Green-X Landfall - Cards

I've had this on my mind since I saw a web post, where some crazy guy was playing a landfall aggro deck, revolving around a few additional elements.

 

Running Lynx + Geopede is nothing new, but  that is not what caught my attention.

The ideal play for this sort of deck is T1 Steppe Lynx, T2 Plated Geopede(fetch, attack for 4).  T3 Fetch, Harrow, attack for 17, dead on turn 3.  Or various other combinations he runs through that also yield them being dead fairly quickly.

However, you may note that this requires three different, untapped, colors of land on t1-3, and fetches that in general do not fix your mana.  (RW fetch - Arid Mesa, is the only one that would be actual mana fixing)

The deck also had non-synergistic spells like Inferno Titan (vs Primeval), and Hero of Oxid Ridge (which is synergistic in that it empowers attackers, but at RR2, would be fairly hard to cast), and Precursor Golem.  They're good, and they invalidate some strategies, but they don't seem amazing. The RW aggro decks are often sideboarding OUT the Plated Geopedes, even in 12+ Fetchland decks, so going into another color to get this, plus two other things that don't really help the general strategy, seems marginal.  One thing these creatures do is overload the cheap removal that is often used to remove them, so that is something. but really, the mana seems like a nightmare.

However, this post did get me excited, and got me thinking about green-based landfall, because there are quite a few green effects that would strongly benefit a landfall-based strategy (because green is good at ramp).  The key in my mind is to make them actual good cards, that combine fairly well with other actual good landfall cards.

Reasonable Landfall Cards:

The core, Green:

  

 


Green has a ton of the land-playing abilities, which we'll talk about later, so finding good cards in this color are much better than potential good cards in other colors.

Lotus Cobra is very strong.  It ramps you to 5 on turn 3, potentially 6 on turn 3.  Rampaging Baloths is a fine threat against the white (chump-)blockers we see nowadays.  Avenger is a very solid finisher.  Both of those can win games on their own.  Gladeheart can do a fair(ly bad) impersonation of a Obstinate Baloth, but would be a sideboard card at best against hyper-aggro.

Friend-color color splashes:  White + Red

Friend color splashes are:
Good, because it makes the mana very reliable.  The new lands from MBS (come into play untapped if you control 3 or less lands), and the M10 duals (CIP untapped if you have a basic of the appropriate type), give you strong access to the right color, untapped, on turn 1, and turn n.
Bad, because the fetches are tap-lands (Terramorphic Expanse) or do not fix your colors.

Steppe Lynx and Geopede are incredibly aggressive creatures.
Emeria Angel is a great blocker against a Hawk-filled metagame, and provides a stream of attackers.  Admonition Angel would be good if your opponent has removal for it, which seems fairly non-plausible.  Rampaging Baloths is probably better against those decks anyway?

The enemy colors: Blue and Black

Enemy color splashes are:
Good, because they have a "on color" mana fixer, in the fetchlands you want to play anyway.
Bad, because that fetchland is the only mana fixer that allows the land to come into play untapped.  You can still use Terramorphic Expanse/Evolving Wilds, and "off-color" fetchlands to power up the main deck theme.

Ob Nix is pretty much the best card here.  Caustic Crawler really needs those to be -1/-1 counters to be great.  SSE is pretty reasonable, as the creature count rises, but it's not amazing.  The crab is a role-player in decks that are probably not this one.

Secondary splash advantages:
Outside the cards that specifically help the decks synergy/strategy, you also have to consider cards that you get from all of these splashes that are not landfall or land-searching.  Blue adds counterspells (Mana Leak), and card drawing (Jace, Preordain), Black adds creature removal (Doom Blade, Go for the Throat), and discard (Inquisition of Kozilek, Duress).  Red adds damage-based removal (Lightning Bolt, Arc Trail).  White adds semi-removal (Oust, Condemn)

Colorless colors: the artifacts

These two cards are amusing, because of how different they are.  One is a cheap way to pump creatures in this deck.  The other is a expensive way to draw cards, but given the interaction with this deck, both of these should be considered, depending on the outlook.

Reasonable "Play More Lands" Cards
The best:

Explore is a great card, because it is cheap, it replaces itself late, it accelerates you early.

When combined with a turn 2 Lotus Cobra, an Explore can accelerate you into a turn 3 Primeval (Explore -> Fetch -> Fetch -> 6 mana)

The one downside to this, in my mind, is that it does not search a land out of your deck, but rather gives you a random card.  So if, on turn two, you need a third land, you might not get it.  However, the advantages of Explore make it a top contender for a deck like this.

