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Kathleen, Graham, James and Alex dive into your questions from Twitter this week on TapTapConcede.

So what's your treefolk deck look like now Graham?

"Field Surgeon suuuucks!"

...

Did you guys *read* the card? It's probably top 3 commons in the set,
makes combat impossible for your opponents.

Man, as someone who started playing around the time Urza's Destiny came out, that crack a pack was quite the nostalgia trip for me. Goliath Beetle, Yavimaya Enchantress, and Taunting Elf were all cards that were in my first couple of decks.

Re: Urza's Destiny power -- You have to remember that creatures were worse back then. Sure, sometimes they had broken abilities, but average power and toughness was waaay lower. Like, even getting a 2/2 for 1G with any sort of positive ability was pretty rare. Also, most of the "broken" sets weren't actually that generally powerful -- they just have an above average number of totally nuts cards, and a lot of okay or kind of crap ones. Plus, as I recall, Urza's Saga was the really insane set. And as Rytthigar said, you guys are definitely underestimating Field Surgeon (at first I thought you were being sarcastic).

Oh, and the "2 colorless and sacrifice this permanent to draw a card" thing was meant to be a progression of the Cycling mechanic. Mark Rosewater has said in the past that he regrets not making that connection more obvious, because most people had the same reaction you guys did (I know I did).

Rytthigar wrote:"Field Surgeon suuuucks!"

...

Did you guys *read* the card? It's probably top 3 commons in the set,
makes combat impossible for your opponents.

No need to be a bit of a jerk about it. Yes the card is deceptively very powerful and a very high pick, however this is an old set and by today's standards the card is certainly worse. Obviously anyone who has played the set knows the power of the card, but it's completely reasonable for someone who hasn't to see it and not think much of it. It's still a 2 mana 1/1 that your opponent knows about and can thus play around, that doesn't exactly scream high pick, especially if you are coming from a more modern perspective of limited magic.

JQuill wrote:

Rytthigar wrote:"Field Surgeon suuuucks!"

...

Did you guys *read* the card? It's probably top 3 commons in the set,
makes combat impossible for your opponents.

No need to be a bit of a jerk about it. Yes the card is deceptively very powerful and a very high pick, however this is an old set and by today's standards the card is certainly worse. Obviously anyone who has played the set knows the power of the card, but it's completely reasonable for someone who hasn't to see it and not think much of it. It's still a 2 mana 1/1 that your opponent knows about and can thus play around, that doesn't exactly scream high pick, especially if you are coming from a more modern perspective of limited magic.

The card is still extremely powerful by today's standards. They don't make repeatable damage prevention (to creatures) effects at common anymore and the uncommon ones that they do occasionally make are way way worse than this one (ie they are effected by summoning sickness and can usually only be used once per turn). The last time they printed one of these at common was Barrenton Medic, and anyone who has played Shadowmoor limited knows that that card can be incredibly difficult to play around. Something like this makes the board incredibly complex and difficult for an opponent to figure out the correct attacks/blocks.

Your point still does stand when it comes to this being difficult to evaluate by today's standards, but not because it isn't still good. It is more that players who have never really played with repeatable creature damage prevention effects (as the LRR folks havent really) are more likely to underestimate how powerful they really are, since the repeatable prevention pinted these days usually only works on players, so usually reads like a form of bad lifegain.

I was really happy when I first heard about tiny leaders as I'm making a cube with a similar theme. Ie a cube with nothing higher than cmc 3. Personal favorite in it is Eidolon of Great Revel.

I was really happy when I first heard about tiny leaders as I'm making a cube with a similar theme. Ie a cube with nothing higher than cmc 3. Personal favorite in it is Eidolon of Great Revel.

Maybe Graham forgot about Ob Nixilis? Though he was a printed as a legendary creature first, then reconned printed as a Planeswalker that loses his spark.

You missed the most obvious "Legend who became a Planeswalker" card, Nicol Bolas himself became a Planeswalker after being a legend(maybe the whole Sarkhan going the other way is meant to be a counter to Bolas?)

Saltblast wasn't a colorshifted card. White just had a "we hate nonwhite" theme in Planar Chaos.

Jonci wrote:Maybe Graham forgot about Ob Nixilis? Though he was a printed as a legendary creature first, then reconned printed as a Planeswalker that loses his spark.

It wasn't a retcon. Ob's first card mentioned him loosing his spark. He was a fallen planeswalker from the get-go.

Oh, right, you also forgot Teferi. Though he's a bit of an odd case, since his creature card depicted him after losing his spark, but was printed first, and his planeswalker card was a look back into the past to when he still had his spark, but was printed second.

BenMarc wrote:Saltblast wasn't a colorshifted card. White just had a "we hate nonwhite" theme in Planar Chaos.

I knew there was something I wanted to say. Not every card in Planar Chaos is Planeshifted. I mean, MaRo has gone on record to say that was the original idea for the set. But then they realized they had to actually make Planeshifted cards and decided, "These cards we made are the Planeshifted cards, and now we'll make new cards based on the color pie as represented on these cards." So, Saltblast, while likely a reference to Desert Twister, isn't actually a Planeshifted card. Damnation or Pyrohemia, however, are Planeshifted.

From where I was sitting it looked like the colour-shifted frame.
It's really easy to tell which ones are colour-shifted, just from the card frame.