So, we finally got deck lists and scheme cards spoiled for Archenemy: Nicol Bolas. Anyone wanna talk about it?
magic.wizards.com
>tl;dr version:
The Nissa deck is UG despite Nissa's PW card being monogreen.
Bolas' deck has lightning bolt, while chandra has to make due with searing spear.
New art is okay. All the GW members are looking upward, while Bolas is looking down.
>The Nissa deck is UG despite Nissa's PW card being monogreen.
This isn't commander, so that's fine.
>Bolas' deck has lightning bolt, while chandra has to make due with searing spear.
Bolas is way older than Chandra, he should have better everything.
>The Nissa deck is UG despite Nissa's PW card being monogreen.
Latest nissa in Amonkhet is UG...
I'm loving all the Amonkhet flavor on the scheme cards, is that supposed to be Razaketh on "A Reckoning Approaches"?
Like most decks wizards releases these days, absolutely unplayable bad decks. 1 of Scaled Behemoth for Nissa, really? Wotc needs to stop putting good reprints in as one-ofs like Grim Lavamancer, Baleful Strix, there's no reason decks can't be consistent in these products, but instead we get garbage with 20 one ofs and 10 2-ofs and another garbage manabase, ffs put 4 of each the coreset checklands in the decks, they're 2 dollars you cheap bastards.
>these days
Other than that, I agree. There's really a lot more wizards could be doing with their deck releases. That being said, these kind of things have almost always been for new players and casuals (barring random stupid bullshit like strix and true-name).
Man, original Archenemy deck lists were better than this unplayable shits
>unplayable
In what fucking way, you mong? It's a pack of four preconstructed decks made specifically to play against each other, that's all it needs to be and that's all they ever said it would be. Were you expecting it to be playable in eternal formats or something?
Original archenemy only gave you the archenemy's deck and scheme cards and expected you to build your own hero decks to play against it.
Meh... dissappointing to say the least. The first Archenemy decks and schemes were way better than this ones.
Also it's too expensive. Nice one Jews of the Coast.
>not new Bolas
Sad
>Nicol Bolas may just be the biggest big-bad that Magic has offered so far.
Poor Yawgmoth getting thrown under the bus here.
Know Evil is a cute (scheme) card.
I like that they're using Gideon Jura. Other than that I totally don't give a fuck about any of this.
Modern Magic is all that they can market, newbies won't know who the fuck Yawgmoth is because he's not current.
Meh, its a shit. I'll pass on this one since I already own a singleton of most cards.
I'll save my cash for the commander product of this year.
Agreed. That was the one card that caused me to stop a moment to appreciate it. I kind of glossed over the rest.
Except the new art looks like rubbish. Nissa too. Still, OG Gids is a pretty neat card.
I just looked through the lists and holy god what a mountain of trash. I particularly love how Gideon gets sun titan, Chandra gets inferno titanic, but Nissan doesn't get primeval titan because oops that's a good card with actual value. You'd have to be brain dead to shell out $60 for this.
I play archenemy with some of my friends all the time, so we were really looking forward to this.
But
>$60
>we're not going to touch the allied planeswalker decks anyways
Is buying singleton scheme cards a thing? I'd love to pick up just the scheme deck and maybe the bolas premade.
Man they're bipolar on how good schemes should be. You've got the amazing ones like No One Will Hear Your Cries or Behold My Granduer, and then you have the ones that exist to give dead turns like Every Dream a Nightmare or For Each of You a Gift. Pay Tribute to Me is especially hilarious for being worse than No One Will Hear Your Cries most of the time. I also miss the old Scheme mechanic of leaning on one player.
Do you think anyone is going to make an EDH-(ish) Archenemy: Nicol Bolas video? Maybe using Origins planeswalkers and the nicol bolas creature as commanders. Maybe have the Origins decks be Tiny Leaders decks?
I'm watching youtube.com
Just saw the red Morphling (not strict color shift, but obvious callback to it).
Torchling?
Yep.
I didn't know it was a reprint.
I feel stupid.
I liked the reference here.
Bolas is also old lore af, they just didn't felt like killing him and kept him around.
At least we have a print of worldwaker that doesn't incite quotes from Chappie.
I prefer drug user Nissa than "i stole Gideon's face" Nissa.
What were they thinking. How in hell wasn't the artist told to correct that shit?
thats pretty cool
>magic.wizards.com
We can get all the good cards for $35, everything else is crap from fucking Standard sets. The schemes aren't worth $25 because nobody ever wants to play archenemy.
Why do they refuse to make fucking good decks? They don't even need to put expensive cards in there, just more shit like Portent, Intuition and Blackmail instead of fucking crap like Soul Ransom and demons that have never been good in any deck ever.
>these days
The original archenemy and duel decks could beat current Tier 1 Standard decks.
Hell, a Portal+Portal SA constructed deck can beat Vehicles and Zombies, and that shit was meant to be the introductory set for dum dum kiddies back then.
If you don't look at the art for too long you don't really notice it.
The card'll probably be better, but still probably worse than yolandi, worldwaker
Having read the flavor text quotes for the scheme cards, I'm now 100% convinced that Bolas would be voiced by Tim Curry.
