Reorder and rework the Oath section

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Joshua Boniface 2024-01-28 12:25:50 -05:00
parent 210c9cc0f4
commit e56b8390f0
1 changed files with 10 additions and 8 deletions

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@ -40,19 +40,21 @@ In terms of the decks, this is a Commander-*like* format, but more like Oathbrea
* The player may cast their Oath at any time from the command zone, regardless of whether they control their Commander or not (which, given the abilities of the Oaths, is quite critical). [Change from normal Oathbreaker]
* If the Oath would leave the battlefield, it instead returns to the command zone. [Same as normal Oathbreaker]
* The Oath costs {2} more to cast for each time it has been previously cast this game. [Same as normal Oathbreaker]
* The original Oath of Nissa card has a second ability ("use mana as if it was any colour to cast planeswalkers") that is functionally useless in her deck and this format, since each deck features only a single planeswalker and the deck is forced into those colours with a good dual-colour manabase. Instead, this variant uses [a new, custom Oath of Nissa card to compensate](images/nissas-new-oath.png). The new version keeps the first ability, changes the second ability to an extra land drop whenever a planeswalker (i.e. Nissa) enters the battlefield, and increases the cost to {G}{G} to compensate for the slightly increased power here (comparable to Explore). While this is optional, we feel it helps keep parity between the 4 Gatewatch decks and avoids a feel-bad moment when the Nissa player realizes her Oath has no functional planeswalker-enters ability like the others have.
```
Oath of Nissa {U}{G}
Legendary Enchantment
When Oath of Nissa enters the battlefield, look at the top three cards of your library. You may reveal a creature or land card from among them and put it into your hand. Put the rest on the bottom of your library in any order.
Whenever a planeswalker enters the battlefield under your control, you may play an additional land this turn.
```
* Each deck features 2 additional Legendary creatures as "lieutenants" within the deck (not command zone), representing key allies that help define the deck and provide strong synergies. For Bolas, these are two of his dead gods; for the Gatewatch, they are on-flavour friends and allies that have come to assist.
* The decks, and specifically the 3-colour Bolas and 2-colour Nissa decks, feature a fairly expensive manabase. This was a conscious decision to ensure optimal mana is avaiable and avoid a key problem mentioned above, since losing because you couldn't play your spells is never fun. But we recognize that this might be overly prohibitive to people wishing to craft these decks. There are two options here:
1. Depower the manabases, replacing the original duals, shocks, and fetches with more modern, slower multicolour lands and basics. This would hurt the Bolas deck much more so than the Nissa deck, but would be doable. Personally, we do not like things such as the MDFC land cycles due to the actual act of flipping them and such, but there are viable options like that.
2. Proxy the expensive cards. This is the solution we have chosen for our playgroup, as we are firm believers in "Magic should be *played* and the cards exist somewhere, so use them however we can". You may disagree with this philosophy and that's fine, but we built around it.
Yes, this means the decks as-is would never see print, even beyond just the Reserve List cards, but that is after all part of the point of "reimagining" them.
* The original Oath of Nissa card has a second ability ("use mana as if it was any colour to cast planeswalkers") that is functionally useless in her deck and this format, since each deck features only a single planeswalker and the deck is forced into those colours with a good dual-colour manabase. Instead, this variant uses [a new, custom Oath of Nissa card to compensate](images/nissas-new-oath.png).
```
Oath of Nissa {G}{G}
Legendary Enchantment
When Oath of Nissa enters the battlefield, look at the top three cards of your library. You may reveal a creature or land card from among them and put it into your hand. Put the rest on the bottom of your library in any order.
Whenever a planeswalker enters the battlefield under your control, you may play an additional land this turn.
```
The new version keeps the first ability of the original as-is, changes the second ability to be an extra land drop whenever a planeswalker (i.e. Nissa) enters the battlefield, and increases the cost to {G}{G} to compensate for the slightly increased power here (comparable to Explore). Since we decided to proxy chunks of the decks anyways, this was a trivial change for us, but you can choose not to use it should you wish; that said, we feel it helps keep parity between the 4 Gatewatch decks and avoids a feel-bad moment when the Nissa player realizes her Oath has no functional planeswalker-enters ability like the others have. If we were WotC, we'd very likely make an entirely new cycle for this purpose, but since we're not, we felt keeping the change as small as possible was important.
## Decklists
@ -66,7 +68,7 @@ Nicol Bolas: Archenemy, elder dragon, fiend, villain, cruelty incarnate. This d
Commanders:
* Nicol Bolas, the Deciever
* Liliana, Dreadhorde General
* Liliana, Dreadhorde General [Subcommander]
Lieutenants:
* The Locust God