It's Cycling 3 for the same reason that Akroma's Vengeance is Cycling 3. If you give a card Cycling, it makes the card better, so the mana cost goes up. If you want the top side of the card to stay good, like this or like Akroma's Vengeance, you need to bump up the Cycling cost to compensate.
If this had Cycling 2, it would cost 2RR and you'd all hate it.
I think it goes very well in decks that run some number of Anger of the Gods in the main in modern. I don't think the exile clause is as relevant right now as it was when Dredge was big or when Melira Company was big. And with the presence of decks like Death's Shadow Jund and Eldrazi Tron not caring about the wipe, I think the Cycling is really important. There are decks like RG Titanshift, Blue Moon, Jeskai Nahiri etc that really want some number of sweepers in the main to deal with the small creature decks that could otherwise overrun them in game 1, but they hate having a dead card in hand in other matchups. I think this will be really, really good for those decks.
The reason I believe that cycling makes this card great is that it suddenly gets reasonable to play against things other than weenie decks. Suddenly it becomes a powerful tool that can clear early aggression or convert into a new card when you're at the point where you need more than 3 damage. I fully expect this card to hit Modern.
Is 3 mana too much mana for this flexibility? Maybe. But 2 mana would have been too powerful imo.
No matter what, this cycling cards look terrible boring ... (compared to what we already got way back in Onslaught, almost like they just reprint the cards from back then and make them overall worse).
Anger will likely remain the 3 damage sweeper of choice in older formats, but this one's really solid.
I'm not positive in modern. I guess while dredge is popular but otherwise I think this might be better. Just as useful against affinity, merfolk and such but being able to cycle this away in dead matchups or just when you don't need it is pretty high upside.
Anger will likely remain the 3 damage sweeper of choice in older formats, but this one's really solid.
It's a bit of a wash in Commander. Anger stops annoying recursion effects (considering just about every white deck runs Sun Titan and Reveillark, every green deck runs Eternal Witness, etc.) But this also cycles, so you can use it to smooth out one of red's biggest disadvantages in Commander: Inconsistency.
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Card advantage is not the same thing as card draw. Something for 2B cannot be strictly worse than something for BBB or 3BB. If you're taking out Swords to Plowshares for Plummet, you're a fool. Stop doing these things!
And finally we get a cycling card that breaks the mold of being a mediocre card made playable by tacking cycling on to it. Even without the cycling part this would see play in Standard and Limited. The cycling is just gravy, even at 3 getting rid of something useless in matchups that are not weenies is great, if UR control is a thing I predict 2 copies will be maindecked with one or two more in the board. A solid card overall, nice work.
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If this had Cycling 2, it would cost 2RR and you'd all hate it.
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Modern
Elves / Titanshift / Merfolk
Is 3 mana too much mana for this flexibility? Maybe. But 2 mana would have been too powerful imo.
No matter what, this cycling cards look terrible boring ... (compared to what we already got way back in Onslaught, almost like they just reprint the cards from back then and make them overall worse).
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I'm not positive in modern. I guess while dredge is popular but otherwise I think this might be better. Just as useful against affinity, merfolk and such but being able to cycle this away in dead matchups or just when you don't need it is pretty high upside.
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It's a bit of a wash in Commander. Anger stops annoying recursion effects (considering just about every white deck runs Sun Titan and Reveillark, every green deck runs Eternal Witness, etc.) But this also cycles, so you can use it to smooth out one of red's biggest disadvantages in Commander: Inconsistency.
On phasing: