I’d agree, Triple cold snap or RGD?  I’ll take the RGD!  Maybe they will print so much cold snap and not sell it we can get it for half price?

maybe all the coldsnap packs will spontaneously combust before it’s released.

“Wasn’t our plan just to get to 900 life and f***’em?”

Coldsnap Sealed: who cares
Coldsnap Draft: who cares

Unsellable. Unsticked. Unwelded. Untaped. Unaffordable. Unjust. Uncommon? Unglinged.

Coldsnap sucks. I dont wanna buy it. I know i will, though, cuz its cardboard crack.

Snow-Covered Lands CAN be useful if cards like these are printed:

Amulet of Paurank
2
Artifact
During your upkeep, you may gain one life if you control a snow covered land
3, Tap, Sac a snow covered land: Deal X damage to target player equal to the number of snow covered lands you control that are not of the land type of the sacced land.

Goblin Exile
2R
Creature- Goblin
1R, Sacrifice Goblin Exile: Goblin Exile deals 2 damage to target creature or player. Search your library for a Snow-Covered Mountain and put it into play.
1/1

Elf Exile
2G
Creature- Elf
1G, Sacrifice Elf Exile: Gain life equal to the number of snow covered lands you control. Search your library for a Snow Covered Forest card and put it into play.
1/1

what do ya’ll think?

Love,
Matt

Standard: Ideal 31-7-8

I like the fantasy cards.

I don’t think CS will suck, per se, but I am rather unimpressed with what has been spoiled thus far.  My biggest fear is that they aren’t going to follow through very well with the set.  The word I get from some insiders, is that the set is going to be pretty solid.  I also hear that there are plans to have a rather limited print run, so who knows.  It’s not going to be rare or anything, but if it IS a pwoer-set, supply could dry up well before it rotates out of T2.  We’ll just have to see, but what I’ve seen so far doesn’t encourage me.

Chris Mettler
Madness Games & Comics

“Play the Games because You Love the Game"

For the record, the problem with Snow-covered lands was really more of a development one than design.  Wizards has learned from this mistake: make mechanics near-universal in their application.  For example, cycling is pretty much always good, as it nets you a card and sometimes does other things too (Astral Slide/Decree of Justice).  Cumulative Upkeep and Fading were always drawbacks (yes, even on Psychic Vortex).  The problem with SCLs is that half the cards were decent with them, but there were a ton of cards that penalized either the controller or other players for playing with them.  They proved too risky for not enough of a reward, and consequently never got played (with the sole exception of Withering Wisps).  Why randomly risk enabling some guy’s Rime Dryad or Barbarian Guides for such generally small effects?

If every card with snow-covered interactions is beneficial (save maybe one), then the choice to use snow-covered lands will actually matter.  Part of the reason why there were SCL hosers originally was that they wanted some reason to keep people from simply changing all their basics for SCLs.  Nowadays, you’re hard-pressed to find a competitive deck that runs more than a handful of basics, making the SCLs more of an interesting deck-design constraint.

Any mechanic can be done well, or horribly.  Useless or broken.  The pitch spells are all more or less balanced, except for Force of Will.  The buyback spells are all more or less balanced except for Forbid and Capsize.  See the pattern of blue breaking the mechanics?  Cycling cards distinctly fall into only two categories, the breakable side effects ones, like the ones Slide and Decree, or the crap that just isn’t anything but crap.  But without Flucuator or Slide, Cycling is mere utility with slight bonus.  Those cards made advantage ridiculous.  Snow-covered lands could be brought back to viability, or they could be a useless footnote again, like they were the first time around.  It all depends on what they do with it. It would have only taken 1-3 cards to take massive advantage of SCL for it to have been a much more heavily played part of the game. 

Hmm...spells that have affinity for snow-covered?

Chris Mettler
Madness Games & Comics

“Play the Games because You Love the Game"

Boog - 04 June 2006 09:52 PM

Any mechanic can be done well, or horribly.  Useless or broken.
Hmm...spells that have affinity for snow-covered?

And we would want lands and spells like Mirrodin back?  No thanks!  Just what we need, getting snow covered lands banned in standard

without a couple key cards slipping by in playtesting, they wouldn’t have been banned.  We’ll just have to wait and see how they followthrough with this set.

