(PeterTaylor) Interesting, looks likely to be powerful, although I'm not sure quite what will be done with it - the untap ability and MTG: Wirewood Channeler or a power-enchanced MTG: Viridian Shaman looks like the most obvious approach.
In block, I'm not entirely sure. Obvious infinite-mana combo if you can somehow get more than 4 mana out of a creature with one tap, so, yeah, the Channeler seems the obvious way to go. Out of block, also a nice mana sink for MTG: Mirari's Wake or MTG: Mana Flare. Anyone got any ideas for silly uses? --Requiem
Also a useful sink for MTG: Upwelling - even if someone disenchants the 'welling, you can avoid mana burn. --CH
(Requiem) Yes, indeedy. Lovely multiplayer card - also quite good against or with any of the myriads of token generators (Saprolings! Yay!). Might fuel my vague aim of one day building a workable Test of Endurance deck.
Mark me down as 'bugged brain' then. Blame magic. --Vitenka
It certainly seems that StuartFraser will be getting rather spoilt for choice for ways to use WUBRG in a month or so. I'm all for more and better mana fixing, although it irritates me that every card they've previewed so far is rare. I can see why in these cases though. I can see why they said MTG: Crystal Quarry would undergo a resurgence of popularity with this set! And the idea of chaining MTG: Wirewood Heralds through MTG: Skullclamp to fill hand and graveyard and eventually end up with some utility elf? Beeeeh. --AlexChurchill
Murfle! Murfle murfle murfle murfle murfle murfle! My Darksteel Ingots and mana-fixing are no longer for trade. Also, re-reading, it occurs to me that Bringer of the Black Dawn might be part of a cycle... --Requiem (murfle)
Explicitly stated that it is. The world of 5-colour decks seems to be back - and apparently using all 5 colours is good for about a decrease of 4 in ConvertedManaCost?. --CH
Humm. That feels about right. It certainly open up the possibility of massive splashes for evil combo type decks. --Vitenka
MuHaHaHa... --Requiem (Oh... and Mistform Ultimus gets a new type - it is now (among other things) a Zombie Pirate Wall Bringer.
Methinks we drafted IPA at the right time... And also that MTG: Harrow is going to become even better than it already is. --CH
Does the Bringer's text look to anyone else like it could have come straight out of one of the Magic card generators? The kind of slightly contorted conditional triggered ability and the rest... Or have I just spent too long staring at the output of that thing? --AlexChurchill
PeterTaylor was thinking earlier this week that they'd never print a card which let you play sorceries at instant speed. He's not sure whether to be pleased that he was wrong, or terrified.
Requiem starts dusting off the words 'At the end of your turn, I...'; This makes MTG: Soulgorger Orgg and phasing enchantments a much more attractive prospect. Nekrataal or Flametongue Kavu at instant speed. All your creatures effectively gain haste. This might end up being Skullclampesque in terms of who plays it, but it also has Johnny uses.
Those who were wondering what the Sunburst mechanic is can now find out from official sources.
The card seems solid but average. Mechanic thoughts - Shurely they're not expecting lots of people to draft 5c Artifact decks? Or are we all supposed to Johnny draft? :rubs hands: --Requiem
Not hugely taken with the card. The other "Sunburst"s had better be much better, or it's not going to be all that good outside of casual... --CH
(PeterTaylor) !? Have to read the article to see whether Scott has any ideas of good things to do with it. Strikes me as mildly interesting, but that's all.
Yes, that looks more promising. Jury is now happy to still be out on Sunburst. --CH
Requiem took one look, thought "My God they've reprinted Pernicious Deed", then read again and realised that no, they're sane. It's still a solid card. Again, a nice number of uses. On a little more thought - is there anything out there that takes advantage of your large CMC cards on the table to do something fun? Quite apart from its ability - can we do anything with paying more than 5 for it?
