The Gaming Den

In the past Wizards of the Coast has been very careful to keep Magic and D&D separate. They seemed to feel it would compromise one or both if they allowed any concepts to bleed over between the two.

Not anymore.

honestly, I don't really think it's possible for D&D to get terrible news anymore. Every edition has it's hold outs and grognards, and the name is so recognized that it will always exist in one manner or another. Wizards is merely a bump in the road, really.

As for this specifically, I'm actually in favour of it and await to see what comes of it.

Too bad that's Magic and not D&D.

catharz, he seems to be implying that WotC is mingling D&D and MtG and it may be bad for D&D in the end.

At least it's a rather interesting new mechanic.

Oh noes, they got D&D in my Yu-Gi-Oh!

TOZ wrote:

Oh noes, they got D&D in my Yu-Gi-Oh!

*pff* like that's anything new...

Level Up counters?

WHY ROSEWATER WHYYYYYY?!

Pfft, the Sailor Moon CCG had a level-up mechanic.

I haven't played magic for a long while, but that card seems ridiculously good. Are games faster now?

The Lunatic Fringe wrote:I haven't played magic for a long while, but that card seems ridiculously good. Are games faster now?

A bit. Lightning Bolt is back so you bet this guy is gonna get fried.

This is a pretty slow creature though. You'd essentially have to pay 1U then UUUU just to make it a 2/4 creature. Then you'd need another UUU to give you double turns. That 1 colorless and 8 blue mana. Plus, Sorcery speed.

OTOH, with ridiculous mana acceleration...

Actually, I think the real deal with these shitters is counter spam.

As I recall, one part of my squirrel deck involved a card that allowed you to declare X tokens to counters on any of your cards, and a card that turned counters on it into 3/3 squirrel tokens.

A properly built token deck + that first card could end up leveling up Wizards very fast, and I don't see anything that prevents multiple Wizards from stacking. So you could eventually get to the part where you have enough turns to steamroll people with your infinite tokens.

Kaelik wrote:Actually, I think the real deal with these shitters is counter spam.

As I recall, one part of my squirrel deck involved a card that allowed you to declare X tokens to counters on any of your cards, and a card that turned counters on it into 3/3 squirrel tokens.

A properly built token deck + that first card could end up leveling up Wizards very fast, and I don't see anything that prevents multiple Wizards from stacking. So you could eventually get to the part where you have enough turns to steamroll people with your infinite tokens.

That too. But I don't think they're gonna have a lot of counter-adding cards in Standard for it to be become too crazy. Fast mana acceleration though... Standard has a decent set of them right now.

Regardless, bolt it before it levels up. BOLT IT NOW.

Really, I think that says much worse things about Magic than it does about D&D.

Yeah, that dude is fucking nuts. Even with no mana acceleration at all, he comes out on turn two. Then you level him up with all your mana on turn 3. Then you level him up with all your mana on turn 4. Then you take two turn 5s in a row, so it's a lot like you didn't spend any mana on turn 4 and just delayed it a bit in order to draw an extra card. Essentially you swap out go first for draw first on turn 4 and then you go into absolute fucking crazy town where you take two turns a turn and have an extra Ironwood Treefolk on top of that.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:Yeah, that dude is fucking nuts. Even with no mana acceleration at all, he comes out on turn two. Then you level him up with all your mana on turn 3. Then you level him up with all your mana on turn 4. Then you take two turn 5s in a row, so it's a lot like you didn't spend any mana on turn 4 and just delayed it a bit in order to draw an extra card. Essentially you swap out go first for draw first on turn 4 and then you go into absolute fucking crazy town where you take two turns a turn and have an extra Ironwood Treefolk on top of that.

-Username17

The reason why you'd want mana acceleration with this guy is the sorcery speed of Level Up. It means you can't pump this guy up to become a 2/4 when somebody Lightning Bolts/Removes it.

Worse, they can do the bolting after you've spent the mana to Level Up (just before it turns into a 2/4) and make you waste all of it. It's actually pretty dangerous to try and bring him up to level 7 all on one turn; because he might get vaporized even before you can enjoy your double turn.

That's why I'd say it's much better with mana acceleration. You'd need to have some counterspells handy to keep the bolts away (which you power with some extra mana).

And yeah, you can do a double turn 5. But assuming you have no acceleration you'd have zero mana to spend on anything else for turns 3/4, and you'd be tapped out when your opponent's turn comes up. Neither of these situations are entirely ideal.

