I hope that they are going to do a Grove of Burnwillows cycle, but River of Tears and Nimbus Maze would be good too. A Horizon Canopy cycle would be okay. The best cycle for them to reprint would be the filterlands. I'd love fetchland reprints, but they would be too powerful in Standard.
I hope that they are going to do a Grove of Burnwillows cycle, but River of Tears and Nimbus Maze would be good too. A Horizon Canopy cycle would be okay. The best cycle for them to reprint would be the filterlands. I'd love fetchland reprints, but they would be too powerful in Standard.
In the same way you can tell someone is from the XVIII century because he is arroused by ankles, you can tell someone is from USA because he feels nipples disturbing.
Reprinting the Mirage fetch lands seems unlikely to me. Zendikar fetch lands will likely be reprinted after the current pain lands rotate out in order for Modern to survive; otherwise, the mana base is too expensive. Right now, a lot of people are turned off by getting into Modern because a mana base costs $250-$300. They fixed part of the problem by printing the pain lands, but the fetch lands are still $25-$45 a pop, depending on which colors. So I think what they'll like to do is go with filter lands for Theros, and when Return to Ravnica rotates out, introduce fetch lands again in the block after Theros. Can't have both fetchlands and shocklands in Standard, the mana base will be too easy. So as soon as the shocklands rotate out, I expect fetchlands to come in.
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"The sword blazed bright as he held it high, filling him with righteous might." - Book 4, Tome of Kor-Nevan
What would you define as "exciting" in the form of dual lands? Manlands, perhaps?
Honestly, it's either cycle lands, filterlands, or some new form of checklands I think at this point.
I guess manlands would have the highest potential. That's why I found the whole 'Exciting' descriptor to be odd (again, unless the one giving the quote is easily excitable).
Makes me think (hope?) that it's a new, previously non-existing dual land design. Even if the end result is just as 'meh' as existing duals (as in, good mana fixing and that's it), something new would be more exciting than making a cycle based on existing cards.
They dont have to be exciting imho. The old duals are just 2basic lands on 1 card nothing exciting about that but believe me when i say people will go crazy if they'd reprint those.
I'm using 'Exciting' because that's what the individual in the OP's quotes said. One person's 'exciting' is another one's bland, so it could be anything at this point, but the sliver of optimist left in me is hoping for something new. If they make something functionally identical (or as close as they can get without pissing off collector's too much), then that would be FANTASTIC. The cards themselves wouldn't be exciting, but the potential would be.
Not opinion whether I think Theros has a Nimbus Maze cycle, but I think it's interesting how Nimbus Maze lands would work almost flawlessly in a two color deck, but work pretty poorly in a three color deck. If that's their agenda, they would fit perfectly. Let's analyze, starting with a RG deck:
Forest or Mountain + RG Maze:
Able to cast anything but RR or GG. That's pretty sweet.
RG Shock + RG Maze:
RG, RR, GG. Alright!
That's almost as good as with checklands. Now, let's look at the different situations in a Naya deck:
RG Shock + RW Maze:
All colour combinations available, no WW, RR or GG. Not bad at all.
Any Maze + Any Maze: No colors available. This is possible in a two color deck as well, of course, but a two color deck would only run four mazes, so chances for getting stuck with two are slim. A three colour deck, on the other hand, would want to run twelve mazes, but this might not be viable because of this. WIth that in mind, let's throw some basics into the mix:
Forest + RW Maze:
G1 available, no white or red. That's pretty terrible.
Forest + RG Maze:
No GG, no white. Still pretty nice, though still no support for WR Maze as third drop.
There you have it, pretty clunky.
I'll just add that slight splashing is a lot harder with mazes. Let's say I want to run a RG deck, but just barely splash W for Assemble the Legion and nothing else. Obviously, I'm not using Plains for that one playset. Without a WR or GR Shock, my WR Maze won't make red mana, making it a plains at best. I do not want to run a Plains in my RG deck anyway, so WR Maze makes my core colors less available. This is not a problem with a a WR checkland, which would always give me R as well as W, and worst case scenario CIPT once in a blue moon.
Well, Nimbus Maze itself would fit in flavorfully with Theros with all this talk of citys in the air and the night sky and all that. I don't know if they could fit the whole cycle into that particular theme, but I wouldn't be surprised if they did.