Oracle is a incredibly strong card. 

It lets you play lands off the top, so you are always drawing a spell.

It lets you play lands off the top, so you are thinning your deck, and accelerating, without having to draw the cards.

It combines well with fetchlands, because you can shuffle to try and either get more lands, or better spells on top.

It combines well with Explore (and blue cards like Preordain, Jace, and Halimar Depths) to rearrange the top of your library in a favorable way for you.  (Give you more shots at land, etc)

Oracle is a near-lock for this deck.

Primeval Titan is a format-warping card.

It can search for non-basics, which means it can get two fetchlands (setting up omni-landfall next turn), two dual lands, two Tectonic Edges, and so on.

And, of course, it provides you two (additional) landfall triggers on a turn.

In contrast to some other PT decks, the PT doesn't have to necessarily survive and attack for it to be good.  The PT is a pretty good setup card for the rest of your deck, but otherwise a strong top-end.

It would be pretty hard for me to look at any board state, and not want my card in hand to be Primeval Titan.

Genesis Wave is a hay-maker.

It doesn't combo very well with instants or sorceries you might use, but if you utilize enchantment, artifact, creature, or planeswalker-based removal, it can get that, which is pretty nifty.


This deck is likely to make a zillion mana, so being able to use it to win the game "next turn" (or this turn, if you have any landfall-based board position) could be useful.






 
The Rest:

Both of these are three mana, two land cards, that trigger landfall when played.

Cultivate is "safer", and gives you actual card advantage, as well as more total land once you run out of land to play.

Harrow is higher variance, can be cast as an instant, and sets you back a land if countered.

I don't really like KHE, even though it says "Landfall" and gets lands.  Anyway, the good and bad:

When your deck is working, it works, when your deck isn't...

It "stores" lands up, for potential use later.

It is a pretty bad topdeck, because it doesn't trigger landfall until you play 3 more lands (ug).  It's kinda slow to turn on.

Multiple KHEs charge each other up pretty well, and some effects (like Primeval Titan) charge it up quite well.

It is a perminant, for Genesis Wave, and is only non-creature to qualify as working with Genesis Wave at all.  (It also charges up near-instantly if revealed on Genesis Wave)


What would the final deck look like?
Well, it depends on the colors.

I like a core of:

Get More Land:
4x Oracle of Mul Daya - 3G
4x Primeval Titan - 4GG
4x Explore - 1G

 Use More Land:
2x Seer's Sundial - 4
3x Avenger of Zendikar - 5GG

Both:
4x Lotus Cobra - 1G

1x Genesis Wave  - XGGG


Neither:(Removal, counter, discard)


Land:

4x Tectonic Edge
12x Fetchland as appropriate (Green/X, Green/Y, X/Z, Terramorphic, Evolving)
12x Basic/Dual.

That leaves around 12 cards, that have to either use the land we're generating, or be non-synergistic but shore up other holes in the deck.

I believe that whichever path we choose, at least 4 slots need to be devoted to some sort of removal.
If Red, Lightning Bolt/Arc Trail
If Black, Doom Blade/ Go For the Throat/ Inquisition of Kozilek/Duress
If White, Oust/Condemn/Journey to Nowhere

If the splash is Red, we'd likely play Plated Geopede(1R), and another removal spell (both Arc Trail (1R) and Lightning Bolt (R))

If the splash is White, we'd play Steppe Lynx (W) and Emeria Angel (2WW)

If the splash is Black, we'd play Ob Nix(3BB), and another "removal" spell in the form of one of the discard spells (B), and one of the "true" removal spells (1B).

Caw Blade: "Connecting with a sword is like Time Walk" - not..

In case we need to be reminded, this is what people are implying:






                   ==







This seems to be about as grand of an overstatement as can be made.

1) Them discarding a card of their choice is neither as good as you drawing a random card, or them not drawing a new card. 
2) You do not get another attack step.  In fact, you often get a relatively poor attack step (take three!)
3) You do not get another activation of your Planeswalkers.  Planeswalkers are a big freaking deal. 
4) You often cannot use the mana you are untapping anyway, because you are out of cards by the time you get the hits in.  Getting hits in with SoFaF causes you to be able to play all your cards, which makes the untap ability progressively LESS relevant as the game goes on.  Often what you do with the mana is equip the sword over to another creature.  Nice Accorders Shield.

There are several things that the sword-wielders, or sword-commenters are NOT considering when they look at how effective the sword is.

