This card seems like a solid 2-3 of in EVERY blue deck for the next year. Its a hit for me. I mean its an indestructible enchantment that at worst gets rid of dead draws every turn, and can act as an artful dodge for your finisher, isnt the same CMC as Jace, Ral Zarek or possibly the new blue planeswalker and could become a 5/5?
I just hope the other gods are TOO big and unplayable.
Helio that is pretty win more... this won't see play in legacy at all. It isn't a creature unless you have 5 blue spells on the board. If you have a jace and a counterbalance you are going to win that game 90% of the time without this. Why would you run this over a 3/3 shroud mongoose or delver? You wouldn't. I think its great for standard, and possibly a modern playable.
Just want to point out that it's not that you need 5 blue spells, you need 5 instances of U, so Jace and Counterbalance together WOULD make it into a creature.
A) Creature Type: God
B) Cheap: 2U
C) Is Indestructible
D) If your devotion (number of blue mana symbols you control) is low, it loses indestructible and becomes a noncreature enchantment.
E) 5/5, relevant P/T
F) Has a relevant ability (unblockability) for 1U without needing to be tapped.
So my verdict? All she would need is Hexproof and she would become a 4-turn clock, that is indestructible and easily bypasses your defenses.
D) is slightly incorrect. It doesn't lose indestructible
Seems pretty good. This is going right into my planned American Superfriends/Control deck.
Also .... SCRY!
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Level 2 Judge
Currently playing:
Standard: Superfriends!
Legacy: Nic Fit / Pod
Pauper: Delvar; Tron; Flicker Stuff
Commander: Riku ("Some weird doubple spell thing happened"); Keranos ("I did a Gatherer search for 'random' and 'flip a coin.'"); Superfriends!
You know, I just realized how well Bident and Thrassa synergize.
- 3/5 of the way to devotion with just the two cards
- if Thrassa is turned into a creature, have a 5/5 indestructible creature that you force your enemies to swing into
- can guarantee a card draw (and damage) for 1U, as long as the creature swinging isn't removed mid attack phase.
...This just makes me REALLY excited to see how the other gods and their artifacts synergize
Well this is awesome. Between this and the archon seems like WoTC actually managed to do enchantment creatures right!
I'm not sure how I feel about the viability of this card in standard though. Living through your wrath is awesome, but how often is it going to be turned on, as awesome as it's upkeep ability may be. Though being the enchantment block, maybe there will be some nice ones that control enjoys.
I get that this a powerful card, but flavor-wise it seems strange that mythic, legendary gods are smaller than a lot of common creatures. Oh, you have a god? Well, my Kindercatch/Scaled Wurm/Alpha Tyrranax is bigger.
Dopey green creatures should not be able to outrace gods. It would be more appropriate if the gods were comparable in size to the Eldrazi. But they should be able to outrace commons at the very least.
I get that this a powerful card, but flavor-wise it seems strange that mythic, legendary gods are smaller than a lot of common creatures. Oh, you have a god? Well, my Kindercatch/Scaled Wurm/Alpha Tyrranax is bigger.
Dopey green creatures should not be able to outrace gods. It would be more appropriate if the gods were comparable in size to the Eldrazi. But they should be able to outrace commons at the very least.
Magic flavor doesn't always make sense. You're telling me that the fat, 7th edition Eager Cadet can only trade with an Elite Vanguard, but can't kill a Laboratory Maniac? And what's with creatures both killing each other during combat?
You only need 4 other U to turn her on. Let's say you get 2 from a Jace and then 2 from Aetherling and you're done. That'll be quite common in a control deck methinks. Until then you are fixing your draws which can be a godsend for that deck and occasionally getting her activated for a turn via incidental stuff.
If you have Jace and Aetherling, how often do you need more things on the board?
Has anybody else realized that the "confirmed text" has a wording error? Unblockable was keyworded, so the activated ability should say gains unblockable not cant be blocked
Very interesting design, quite refreshing.
As such also quite difficult to say how good it is but I'm inclined to say it's mediocre but it's difficult to envision straight away how this will see usage.
At first it feels good in a sort of UW control deck where this is just used as a crystal ball untill you have some number of blue planeswalkers and detention sphere's and this turns on to finish. A finisher that has some good tutor usage before that. Looking at it more though it's probably quite difficult to turn it on as needing 4 other blue symbols is quite difficult probably and if you have active planeswalkers or an aetherling you're already winning anyway. A crystall ball is also not that great for control, control typically wants card advantage, not so much selection really since every card tends to be useful in control and they have a lot of use for land anyway.