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After seeing the images for the cities, i'm pretty sure those are duals. Look:
Island (Left side) - Plain (Right side)
Plain (Left side) - Mountain (Right side)
Island (Left side) - Forest (Right side)
I'll go even more there and say that those will be Legendary duals but with full card art and with the type on the long side of the card, and no reminder text. This would make them feel more "legendary" even with no additional text, and will show nicely enough that they are "two" lands into one because of the Big art.
EDIT: i may also be allucinating but those are not full arts, there's a sign that those are two arts merged together, especially in Akris (Mountain, Plain) case. Look at about 1 third of the lenght from the left, you will see that art is not continous but there are some incongruent spots, as if the art was cut and then put back together.
EDIT2: probably just compression artifacts. WotC plz use PNGs it's 2013 already.
Yeah, it's pretty evident those will be the art used for the duals. Also, it's a mix of enemy (W/) (U/) and allied (U/) colors which points towards a set of 10 duals.
After seeing the images for the cities, i'm pretty sure those are duals. Look:
Island (Left side) - Plain (Right side)
Plain (Left side) - Mountain (Right side)
Island (Left side) - Forest (Right side)
I'll go even more there and say that those will be Legendary duals but with full card art and with the type on the long side of the card, and no reminder text. This would make them feel more "legendary" even with no additional text, and will show nicely enough that they are "two" lands into one because of the Big art.
EDIT: i may also be allucinating but those are not full arts, there's a sign that those are two arts merged together, especially in Akris (Mountain, Plain) case. Look at about 1 third of the lenght from the left, you will see that art is not continous but there are some incongruent spots, as if the art was cut and then put back together.
EDIT2: probably just compression artifacts. WotC plz use PNGs it's 2013 already.
I hope there not legendary though. I would like to see somthing similar to the originals or the news the dual land will be removed from the reserved stating they are a card of basic utilities and should be available to all.
I hope there not legendary though. I would like to see somthing similar to the originals or the news the dual land will be removed from the reserved stating they are a card of basic utilities and should be available to all.
This is about the least likely thing that can happen. Wizards has increasingly clamped down on the reserved list in recent years, including removing loopholes for printing nearly-functional-but-with-tiny-differences cards (Fork->Reiterate for example) and for printing premium cards (some of the older FTV and Duel Decks had foils of reserve list cards like Beserk). They also said, after removing a number of commons from the list, that the list would not have any further changes.
Legendary duals with basic land types would be extremely powerful, especially given the recent legend rules changes. I would be fully for them, but given the recent statements about how the M10 duals were dropped so that the mana after Theros would be worse than Innistrad-Ravnica mana, I'm not sure we're likely to see them.
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This is about the least likely thing that can happen. Wizards has increasingly clamped down on the reserved list in recent years, including removing loopholes for printing nearly-functional-but-with-tiny-differences cards (Fork->Reiterate for example) and for printing premium cards (some of the older FTV and Duel Decks had foils of reserve list cards like Beserk). They also said, after removing a number of commons from the list, that the list would not have any further changes.
Legendary duals with basic land types would be extremely powerful, especially given the recent legend rules changes. I would be fully for them, but given the recent statements about how the M10 duals were dropped so that the mana after Theros would be worse than Innistrad-Ravnica mana, I'm not sure we're likely to see them.
They said they wanted duals which, combined with Ravnica, wouldn't make so easily for 3-colors decks. Legenduals fit perfectly because as stand-alone duals without fetches they're far worse than checklands.
Such a statement would make trilands, or duals that check for types pretty unlikely as they'd synergize too nicely with shocks for 3-colors manabases, just like checks.
They said they wanted duals which, combined with Ravnica, wouldn't make so easily for 3-colors decks. Legenduals fit perfectly because as stand-alone duals without fetches they're far worse than checklands.
They're not "far worse" than checklands by any means as they allow more consistent turn 3-4 wins for a deck like Naya blitz. And aggressive 3-colour decks is exactly what they are trying to stop. Legendary duals would help those decks.
They're not "far worse" than checklands by any means as they allow more consistent turn 3-4 wins for a deck like Naya blitz. And aggressive 3-colour decks is exactly what they are trying to stop. Legendary duals would help those decks.
You're counting on some pretty far-fetched odds, unless you are running 3 or 4 in your decks, in which case you'll just drop games out of mulls.
Checks in decks with nothing but shocklands are basically original duals. Legenduals can be run at most as 1-of in tri-color decks, making it harder to combine with shocks. This also fit with the "no duals" in M14, because Legenduals are great but can be run only as 1-ofs, so in an hypotetical 3- color decks, you'd be forced to play basics, or other utility lands.
