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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > [MTG] zendikar and the art of card evaluation
 
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Heatwizard
Nov 6, 2009

Sigma-X posted:

Like Judge's Familiar is objectively better than Cursecatcher in a vacuum except in most/all actual contexts Cursecatcher is better as the benefits that Familiar provides are typically overridden by the tribal benefits of being a merfolk.

Except for every deck that isn't interested in being a merfolk deck? Just because you acknowledge that one card is an upgrade over another doesn't mean you're obligated to burn all your copies of the other version and forever deny that it'll ever have a place anywhere. For any deck that doesn't get saved under the file name 'merfolk.dek' they'd sooner run Familiar over Cursecatcher, it's just that merfolk.dek is the only deck that ultimately decides it'll bother running that effect. Extrapolating from that that you can never ever compare two cards without having the entirety of Magic the Gathering open in front of you just seems like pointless hand-wringing.

* # ¿ Mar 29, 2015 05:39
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# ¿ May 14, 2024 02:00
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Heatwizard
Nov 6, 2009

Sigma-X posted:

That's a pretty extreme response!

You just said that only merfolk wants the effect because it isn't a powerful card on it's own. So you just argued that again, contextually familiar is not a more powerful card.

You absolutely should be comparing cards to each other in the format. In fact when building a deck you should be comparing cards that are dissimilar too, to determine if card A or B is more powerful in your meta. Maybe you'll run a sweeper because. It's a heavy creature meta or maybe you'll run a counterspell.

There is literally no value in declaring Judges Familiar as Strictly Better than Cursecatcher (except for all practical contexts which we will ignore).

But I'm done I clearly don't get this thread at all.

The value is that you then ask the correct questions while building your deck. When you look at these two cards you should ask yourself "why would I run cursecatcher over familiar". "Why should I run shock over bolt". Perhaps there's a good answer to that question in a given case ("well I have four lords of atlantis already") but that doesn't mean the question is a waste of time.

Like, in what situation would you run Savannah Lions over Soldier of the Pantheon? You could sit there and wring your hands over 'but but but what if they print a bunch of cat tribal or whatever" but what is that getting you in a universe where that doesn't exist?

* # ¿ Mar 29, 2015 06:43
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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > [MTG] zendikar and the art of card evaluation