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Magic: the Gathering |OT| Guilds of Ravnica - We built this city on blocks of gold
- Thread starter SigmasonicX
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Sabotage sometimes buys you time by speeding things up (if the thing you need is at the top of your deck). Absorb buys you time by extending the game. It also allows you to take advantage of that bought time if your answers are in your hand but not quite ready.
Neither is strictly better but Absorb is a better card against burn or aggro pretty much always if you heavy into UW. Sabotage is far better against control though.
Finally tried Commander(only a 2 player game so not a full game) out over the weekend and it was fun. I upgraded the Breed Lethality precon a bit. Ended up killing the opponent with Walking Ballista by removing 60 counters from it. I think I'll see if my LGS does Commander nights to play more.
decks might have 12 shocklands. the 3 life is gonna be better than you think
if they're equally castable (this isn't true for all decks), sabotage would have to meet all of these conditions to outperform absorb:
each one of those conditions might be likely, but i don't think the combined probability of all 3 of them being true is above 50%
if they're equally castable (this isn't true for all decks), sabotage would have to meet all of these conditions to outperform absorb:
- you have to surveil to the graveyard
- choosing graveyard instead of top has to have been the correct decision
- having access to cards BCDEF instead of ABCDE has to be better than 3 life
each one of those conditions might be likely, but i don't think the combined probability of all 3 of them being true is above 50%
Now that's a much fairer point I can agree on. In a strictly UW build Absorb will likely be better unless they get a strong sweeper you want to dig towards w/ Sabotage. If control sticks to Jeskai OTOH I would prefer to err on the side of Sabotage.
I agree. In Jeskai I'd assume Absorb is sideboard if it's in at all.
Hey I championed Risk Factor's playability and it definitely is playable. Listen to me!
Tell 14 year old you whoever says Absorb is unplayable today doesn't know what they're talking about. It's clearly coming back to help vs Burn and Aggro, exactly the meta where it would be played over Sabotage. Might be Sanguine Sacrament's time to shine too (probably not).
nobody is playing both
you need more than 3 life to make adding an additional colored mana onto a 3 mana counterspell worth doing
I'd say it would prob be a good idea to at least hold off and see the rest of the set before saying whats playable or not?
You really don't need more than 3 life to make it worth playing. If we have a burn/aggro heavy meta, Absorb is a 4-of without a doubt in any deck that can run it. It's basically a 2-for-1. Life matters a lot in those types of decks. We will also have a gigantic amount of good color fixing.
It'll be playable for sure barring a heavy control meta. It has an alright chance of being very good.
Absorb isn't a 4-of in any deck. I think you guys are vastly overrating the abilities of 3 mana counters. Ionize only sees play as it is because it's easier to cast a 1UR spell. Having a 3 mana counterspell that's significantly harder to cast just because you get healing salve along with it isn't it.
Effects like Dissolve and Sinister Sabotage are better than you are imagining because you get to put less land in your deck when you have a critical mass of those effects. Those effects actively work towards progressing your board state to an advantageous position. Absorb gives you 3 life, a resource that doesn't do anything until you are at 0.
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The damage that Ionize does is fairly pointless for a lot of control decks because you don't win or lose off the difference of whatever damage you deal to the opponent. And in a shock/check meta, the mana requirements are less difficult than people tend to imagine. People were very skeptical of Niv-Mizzet because of his casting cost and yet he sees tons of play anyway.
I frequently explain to new players at my LGS that life is a resource and that the only lifepoint that matters is the last one. I chump block less than many others do because I understand what your life total means. When I'm the aggressive deck with no fear of burn from the otherside, I will gladly go down to 1 life in order to gain board advantage. I try to pound the idea into this one guy's head that the lifegain on Navigator's Compass is pointless.