The Nimbus Maze Cycle, for example, would be a lot better than Legenduals in 3-color decks because you could run a manabases of all multiple colors producing lands.
Let's take the deck you named, Naya blitz (first list on google):
4 Boros Elite
4 Burning-Tree Emissary
4 Champion of the Parish
4 Experiment One
4 Flinthoof Boar
3 Frontline Medic
4 Lightning Mauler
4 Mayor of Avabruck
Creatures [31]
4 Giant Growth
4 Searing Spear
Spells [8]
4 Cavern of Souls
1 Rootbound Crag
4 Sacred Foundry
4 Stomping Ground
4 Sunpetal Grove
4 Temple Garden
Lands [21]
Now you don't have Sunpetal, Cavern and Crag (Theros standard). If you run Legenduals, you'd have 12 Shocks +3 legenduals, then i suppose basics? You coul run 2 of each, but you'd be still at 18 lands, and you'd run the risk of having 3 dead cards in your deck basically. Opportunity costs. At 21-22 lands, you'd still need some basics anyway, and at that point you'd have consistencies issues.
If you had the nimbus maze cycle for example, you'd swap the checks for the corrispondent Maze, and the Cavern with even more of those maze-duals, with no drawback except having slightly worse T2 color combinations of same-color (but i see no dual-mono colored cards so i don't think it's as important). Running 12 shocks, and 10 Mazes is doable for example. They're pretty similar to checks, albeit worse.
It's debatable, but barring some extremely bad lands like tempest duals, i'm not seeing what would be worse than Legenduals to punish heavy-multicolored decks. Something like Anti-duals?
Land - Forest island
If you control a mountain, a plain or a swamp, sacrifice Telessa.
We're going in the realm of complicated designs too. Legenduals are much simpler and would works for their stated goals. Not that i think it would be likely that they'd print them, because WotC has showed to me time and time again they never go for the better decisions (see Reserved list, Red fiasco, Snapcaster being blue and not red, Delver being blue and not black etc...)
Naya Blitz would run 4 of the three legendary dual lands without a single care in the world.
A great Naya Blitz hand usually involves having W on turn 1 and (R/G)(R/G) on turn 2, this is only possible with a turn 1 Temple Garden or Sacred Foundry. The legendary duals would double the chances of that happening.
Having to sacrifice a single land when you have two identical ones really doesn't matter for a deck that aims to dump their hand by turn 3. Those lands are more punishing for slower decks who will indeed have to shy away from running more than 2.
And even just running 2 will bite you in the butt at one point as you will likely draw the second one if you are running a slow control deck.
What they need are ETB-tapped dual lands, they will dramatically slow down aggressive 3-colour decks and will hurt other 3-colour decks as you don't want to run 12 tapped lands.
I honestly think legendary dual manlands are simultaneously a realistic and very exciting concept. With the legendary-ness, it makes it more difficult to abuse them, and as such they can be more powerful than other manlands.
Examples:
Amazon Palace
Legendary Land
Amazon Palace enters the battlefield tapped
T: add R or W to your mana pool
RW: Amazon Palace becomes a 3/1 Red and White Human Warrior creature
with First Strike and Vigilance until end of turn.
Or:
River of Despair
Legendary Land
River of Despair enters the battlefield tapped
T: add W or B to your mana pool
2WB: River of Despair becomes a 2/2 White and Black Zombie creature
with "When this creature deals combat damage to a player, that player
reveals their hand. You choose a nonland card from it and remove it
from the game until River of Despair leaves the battlefield." until
end of Turn.
Or maybe:
Forge of Titans
Legendary Land
Forge of Titans enters the battlefield tapped
T: add U or R to your mana pool
3UR: Forge of Titans becomes a 6/4 Red and Blue Cyclops creature with
Protection from Red and "R: Forge of Titans gets +1/+0 until end of
turn" and "U: Draw a Card"
Until end of turn.
These are just rough concepts, but I'd love to see something akin to these in Theros.
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Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
There's a much better card for the job: Shimmering Grotto.
If you're worried about value i'd sell them before the set after Theros then. The inevitability of their reprint is nigh.
^ This.
River of Tears
http://wiki.mtgsalvation.com/article/Arkhos
http://wiki.mtgsalvation.com/article/Lethe_Lake
I see this being a good possibility for Theros duals.
I could see them using the River of Tears-based cycle, and changing its flavor from Arkhos to Theros.