1) It took 4 or 5 mana, potentially over two turns, in order to get your "free untap" of between 4 and 5 mana that first turn.  The ability to spend it over two turns is good, and the ability to threaten counterspells is good, but often you cannot use the mana precombat, or postcombat, because you are playing around counterspells like Mana Leak on your powerful high-mana spells.
2)  The sword provides you a burst of mana, which quickly becomes irrelevant.
3) The sword doesn't cost a card most of the time, because you get it "for free" off Stoneforge Mystic.  However, you have to play Stoneforge Mystic (1/2 for 2), in a land of Fauna Shaman, Lotus Cobra, and Lightning Bolt.
4) The sword doesn't give you anything until it hits 1-3 times.  Sure, it's a "free" lava axe/Necrogen Censer, or a "free" Mind Rot, but it's really not all that free, and not all that consistant.

The sword is pretty good.  It gives you protection from one of three credible removal colors.  It gives a reasonable (though not large) power/toughness boost for cheap dorks.  It apparently is a good game against Valakut, when combined with alot of other truly good cards (against Valakut), because it provides a clock on both their life (through damage), and their big cards (through discard).

The sword, like planeswalkers, really starts to pay off on the second turn.  When you no longer have to spend mana to equip the sword (cast the planeswalker), you can use the ability again (to start to generate real card advantage).  If you don't get that second swing (that connects), you're not going to be in a great scenario.

I have no idea how the PA  vs. CawBlade matchup plays out.  I'm pretty sure the problem I am going to have is with their Planeswalkers, and huge creatures.  (Jace, Gideon, Sun Titan)  I need to get some time in with this matchup this weekend.

Sword is good, but it's not even close to a Time Walk.

Dragon Age 2 - Stick with replaying Dragon Age 1 (Origins)

Side track from the normal conversation today, because I recently finished Dragon Age: 2.  As a fan of Dragon Age 1, the spiritual successor of some of my other more favorite games (original Baldur's Gate, etc), I feel compelled to comment on this "sequel".   When comparing Dragon Age 2, to Dragon Age, Dragon Age Origins:

Dragon Age 2 has a:
 
Very linear storyline. You are given many false options, and the hostile actions of NPCs often/always force a similar outcome despite your approach.

Almost insane map duplication. I must have run through the same 3-4 dungeon maps 5-8 times each.

Lack of choice for map exploration. Normally, you might have a map with many side passages, or several ways to get to the same place, and you could choose to clear them both out, or just one, or engage enemies, and exploration into the side branches would often yield bonus loot. In Dragon Age 2, you are forced to do this exploration via unopenable doors, or semi-keys. I often went what I presumed to be the side way (treasure sense activated), only to later find out on retracing my steps that the side way was the only way, because there was no door the main way.

I would presume that two charachters who went through a particular map/quest/dungeon would have 95% or higher duplication in experience and loot acquired/map explored.

Some graphical glitches. One of the early quests had me talking to a floating head, because the rest of his body didn't render. Some of the cut scenes seem to be missing a piece of furnature, and so on.

Low replay value. On one run through of the game, I earned something like 80-90% of the achievements. Dragon Age 1 had some serious replayability for the achievement-junkie, Dragon Age 1 has almost none. This is reinforced by the linear storyline, there are so few choices to make, that you are not able to get an achievement for taking a different story branch, unlike the many instances of this in DA1.

In DA1, there were something like 6 unique independant storylines to start with, that had a good 10 or so hours of playtime in them, and gave you insights into what happens before the quests you run into in the main storyline. Seeing Arl Howe come over for dinner in the Human Noble storyline (my second playthrough) after what happened in my original playthrough was spooky. The biggest (only) difference in DA2 is whether your melee dpser or mage suicides themselves before one of the harder fights in the game (first ogre). That first ogre fight comes pretty darn quick too, perhaps 30 minutes into the game, vs 5-15 hours in DA1?.

Webbed talent trees. This is not a problem in general. DA1 had 4 rows of 4 linear talents per talent block, most often restricted by a stat prereq. (and taking the previous talents in the row) DA2 has a web instead of 4 lines

What makes this bad is that virtually every talent has a prereq of taking some number of other talents in that web, along with level (and potentially stat) requirements. This puts you in a position of being forced into spending your points in a certain way just to unlock a talent/upgrade that only has one apparent prereq. A majority of the talent points are also "upgrades" to existing talents. So your heal does 80% instead of 40%, as an upgrade (with high level and/or points-in-tree prereqs). In one case, an upgrade to a talent I took spending two points in the tree required me to spend 6(!) points in that tree. I didn't do that.