Remind me how replacement effects work again because I can't brain today.
Say I use My Laughter Echoes on Plots that Span Centuries. Would you get five schemes next turn, or three schemes on each of your next two turns or what?
You would set Plots that Span Centuries in motion. You would then set it in motion again, along with another 2 schemes. On your next turn, you would then set 3 schemes in motion.
The original archenemy decks were $20 each with a ton of value/ playability. The Bolas deck is the only one reminiscent of that.
You know how they change that... Right?
And barely. The first Planechase zombies deck and the Archenemy dragons deck were both super fierce and had cards that not only were very valuable at the time, they hadn't been reprinted in ages.
The only cards in this product that haven't been reprinted recently are the talismans.
I think it's cool. I hope it comes with that bolas hat. Like the art and lore hints
I really hope it comes with the bolas hat. if not i have no idea where you'd get so a goofy acroutement.
>bolas hat
If they do so, I would buy a dozen of them.
>A DOZEN!
I still have and use the conspiracy hat.
Ha, there was a conspiracy hat?
Which reminds me that I should get a crown to tape the monarch reminder token to.
Yea they did, it was nice.
You can probably buy one or something.
Dainty!
You can buy the scheme cards on TCG player for pretty reasonable. One of each of the old scheme cards (50 schemes in total and some of those were promotional mind you) is under $150.
If the decks had good cards in them, the set would be entirely bought up by hoarders and people who just want to strip them for parts for [insert format here]. The people who want to play Archenemy with three of their friends wouldn't be able to play.
Since the article hinted at this being the first of more archenemy featuring nu-magic's rogues gallery, who do you think we're getting next? Ob Nixilis? Xenagos? Memerakul?
Next will probably be Nahiri, if for no reason other than her being a powerful oldwalker despite being a newish character, a petty bitch, and a loose end.
You can make infinitely better decks without upping the EV considerably by just having 4x to make the gameplay consistent.
80% of games with this box will be lost because the Gideon player doesn't draw any of his TWO removal cards.
These products are just vendor bait.
They could just sell the scheme parts on the side too if that was the case.
Is it bad that it bugs me that Gideon has an Odric in his deck?
Why, because Odric has a lot of problems to worry about on Innistrad and shouldn't be taking time off to help Superman throw down on one of Bolas's pet planes?
Odric really got cucked to Oblivion with neo-Inn. The random soldier girl that accompanied Thalia had more focus than him for fuck sake.
No, Gideon summoning Odric wouldn't remove Odric from Innistrad, just make a copy of Odric.
The problem is that Gideon never met Odric at all. He doesn't know who that guy is whatsoever, and certainly not well enough to be making fake-copies of him.
You know what?
I'm going to make balanced archenemy commander decks just to spite this wizards fuckery. What other handicaps should I impose? Picking the same colours is lame, what kind of flavour should I do? I'm thinking Praetors vs Sharrum with artifact battles, but I bet Brago or Ghave would be a dick archenemy commander.
To be fair, Bolas's goal is omnipotence, whereas Yawgmoth's goal was pretty much always just to conquer Dominaria because he thought it would let him bone the woman he had failed to NTR with.
Yeah, no-one's making you use the 24+ lands precons, same with the old archenemy precons. Your friends could just use their existing decks of choice.
>tfw gideon actually spent a great deal of time learning about the plight of humanity and the nature of mortality when return to innistrad 2 was still 3 blocks long
I think I was saying I'm going to put some time into powerful, cheap lists to accomplish the same thing, but with a bit more flare, because I have no life and wizards is ass at deck building.
I was mostly wondering what other people would find fun, and which commanders should be archenemy/the heroes.
Because they're free. Schemes absolutely need to be variable in how good they are, so some turns can be crushing while other turns are a breather for the heroes.
Could do something silly with Monoblack Old Phyrexia vs three invasion-block decks. Don't limit GLORIOUS PHYREXIA to Invasion of course, but to all the wonderful black and artifact shit that is Phyrexia in that time period, which should give it the leg up it needs vs the three competently built Invasion block decks.
>Tiny Leaders
Is that meme still around?
>gideon has sun titan
>chandra has inferno titan
>nissa, who loves lands, doesn't have primeval titan
>not even a frost titan
But seriously I want it to be next friday already.
>jace and lili arent even going to try against bolas
>Bolas has lightning bolt, Chandra has searing spear
I bet it's because she's a pyromancer, so she only really kills things with fire.
To be fair, the last time Jace tried he got hyperwrecked.
Two copies each of Behold the Power of Destruction, Your Fate is Thrice Sealed, Plots that Span Centuries, Tooth, Claw and Tail, Your Inescapable Doom, All in Good Time, My Laughter Echoes, Only Blood Ends Your Nightmares, Power Without Equal, and When Will You Learn? should keep them working hard to save the world. Stifle and Trickbind are much cheaper than they used to be, they can totally manage to ruin your day.
the last time jace tried he didnt have his squad if wondersluts to run defence.
Yeah, considering what they did to the eldrazi, Bolas better watch his step.