Most of the abilities seem of better use in aggro really. Scry is much better in an aggro deck because land drops essentially become wasted after a point and scry does quite a decent job of avoiding any further lands. The unblockability clause is also actually good in aggro. The problem then is in turning it on of course, heavy blue creatures and other sorts of enchantments seem best for that but it seems overkill to go for it, overall the 5/5 creature part seems difficult to achieve without being it just win more even though the scry itself makes devotion easier to get.
Overall very cool card but probably needs some couple great support cards to make this shine. The devotion part is easiest to get in a control deck as you have plenty of time to get there but the abilities play much better in aggro. However in aggro it's probably quite rare to get turned on and have it matter, in board stalls I see it happen but otherwise not that much and how likely is it for there even to be a blue aggro deck. Heavy blue permanents are needed to make this good really. Stuff like small jace, detention sphere a sort of cheap claustrophia like card etc.
Otherwise I only see this being good if blue aggro becomes a thing which is unlikely. But being so new and doing so many different things it's undoubtedly going to be played and rated quite highly at first.
Has anybody else realized that the "confirmed text" has a wording error? Unblockable was keyworded, so the activated ability should say gains unblockable not cant be blocked
Has anybody else realized that the "confirmed text" has a wording error? Unblockable was keyworded, so the activated ability should say gains unblockable not cant be blocked
Maybe you're confusing with "Indesturctible". Unblockable was not keyworded, see Phantom Warrior.
Interesting design, actually very versatile. I could definitely see this showing up as a 1- or 2-of in Merfolk decks; it's only 3 mana and giving creatures unblockable is a good way to push through that last bit of damage. In addition, the fact that it's indestructible and can scry every turn means that it can help those decks' long games.
2U Legendary Enchantment
Indestructible
At the beginning of your upkeep, scry 1.
Is that playable?
If so, this card is very solid, and will see play in every control list until it rotates (depends on the rest of the card draw, however, if they reprint something better).
If not, then the card is mediocre, since you are basically paying for this ability. AEtherling is always going to hit for damage. I am fairly certain you do not want to splash it for the unblockability since you lose the option of Devotion.
Modern, with Plumeveil might be a thing for control decks as well, but it just doesn't do enough quickly enough to make it work (theory only, needs testing)?
You only need 4 other U to turn her on. Let's say you get 2 from a Jace and then 2 from Aetherling and you're done. That'll be quite common in a control deck methinks. Until then you are fixing your draws which can be a godsend for that deck and occasionally getting her activated for a turn via incidental stuff.
And you can flicker Aetherling to make anything that targets a creature fizzle. Or, if Terminus was staying in the format, you could flicker Aetherling to keep her on the table. Being able to manipulate Devotion counts is going to be insane. At least, for this card.
Magic flavor doesn't always make sense. You're telling me that the fat, 7th edition Eager Cadet can only trade with an Elite Vanguard, but can't kill a Laboratory Maniac? And what's with creatures both killing each other during combat?
I guess, but there are some flavor things that need to make sense. If you're going to make gods into cards, you better make them huge, powerful, and awesome. My jaw should be hitting the floor with how powerful they are. They're gods, for crying out loud. They need to be Eldrazi-esque in their power level. Instead, we get 5/5s. Not even as big as the titans. Not even as big as green commons. That's just a flavor fail.
I would like to say that I called it with the God cards.
This is very interesting. This leaves up lots of speculation about the other gods. Considering having double or triple colored mana in their mana costs is a cheap and easy way to turn them into creatures, they will be probably undercosted enchantments with meh abilities (lets face it, 3 mana scry 1 each turn is pretty meh) that are indestructible and are probably 5/5s
If the Red one is undercosted like Thassa, GET YOUR BURNING-TREE EMISSARYS NOW.
Turn 1-Red 1 drop
Turn 2-BTE Chain into something.
Turn 3-Red God as a 5/5. Win?
Interesting design, actually very versatile. I could definitely see this showing up as a 1- or 2-of in Merfolk decks; it's only 3 mana and giving creatures unblockable is a good way to push through that last bit of damage. In addition, the fact that it's indestructible and can scry every turn means that it can help those decks' long games.
Yeah, I think I'm going to try it out in my modern merfolk deck. Since it's also a creature you can even vial it in (unless there's some weird rules thing I don't know about). I play mono-blue merfolk so getting to 5U is not hard with all the UU lords. I don't know, it seems at least worth trying out.
I will say this seems better suited for a merfolk-type aggro/tempo deck rather than control, since control decks are less likely to have enough permanents in play to make it a creature. Plus, the filtering from scry can help prevent flooding out, which is bad in aggro but fine (most of the time) in control decks.
but who knows. I just hope it's real since it seems cool.