Minions have restricted gearing options. In DA1, your NPC companions had full armor capabilities, so if you found your juggernaut plate armor, you slapped it on your tank (once they met the stat reqs), and you were good to go. In DA2, the main charachter is the only one that can equip hats, boots, chests, and gloves. The minions can wear the standard jewelry (2x ring, amulet, belt), and weapons (though, in the case of Varric, you cannot upgrade his weapon). This means that roughly 50% of the gear you recieve is 100% unusable. Minions do recieve stock minion-only armor upgrades, that you find doing their quests, but you often have no idea that you have recieved such an item, or where to get it.

Items do not have descriptive names. In Diablo 2, for example, all the gear was "Prefix Item of the Suffix". If you knew, or payed attention to what those suffixes were, you had a reasonable idea of whether the item was going to be worth using just from the name. In WoW, you have a color on the items, which indicates the rough usefulness of the item. In DA2, everything is a "Belt" or "Ornate Belt", which only reveals its stats to you once you hover over it. When you have 15 "Belt"s in your inventory list, which you cannot even necessarily see at the same time, it is quite difficult to determine whether any of them are worth equipping.

To their credit, they do have a "Star" system, that roughly compares items to the charachter you happen to be looking at at the time (but not any other charachter). Unfortunately, the rating system of the stars seems to be mostly based on a random number generator. I had the item system rate a belt I was not wearing at 5 stars, when it had less of every stat than the belt I was wearing at the time. (+2 mana regen, +10 health, vs just +2 mana regen -> lose 10 health to get 5 stars?). It was a sliding scale, which was good design, but it rated the items in a undeterminable manner, which is not good design.

Items in general feel pretty bad.

Heals are on a (very) long cooldown. I don't generally object to design restrictions, but I'd prefer to be mana limited than time-limited, since mana is a resource I can control, whereas time is controlled almost solely by the difficulty of the encounter. I also don't mind having some powerful abilities on longer cooldowns, with less powerful abilities being "chain castable", but there are none of those less powerful abilities, only the powerful ones on long cooldowns. (as if a 40% heal on a 40 second cooldown is powerful...)

To amplify this problem, not all mage NPCs can even cast a heal. You also lose your mage companion (if you are a mage) before what is potentially the most difficult fight in the game for a long time (first ogre). (oops, spoilers?).

A consequence of this time-limitation is that mana is worth almost nothing. As is mana regeneration, since you can't physically spend your mana fast enough to run out. In the final fight (spoilers!) my sole healer was 100% mana drained every 60 seconds or so in a 10-15 minute slogfest, and I only noticed that I was being mana drained about 8 minutes in. (and took no action to prevent future mana drains - which appear unavoidable anyway)

Staff DPS is laughable. In DA1, I was quite successful using a 2 healer + dps + tank strategy, because the mobs hit very hard, and being able to cross-mana-regen (could not cast mana regen on self) was quite good on the long fights, where you had to be chain-healing a tank. My main healer+ccer did something like 20% of the party damage from just wanding. In DA2, they don't provide this statistic, but I would imagine my DPSer (when I was doing 2h-1d-1t) was doing something like 50-70% of the party damage. In DA2, do not try to use two healers, it is a recipe for being overwhelmed.

CC is not nearly as useful/varried. I took sleep, and it was near-100% useless. It doesn't last very long, and is almost instantly broken with all the aoe going off. I suppose I could have edited the tactics to prevent my allies from using AOEs, but then I would have been overwhelmed by the opposition. DA1 had some powerful CC (AOE stun, large AOE sleep, Fear, etc). DA1 has horror as pretty much the only viable CC. OTOH, mobs have a pretty trivial time CCing your party members, though the various AOE knockdowns, or just knockback on attacking you, putting you in a semi-stunlock where you cannot act with that charachter. Normally, this is a time where having two healers (with cc?) is ideal, but it's not effective/possible in DA2.

Hover text is largely missing where it's most useful(Tactics Screen). This was also a problem in DA1 if i recall, but it was not fixed in DA2.

Holding off leveling up is quite difficult. Sometimes I would leave a charachter with stat points floating, because they weren't terribly relevant except for increasing health and meeting requirements on armor/weapons, but in DA2, it seems to want to lauch you into the level up menu for 90% of clicks on a charachter portrait.

