Direct Damage

Much as I hate cross-commenting and cross-posting, I'm not going to rewrite this stuff.


From Joe Panuska's most recent blog post


I posted the following comment:

A few things:

1) That podcast would make a lot more sense if Flores wrote down his thoughts first.

2) Also, if they had recorded it properly instead of in what sounds like a busy coffee shop, I would be able to understand it better. The Podcast is so overmodulated I can't understand half of what they are saying or trying to say.

3) That all being said, I think Mike is on the right path. Insomuch as it's better to step back from card advantage as a metric and look more to mana efficiency. Of course, that's assuming I'm understanding the podcast correctly. Similar to what Alton says, you guys are using too many examples and the result is a "moving metric" that makes it difficult to come to any conclusion

I don't think Bloodbraid should go away. Just like Affinity, or possibly Bitterblossom/Faeries, it will eventually get rotated out and lose its flavor. In fact, one could argue that Jund's current popularity in Standard could mean a lot of hate in Extended/Legacy and therefore hurt both its popularity and its strength as a deck. I'm not sure if this could happen, but it certainly makes sense in my mind.

However, what I feel is the best takeaway from Jund is that it highlights the power of Cascade. Once Jund moves into Extended, I can see it being used to power up cards from previous sets.