Bottom line, a card you have to push to make it worthwhile, but in the right deck still a great card. Mad flavor points with Noyan Dar, Roil Shaper! Decent pick for Rashmi, Eternities Crafter.
Being searchable off firemind's foresight alongside reiterate (and lightning bolt if you need a wincon) makes this a pretty potent 1-card combo in RU (esp. mizzix) decks. Being able to go off "in response" to your opponents wincon is a pretty cool strategy that I always liked about solidarity decks, but in commander I suspect it'll feel more like "ugh, if you had the stupid combo why didn't you just do it earlier?"
As far as the intended use of untapping your lands to keep countermana up, I don't think I'd ever consider doing that seriously. Although on a scepter seems plausible I guess, if you have a good mana sink.
Well, on the plus side an instant speed combo means that you can wait until it can't be interrupted. Which if its the fireminds insight package basically means once the blue player is tapped out (and doesn't have FoW).
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The Meaning of Life: "M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations"
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
This card inspires me to bring up one of personal list of the 3 worst rules in Magic: the Gathering.
711.6. A double-faced permanent always has the status “face up” (see rule 110.6). Double-faced
permanents can’t be turned face down. If a spell or ability tries to turn a double-faced permanent
face down, nothing happens.
That's stupid. While I'd agree, it's better to do nothing than to have werewolves transform when Ixidron enters, they seem to have ignored the possibility of turning double-faced cards face-down anyway. If you're playing DFCs, you have to have a way to turn them face down, whether its a checklist card or a sleeve to put it in, because you have to be able to bounce the card to hand or shuffle it into your library anyway, so why they wouldn't just have you do that, I don't know. It's a stupid rule.
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Zedruu: "This deck is not only able to go crazy - it also needs to do so."
Being searchable off firemind's foresight alongside reiterate (and lightning bolt if you need a wincon) makes this a pretty potent 1-card combo in RU (esp. mizzix) decks. Being able to go off "in response" to your opponents wincon is a pretty cool strategy that I always liked about solidarity decks, but in commander I suspect it'll feel more like "ugh, if you had the stupid combo why didn't you just do it earlier?"
As far as the intended use of untapping your lands to keep countermana up, I don't think I'd ever consider doing that seriously. Although on a scepter seems plausible I guess, if you have a good mana sink.
Well, on the plus side an instant speed combo means that you can wait until it can't be interrupted. Which if its the fireminds insight package basically means once the blue player is tapped out (and doesn't have FoW).
I mean, I'm not saying it's not a strong combo. If anything it's TOO good - a combo like that in a lower-powered meta is probably going to win an extremely high percentage of games if played correctly.
-You can wait until the perfect time to avoid disruption, including during others endsteps when they dump mana into mana sinks.
-It's totally noninteractive outside of counterspells, discard, and mass LD, basically.
-There's no way to tell when you have it available since all pieces are in hand.
-You're doing it in response to someone else trying to win the game, so for the other players, they don't even really care since they were going to lose anyway (less applicable if you were going to die first, but even more applicable if other players were eliminated before you). So people are less likely to remember it in future games when threat assessing.
That's the reason why I've basically avoided it. Those sorts of combos make the game really trivially easy until everyone figures out what you're doing, and if they do then it either becomes archenemy or everyone starts holding up all the counterspells all the time. That's not the sort of dilemma that makes for fun games imo. It's basically everything people hate about other infinite combos, except way harder to predict and to interact with.
711.6. A double-faced permanent always has the status “face up” (see rule 110.6). Double-faced
permanents can’t be turned face down. If a spell or ability tries to turn a double-faced permanent
face down, nothing happens.
So in the case of Manifest, you just plop it onto the battlefield face up...? Bizarre.
Ixidron is a pretty nice card. There's a lot of ways to deal with a lot of creatures in Blue to be fair, but not many of them can be reused with Crystal Shard.
This card inspires me to bring up one of personal list of the 3 worst rules in Magic: the Gathering.
711.6. A double-faced permanent always has the status “face up” (see rule 110.6). Double-faced
permanents can’t be turned face down. If a spell or ability tries to turn a double-faced permanent
face down, nothing happens.
What are the other 2 rules?
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Your new prescription eyeglasses don’t work. You still can’t see things my way.
I thought they changed the rule since DFCs are usually sleeved or have the checklist card. Effectively, they have 3 faces, right?
Did I dream this rule change?
If you did, you need to get the **** out of my dreams.
Besides a scathing opinion piece about WotC's inability to consistently structure their rules between revisions, I'm not sure the quote CR is correct.
I'm looking at the PDF from WOTC's website marked as 2020180119 and rule 711.4 is quite different. I'd quote but I'm on my phone.
The rule governing casting DFC as face down (not transformed) and turning them face up (again, not transforming) is 711.9 and 711.10
Yeah, I had navigated myself to an older version of the rules, but the 711.10 you reference still says you can't turn them face-down. Ixidron can't flip werewolves, just because.
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Zedruu: "This deck is not only able to go crazy - it also needs to do so."