Has anybody else realized that the "confirmed text" has a wording error? Unblockable was keyworded, so the activated ability should say gains unblockable not cant be blocked
They recently changed it. Phantom Warrior is the current text, because it is clearer.
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"If you don't wear your seatbelt, the police will shoot you in the head."
- To my youngest sister when she was 6.
Everyone knows that good luck and good game are such insincere terms that any man who does not connect his right hook with the offender's jaw on the very utterance of such a phrase is no man I would consider as such.
I get that this a powerful card, but flavor-wise it seems strange that mythic, legendary gods are smaller than a lot of common creatures. Oh, you have a god? Well, my Kindercatch/Scaled Wurm/Alpha Tyrranax is bigger.
Dopey green creatures should not be able to outrace gods. It would be more appropriate if the gods were comparable in size to the Eldrazi. But they should be able to outrace commons at the very least.
Its more than likely just a compromise for playability over flavor. They want a block and standard environment where the gods see play. And further, when they hit play, they want them to be around for awhile. If the game instantly ends when you cast one, the god doesn't really matter, its just a really expensive spell that ends the game, it doesn't really matter what it does at that point, and that makes all the gods feel the same.
With lower costs, they hit play more often, and they usually stick around for several turns. This gives significantly more room for differentiating the gods.
As an appeal to flavor though, remember, Eldrazi are the equivilent of lovecraftian horrors, which are often put forth as significantly more powerful than mankind's gods. So these do not really have to be eldrazi level power.
The only god we have so far is also blue, which isn't known for its efficient creatures. if Blue gets a 3 mana indestructable 5/5, how much larger will black, white, or green be?
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I support WotC's goal of shaping Modern in favor of diversity.
I ran a thought experiment on my blog Modern in a Nuclear Wasteland
of an extreme case of banning 20 more cards to make sure they get everything, then scaling back where appropriate. WotC seems to be on a slowly build up approach. Both ways probably reach similar end points.
The post Gatecrash metagame is proving to be closer to the endpoint than I estimated, so its very possible that few (if any) more cards need to be banned.
I'm guessing her mana cost helps with devotion right?
So you only need 4 other blue symbols?
This will really help tempo decks be a thing.
Also freaking scry is back! Awsome!
Come on serum visions!
I am now way more excited about theros than I was before. Thassa's bident had me a little scared that the power level would be too low in this set, but not anymore!
If this doesn't see play, it's because there aren't enough good blue cards to be heavy blue.
I'm not sure if this would go in a dedicated control deck, but it will 100% show up in a tempo deck, coincidently my favorite archetype.
This might even make things like claustrophobia playable (might be a stretch). But 2 Tidebinder Mage's would turn this on. Or a Tidebinder and Nightveil Spector.
Ahhh I'm so freaking excited now.
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If MTG is a part of your life, the formats are like relationships:
Standard/Block = The on-again, off-again holiday fling
Modern/Vintage/Legacy = Stable, homely. A ***** after absence/misreading
Limited/Sealed = Heart breaking free spirit
Commander/Cube = Agreeable, needy and expensive
Pauper/Peasant = Sweet, kind, practical, but shy and boring
2U Legendary Enchantment
Indestructible
At the beginning of your upkeep, scry 1.
Is that playable?
If so, this card is very solid, and will see play in every control list until it rotates (depends on the rest of the card draw, however, if they reprint something better).
If not, then the card is mediocre, since you are basically paying for this ability. AEtherling is always going to hit for damage. I am fairly certain you do not want to splash it for the unblockability since you lose the option of Devotion.
Modern, with Plumeveil might be a thing for control decks as well, but it just doesn't do enough quickly enough to make it work (theory only, needs testing)?
I don't know why you're focusing on Aethering. It works just as well on other creatures. An aggressive merfolk deck could develop that would like to see this card. That being said . . .
My knee-jerk reaction was that Thassa was insane, but, after thinking about the card more, I agree that it needs testing. It would be much more of an auto-include at Scry 2. Playing it with the rest of Theros will provide some clarity.
I would play a 2U, Scry 1 indestructible enchantment in the current Standard. Blue's card manipulation is supremely lacking right now, and I'd find it quite useful to filter my deck twice as fast as my opponent.
I'd also like to point out that Jace, AoT and Aetherling are collectively UUUU, and both being played in UW control. It would not be hard to slot this into a similar build, making exactly 5 devotion for the late game beatdown. Having exactly 5 devotion would appear to offer some benefits in certain situations such as the one above. If they Selesnya Charm your Thassa, you could (at least in theory) exile Aetherling in response, dropping your devotion to 3. She'd cease to be a creature and become an illegal target, effectively sharing Aetherling's evasion.