Current EDH decks:
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URG Surrak Dragonclaw (Guttural Response)
UG Ezuri, Claw of Progress (Phyrexia's Claw)
BR Kaervek the Merciless (Keep Kaervek Alive)
BG Ishkanah, Grafwidow (Descend into Delirium)
W Eight-and-a-Half-Tails (Mark 8.5)
U Thassa, God of the Sea (Here There Be Monsters)
However, some people are more excitable than others, so anything's possible.
What would you define as "exciting" in the form of dual lands? Manlands, perhaps?
Honestly, it's either cycle lands, filterlands, or some new form of checklands I think at this point.
I guess manlands would have the highest potential. That's why I found the whole 'Exciting' descriptor to be odd (again, unless the one giving the quote is easily excitable).
Makes me think (hope?) that it's a new, previously non-existing dual land design. Even if the end result is just as 'meh' as existing duals (as in, good mana fixing and that's it), something new would be more exciting than making a cycle based on existing cards.
I'm using 'Exciting' because that's what the individual in the OP's quotes said. One person's 'exciting' is another one's bland, so it could be anything at this point, but the sliver of optimist left in me is hoping for something new. If they make something functionally identical (or as close as they can get without pissing off collector's too much), then that would be FANTASTIC. The cards themselves wouldn't be exciting, but the potential would be.
Forest or Mountain + RG Maze:
Able to cast anything but RR or GG. That's pretty sweet.
RG Shock + RG Maze:
RG, RR, GG. Alright!
That's almost as good as with checklands. Now, let's look at the different situations in a Naya deck:
RG Shock + RW Maze:
All colour combinations available, no WW, RR or GG. Not bad at all.
Any Maze + Any Maze:
No colors available. This is possible in a two color deck as well, of course, but a two color deck would only run four mazes, so chances for getting stuck with two are slim. A three colour deck, on the other hand, would want to run twelve mazes, but this might not be viable because of this. WIth that in mind, let's throw some basics into the mix:
Forest + RW Maze:
G1 available, no white or red. That's pretty terrible.
Forest + RG Maze:
No GG, no white. Still pretty nice, though still no support for WR Maze as third drop.
There you have it, pretty clunky.
I'll just add that slight splashing is a lot harder with mazes. Let's say I want to run a RG deck, but just barely splash W for Assemble the Legion and nothing else. Obviously, I'm not using Plains for that one playset. Without a WR or GR Shock, my WR Maze won't make red mana, making it a plains at best. I do not want to run a Plains in my RG deck anyway, so WR Maze makes my core colors less available. This is not a problem with a a WR checkland, which would always give me R as well as W, and worst case scenario CIPT once in a blue moon.
Stay reasonable, be mindful of your expectations and don't feed the trolls.
Doomsdayin'
Island (Left side) - Plain (Right side)
Plain (Left side) - Mountain (Right side)
Island (Left side) - Forest (Right side)
I'll go even more there and say that those will be Legendary duals but with full card art and with the type on the long side of the card, and no reminder text. This would make them feel more "legendary" even with no additional text, and will show nicely enough that they are "two" lands into one because of the Big art.
EDIT: i may also be allucinating but those are not full arts, there's a sign that those are two arts merged together, especially in Akris (Mountain, Plain) case. Look at about 1 third of the lenght from the left, you will see that art is not continous but there are some incongruent spots, as if the art was cut and then put back together.
EDIT2: probably just compression artifacts. WotC plz use PNGs it's 2013 already.
I hope there not legendary though. I would like to see somthing similar to the originals or the news the dual land will be removed from the reserved stating they are a card of basic utilities and should be available to all.
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The picture looks better than the design itself
This is about the least likely thing that can happen. Wizards has increasingly clamped down on the reserved list in recent years, including removing loopholes for printing nearly-functional-but-with-tiny-differences cards (Fork->Reiterate for example) and for printing premium cards (some of the older FTV and Duel Decks had foils of reserve list cards like Beserk). They also said, after removing a number of commons from the list, that the list would not have any further changes.
Legendary duals with basic land types would be extremely powerful, especially given the recent legend rules changes. I would be fully for them, but given the recent statements about how the M10 duals were dropped so that the mana after Theros would be worse than Innistrad-Ravnica mana, I'm not sure we're likely to see them.
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They said they wanted duals which, combined with Ravnica, wouldn't make so easily for 3-colors decks. Legenduals fit perfectly because as stand-alone duals without fetches they're far worse than checklands.