Here's how I want it to go down.
>Bolas arrives, the hekma goes down, horrors everywhere and everything's fucked.
>Jace and Lili try to run rescue while the naya sandwich fights Bolas.
>It's a bad idea.
>Get thrown around like rag dolls, Jace gets a facefull of Bolas mindfuckery and Lili's too busy fighting her demon.
>Samut's doing whatever, who cares she's garbage.
>Jacetice League bails, all to different planes in the confusion.
Then we get an angsty getting the band back together arc, and something resembling drama.
Alternatively, before the final blow is struck and Bolas nukes the plane, there's a flash in the air and a whirling portal the gang last saw on Kaladesh opens. (They already made one, why couldn't they make another?)
youtube.com
Ajani steps out, and behind him an army of Ixalan warriors, Nayan gargantuans, Bant knights, and Theros Leonin. Ajani slowly takes off his sunglasses and looks at Bolas.
>"Remember me?"
>"Remember me?"
>Before the final blow was struck I tore open a portal in space and threw
etc
>A few blocks later jace sticks his dick in some bolas slut and uses her to attack him
I'm game for this, you chould make really sweet decks
It's even funnier when you consider that Bolas' goal is essentially "gotta get back, back to the past," in a metaphorical sense.
I'm going to do this. Thanks user!
Who best exemplifies old phyrexia as a legendary creature? I don't know a lot about the lore, but I know a ton about the cards, themes and mechanics. Maybe Tsabo Tavoc?
I've counted your list of schemes 3 times and I've counted 11 each time.
>What other handicaps should I impose?
Price it under $60 to show it's not the value but their mediocrity that makes these decks suck like we did with Heroes vs Monsters.
the ones I can think of are ertai the corrupted, asendient evencar, volrath and tsabo, I might be missing a couple
60 total or for each deck?
>Volrath
Holy shit I built an incredibly cheap and strong volrath deck. Maybe if I make a few custom schemes I can cut some of the pricier ramp. With a full ramp suite it would be very difficult to overcome.
I liked tsabo thematically because it nukes opposing commanders, and that seems like a villainous thing to do.
There's not enough red stuff that's Phyrexian to justify Tsabo, honestly. She was the commander of the first stage of the invasion, sure, but then failed at that and suffered the price for failure.
The REAL best choices never got cards - Yawgmoth himself or Gix - so the best option for a Legendary face card (or commander if you go that route) is the one who succeeded Tsabo.
Total. It's the product MSRP.
Go with a $70 limit instead because products like this usually cost just a little bit more to build from singles than they do for the box.
that's what makes this hard, the big bads themselves never got cards, so you don't have many more choices. but him or volrath seems to fit the most,since almost all pyrexian cards are black
you could do tsabo and put volrath in the 99,
Oh Jace you have such good instants and sorceries
>*mindwipes forehead*
Maybe because of Tooth, Claw and Tail in the middle?
I would say to go with Crovax, the Ascendant Evincar, if only for flavor principles if you're doing a Phyrexian Invasion deck. Volrath was rendered helpless and killed as soon as the invasion started since he was putting his hateboner for his brother over anything else.
Phyrexia Archenemy also gives an excuse to bring out the Bargains
Cool beans, I'm going to make ultra budget commander decks. It shouldn't be too hard if I skimp on the mana bases and balance them together.
I think I'm going with Volrath, there's not enough red to do Tsabo and I'd really like to make an Urabrask deck to fight it. I was thinking him, Elesh Norn and Jin Gitaxias? Jin is tough because he's a wincon, but that mana cost could be fun to build around and give you a few turns.
that is true, he would work better then volrath. you could even out will in the deck as well, there are somespicy cards you could add too
Jin would be sweeter I think,you could make the deck have some ramp too plus mono blue has some fun cards to build around, you could do control or prison style deck or just straight counter deck
I know this is combining cards with lore, but I love that Yawgmoth's monstrous power was translated into actual overpowered cards.
But it has to balance with Volrath fighting three decks. I think just straight up running no ramp and making you hard cast Jin to balance out how hard he'd Fuck over Volrath. Elesh Norn is meh, particularly because volrath is so strong, but Urabrask is going to be the real nail in the coffin of he gets out there.
the cards we got depecting him were sweet, he is much stronger then bolas for sure, makes me really wantduel deck with him vs yawgmoth
How does commander work with Archenemy (aside from not as intended, like all alternate win-cons in Archenemy), you bump up the life above 40 and the general damage above 21?
ok then soundsbetter, elesh is easy to build you could like a pillow fort/horde deck. urabrask sounds like too much to handlebut blackdoes have removle so it should balance out I think, but about voren clex?
>How does commander work with Archenemy (aside from not as intended, like all alternate win-cons in Archenemy)
You just answered your own question mate.
Seriously though, what yoou suggested sounds fine. Neither commander nor archenemy are particularly balanced so just agree on something with your group.
archenemy has 60 hp, 31 commander damage to kill
Hero players have 30 hp and take 21 commander to kill
infect is still 10
>one infect deck and a bunch of mill decks
No better way to murder an archenemy