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Just want to point out that it's not that you need 5 blue spells, you need 5 instances of U, so Jace and Counterbalance together WOULD make it into a creature.
D) is slightly incorrect. It doesn't lose indestructible
Also .... SCRY!
Currently playing:
Standard: Superfriends!
Legacy: Nic Fit / Pod
Pauper: Delvar; Tron; Flicker Stuff
Commander: Riku ("Some weird doubple spell thing happened"); Keranos ("I did a Gatherer search for 'random' and 'flip a coin.'"); Superfriends!
- 3/5 of the way to devotion with just the two cards
- if Thrassa is turned into a creature, have a 5/5 indestructible creature that you force your enemies to swing into
- can guarantee a card draw (and damage) for 1U, as long as the creature swinging isn't removed mid attack phase.
...This just makes me REALLY excited to see how the other gods and their artifacts synergize
I'm not sure how I feel about the viability of this card in standard though. Living through your wrath is awesome, but how often is it going to be turned on, as awesome as it's upkeep ability may be. Though being the enchantment block, maybe there will be some nice ones that control enjoys.
Dopey green creatures should not be able to outrace gods. It would be more appropriate if the gods were comparable in size to the Eldrazi. But they should be able to outrace commons at the very least.
Not so sure I believe it.
How To Keep Your FOIL Cards From Curling: http://youtu.be/QTmubrS8VnI
The Best Deck Boxes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEwgLph_Pjk
The Best Binders: http://youtu.be/H5IauASYWjk
Magic flavor doesn't always make sense. You're telling me that the fat, 7th edition Eager Cadet can only trade with an Elite Vanguard, but can't kill a Laboratory Maniac? And what's with creatures both killing each other during combat?
If you have Jace and Aetherling, how often do you need more things on the board?
You can find me on MTGO. My username is gereffi.
As such also quite difficult to say how good it is but I'm inclined to say it's mediocre but it's difficult to envision straight away how this will see usage.
At first it feels good in a sort of UW control deck where this is just used as a crystal ball untill you have some number of blue planeswalkers and detention sphere's and this turns on to finish. A finisher that has some good tutor usage before that. Looking at it more though it's probably quite difficult to turn it on as needing 4 other blue symbols is quite difficult probably and if you have active planeswalkers or an aetherling you're already winning anyway. A crystall ball is also not that great for control, control typically wants card advantage, not so much selection really since every card tends to be useful in control and they have a lot of use for land anyway.
Most of the abilities seem of better use in aggro really. Scry is much better in an aggro deck because land drops essentially become wasted after a point and scry does quite a decent job of avoiding any further lands. The unblockability clause is also actually good in aggro. The problem then is in turning it on of course, heavy blue creatures and other sorts of enchantments seem best for that but it seems overkill to go for it, overall the 5/5 creature part seems difficult to achieve without being it just win more even though the scry itself makes devotion easier to get.
Overall very cool card but probably needs some couple great support cards to make this shine. The devotion part is easiest to get in a control deck as you have plenty of time to get there but the abilities play much better in aggro. However in aggro it's probably quite rare to get turned on and have it matter, in board stalls I see it happen but otherwise not that much and how likely is it for there even to be a blue aggro deck. Heavy blue permanents are needed to make this good really. Stuff like small jace, detention sphere a sort of cheap claustrophia like card etc.
Otherwise I only see this being good if blue aggro becomes a thing which is unlikely. But being so new and doing so many different things it's undoubtedly going to be played and rated quite highly at first.
Unblockable was never keyworded.
WWUGeist of Saint TraftUWW
UUBBLazav, Dimir MastermindBBUU
BRMalfegorRB
RGThromok the InsatiableGR
GGWWTrostani, Selesnya's VoiceWWGG
WBTeysa, Orzhov ScionBW
BGGGlissa, the TraitorGGB
GGUUPrime Speaker ZeganaUUGG
URJhoira of the GhituRU
RRWWAurelia, the WarleaderWWRR
UBRJeleva, Nephalias ScourgeRBU
Maybe you're confusing with "Indesturctible". Unblockable was not keyworded, see Phantom Warrior.
How good is this card?
2U Legendary Enchantment
Indestructible
At the beginning of your upkeep, scry 1.
Is that playable?
If so, this card is very solid, and will see play in every control list until it rotates (depends on the rest of the card draw, however, if they reprint something better).
If not, then the card is mediocre, since you are basically paying for this ability. AEtherling is always going to hit for damage. I am fairly certain you do not want to splash it for the unblockability since you lose the option of Devotion.
