Excellent! I was hoping you would be.

In a month I will be able to test sealed again.

I hope to have things up and running well before a month's passed, but you know how I am with deadlines.

If you run a tournament please drop a line in the talk thread in M:EM so that we can get involved and help out! Not all of us are pure vorthos scrubs. Just me. I'm a scrub.

Had to share this with you all....

I went back on to cockatrice and loaded my GRUB deck (Lol, Green Red Blue Black)

So here is how it went down....

TURN 1
Forest
Crushthread Sage

TURN 2
Draw Groveskipper Ouphe
Play Groveskipper Ouphe and sac the Crushthread Sage for an extra card.

TURN 3
Play Viashino Suncaller

NOTE: STILL DO NOT HAVE A 2ND LAND

TURN 4
Play Canoca of the Lost Orchard
Play 2nd Viashino Suncaller
Play 2nd Crushthread Sage saving 1 mana
Play 3rd Crushthread Sage saving 1 mana
Play Knifetail Ambush

Return Crushthread Sage from graveyard then play by tapping both Viashino Suncaller, sac a Crushthread Sage to draw extra card. Now repeat.

UNLIMITED CARD DRAW, UNLIMITED MANA WITH ANOTHER VIASHINO SUNCALLER, UNLIMITED CREATURES WITH MARAKA WOLFCALLER

ALL THIS ON TURN 4

I have carefully looked over the set and I have a few observations, but my observations can be a little crazy sometimes so take it for what you will.

White:

Lightbearer: feels uncommon.
Wanderer of Illpyre needs evasion or a bigger body.
Remove from Reality is an excellent card. I'd nominate that bad boy if I could.

Overall, white has too many bears and not enough evasion. We need some creatures with power/toughness 3/3 and greater across common and uncommon.

The rares are all crazy bombs except for Written In History which seems like bad fit for starstill.

Blue:

Gale of Denial bothers me. It seems very weak and too situational to bother playing with.
Too many one spells.

Black: no comments.

Red:

Biting Frost seems uncommon since its harder to get rid of. I'd put it at common if it was a creature.
Ignite the Ashes seems almost rare to me. Uncommon at least.
Gleam Collector would be better of as a scary creature to start. Like at least a 3/3 for 4. Maybe even bigger. Make him a beater. Like a 6/6 for 6. Drop the haste in that case though. There are enough red weenies.
Hidden Riches is odd. I would never play it unless I know I was about to destroy it myself, which means I had to spend 2 cards to draw 4. Not bad, but hardly a rare to drool over.
Gruff is cute and all, but there isn't much reason to actually play him. An oblation enabler?

Green:

Crushthread Sage - I might be missing something, but he seems common to me. Unless the 1GG is to return it from the graveyard to your hand?
Moss Giant feels like a red creature to me.

Artifact:
Quietus Engine is pushing Mythic. Common is just insane.
Composite Construct is cool, but I would put him at uncommon I think.

Over all thoughts:

Mastery - Cool but under utilized.
Oblation - Not bad, but seems unnecessary? Doesn't add much to the set as far as I can tell.
Engrave - seems good.

Biting Frost is based on Curse of the Pierced Heart.

I stand corrected.

Yeah, when I was doing the spoiler, I left off "Sacrifice Quietus Engine" on both abilities. It's actually not as ridiculous as it looks.

Addressing Dudibus' critiques (and also some other stuff I noticed):

Lightbearer probably should be uncommon, if only for mentioning cmc.
Wanderer Of Illpyre seems fine too me. It has a very weak form of evasion, and 2 power and pro artifacts means a lot in this set.
Written into History doesn't really do much for the set. Unpickable in limited. We could probably cut it.
We really do need to do a thread on workshopping the white rares. Lots of bombs there.


Gale Of Denial - not sure how I feel about this. Maybe reduce the cost? Or have it require 2 tapped creatures or 3 tapped permanents?


Ignite The Ashes should indeed be uncommon. Also, we should revisit whether the exile clause is necessary, seeing as it can't return itself unless you have multiple copies. That's unlikely in limited and probably not worth it in constructed.
Sandpit Wurm should be uncommon if it references cmc. Otherwise just make it hit lands. Also, it could just destroy the card.
Gleam Collector could be at least a 2/1. You really have to build your deck around it to make the ability a plus. Maybe take Dudbius' advice and it an efficient midrange creature.
Hidden Riches is pretty weird. It's kind of neat to build around, but in actual gameplay it doesn't lead to any neat decisions. Plus red card advantage is super weird, even if we can justify the flavour.
Gruff could probably hit lands that "share a type" to let him hit dual lands. Or maybe he can turn anything into a Mountain? Dudibus is right, outside of landssdying.dec the +0 doesn't do much. If testing shows it's okay I'd let Gruff's -1 hit players too. Seeing as it's still just a really weak Curse Of The Pierced Heart.


Groveskipper Ouphe presents memory problems at common. I would raise the rarity and possibly let it tap for any colour.
Crushtread Sage is supposed to return itself from your graveyard I think. If not it shouldn't be rare. If so it then it can go infinite pretty easy.
Moss Giant could really go or . R is probably a little better though (with new flavour of course).


Composite Construct could go uncommon, but then I would make it costs . Too many durdlers in a limited environment sucks.

Oblation is a really unspecific ability word (the trigger always changes). That kind of defeats the purpose of ability wording it. I recommend removing the Oblation ability word. The effects are easy enough to do without "Oblation" in front.

I think all these cards need reviewing and we should vote on the changes we want to make to them.

It also occurs to me that the cards would be easier to discuss if they were on the NGA database and we could tag them. That might go against the point of the database though.

Would it?

The database can be used in a way that material cards can't: we can issue function-changing errata at any time. If we could figure out a way to hook things up to the wiki, we could make changes quite quickly. (I'm working on looking into this possibility but no luck so far )

We HAVE this power, why not use it?

I was just a little worried since the database is supposed to be a reflection of NGA constructed and Starstill isn't part of that yet. I'm not sure we want to set a precedent for sets getting into the database before they're completed.
That said, the pros totally outweigh everything I said above, so yeah, let's do it.
So who's the one who actually does that? Gobo Welder? CKY?

It might also be possible to have a database for autocarding NGA constructed and a seperate one that is more easily editable by anybody (possibly with some vandalism protection) for things like developing community sets.

Welder is the one in charge of updating it.

Welder is the one who pushes the button, but I'm the one who does all the busywork and data entry. Do you all want Starstill to be in the NGA Constructed database?

Yes please.

It may be that I undervalue your role in all this, but aren't you mostly just an intermediary? If I understand the process correctly, then it's:
Set owner exports from MSE to XML and sends it to you
You append that at the end of the XML file (or wherever inbetween that suits your fancy) and send it to welder
Welder runs his script (which converts it to MySQL)

I understand that you probably had a ton of work at the onset because most sets weren't stored in MSE, but isn't the process pretty easy right now? I assume Parad would have the set on his computer.

Having the set in the database would make it infinitely easier to discuss, although it would be nice to have some method of indicating that they're not finalized. However, I don't actually think that is going to happen.

Haha no. I type everything out by hand. That said, since Starstill is already in a Cockatrice plugin this time, I can just copy and paste it onto the end of the existing NGA Constructed plugin. You'll see it in the database on 1 March.

Well, that sounds awful.
I'll see if I can do something about it when I get the time, although my track record for these things is pretty bad. XML is usually not that difficult to work with though, so I guess it depends on MSE.

The cockatrice xml is easy to modify, just very time consuming.