But this is a counterspell. That will go in a control deck. Control decks care about their life a lot more. Against burn or aggro, life isn't quite like other decks where it's a resource that you can tap into. Gaining life gets you card advantage. Burn and aggressive decks basically have a finite amount of damage they can deal because they can run out of gas so quickly, so by getting 2-for-1's with Absorb or even slowing the game down, you can much more effectively get to the point where you can turn the game around. I still wouldn't attempt to mainboard cards that are pure lifegain under any circumstance, but staple it onto unconditional counterspell? Yes please.
Except the problem is that basically any situation in which you want to cast Absorb and you can't cast it, you almost always will lose the game.
There's also the problem that if your gameplan is to counter things and the 3 life matters, it's because your opponent is resolving a bunch of stuff and you need to draw into a better answer and/or land to actually play the answer. Being on a counterspell does not make 3 life way better. Absorb isn't a version of Sphinx's Revelation or something. It's a generic counterspell with a minimal effect on the board that only happens once.
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You are getting way too hung up on the casting cost, every deck running this will have the mana to support it on 3, the consideration is the effects, and in a matchup where life matters stapling the lifegain on a Cancel makes it playable whereas standalone lg isn't.
No, I'm not, actually.
The point of a control deck isn't to "survive to turn 5." It's to control the boardstate. Control players very often do not actually have a way to control the boardstate and cards like Sabotage help you do that while also actually letting you control the boardstate when it's cast. Absorb does nothing to help you on board beyond the generic counter and also randomly has a fail-case where you can't cast the card and lose.
It's easier to rebuild from Wrath effects than it ever has been. I don't know if you all actually remember how good Dissolve actually was. Being able to cut even one land is worth playing Sabotage over a card like Absorb, IMO. Players love cutting lands when they don't have the support to get away with it.
A game where the 3 life from your 3 mana counterspell is relevant to the win/loss is typically a game control is going to be heavily disfavored in because it means they are failing to deal with a persistent threat to their life total.
I do value the surveil a lot, but draw fixing can come from other places (Azcanta, Opt, Map), while lifegain is harder to justify including, Revitalize is only seeing play cause of the pool and it'll be among the first cuts, so if you're running 3cmc counters anyway they might as well do something that can't easily come from other places.
Anyway, it will be tried out no matter what, and it's worth will largely be determined by the meta. Angry Grimace
Anyway, it will be tried out no matter what, and it's worth will largely be determined by the meta. Angry Grimace
Cards like Fath's Fetters and Lightning Helix have done gang-busters in Standards of the past. Fair costed (CMC wise) effects with incidental lifegain have proven to be winners. I won't suppose how much play Absorb will see but to presume it will see NO play is inconsistent with MTG history.
Control is heavily disfavored against hard aggro. Aggro < Midrange < Control < Aggro. So against a good aggro deck, life gain will not even sometimes, but often make the difference if the meta is balanced.
Ok cool but it will still get played and 3 life gain is a big swing in the UW deck
that's not the Rock Paper Scissors that's happening right now at all. Midrange is very well equipped to beat control thanks to carnage tyrant and the recursion through find, control has to look to specifically beat GB to beat it.
Meanwhile aggro is probably even or slightly unfavoured for control thanks to clarion being such a beating for those decks.
Also the lifegain matters against red based aggro way more than against white based. Against White Wheenie you still lose the board and the 3 life might not even gain you a turn. Against Red Deck Wins you effectively countered one of their spells retroactively in addition.
I'd much rather have Sabotage Against White Wheenie than Absorb to hit my sweeper.
Lastly if you have to shock to cast Absorb on 3 you only gained 1 life compared to having a cleaner mana situation w/ Sabotage.
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I wouldn't run it over sabotage unless I was getting some extra effect from the healing like in a lich deck. Burn decks are still killing you mostly with creatures, digging for removal and wipes and hitting the lands to cast it on time without shocking myself are probably gonna net me more wins overall than the life gain being the match decider. I could see running a couple on top of the sabotages in place of like syncopate or whatever if i was already getting the colors pretty reliably.
