So, can someone explain to me why Undergrowth Champion is mythic? This effect seems pretty weak for a regular rare even.
In Standard/Modern, it's play it T3 (Via Bird), drop a Fetchland (+1/+1 counter), get another land (+1/+1, total of 4/4), and watch it not die. Because it removes a single counter rather than "As many as the damage that was delt", the thing is Immortal in combat.
2/2, with two +1/+1 counters means it takes Lightning Bolt (2/2, with one +1/+1 counter remaining), Combat (2/2, no counters remaining) and Pyroclasm to kill it, in the same turn. The moment you drop another land is the moment it takes another source of damage to kill it.
Add to the fact that damage is prevented completely for a single counter to be removed, and you have a creature that can chump block Siege Rhinos for days and you will never lose life from the Trample.
In EDH it's kind of the same thing, as with Azusa, Lost but Seeking, Oracle of Mul Daya, Exploration, so on so forth will keep the counters coming, but since most Wraths played are "Destroy" rather than deal damage in our format, it's practically worthless for that regard.
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Oath of the Gatewatch; the set that caused the competitive community to freak out over Basic Lands.
His ult was apparently mistranslated; it should read "Target opponent gets an emblem with 'Whenever a player draws a card, you lose 2 life.'"
Just noticed that and was about to correct myself on it when I noticed your reply. Definitely a bit more impactful of an effect, especially in multiplayer, though I doubt many tables would allow Ob to survive that long without some extreme shenanigans going on. Regardless, the primary reasons to want to play him remain the same, so it's all good.
Undergrowth Champion: I believe this one was supposedly spoiled by the guy who had info on the Planeswalkers as well. Phantom Wurm and friends have been around for a while and have shown up to decent effect in quite a few builds, so there's a definite backlog of cards that can interact favorably with him, and even just on his own, it will at least require some premiere removal to get him out of the way without burning through more resources than you'd care to commit.
EDIT:Conduit of Ruin: Eye of Ugin as a creature seems like it could be fairly useful, though it makes a few trade-offs in the process by the looks of it (namely a more restrictive tutor effect but far less restrictive cost-reduction effect). Realized that he doesn't straight tutor for a card, but rather puts it on top of the library, which means he doesn't replace himself. Even still, Card selection + a 5/5 body + a Sol Ring's worth of free mana is still well worth experimenting with in the right decks.
In Nekusar that emblem is pretty much: destroy target player...
That emblem destroys a player in any deck, not just in Nekusar. In a normal 4-5 player game that's 8-10 damage a turn, minimum. More if someone draws cards. Very few decks can beat that.
The tutor is very cool but it will need to be in three colour decks at minimum to be strong
I wonder they make it exile the spell before you can cast it... It feels like something is up
Yeah... but 2 of those 3 colors are blue and green. This reads "5 mana, go get a 3cmc spell" which isn't the most amazing thing ever, but it allows you to toolbox the entire bottom half of your curve. Super powerful because of the flexibility.
The new man land is terrible, but thank god they didn't give UG a super efficient one.
In 5 color, it's 5 mana, go play any 5cmc spell for free, which is pretty decent.
Add to the fact that damage is prevented completely for a single counter to be removed, and you have a creature that can chump block Siege Rhinos for days and you will never lose life from the Trample.
Are you sure about that? I would think it would only ever prevent the damage assigned to it, which if its toughness is 3 or below, would always leave the siege rhino player open to assign one or more damage to you.
Add to the fact that damage is prevented completely for a single counter to be removed, and you have a creature that can chump block Siege Rhinos for days and you will never lose life from the Trample.
Are you sure about that? I would think it would only ever prevent the damage assigned to it, which if its toughness is 3 or below, would always leave the siege rhino player open to assign one or more damage to you.
You play the critter, then a fetchland and you have four toughness per block as long as you play a minimum of one land per turn, you play another fetch and it gets stronger than a siege rhino.
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Add to the fact that damage is prevented completely for a single counter to be removed, and you have a creature that can chump block Siege Rhinos for days and you will never lose life from the Trample.
Are you sure about that? I would think it would only ever prevent the damage assigned to it, which if its toughness is 3 or below, would always leave the siege rhino player open to assign one or more damage to you.
Fairly certain. Could be wrong, but I'm at least 95% certain that's how it works.
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Oath of the Gatewatch; the set that caused the competitive community to freak out over Basic Lands.
Bring to Light is so far my favorite card revealed. While the wording suggests that you must use it immediately, which means you can't just grab a Cryptic Command and hoard it for another time, but I still love it for its versatility. Sometimes I just need that Time Warp, Ancestral Vision, Eternal Witness, Primal Command, etc, and that's just within two colors. In three colors, boy it can grab so many more, from removals like Maelstrom Pulse to "tutors" like Academy Rector, the usage is endless.