Yes - Scourge had a number of cards that did something according to highest CMC you controlled - gained life, drew cards, caused discard, dealt damage, and pumped I believe, in canonical colour order. --CH
However, it doesn't work like AA thinks. The card will have CMC 0 on the table. From the CompRules glossary on X: While the spell or ability is on the stack, the {oX} in its mana cost equals the amount announced as part of playing the spell or ability. If a card in any other zone has {oX} in its mana cost, the amount is treated as 0. --AlexChurchill
Oh. I didn't realise that. Thanks for clearing that up. So - now we're left with merely things that work on a spell's CMC as it's being cast. Apart from Spell Blast, anything else that does that? --Requiem
Hmm. Definitely hmm. I can't decide whether this is a seriously bad idea, or a thoroughly mediocre card. It's certainly another notch on the "rules we have broken" counter... --CH
(PeterTaylor) If you have one, I'm certainly happy to trade for it.
No, actually, I don't. And tbh, if I had one I'd be using it... ^_^ I believe SF has one - he was using one at the Planeshift draft, and I think he picked it up in the redraft. --Requiem
Mmm, Rat Rat Rat Rat Rat Rat Rat Rat Rat Rat Rat Rat Rat Rat Rat Rat Rat Rat Rat Rat Rat Rat Rat Rat Swamp! Swamp! Swamp! Swamp! Rat Rat Rat Rat Rat Rat Rat Rat Rat Rat Rat Rat Rat Rat Rat Rat Rat Rat Rat Rat Rat Rat Rat Rat Panic An Explosion! Aaagh an [Engineered Explosion!] -- Senji (with pedantry by ChrisHowlett)
With Grip, does it ever bring the creature back on your own side?
(PeterTaylor) I presume you mean Confusion, in which case: if it comes into play under your control, then provided Confusion can target another permanent sharing a type, you will lose control. If you don't get it back in exchange for something else before it dies, it will come back under your control and you loop.
(PeterTaylor) Recursion in white and green seems to be quite strong in this deck - I've already had some good use out of MTG: Ritual of Restoration. Double green probably doesn't fit into Mind, all mind!, though.
Mmm... recursion. One of the four food groups. --Requiem People who haven't been viewing unofficial spoilers may be interested to wonder at the [Razormane Masticore], which hasn't had text revealed yet, but is confirmed to be in Fifth Dawn...
(Also mentions a card called Eyes of the Watcher). The Scry mechanic revealed. Good news for Jonny.
Wizards site currently down. Scry mechanic + good news for Jonny = Tantalising... :( --CH
(PeterTaylor) I can still get to it. Check your DNS?
IE gives a consistent 500 error. Tracert correctly traces to 12.46.120.31. IE gives a 500 error on the IP address as well.
Requiem and AlexChurchill are getting the same thing. Mozilla clarifies it to an HTTP Error 500-13 - Server too busy.
Evidently a good and interesting article from MaRo, then. And probably a non-previously leaked card? --CH
It's been like this since I got back from rowing at 9am. --Requiem
Sa ha! It came back on line at 11:26. I'm not overly excited by the Scry mechanic myself. But then again, according to the article I'm not supposed to be. --Johnny
(PeterTaylor) I read "And we already knew Johnny was going to be smiling ear to ear." as good news for Jonny. On re-reading, the context is the rest of the set. Even so, I wouldn't mind a couple of Magma Jets for my mono-red deck, because library fixing is always useful in setting up combos. (Actually, I'd really have liked it yesterday for shoving dragons to the bottom of the deck - when my Dragonstorm went off for three, it fetched the only three dragons left in the deck: I'd drawn the rest).