Front/Back menu navigation is not handled particularly well. Each charachter has 6-8 talent webs, to see the details on any of them, you have to "zoom in" to one of them. this makes comparing across webs quite frustrating (have to click on "back" in one area of the screen).

The menu system hides your achievements quite well, and the "flag" for marking an item as new goes away on the slightest mouseover. This means that it becomes hard to identify which belt is the new belt, if you want to compare it to 4 different charachters.

Every encounter is a wave encounter. You engage the 4-10 guys they start with, then at some undetermined time later (either time or progress on 4-10 guys based?) you get another 4-10 guys, who often show up in the middle of where your extremely fragile ranged guys are standing. Then you get another 4-10 guys, and often another 4-10 guys after that. I can't think of a single fight in the game where this was not the pattern. I mean, sometimes it was 25 guys instead of 10, or sometimes they were all "elite" or half-"elite" (it would take perhaps 40 seconds for my healer mage to staff-down a single normal mob)

Why not just aoe them you say? AOE seemed to be just strong enough to get your AOEr killed, without easily dealing with the waves. A standard aoe on a long cooldown would potentially do 10% damage to a normal mob. If I played again, I might experiment more with this strategy in mind.

For reference, one charachter has a optional static aoe power of 7-14 damage every 4 seconds. My staff swing (which takes 10 seconds to kill a 1/4 health (weak) mob, or 40 seconds to kill a normal mob) does something like 60 DPS. Good luck not getting killed!

For some fights, the only way to beat the wave encounter mechanic on high difficulties was to kite the starting monsters far away from the starting location, and the reinforcements would stand around looking stupid at their spawn-in location. To give you an idea of how necessary this was for 1-3 fights in the game, I kited away the starting boss + 4 ranged nukers/vanishing/ambushing rogues, and STILL died to just the reinforcements when I ran back to deal with them.

The fighter/tanks seem to get a auto-counterattack power, which probably accounted for 20% of the damage done by the party.

Mobs were trivially kited.
Without any movement enhansing or debilitating effects, I often kited melee mobs just by running their target away.

In the solo fight against the Arishok (spoilers, but you've seen the trailer...), it was 20-50 minute kite for my healer mage against a overpowering melee monster with infinite health and near-infinite health potions.

The quest system feels detached, you don't feel connected to the story. I often went into a quest "?" having no idea which quest I was actually working on. I'd have to figure out from what they said what the heck was going on. You'd often have 4-8 quests in a zone, and have no idea which one you were wandering into.

Acts randomly end, leaving you stranded without the ability to find certain items (which are only available in certain acts). This varies from act to act, but I went into act 3 without being able to get one of my party members back, which caused me to be short a guy (gal) for the rest of the game.

Item sets feel pathetic. The Juggernaut plate armor from DA1 was epic to get, and felt epic once you got it. The act 2 armor can't even be completed in act 2, and has stats indistinguishable from other items. The set bonus for the act 1 armor? +1 to a stat, and +10-20 mana? The set bonus for the act 3 armor? +2 to a stat, and +15-30 mana? Meh. Meh I say.

Party friendly AOE is prevalent. Often, you would be told to blow something up, and because you did the blowing up, your melee guy standing next to the explosion would be unharmed. I liked the limitation of power of the DA1 party non-friendly aoes for some effects. (notably Fireball - but in DA2 fireball seems pretty bad) I do recall one (1) fight in the deep roads where the aoe actually did hit the party, and did trivial mob damage. (we were told to blow them up to kill the mobs, gee thanks)

Linking of notifications is only weakly tied to the ability to find out more about that notification. For example, when you recieve an item, if you click on that notification on the main screen, it takes you to whatever inventory tab you last visited, which often (75%) does not contain the item you recieved. When the item you recieve is "Belt", it's even better. Codecs and quest linking is similarly vague. I often had little to no idea what quest I had just finished, or what item I recieved.

Many dialog options do not indicate the consequences of that option. The most aggredious offender for this is the option to give money to people. One time, I gave 30 silver (0.3 gold), another I gave 5 gold (out of the 30 gold I had at the time). In DA1 you chose how much to give, from 3-5 options, so you could know what you were getting yourself into.

Necessity of saving frequently. Because rogue mobs can one-shot a non-tank from a repeatable ambush ability they use every 20 seconds or so, and there are some fights with 4 "normal" (aka not weak) rogue mobs, and some blood mages have an ability that near-instantly kills all non-tanks in your party, and some tank mobs knockback your healer into a corner (with no response possible) and continue to knockback them to death, saving frequently is a must. I had over 800 saves near the end of the game.