In two colors, you're never grabbing Time Warp, Witness, or Command. In three colors, you're never grabbing Rector. It's a decent card, but you're giving it too much credit here.
It's still my favorite thing spoiled so far. Grabbing anything CMC 3 or less in a UGx deck is a very powerful effect.
Add to the fact that damage is prevented completely for a single counter to be removed, and you have a creature that can chump block Siege Rhinos for days and you will never lose life from the Trample.
This is just not true. It's only preventing the damage assigned to it. Any large creature with trample is still going to get though. It can block a Rhino more or less indefinitely as long as you start with two counters and hit your land drops, but it doesn't prevent creatures from trampling if they can assign damage equal to its toughness and still have some power left over.
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[Pr]Jaya | Estrid | A rotating cast of decks built out of my box.
wait? i thought spending 3 Blue and 2 Green will make you search CMC 5(i thought the wording suggested "no you can't ramp with your sol ring"), or is it like sunburst?
The only card sort of interesting to me so far is the new Ob planeswalker. He is a bit awkward for me in my decks as he sits at the same cmc as Bloodgift Demon. While Ob does offer better flexibility in his Murder neg ability, Bloodgift Demon is easier to recur and can attack/block. Therefore its going to come down to price. If I can get the new Ob for $5-$8, then I would add him to decks. But if he is going to be rocking a $30+ price tag, I'll just spend the 50 cents on a Bloodgift Demon.
wait? i thought spending 3 Blue and 2 Green will make you search CMC 5(i thought the wording suggested "no you can't ramp with your sol ring"), or is it like sunburst?
Yeah it's pretty much like Sunburst. It tracks the total types of mana spent to cast it, so the highest CMC card you could ever get from it is 5 (i.e, you spent WUBRG to cast it).
The only card sort of interesting to me so far is the new Ob planeswalker. He is a bit awkward for me in my decks as he sits at the same cmc as Bloodgift Demon. While Ob does offer better flexibility in his Murder neg ability, Bloodgift Demon is easier to recur and can attack/block. Therefore its going to come down to price. If I can get the new Ob for $5-$8, then I would add him to decks. But if he is going to be rocking a $30+ price tag, I'll just spend the 50 cents on a Bloodgift Demon.
I think a better comparison is Liliana of the Dark Realms. Both of their +1 abilities are effectively card draw, their -3 is removal, and their ultimates who cares how often do walkers ult in non-superfriends lists. I'd say run both Ob Nix and Bloodgift Demon. At least, in my deck I would since I can never draw enough cards.
So, can someone explain to me why Undergrowth Champion is mythic? This effect seems pretty weak for a regular rare even.
In Standard/Modern, it's play it T3 (Via Bird), drop a Fetchland (+1/+1 counter), get another land (+1/+1, total of 4/4), and watch it not die. Because it removes a single counter rather than "As many as the damage that was delt", the thing is Immortal in combat.
2/2, with two +1/+1 counters means it takes Lightning Bolt (2/2, with one +1/+1 counter remaining), Combat (2/2, no counters remaining) and Pyroclasm to kill it, in the same turn. The moment you drop another land is the moment it takes another source of damage to kill it.
Add to the fact that damage is prevented completely for a single counter to be removed, and you have a creature that can chump block Siege Rhinos for days and you will never lose life from the Trample.
In EDH it's kind of the same thing, as with Azusa, Lost but Seeking, Oracle of Mul Daya, Exploration, so on so forth will keep the counters coming, but since most Wraths played are "Destroy" rather than deal damage in our format, it's practically worthless for that regard.
I see. I'm going to have to start boarding in my Dismembers more often.
Do you run that many 7cmc or greater colorless critters?
In the three decks I'm considering him for, Glissa runs several Eldrazi titans, Sydri runs Blightsteel/Mycosynth/Platinum/Memnarch, and Riku makes this thing insane when copied. All three decks love to play creatures, and his cost reduction effect and size make him worth the 6 mana alone, without the tutor.
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Desolation Twin's gonna be one of those cards that's big and huge but in the end will get chumped for days. There are beautiful ways to abuse it though, and imagining it next to Doubling Season, Parralel Lives and Primal Vigor makes me giggly. "So that's 10 mana, 90 power..."
Probably won't ever happen but hey.
Conduit of Ruin is going into my Kozilek. Very likely I'll end up having turns like "T3 play Conduit, tutor up It that Betrays. T4 play Kozilek, T5 drop It and attack". Scary card. Shame it just can't grab CMC 6 creatures, else Steel Hellkite and Wurmcoil Engine would've had a new friend.
