Comments on: Shadowmoor - Color Me Unimpressed

By: Scott

Scott — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 00:43:51 +0000

Matt- I can’t help but note that if you were using Opera you could have just hit “back” and your original comment would still be there. For what that’s worth.

Since I am uncertain whether I’ll have time to do a proper follow-up post of my own, I’ll throw in my condensed take on this stuff for now.

Shadowmoor’s still got the same type of mentality as other recent blocks. “‘X’ matters”, where X was graveyard, creature type, hand size, etc. and now X is color and creature size. Any set which includes +1/+1 counters generally doesn’t do much with them, but with -1/-1 counters the possibilities opened up further and allowed them to really focus on that aspect.

Is it engaging, or boring, to care about the changing size of your creatures? I’m still undecided on that score, but there are other things influencing that dynamic than just wither.

Some of the hybrid creatures are pretty vanilla, and some are absolute bombs. I generally don’t like vanilla creatures because I like the extra complexity posed by lots of abilities interacting, but in a way having more vanilla creatures meshes with the focus on creature size. What I mean is that a 3/3 for four mana becomes a bit more important when simply having solid bodies is something of a must.

My judgement is still out on the question of whether they chose a focus of interest, or executed in such a way as to create interest, but as of yet I can’t necessarily fault their direction.

I’ll also add that I did have a lot of fun at the pre-release. Oh, and I do welcome the return of artifact creatures, that’s something I definitely took advantage of in each flight.

By: Josh

Josh — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 21:12:49 +0000

Even conspire seems a tad on the dull side to me since the cost is always the same unlike Evoke which was more flexible.

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 18:53:08 +0000

Seems to be the only decent thing is conspire. Although the macanic by itself again is not very innovative(tap two creatures, make a copy of the spell). However the copy can make a couple things quite interesting. If you want to cancel the effect via counterspell you need two as conterspell will only stop one copy not both seeing as the are seperate on the stack. The other is that the Conspire spell themselve don’t seem to bad but if you get the copy as well they seem almost game breaking (Burn Trail being a big one).

By: Josh

Josh — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 12:59:05 +0000

Last night I was thinking about the differences between an ability like Evoke as compared to Wither or Persist. Basically, Wither is always Wither. It never does anything but put -1/-1 counters on when dealing damage to a creature. Yes, Evoke JUST triggers when it enters play or leaves play (set depending) but what is triggered is always different. Persist is sort of the same though they did make some have come into play abilities so they are more interesting that just getting another shot with the creature but some creatures just come back a little smaller once and that by itself doesn’t interest me too much.

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 12:00:19 +0000

Man i just wrote this nice long post about my impressions, but I clicked submit before I put in my info and lost the whole thing. So here’s the short version.

Wither - Interesting in that blocking with them creates smaller creatures on the other side which can buy time and open more avenues for answers. As far as attacking goes I suppose it does the same to the opponent blocking with their bigger creatures, but they won’t stay big for long. So it makes the opponent make a decision to block, lose a creature, or make they bigger creature smaller. Not enough to hold the set up by itself.

Hybrid - Not bad, but seems to create the old Ravnica problem. Each hybrid is higher power then the mono-colored cards so the more you have the more powerful you deck is and it seems to create the bomb verses bomb scenario which isn’t very fun.

In all I agree that the set seems unimpressive, but it seems that we’ll give it another shot soon as it comes out to the public.