Chris Mettler
Madness Games & Comics

“Play the Games because You Love the Game"

After that last Sealed, I’m positively looking forward to a different Limited environment.  I’m tired of losing to four and five color decks that hit all their colors on turn four while my two-color deck with a four-card splash and seventeen land gets manascrewed every game.

Mulliganing twelve times in one night is not good for one’s temperament.  Sincere apologies to anyone I inadvertently ticked off with my incessant complaints last Friday.  I promise I’ll be in a better mood this week.

Personally, I disagree.  This is the most fun I’ve had in a limited environment in a long time.  I love the infinite paths and possibilities of deck construction with draft and Sealed.  Once the next “real” set comes out, and Rav gets cheaper, I’m going to buy a box of Rav, GP, and Dis, just to hold onto so I can draft them at a later time.  Such a nice contrast to the relative snoozefest that was Kami block limited.  Just my opinion. 

That and $3.50 will get you a cup of coffee…

While I do think the format is fun I have to agree that it is the most luck-based limited environment I’ve seen since I started playing in Revised.  The games are won by the person who draws their multiple mana colors first.  More interesting than Kamigawa?  Definitely.  More skill intensive than Kamigawa?  Probably not.  More frustrating if you don’t open multiple mana-fixers.  Absolutely.  Overall I really dislike the limited environment, but I think it’s great to have more than just five competitive decks in Standard.  I suppose every block has its pros and cons.

I think Green was just mad at me for not playing it.  I opened Birds, Farseek, Wayfinder, Sprawl, and Dark Elves, but other than that, I just didn’t have much good Green going on.  Or maybe I was just too tempted by all my flyers.  It does seem a lot more luck-based, even though it’s more interesting in general.  I wouldn’t mind so much if it weren’t so expensive to play Limited.

Christian - 07 June 2006 11:48 AM

While I do think the format is fun I have to agree that it is the most luck-based limited environment I’ve seen since I started playing in Revised.  The games are won by the person who draws their multiple mana colors first.  More interesting than Kamigawa?  Definitely.  More skill intensive than Kamigawa?  Probably not.  More frustrating if you don’t open multiple mana-fixers.  Absolutely.  Overall I really dislike the limited environment, but I think it’s great to have more than just five competitive decks in Standard.  I suppose every block has its pros and cons.

You say the “limited environment”, but I believe you mean Sealed, if I’m not mistaken.  Draft is an entirely different animal, as you can choose how highly you pick your bouncelands and signets.  I’ll agree that Sealed does have some luck to it because of the necessity of some sort of manafixing to make a consistent, competitive deck.  At the same time, ALL of the mana fixing in the common slots of every set in the block helps make up for that.  I wouldn’t call the entire limited format “less skill-intensive” as a result.  There is still some skill to deckbuilding, manabase building, etc.

I’ve run into the problem in Draft, though to a much lesser degree.  I’ll pick things to keep my deck on-color and focused but get into trouble against someone playing the best cards from all five colors who lucks into his mana sources before I do.  It’s still better than Sealed, though.

I can see where you’re coming from - I just am of the opinion that if someone can get enough fixers by drafting them highly enough to be able to play all of the cards he drafted, even if they are all 5 colors, I’m not sure that I would call it “lucking into” his mana sources.  If he chose to splash for 2 Wrecking Balls in his G/U deck with one Rakdos signet, and he played it on turn 2 both games, THAT I would call “lucking into.” (or I might call it shenanigans!)

Sure, there’s always the time where you’re on the draw, he gets a signet turn 2, and Wrecking Balls your bounceland turn 3, but then again, if you saw Wrecking Ball first game, it’s probably not the best idea to lay down that bounceland turn 2.  Maybe I like this format because it’s a lot like my Bringer deck.  I had to think about every land I searched for with Kodama’s Reach because of lands in hand, mana producer’s on the table, possible draws of lands, etc.  Then again, too many decisions makes Blake a drawing fiend.  Alas, I digress....Maybe I just have an affinity (only a slight pun intended) for anything that warrants playing 5 colors.