Here's some stuff it CAN search up and is actually decent at least though:
Chandra, Torch of Defiance - Oops! All Chandras. Prime Speaker Zegana - Draw for Power. Pir & Toothy - Counterpalooza. Arcades, the Strategist - Another Brick in the Wall. Zacama, Primal Calamity - Calamity of Double Mana. Edgar Markov - Vampires Don't Die. Child of Alara - Dreamcrusher.
Here's my take on the (recently) spoiled cards thus far:
Desolation Twin is silly in Trostani, but I would put it in any token-themed deck tbh. It's unfortunate that it has to be cast to get the token but I can see how copying it and reanimating it would get dumb very quickly.
Conduit of Ruin will be an auto-include in any colorless deck, and I could definitely see an argument for putting it in mono-green decks with enough targets.
Bring to Light I'm on the fence with. It's bad in anything less than 3 colors and even then it's not that fantastic. While it's true that for 3cmc you can get a lot of good stuff, you could get most of that stuff with cheaper tutors like Mystical Tutor, Green Sun's Zenith, Eladamri's Call, etc. The fact that you cast the card also leaves them open to being countered. Maybe if it grabbed any nonland permanent or if it was an instant I'd be more impressed with it, but as is I don't think I'd recommend it.
Undergrowth Champion is cute, but that's about it. In a world full of mass removal and giant creatures he fails to impress. And even if those didn't exist he's basically just a vanilla creature that's hard to kill in combat and doesn't kill much stuff himself. Pass.
Ob Nixilis Reignited is awesome. He's either drawing you a card every turn, or he's killing the best creature on the board. And that ultimate is basically "target player loses the game". He's fairly close to an auto-include in any deck with black in it.
Kiora, Master of the Depths is also awesome, and better in almost every way than her previous incarnation. In her colors you're almost always going to get 2 card off of her second ability, and untapping a creature and/or mana for a counterspell to protect her is sick. The only downside to her is, like all PW's, they're hard to recur and most people want to kill them ASAP as soon as they hit the board. Netting you potentially 2 extra cards a turn is no joke though. I might just have to find room for her in my Jenara deck.
Both Zada and Smothering Abomination seem like they may have a place in the format. Zada is an obviously powerful ability that I'm too lazy to explore, but goblin decks and spell slingers alike should appreciate it.
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Current Decks GTitania midrange RGThromok tokens/goodstuff | UB Grimgrin zombie tribal GW Sigarda enchantress | R Godo voltron U Braids aggro | WR Kalemne punisher RU Mizzix storm | BUG Mimeoplasm competitive reanimator | UG Ezuri infect
In Standard/Modern, it's play it T3 (Via Bird), drop a Fetchland (+1/+1 counter), get another land (+1/+1, total of 4/4), and watch it not die. Because it removes a single counter rather than "As many as the damage that was delt", the thing is Immortal in combat.
2/2, with two +1/+1 counters means it takes Lightning Bolt (2/2, with one +1/+1 counter remaining), Combat (2/2, no counters remaining) and Pyroclasm to kill it, in the same turn. The moment you drop another land is the moment it takes another source of damage to kill it.
Add to the fact that damage is prevented completely for a single counter to be removed, and you have a creature that can chump block Siege Rhinos for days and you will never lose life from the Trample.
In EDH it's kind of the same thing, as with Azusa, Lost but Seeking, Oracle of Mul Daya, Exploration, so on so forth will keep the counters coming, but since most Wraths played are "Destroy" rather than deal damage in our format, it's practically worthless for that regard.
Just noticed that and was about to correct myself on it when I noticed your reply. Definitely a bit more impactful of an effect, especially in multiplayer, though I doubt many tables would allow Ob to survive that long without some extreme shenanigans going on. Regardless, the primary reasons to want to play him remain the same, so it's all good.
Undergrowth Champion: I believe this one was supposedly spoiled by the guy who had info on the Planeswalkers as well. Phantom Wurm and friends have been around for a while and have shown up to decent effect in quite a few builds, so there's a definite backlog of cards that can interact favorably with him, and even just on his own, it will at least require some premiere removal to get him out of the way without burning through more resources than you'd care to commit.
EDIT:Conduit of Ruin: Eye of Ugin as a creature seems like it could be fairly useful, though it makes a few trade-offs in the process by the looks of it (namely a more restrictive tutor effect but far less restrictive cost-reduction effect). Realized that he doesn't straight tutor for a card, but rather puts it on top of the library, which means he doesn't replace himself. Even still, Card selection + a 5/5 body + a Sol Ring's worth of free mana is still well worth experimenting with in the right decks.
