[GTC] – 12/26 Mothership Holiday Preview: Firemane Avenger

[NeonPriest]

definitely going to use this in 2HG games and EDH with my token deck. looks awesome to me and love the mechanic, but i do see its downside. hopefully there will be other lower costed creatures to make use of it as well, but all in all.....awesome.

[arvinsim]

Originally Posted by Lord of Atlantis

I'll bluff with just Angel and 1 other creature. Meanwhile they keep holding the Verdict, waiting for the 3rd creature that never drops.

Why should I wait for the 3rd creature? Why can't I cast Supreme Verdict then and there?

[Gorganoth]

Originally Posted by arvinsim

Why should I wait for the 3rd creature? Why can't I cast Supreme Verdict then and there?

Greed. It is natural to asume that the opponent will drop a third creature with the avenger out, and as a result the controll player might be tempted to wait for the + 1 card advantage that verdict gives you.

[italofoca]

Originally Posted by BubbaKanoosh

Is there a scenario currently in Standard that one can survive a terminus or supreme verdict unscathed outside countering them?

No. But when you can hold 1~2 creatures in hand and leave 2 in the battlefield attacking, even if the control player can 1-for-2 via Verdict/Terminus, the aggro player still has the upper hand in winning the game, specially if the creatures in hand have haste.

The card is super weak vs. control. It's not only sweepers, any removal in any one of your 3 creatures already ruin the battalion trigger. It's not like attacking with 3 creatures is a rare event in magic, but does not happen 100% of the matchs either. And a card that wiffy even 10% of the time is already unplayable by competitive standards.

[WoodWraith]

Originally Posted by italofoca

No. But when you can hold 1~2 creatures in hand and leave 2 in the battlefield attacking, even if the control player can 1-for-2 via Verdict/Terminus, the aggro player still has the upper hand in winning the game, specially if the creatures in hand have haste.

The card is super weak vs. control. It's not only sweepers, any removal in any one of your 3 creatures already ruin the battalion trigger. It's not like attacking with 3 creatures is a rare event in magic, but does not happen 100% of the matchs either. And a card that wiffy even 10% of the time is already unplayable by competitive standards.

Untill we see another Boros creature who produces tokens with haste. Seriously, it's called a "set" for a reason.

[Monkeyfo]

Beautiful art, a beast in limited, great casual card and it might even see some very fringe competitive play. Similar to Odric and he made it into a few standard beatdown decks as a 1 or 2-of

[dylanm7]

Originally Posted by BubbaKanoosh

Is there a scenario currently in Standard that one can survive a terminus or supreme verdict unscathed outside countering them?

I'm no competitive player by any stretch but using a wrath effect as example of why the card is bad seems silly. Then again, I'm a casual player so maybe I'm missing something in your example.

well for the verdict, you could use golgari charm to regenerate all of your creatures. I dont think there is anything for terminus though
it would be tough to get green black in a boros deck though

[SilverLynx]

Originally Posted by dylanm7

well for the verdict, you could use golgari charm to regenerate all of your creatures. I dont think there is anything for terminus though
it would be tough to get green black in a boros deck though

Or you could use Rootborn Defenses which is actually in one of your colors and can boost your numbers if any of your creatures are tokens. I could see Precinct Captain fitting in a deck like that if you don't want to splash green for Call of the Conclave. Also thinking Attended Knight assuming we don't get something better in this set. Not getting 2 for 1'ed as much if your cards are 2 for 1's too

[Ardan]

I posted this in the New Card Discussion forum thread on Fireman Angel where the argument is a little less heated but I thought I'd post it here too:

I agree with the people who are saying that Battalion sucks with the traditional Boros method of playing. RW decks like to balance quick and efficient burn and removal with quick and efficient creatures, and perhaps some good equipment to pump your creatures in the late game. They rarely have three creatures on the board until they have already essentially won the game.

Arguing that Battalion is weak to board sweeps is redundant, all creature based aggro strategies are weak against board sweeps. Being able to rebuild your board position quickly is one of the things aggro players need to learn to do incredibly quickly, or they lose allot. However, at the same time I can understand why people would have some trepidation - it's easier to only need to play one creature after a sweeper than having to get three on the board. However, not being able to activate a creatures Battalion ability every single time it attacks doesn't make cards with Battalion bad - it makes them balanced. Firemane Avengers ability is incredibly power, it needs to be a bit more difficult to activate to keep the game balanced, but that doesn't mean the ability is completely unplayable.