Modern, with Plumeveil might be a thing for control decks as well, but it just doesn't do enough quickly enough to make it work (theory only, needs testing)?
And you can flicker Aetherling to make anything that targets a creature fizzle. Or, if Terminus was staying in the format, you could flicker Aetherling to keep her on the table. Being able to manipulate Devotion counts is going to be insane. At least, for this card.
This is very interesting. This leaves up lots of speculation about the other gods. Considering having double or triple colored mana in their mana costs is a cheap and easy way to turn them into creatures, they will be probably undercosted enchantments with meh abilities (lets face it, 3 mana scry 1 each turn is pretty meh) that are indestructible and are probably 5/5s
If the Red one is undercosted like Thassa, GET YOUR BURNING-TREE EMISSARYS NOW.
Turn 1-Red 1 drop
Turn 2-BTE Chain into something.
Turn 3-Red God as a 5/5. Win?
"There are no two words in the English language more harmful than 'good job'." -Terrance Fletcher, Whiplash (2014)
Yeah, I think I'm going to try it out in my modern merfolk deck. Since it's also a creature you can even vial it in (unless there's some weird rules thing I don't know about). I play mono-blue merfolk so getting to 5U is not hard with all the UU lords. I don't know, it seems at least worth trying out.
I will say this seems better suited for a merfolk-type aggro/tempo deck rather than control, since control decks are less likely to have enough permanents in play to make it a creature. Plus, the filtering from scry can help prevent flooding out, which is bad in aggro but fine (most of the time) in control decks.
but who knows. I just hope it's real since it seems cool.
They recently changed it. Phantom Warrior is the current text, because it is clearer.
- To my youngest sister when she was 6.
Its more than likely just a compromise for playability over flavor. They want a block and standard environment where the gods see play. And further, when they hit play, they want them to be around for awhile. If the game instantly ends when you cast one, the god doesn't really matter, its just a really expensive spell that ends the game, it doesn't really matter what it does at that point, and that makes all the gods feel the same.
With lower costs, they hit play more often, and they usually stick around for several turns. This gives significantly more room for differentiating the gods.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As an appeal to flavor though, remember, Eldrazi are the equivilent of lovecraftian horrors, which are often put forth as significantly more powerful than mankind's gods. So these do not really have to be eldrazi level power.
The only god we have so far is also blue, which isn't known for its efficient creatures. if Blue gets a 3 mana indestructable 5/5, how much larger will black, white, or green be?
I ran a thought experiment on my blog
Modern in a Nuclear Wasteland
of an extreme case of banning 20 more cards to make sure they get everything, then scaling back where appropriate. WotC seems to be on a slowly build up approach. Both ways probably reach similar end points.
The post Gatecrash metagame is proving to be closer to the endpoint than I estimated, so its very possible that few (if any) more cards need to be banned.
I mean the best is probably Frostborn Weirf
I'm guessing her mana cost helps with devotion right?
So you only need 4 other blue symbols?
This will really help tempo decks be a thing.
Also freaking scry is back! Awsome!
Come on serum visions!
I am now way more excited about theros than I was before. Thassa's bident had me a little scared that the power level would be too low in this set, but not anymore!
If this doesn't see play, it's because there aren't enough good blue cards to be heavy blue.
I'm not sure if this would go in a dedicated control deck, but it will 100% show up in a tempo deck, coincidently my favorite archetype.
This might even make things like claustrophobia playable (might be a stretch). But 2 Tidebinder Mage's would turn this on. Or a Tidebinder and Nightveil Spector.
Ahhh I'm so freaking excited now.
Standard/Block = The on-again, off-again holiday fling
Modern/Vintage/Legacy = Stable, homely. A ***** after absence/misreading
Limited/Sealed = Heart breaking free spirit
Commander/Cube = Agreeable, needy and expensive
Pauper/Peasant = Sweet, kind, practical, but shy and boring
I don't know why you're focusing on Aethering. It works just as well on other creatures. An aggressive merfolk deck could develop that would like to see this card. That being said . . .
My knee-jerk reaction was that Thassa was insane, but, after thinking about the card more, I agree that it needs testing. It would be much more of an auto-include at Scry 2. Playing it with the rest of Theros will provide some clarity.
I'd also like to point out that Jace, AoT and Aetherling are collectively UUUU, and both being played in UW control. It would not be hard to slot this into a similar build, making exactly 5 devotion for the late game beatdown. Having exactly 5 devotion would appear to offer some benefits in certain situations such as the one above. If they Selesnya Charm your Thassa, you could (at least in theory) exile Aetherling in response, dropping your devotion to 3. She'd cease to be a creature and become an illegal target, effectively sharing Aetherling's evasion.