RRR - Bosh's School of Hard(cover) Knocks
That emblem destroys a player in any deck, not just in Nekusar. In a normal 4-5 player game that's 8-10 damage a turn, minimum. More if someone draws cards. Very few decks can beat that.
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Oh wow. That could be a powerful interaction. It can get Hypergenesis, Living End, Ancestral Vision, and Wheel of Fate too - even a copy with no mana spent to cast it.
In 5 color, it's 5 mana, go play any 5cmc spell for free, which is pretty decent.
Are you sure about that? I would think it would only ever prevent the damage assigned to it, which if its toughness is 3 or below, would always leave the siege rhino player open to assign one or more damage to you.
You play the critter, then a fetchland and you have four toughness per block as long as you play a minimum of one land per turn, you play another fetch and it gets stronger than a siege rhino.
Fairly certain. Could be wrong, but I'm at least 95% certain that's how it works.
It's still my favorite thing spoiled so far. Grabbing anything CMC 3 or less in a UGx deck is a very powerful effect.
This is just not true. It's only preventing the damage assigned to it. Any large creature with trample is still going to get though. It can block a Rhino more or less indefinitely as long as you start with two counters and hit your land drops, but it doesn't prevent creatures from trampling if they can assign damage equal to its toughness and still have some power left over.
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Yeah it's pretty much like Sunburst. It tracks the total types of mana spent to cast it, so the highest CMC card you could ever get from it is 5 (i.e, you spent WUBRG to cast it).
UWU/W BlinkUW
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Commander:
GWUJenaraGWU
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RGXenagosRG
WUBSharuumWUB (retired)
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Ha! That's a good one.
I think a better comparison is Liliana of the Dark Realms. Both of their +1 abilities are effectively card draw, their -3 is removal, and their ultimates who cares how often do walkers ult in non-superfriends lists. I'd say run both Ob Nix and Bloodgift Demon. At least, in my deck I would since I can never draw enough cards.
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Conduit of Ruin just confirmed that change. There are ways to just rush Eldrazi after Eldrazi anyway.
Probably won't ever happen but hey.
Conduit of Ruin is going into my Kozilek. Very likely I'll end up having turns like "T3 play Conduit, tutor up It that Betrays. T4 play Kozilek, T5 drop It and attack". Scary card. Shame it just can't grab CMC 6 creatures, else Steel Hellkite and Wurmcoil Engine would've had a new friend.
Here's some stuff it CAN search up and is actually decent at least though:
ok so they're not all good, but hey, combined with what BFZ will bring us, looks like a nice toolbox is certainly possible.
Desolation Twin is silly in Trostani, but I would put it in any token-themed deck tbh. It's unfortunate that it has to be cast to get the token but I can see how copying it and reanimating it would get dumb very quickly.
Conduit of Ruin will be an auto-include in any colorless deck, and I could definitely see an argument for putting it in mono-green decks with enough targets.
Bring to Light I'm on the fence with. It's bad in anything less than 3 colors and even then it's not that fantastic. While it's true that for 3cmc you can get a lot of good stuff, you could get most of that stuff with cheaper tutors like Mystical Tutor, Green Sun's Zenith, Eladamri's Call, etc. The fact that you cast the card also leaves them open to being countered. Maybe if it grabbed any nonland permanent or if it was an instant I'd be more impressed with it, but as is I don't think I'd recommend it.
Undergrowth Champion is cute, but that's about it. In a world full of mass removal and giant creatures he fails to impress. And even if those didn't exist he's basically just a vanilla creature that's hard to kill in combat and doesn't kill much stuff himself. Pass.
Ob Nixilis Reignited is awesome. He's either drawing you a card every turn, or he's killing the best creature on the board. And that ultimate is basically "target player loses the game". He's fairly close to an auto-include in any deck with black in it.
Kiora, Master of the Depths is also awesome, and better in almost every way than her previous incarnation. In her colors you're almost always going to get 2 card off of her second ability, and untapping a creature and/or mana for a counterspell to protect her is sick. The only downside to her is, like all PW's, they're hard to recur and most people want to kill them ASAP as soon as they hit the board. Netting you potentially 2 extra cards a turn is no joke though. I might just have to find room for her in my Jenara deck.
UWU/W BlinkUW
BMono-Black ControlB
Commander:
GWUJenaraGWU
BGeth MBCB
RGXenagosRG
WUBSharuumWUB (retired)
Modern:
xAffinityx (starting)
Standard:
Ha! That's a good one.
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Arcbond seems like a particularly entertaining card to go with.
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