This is compounded by everything being a wave encounter. You get near the end of what you think the fight is, and go in passive mode, looting, autoshotting or whatever, and a blood mage you didn't see because they spawned in behind you has been casting a spell that kills 3/4 of the party, or 2 rogue mobs and 3 archers show up, and 2-3 people die.

Getting three of your party members perma-knockbacked by a blood mage's aoe until they die is pretty non-fun. All you could do was throw a stun (Horror) at them and hope you burned them down before they got to act, or the omnipresent waves of guys overwhelmed your dpsers/healers.

Nothing felt very epic.
The fade sub-quest in the circle tower in DA1 felt absolutely amazing. Nothing got remotely close to that in DA2. It was just another run through the same map, with new ways being blocked off to force you into a slightly different 100% linear path.

The false choices or everpresent must-attack-me's of the NPCs also didn't help this.

Loot seemed to appear and dissapear (on the map) over time.
Since you spend so much of your time going through the same zones, you notice that things appear or go away in the same act, in the same time of day. You have to be pretty vigilent or you'll miss the loot you might be walking by, and then it is gone forever.

Loot was relatively hard to loot. There was no auto-loot, you had to click on "Loot All". I didn't determine how to loot anything without clicking "Loot All" over the course of playing through the game once. The loot display screen also only showed three items (One of which was always gold). I presumed this meant that you only ever got two items, but instead, you had to mousewheel the menu to see the other items you got, if you got any more than that. Otherwise, you are reliant on the flag system in your inventory to determine what the heck you should look at.

Locked chests were prevalent, and to open them, you had to take control of your rogue charachter. Why couldn't the rogue auto-open it, who knows.

==============================

Props:
Presumably, they give you some tie-in to your experience in DA1, and you can move charachters over.

You did get to see some callbacks to DA1 charachters, and actions your previous charachter took.

Varric is awesome. (but at the end, appears to be leaning on a table that isn't there) Varric is probably the best part of the entire game, to be honest. The cut scene going into Bartrand's Estate is hilarious.

"Hard" difficulty was hard. It was too hard for 1-4 fights in the game for me. (Initial Ogre, nothing from the deep roads on, may be a early charachter problem). I did not try nightmare difficulty. (replayability = 0?)

You did get "letters" at your home base, from the people you saved, but often you had no idea who they were, or what they were talking about. Perhaps if I paid more attention, or took notes, it would have been less confusing. It was a nice feature.




DA2 is a different tactical challenge, and I do enjoy different tactical challenges, since this type of wave encounter was less seen in DA1, and heals are certainly less chain-able, which forces you to react differently.  Unfortunately, you are reacting in a near-identical manner across all combats in the game, which counteracts what would otherwise be a strong point.

================================

Dragon Age 1 was one of the funner games I've played. It extended the grand tradition of the Baldur's Gate series, and took it to a new level. It had alot of versitility, was fairly easy to understand, and multiple viable strategies. And multiple storylines! What you did had an impact on the flow of the game, in more than just the end credits.

Dragon Age 2 is a pale shadow in comparison. It presents what feels like false options throughout the game. Many of the fights feel the same, you keep wandering through the same zones, etc.


Reviews for DA2 have not fallen off strongly from DA1, so perhaps my views here are not the mainstream.  And obviously, if you enjoy the things I list as "negatives" for DA2, your conclusions will be the opposite of mine.  Some people like linear gameplay, or being faux evil.  Either way, you'll have information from reading this that should be relevant to your decision to purchase this game.

Grand Prix Atlanta

In the top 8 of this event, the top 5 cards by volume were:

35 Island
32 Jace, the Mind Sculptor (+5 Jace Beleren)
32 Preordain
28 Mana Leak
25 (All Sideboard) Flashfreeze

There were only 35 islands in the top 8, but there were 37(!) Jaces! (that both cost UU)

There was something like one deck in the top 16, and 3 in the top 32 that didn't play JtMS/Preordain to the max.

Just like the Titan cycle nullifies virtually every other creature that costs 5-8 mana in their respective colors (or colorless for that matter), Jace nullifies entire strategies by himself.  Play some creature without a CIP effect?  Jace is something like three Time Walks against that deck.

I guess the lesson from this is play JTMS, Mana Leak, and Preordain, or have a solid matchup against decks packing them.  (Mostly CawBlade and RUG in the top 8, some others filling out the top 32)