(Of course, not all decks pack removal. But I'd say decks without removal are kinda screwed anyway)

A magic deck that can't remove a single creature that the opposing deck just invested two straight turns in and has no special defense is already pretty boned. Even a boomerang fucks this guy sideways.

But then again Figure of Destiny was pretty bad ass, so I'm sure at least one of these guys will do something nasty.

Red_Rob wrote:But then again Figure of Destiny was pretty bad ass, so I'm sure at least one of these guys will do something nasty.

Indeed. Sadly, the white Level Up creature they've previewed so far looks to be a pain to Level Up. You pay 3 per level? And its grand level 4 ability is it gets stats equal to Serra Angel? (Meaning you spend 13W for a _Serra_?)

Ah, well, maybe it will have uses in Limited.

FrankTrollman wrote:Yeah, that dude is fucking nuts. Even with no mana acceleration at all, he comes out on turn two. Then you level him up with all your mana on turn 3. Then you level him up with all your mana on turn 4. Then you take two turn 5s in a row, so it's a lot like you didn't spend any mana on turn 4 and just delayed it a bit in order to draw an extra card. Essentially you swap out go first for draw first on turn 4 and then you go into absolute fucking crazy town where you take two turns a turn and have an extra Ironwood Treefolk on top of that.

Yeah, he's crazy powerful. I mean he starts out 1/3 which makes him rather tough to kill from the start. At his second turn out, he's immune to lightning bolt, and then it's just batshit nuts from there.

Not to mention in any kind of multiplayer game, the guy is a complete auto-win.

Red_Rob wrote:A magic deck that can't remove a single creature that the opposing deck just invested two straight turns in and has no special defense is already pretty boned. Even a boomerang fucks this guy sideways.

But then again Figure of Destiny was pretty bad ass, so I'm sure at least one of these guys will do something nasty.

That was the main reason I suggested tokens.

Tokens are just transferred over, automatically, without having to pay for them or perform them at Sorcery speed.

So you can just turn your Wizard into a turn generator during your turn, and then take a second turn where attack/do it again/ect.

and the next set after whatever set this is a preview for will play around with the level up mechanic, likely with condition based leveling, "Level: When a creature is sent to the graveyard" is obvious. Hell, I'd be surprised if they never made a tribal level card, ie: "Level: Whenever a(/nother) [type] enters play".

And I wouldn't be surprised if they had something that got less powerful as it leveled up, it'd be a cute inversion that people would shit their pants over the first time they saw it, and then never play, unless they found a way to exploit it.

Frank, that'd be cool, but if you trade all your mana on turn three and four on a sorcery speed ability to get double turns on 5+, you're very, very screwed. Standard is, as far as I know, very, very fast and chock full of removal-doing that leaves you so very vulnerable that you may just lose anyway even if they don't draw a way to deal with him.

Now, when all that crazy Alara shit I hear about rotates out (or is that happening now?) this guy could be great in a control deck. He's an extremely nice, but resource heavy, win condition, though you need to protect him to make you actually win, as opposed to say, a Sphinx of Jwar Isle, which comes out later but can only be gotten rid of via board wide removal and only costs one turn's worth of mana. Of course, with the extra turns you get from this guy, you could throw out a Sphinx or whatever as well, but by the point you're getting 2 turns to your opponent's one you're almost assuredly going to win anyway.

I also have a feeling he'd work well in a good combo deck, but I don't know whether the tools exist in Standard for that. But Extended gives you Doubling Season, and Doubling Season is in the color of mana acceleration.

RandomCasualty2 wrote:Not to mention in any kind of multiplayer game, the guy is a complete auto-win.

In any kind of multiplayer game this guy would be lucky to survive to his own end step.

I see him working as the kill card in some kind of control deck but he seems too fragile, too costly and too slow to be really scary. At the point where a deck can cast this guy, protect him, and level him up, the game is under control already.

On topic, given that Zendikar is the "look we made D&D in Magic!" set, I don't see this as any kind of long term indicator they are blurring the properties any more than Alara was an indicator they are making all the spells multicoloured.

Red_Rob wrote:
I see him working as the kill card in some kind of control deck but he seems too fragile, too costly and too slow to be really scary. At the point where a deck can cast this guy, protect him, and level him up, the game is under control already.

Well he's a blue card. Does blue do anything other than control?

Blue does combos too.

But right now the only thing it does well is turn your opponent's lands into islands so they can't cast their spells.