Well, it'd make the cut in limited iff I was low on removal and playing red. Though advance warning is nice, it's a bit 'meh' to me really. I like the idea of using it to shove cards to the bottom of your library though. --Requiem
Huh? MTG: Shock variants are *always* good in limited, and you'll very nearly always want to play every good removal card you can in limited. This is an excellent card, although I'm irritated it's uncommon. Not exciting, but strong. In general Scry looks like cycling or cantripping: an ability that you'd never object to, and if the cost is reasonable (MTG: Lay Waste, MTG: Repulse, MTG: Exclude) rather than inflated (MTG: Break Asunder is Naturalize at twice the cost and sorcery speed, and still not awful), it seems like something generally worth opting for if possible. I suspect I'd end up playing these in any deck that wants a MTG: Shock variant. --AlexChurchill
Meanwhile, Condescend is the first MTG: Power Sink we've seen for a while... well, there was MTG: Syncopate, actually. Looks average for a modern counterspell - i.e. not very good compared to how countermagic used to be. (It occurs to me that Scry works really really well with MTG: Future Sight...) The "Eyes of the Watcher" which the FAQ tells you has a triggered Scry ability is really cool, but I won't say any more for the moment. --AlexChurchill
(PeterTaylor) Re MTG: Future Sight: yes. I'm thinking about trying to get another couple of Future Sight and then moving my MTG: Zur's Weirding out of the life-gain deck. Future Sight's a great way of breaking the symmetry.
(PeterTaylor) I didn't know about this card when I commented on Eternal Witness, but it certainly supports that comment. Funky card. And Antony's article was quite cool as well. However, Wizards have made an error on the front page of the magic site... --CH
By giving away Anthony's punchline, you mean? Or is there something else I'm missing? --AC
No, I'd have called that a "mistake" probably. I was referring to the fact that Roar of Reclamation doesn't say "return all artifact".
That's a ridiculous combo. But kinda fun. Alex - would Entomb work on a Darksteel Colossus? (Not that I have either, I just want to know if that could be part of said attempting-to-break-card combo).
I'm not Alex, but no. Well, yes, but then the Colossus would be shuffled straight back into your library, which somewhat negated the point of playing the Entomb in the first place. --SF
(PeterTaylor) Alex can say more about this now... Hmm - my mono-blue deck could certainly use one.
I really rather like this one... It could fit happily into my currently-non-built MTG: Brain Freeze deck, much as is posted there. And dear lord, it's uncommon. --CH
Squee! Now that's what I'm talking about. --Requiem
(PeterTaylor) This card is insane! I've been planning a green/blue Power Conduit for a while, and I certainly want a couple of copies of this card for it.
Hmm. Interesting. It seems to be part of a cycle with Eyes of the Watcher. I wonder what the other three will be... --Angoel
Not convinced. The effects don't seem similar enough, and the Eyes are uncommon while the Rite is rare (thank goodness...) --CH
No, not a strict cycle, but a sort of thematic cycle thing. I keep wondering whether we'll see something like 'All creatures you own have fear' or something. --Angoel
(The Orb of Insight shows how many times a given word appears in the set.) "Artifact" - 114 "Kaldra" - 5 Sword - 1 Shield - 1 Helm - 4
At a guess, the single entries are "Sacrifice Sword of Kaldra, Shield of Kaldra and Helm of Kaldra: FunkyEffect?". However, I can't figure the FunkyEffect? out, as if there is a card called "Avatar of Kaldra" then we have insufficient occurences of Avatar and Kaldra... --CH
Maybe it says something like: Helm of Kaldra... If you control a card named Sword of Kaldra and Shield of Kaldra then Helm of Kaldra becomes a huge Avatar of Kaldra creature. Although I'm still missing 2x Helm.
Could be mundane equipment.
(PeterTaylor) Note that there are only 5 Kaldras. If one each is associated with Sword and Shield, that leaves 3 to be associated with Helm. Therefore at least one occurrence of Helm is free, and if there is an Avatar of Kaldra that would free two Helms.
AC is reckoning that there's a Creature - Legend named Avatar of Kaldra, and some card quite likely the same) mentioning "cards named Sword of Kaldra, Shield of Kaldra and Helm of Kaldra". Along with a Legendary card called Helm of Kaldra, that's all the Kaldras, with one other Legend and two other mentions of Helm (either just other helms or perhaps cards named things like "Search for the Helm" or whatever). (I've not seen any spoiler info on any of these cards, btw, otherwise obviously I wouldn't be joining in this conversation.)