Such a statement would make trilands, or duals that check for types pretty unlikely as they'd synergize too nicely with shocks for 3-colors manabases, just like checks.
They're not "far worse" than checklands by any means as they allow more consistent turn 3-4 wins for a deck like Naya blitz. And aggressive 3-colour decks is exactly what they are trying to stop. Legendary duals would help those decks.
You're counting on some pretty far-fetched odds, unless you are running 3 or 4 in your decks, in which case you'll just drop games out of mulls.
Checks in decks with nothing but shocklands are basically original duals. Legenduals can be run at most as 1-of in tri-color decks, making it harder to combine with shocks. This also fit with the "no duals" in M14, because Legenduals are great but can be run only as 1-ofs, so in an hypotetical 3- color decks, you'd be forced to play basics, or other utility lands.
The Nimbus Maze Cycle, for example, would be a lot better than Legenduals in 3-color decks because you could run a manabases of all multiple colors producing lands.
Let's take the deck you named, Naya blitz (first list on google):
4 Boros Elite
4 Burning-Tree Emissary
4 Champion of the Parish
4 Experiment One
4 Flinthoof Boar
3 Frontline Medic
4 Lightning Mauler
4 Mayor of Avabruck
Creatures [31]
4 Giant Growth
4 Searing Spear
Spells [8]
4 Cavern of Souls
1 Rootbound Crag
4 Sacred Foundry
4 Stomping Ground
4 Sunpetal Grove
4 Temple Garden
Lands [21]
Now you don't have Sunpetal, Cavern and Crag (Theros standard). If you run Legenduals, you'd have 12 Shocks +3 legenduals, then i suppose basics? You coul run 2 of each, but you'd be still at 18 lands, and you'd run the risk of having 3 dead cards in your deck basically. Opportunity costs. At 21-22 lands, you'd still need some basics anyway, and at that point you'd have consistencies issues.
If you had the nimbus maze cycle for example, you'd swap the checks for the corrispondent Maze, and the Cavern with even more of those maze-duals, with no drawback except having slightly worse T2 color combinations of same-color (but i see no dual-mono colored cards so i don't think it's as important). Running 12 shocks, and 10 Mazes is doable for example. They're pretty similar to checks, albeit worse.
It's debatable, but barring some extremely bad lands like tempest duals, i'm not seeing what would be worse than Legenduals to punish heavy-multicolored decks. Something like Anti-duals?
Land - Forest island
If you control a mountain, a plain or a swamp, sacrifice Telessa.
We're going in the realm of complicated designs too. Legenduals are much simpler and would works for their stated goals. Not that i think it would be likely that they'd print them, because WotC has showed to me time and time again they never go for the better decisions (see Reserved list, Red fiasco, Snapcaster being blue and not red, Delver being blue and not black etc...)
A great Naya Blitz hand usually involves having W on turn 1 and (R/G)(R/G) on turn 2, this is only possible with a turn 1 Temple Garden or Sacred Foundry. The legendary duals would double the chances of that happening.
Having to sacrifice a single land when you have two identical ones really doesn't matter for a deck that aims to dump their hand by turn 3. Those lands are more punishing for slower decks who will indeed have to shy away from running more than 2.
And even just running 2 will bite you in the butt at one point as you will likely draw the second one if you are running a slow control deck.
What they need are ETB-tapped dual lands, they will dramatically slow down aggressive 3-colour decks and will hurt other 3-colour decks as you don't want to run 12 tapped lands.
Examples:
Amazon Palace
Amazon Palace enters the battlefield tapped
T: add R or W to your mana pool
RW: Amazon Palace becomes a 3/1 Red and White Human Warrior creature
with First Strike and Vigilance until end of turn.
Or:
River of Despair
River of Despair enters the battlefield tapped
T: add W or B to your mana pool
2WB: River of Despair becomes a 2/2 White and Black Zombie creature
with "When this creature deals combat damage to a player, that player
reveals their hand. You choose a nonland card from it and remove it
from the game until River of Despair leaves the battlefield." until
end of Turn.
Forge of Titans
Forge of Titans enters the battlefield tapped
T: add U or R to your mana pool
3UR: Forge of Titans becomes a 6/4 Red and Blue Cyclops creature with
Protection from Red and "R: Forge of Titans gets +1/+0 until end of
turn" and "U: Draw a Card"
Until end of turn.
These are just rough concepts, but I'd love to see something akin to these in Theros.