Make no mistake, Absorb will get played but its matchups will change based on what the meta dictates
I for one cannot await our Mardu Angel overlords
Also Mentor is godlike with Afterlife
I for one cannot await our Mardu Angel overlords
Also Mentor is godlike with Afterlife
I stand by my original assessment: probably a sideboard card in certain match-ups and maybe mainboard in a few rogue lists with lifegain matters themes, like Rainbow Lich. Probably not mainboard in your core Control shell unless we reach the point of degeneracy where it's a 4x alongside 4x Sinister Sabotage, which is the point I delete Arena and never play Standard again.
I think a lot of these posts will age badly, I haven't been on the forum for any set release, sort of for grn but I wasn't paying attention, do people usually get these early predictions right? The non-obvious ones.
Yeah, it's like gambling, but with your Magic street cred instead of cash. Which is good, because we play Magic here so it's not like we have cash anymore.
If you're
Go back and read the first impressions of Risk Factor.
Go back and read the first impressions of Risk Factor.
Or Arclight Phoenix!
I had a lot of experience doing this kind of thing for Hearthstone cards. Some controversial cards end up seeing play, some don't. Sometimes cards that nobody expects to see play, do. Sometimes cards that everybody expects to see play, don't.
Some people will feel like that they're pretty good at card predictions based on their personal experiences with the game. Best thing I can recommend is to actually do retrospectives on your predictions and figure out if you fall into common traps. For example, when I see Angry Grimace compare Absorb to Healing Salve I can recognize that as a common trap. You associate the effect of a bad card in with the revealed card and therefore say that the revealed card is therefore also bad. That reference to Healing Salve creates a negative bias even though Absorb and Healing Salve are completely different cards.
I think I only said Risk Factor was unplayable in limited, which isn't even true because it's actually decent when you're drafting Boros lol
I'm pretty sure I never said Arclight Phoenix was a bad card, just a waste of the red mythic slot. As a primarily U/R mage, even I know free creatures are good!
I'm pretty sure I never said Arclight Phoenix was a bad card, just a waste of the red mythic slot. As a primarily U/R mage, even I know free creatures are good!
Is Risk Factor even played in any deck? Feels like early impressions were quite accurate as it's better than previous punisher cards but still not quite good enough (but also not terrible).
I see Risk Factor sometimes in the lower tiers on Arena, where every other deck is a cheap burn deck.
i mean I could just not say anything and then nobody gets to be right
Either I am right and Absorb is Wood Elemental-tier, or I'm wrong and it sees play. Either way it's funny at someone's expense.
The rest of the cards in the deck that would want to run it just don't cut it. Depending on what Rakdos gets, a Rakdos burn deck may be a reality and Risk Factor will be very good there. Don't confuse a card not being played with a card not being good!
I see Risk Factor in pretty much every Runaway Red Aggro deck. Also some occasional play in Izzet Drakes.
(I'm speaking as someone play Arena at the Silver T1 rank fwiw)
So I was reading the earlier pages of the thread for the Risk Factor argument and noticed an announcement that said 1/8 of boosters would contain MTGA booster codes. Is...that a thing? Have I been missing out on a ton of boosters by just recycling my tokens instantly? Was that just false info?
Just got myself this (minus the Blinkmoths) to have a casual Modern deck for less than 30€ in singles:
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/budget-magic-68-8-tix-artifact-blast-affinity-modern
Not touching the Standard deck much or building a new one until I see what's going on with RNA, since I'm really interested in what can Rakdos or Gruul bring to the table.
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/budget-magic-68-8-tix-artifact-blast-affinity-modern
Not touching the Standard deck much or building a new one until I see what's going on with RNA, since I'm really interested in what can Rakdos or Gruul bring to the table.
Fair enough, but makes it rather hard to argue which "side" was correct.
Afaik it's heavily restricted to like 3 packs per account and that's basically nothing.
I thought we'd finally reached the point everyone agreed on risk factor being bad. I've been plenty wrong about card predictions in the past but not that one.
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