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Love this thread idea. A lot of card eval moves on two basic axes. There are a lot more but there a lot of the nonsense around a card boils down to two things: 1) How impactful is this card when I use it 2) How easy is it to achieve that impact I mean I am dumbing it down to the absolute extremity here but I think that's a useful way to think about it. For instance, Door to Nothingness when used properly wins you the game on the spot, but doesn't see any play because of how many hoops you have to jump through to get to that point. A card like Lightning Bolt has a small-to-moderate impact but is very easy to use. These at least are easy calculations because this is the most bare-bones model of card evaluation that can exist but it can be generalized to a more complex form. You can take this structure and apply it to the whole "dies to removal" argument. Rabblemaster is a card that can be very impactful but is also trickier to use than "pay 2R, get Rabblemaster" because frequently it will eat removal and die immediately. On the other hand Siege Rhino is a card that can rumble effectively in combat but also scores a little better on the second question because unless it's countered you get some impact right away. This is an incredibly wide topic and I'm really glad to see this thread. I myself make many mistakes with card evaluation due to existing biases: I play mostly Limited, I try to imagine non-traditional uses for cards, and I overvalue best-case scenarios a lot. This last one is a common problem but you can, again, reduce it to the two questions above: best-case-scenario problem is a problem of overestimating question 1 and ignoring or minimizing question 2. On the other hand you can go too far in the other direction and you get the typical MTGSalvation garbage of "dies to removal" which has been used to dismiss everything from Tasigur to Tarmogoyf. Love the thread.
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Mar 25, 2015 16:57
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Also when it comes to "dies to removal" there are a couple of other factors. The tempo gain you get from removing an expensive creature with a cheap removal spell means nothing if you can't take advantage of it. I mean it feels nice to Doom Blade a Baneslayer but if you passed your turn with Abyssal Persecutor in hand and 5 untapped mana, spent two of it to Doom Blade and did nothing with the remaining 3, you didn't really gain tempo-- you took your whole turn and a card to kill your opponent's turn and a card. There's nice things like being able to keep your opponent guessing by holding up mana so it's not like it was a strict double time walk or anything but it's a lot better when you can, say, Night's Whisper, hold up mana, Doom Blade their answer and now suddenly you're a turn ahead in a meaningful sense. Another factor is what kind of removal it takes. Seeker of the Way dies to drat near every piece of removal in the format whereas Siege Rhino gets hit by Murderous Cut and Hero's Downfall and now Roast and that's it. If a hypothetical opponent has a removal suite consisting of Terminate, Abrupt Decay, Ultimate Price and Doom Blade, by playing something like Creakwood Liege you dodge 3/4 of their removal. Finally we can talk about the card does if it's NOT removed. Bob (in Modern) and Rabblemaster (in Standard) die to every piece of removal that's commonly played but also take over games if left unopposed. A creature like Great Sable Stag is a lot harder to answer but also doesn't really win the game on its own. DAD LOST MY IPOD fucked around with this message at 17:12 on Mar 25, 2015 |
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Mar 25, 2015 17:10
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Serperoth posted:That's why I made the post, to have a reference for "yes this is STRICTLY better"/"This is what STRICTLY BETTER means". Glad people are liking it. A lot of Magic prices are from price memory. Athreos took forever to drop because he looks super sweet and is really obviously powerful (he just didn't really fit in anywhere) so he was worth a ton at first. Especially in sets that weren't opened very much, there's not a lot of downward pressure on the prices.
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Mar 25, 2015 17:13
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I think the restrictiveness of CC and CCC costs comes up more in situations where your mana is pressured either in availability (by wasteland or a low land count) or accessibility (shock lands vs an aggressive deck). When you have a CD deck, you have some C cards, some D cards and some CD cards, as well as CC and DD. Since a lot of your mana comes from fetching, when choosing to fetch you are making a decision. By fetching C and D sources you can cast your CD cards, but also all of your C cards and D cards. If you get CC then not only can you not cast CD but you can't cast D at all. Obviously having sources that can generate either CC or DD or CD is ideal, which is why filterlands see lots of play despite not being fetchable or able to generate colored mana on their own.
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Mar 26, 2015 01:50
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