same way damage can is part of what makes poison what it is.  I'm assuming that there will be ways to get rid of poison counters in the next set though, as Mirroden learns to fight off the infection.

[CorwinB]

I found the set very lacking at this weekend's Prerelease. Zen was brutal, but interesting, WWK was a bit too much bomb-oriented for my taste but still very playable if your Sealed pool had enough B/R, RoE was awesome, M11 was ok (there are some huge bombs, but also some very high quality commons and uncommons that can really make a difference). SoM is atrocious. Creatures are weak, Infect seems to be ok in Draft but horrible in Sealed (as it adds another layer of dumb luck, this time at the common/uncommon level, either you open enough Infect and support to play it, or what you open weakens the rest of your pool if you want to go straight damage aggro), Metalcraft is just unexciting... The power level of Commons and Uncommons is way too low.

SoM will probably bring some very good cards to every constructed format, and could be fine to draft, but Sealed SoM has been the worst disappointment I had since I started playing MtG again (for M10).

[Ten-Ten]

On top of all the dissapointment there is this: http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Glint Hawk Idol
Seriously, what is going on at WoTC that they forgot it turns into a bird?
Enough with the errata already...

[Jacob Orlove]

On top of all the dissapointment there is this: http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Glint Hawk Idol
Seriously, what is going on at WoTC that they forgot it turns into a bird?
Enough with the errata already...

That's nothing compared to the power level errata they slapped on Oboro Envoy.

[jp22102000]

@  Wagner, I agree.  Every game I lost was to poison counters, and my life was above 20 multiple times when I died.  I had a couple of the 4/3s for 3BB who drain life for 4, and the drain life that costs X and the life i gained was completely irrelevant.

To me at least, the fact that it can't be undone the same way damage can is part of what makes poison what it is.  I'm assuming that there will be ways to get rid of poison counters in the next set though, as Mirroden learns to fight off the infection.

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/mm/107

An interview with Mark Rosewater who was head of the design team. He claims there will be no way to remove poison counters in Scars of Mirrodin block.

[honestabe]

Thats awful

Every game I lost in the prerelease was to poison.  I even died above 20 life a few times.  I cant imagine how insane poison.dek is going to be in draft

[Diakonov]

Wow, so much hate.  To be honest, playing this set at the pre-release was some of the most fun I've had in Limited in a long time.  I think the new mechanics are great.

I like the fact that there are a lot of different directions you can go in, but they seem to all overlap to a certain extent.  It should make for more interesting draft choices, instead of, "I'm playing Allies.  I take lots of Allies."

Sure it may not be great for constructed, but it's fine as a Limited format.  If you remember back, Mirrodin was not really a well-balanced draft format.  You could pretty much always force RW and be fine.  Not to mention that cards like Bonesplitter were absurdly broken at common.  I think they just fixed a lot of what was considered "wrong" about the original Mirrodin: equipment needed to be taken down a notch, artifact lands were insane, etc.  Also, having to deal with poison counters and proliferate adds a fun level of complexity to the game.

[Suicideking]

This is a good limited set.  I didnt lose a game at the prerelease, and I only won one due to poison.  I think its balanced but since there is alt win conditions it makes deck building a bigger issue.