As many people have also rightly pointed out, Battalion works well in Naya Mid-Range and Zoo style decks which play a large amount of creatures. I could also see a deck which uses Geist of Saint Traft and some awesome Azorius cards, like Azorius Charm and Lyev Skyknight (detain plays naturally well with Battalion, it allows you to protect your attackers and you don't need to not throw away a creature blocking) to good use with some Battalion creatures (personally this is the deck I want to try out). One could also make a BWR (or just a plain BR deck if there are good creatures with battalion in mono-red) deck which uses hard to kill zombies and vampires as a means of ensuring you always have three creatures to attack with. There are tons of ways in the current meta and older formats to experiment with getting Battalion to work and more are likely to be printed in Gatecrash and Dragons Maze. Don't right off a mechanic until you've actually played with it.

[Christiancasals]

Originally Posted by The Witch King of Angmar

It looks weak, forces oneself to overcommit while Battalion is a mechanic that is just going to walk into a supreme verdict or terminus.

How does it force you to overcommit? 99% of aggro decks run a strict no block policy

[chili01]

I personally like the mechanic

[FieryBalrog]

Originally Posted by BubbaKanoosh

Is there a scenario currently in Standard that one can survive a terminus or supreme verdict unscathed outside countering them?

I'm no competitive player by any stretch but using a wrath effect as example of why the card is bad seems silly. Then again, I'm a casual player so maybe I'm missing something in your example.

You're missing the fact that one of the ways to minimize the impact of sweepers is to not overextend.

Battalion, barring some amazing token makers, demands that you overcommit. And no, Lingering Souls is not enough, because there are now like 5 different cards that hose Lingering Souls to the point where it doesn't really see that much play.

On top of getting hosed by sweepers, battalion also gets hosed by simple point removal. They can remove the battalion guy, or if they can't, they can just remove one of your other guys. It gets hosed by anything, really. This mechanic is destined for a lot of frustrating moments where getting the trigger is perpetually just out of reach. Oh and when you do get it, on Firemane Avenger, you get rewarded with a massive... lightning helix. That's a lot of hoops to jump through for a pretty mediocre reward. Lightning helix is decent, but it's not exactly game-changing.

Compared to Cipher, Cipher is also a combat mechanic but one that is inherently enormously stronger. You get an effect right away; then you can get the effect again by connecting with one creature, which can be any creature you want it to be. Even if you don't connect, who cares? You still got the spell off. They have to deal with that particular creature, and you can choose a really hard to kill dude if you want (Invisible Stalker, eh?). They can't go kill another random bystanding creature to turn off your mechanic.

or compare it to Evolve, for that matter. The new 1 drop creature with Battalion was spoiled today (Boros Elite) gets +2/+2 for attacking with 2 other creatures. The Simic one-drop, Experiment One, gets +1/+1 everytime a bigger creature enters the battlefield- bigger in power OR toughness. It's incredibly easy to pump Experiment One to a 3/3 by turn 3 or 4 if you play a creature heavy deck. It's much harder to pump Boros Elite to a 3/3 (on the attack only) if you play a creature heavy deck, because you also have to attack with those creatures- all of them- at the same time. Experiment One has an activated ability to boot, which lets it regen and re-evolve if necessary. Boros Elite has nothing, which is kinda ridiculous given that it already has a much weaker keyword. Both are uncommons.

Battalion is inherently a really weak mechanic, and the previews so far show nothing that overcomes that, which makes sense, because historically has been the weakest color combo by a country mile, and Wizards' devs and designers have never particularly cared for the color combo. (It's still by far the worst two-color pair in EDH, for example). Compare to, say, or , which are two of their pet color combinations that almost always get pushed for constructed, and is my favorite color combination so it suits me just fine- I'm just pointing it out.

[wingkon]

Best of the guild ability rares that we've seen. This guy is crazy good.

I know a lot of people will say it's win-more or depends too much on your board position, but I think it's great

[Serpos of Urug]

Originally Posted by empathogen

You're right, but sometimes, you can't remove everything.
They may have undiers, reanimation, Thragtusk, and other removal-resistant critters.

TBH, I'm more worried about Bloodrush-
it shouldn't be too hard to keep their army below 3 or whatever,
but Bloodrush works if they have even a single attacker.

There's also limited, where removal is sparse.
A Stifle or Trickbind effect would be perfect for foiling a key Bloodrush.

Yes, but none of those things stop you "countering" Bloodrush when you kill the dude in response. :P