PeterTaylor has seen the spoiler info, and is thus restricting himself to making logical comments on other people's comments.
"Avatar" - 1 Legend - 2 Legendary - 1 Named - 4 (2 on the Relentless Rats)
WUBRG - 8 (!! Five Bringers and three more...?) "Life" - 13 "Sunburst" - 16
I thought that sunburst was the WUBRG ability. Clearly I was wrong. --Angoel
So did I for a while. I now know better due to other spoiler sites, but this page is for discussion of official Wizards spoilers only so I'm keeping quiet :) --AlexChurchill
"Scry" - 9 (I have no idea what these abilities do, they're just listed on the [product page]. Sunburst is evidently semi-major) "Affinity" - 5. Not many "Bringer" - 15. (!) All 7CC.
I point out that it is mentioned three times on the sample card. One bringer for each colour would make 15 mentions. --Vitenka
Good point.
"Dawn" - 7. Which is odd, as it appears 3 times on the Black bringer. Oops, no, only once. Dawn's doesn't count. So, two cards that aren't bringer and mention Dawn. "Dawn's" - 6 Trample - 10. Noting that the black Bringer has trample, could be that we have two cycles?
One cycle seems likely, but I wouldn't expect another one, just a few green or black tramply things. --AC
"Counter" - 37. But, "+1/+1" - 26 and "charge" - 19. This leads me to believe that there are several cards referring to both +1/+1 counters and charge counters.
Except that "+1/+1" will catch "gets +1/+1 until EOT" and similar effects. Then again, "Counter" will also catch and counterspell variants.
Equipment - 18 Equip - 20 Equipped - 12 Attach - 17 (but most of those are likely in the reminder text for the Equip ability. No way to tell if all of them are.)
But, of course, there is an 'attach' in the reminder text for the Equip ability. So what are the other 3 (or more) Equip references?
"Equip costs..."? Be nice if there's something green (I think is what the flavour would dictate) which increases the equip costs of your opponents.
AC and qqzm were musing about this earlier. I suspect this indicates 12 pieces of equipment, all with "Equip <cost>" and 8 with the reminder "Pay <cost>: Attach to target creature you control. Equip only as a sorcery. This card comes into play unattached and stays in play if the creature leaves play." Um... except that the results for "unattached" (1) and "stays" (0) don't fit that idea. Curses. I don't know what to make of this - is reminder text included or not? (Observing that there could be a "<Something> Barrier(1)" as "Creature - Wall(1)" with "(Walls(1) can't attack)"... -- a confused AlexChurchill
PeterTaylor reminds AC and qqzm that there are no more than 18 items of equipment. More "equip" than "equipment" could mean that some of the equipment have alternative equip costs? No, that's not how the alternative casting costs were templated in Darksteel.
I would expect only 12 pieces of Eqipment, unless some of it *entirely* ignores its "equipped(12)" creature. --AlexChurchill
Unattach - 0. Seems that funky equipment ability was DS only. but Unattached - 1 Weapon - 0. I thought that they were claiming weapons were the best thing since sliced bread. Modular - 1 Arcbound - 1 WWUUBBRRGG - 1 (!)
Requiem was accidentally exposed to a couple of spoilers on a forum, but hasn't seen this card. Wants one, though. (wants 4, actually. Don't care what it does, WWUUBBRRGG is too cool not to have!)
I've not seen the spoiler in question, but would probably suggest that Requiem only wants 3. It's likely to be hard to justify running 4 in the deck if you really do have to pay 10 mana for this (as opposed to it being something like MTG: Stratadon or MTG: Broodstar). --AlexChurchill
Oh, just to own, not to run all of them in the same deck. If it turns out to be Spike-usable, then 3 go in an attempt at a 5-colour useful deck. The other one goes in a silly deck. If it turns out to be a Johnny card, then that's 2 for each of the 'useless-but-fun' decks I'm likely to build (one using in-block mechanics, one using whatever I reckon goes best).
![[Home]](/img/text_logo.jpg){kind=logo}
MagicTheGathering/FifthDawnSpoilers