506.6f If a spell states that it may be cast “only during combat after blockers are declared,” but the
declare blockers step is skipped that combat phase (see rule 508.8), then the spell may not be
cast during that combat phase.
Though I suppose my complaint is that those steps are skipped in the first place. The game is mostly structured that you can't skip steps and you have to pass around priority, and somehow we maage to get through the steps we don't care about just fine, but it was really important that people not have to go through the motions of declaring no blocks and taking no damage that they added a pile of rules baggage by actually eliminating those steps from the turn whenever someone doesn't attack. Which is pretty dumb.
What I put 3rd on the list is perpetually in flux. Sometimes, its layers for letting OpalescenceHumility be a thing. Sometimes I'm mad that protection doesn't protect against destruction. Right now, I'm third most against this bit about mana abilities.
605.1b A triggered ability is a mana ability if it meets all of the following criteria: it doesn’t have a
target, it triggers from the resolution of an activated mana ability (see rule 106.11a) or from
mana being added to a player’s mana pool, and it could add mana to a player’s mana pool when
it resolves.
Bolded by me. That extra clause there disqualifies a lot of abilities that are just making mana, and I've yet to see a reason why they would go out of their way to protect Mana Flare mana but let you stifle something like Eladamri's Vineyard. Like, I half suspect somewhere in the game there's a card that I've never heard of that's like "Whenever you pick your nose, destroy all lands and add 1/2 a mana to your mana pool" that they don't want to skip the stack, but I've never seen it.
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Zedruu: "This deck is not only able to go crazy - it also needs to do so."
Ixidron is pretty nice, a blue way to do mass removal that lets you reuse morph triggers if your running them. It's ability targeting just one creature on an instant would be a much more appropriate way for blue to do a removal spell, because you can get the creature back by blinking it or returning it to your hand and recasting it, in either case undoing the transformation.
A key means by which to utilize break open in a combo, as with a blink outlet you can repeatedly turn that unstable HULK you donated face down so that you can turn it face up again with the break open you tucked under isochron scepter.
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The Meaning of Life: "M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations"
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
I've only seen Ixidron once or twice in games, and boy howdy, did it piss me off when it was cast(yeah, I had a lot of my best guns on the field).
Appropriately blue, useful for morph triggers, but very relevant at all times. Worth packing some flicker to try and save some of your critters against.
I thought they changed the rule since DFCs are usually sleeved or have the checklist card. Effectively, they have 3 faces, right?
Did I dream this rule change?
If you did, you need to get the **** out of my dreams.
Besides a scathing opinion piece about WotC's inability to consistently structure their rules between revisions, I'm not sure the quote CR is correct.
I'm looking at the PDF from WOTC's website marked as 2020180119 and rule 711.4 is quite different. I'd quote but I'm on my phone.
The rule governing casting DFC as face down (not transformed) and turning them face up (again, not transforming) is 711.9 and 711.10
Yeah, I had navigated myself to an older version of the rules, but the 711.10 you reference still says you can't turn them face-down. Ixidron can't flip werewolves, just because.
Oops. You're right. I was referencing 711.9 (and 711.9a) but meant to expand on 711.10 in the rest of that post.
Ixidron is cool as hell, although weirdly inconsistent with manifest. It's a mono-blue quasi-wrath which is pretty nice. I've never played this card, but it's actually not bad...
It's bloody obnoxious in a battlecruiser meta. Good card, but I hate to see it when I am playing some of my more casual decks. It is especially good against generals.
Ixidron is cool as hell, although weirdly inconsistent with manifest. It's a mono-blue quasi-wrath which is pretty nice. I've never played this card, but it's actually not bad...
Why is it inconsistent with manifest?
Private Mod Note
():
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The Meaning of Life: "M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations"
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
So in the case of Manifest, you just plop it onto the battlefield face up...? Bizarre.
Oh no, that would make too much sense. Manifested DFCs are still face down, and if they're creatures, they may be turned face up (by which I mean day side). So, if I manifest, say, Delver, I can still pay U to turn him face up. Now he's a 1/1 with "At the beginning of your upkeep, look at the top card of your library. You may reveal it. If it's an instant or sorcery, transform CARDNAME." When you transform it, it becomes a 3/2 with flying.
All in all, it combines many of the most annoying tropes in boardwipes: Doing something other than damage/destroy/forced sacrifice/bounce, where I can get things back easily, like Worldpurge or Final Judgment; having a situation where most conventional anti-boardwipe cards are worthless but the deck is still stacked so it only affects its owner's opponents, like Wave of Vitriol and Mutilate; and it leaves something behind, like Bane of Progress and Phyrexian Rebirth. All for five mana. Oh, and my pet blinker isn't a creature.
It's why I run sac outlets in all my decks.
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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!
Ixidron is cool as hell, although weirdly inconsistent with manifest. It's a mono-blue quasi-wrath which is pretty nice. I've never played this card, but it's actually not bad...
Why is it inconsistent with manifest?
Manifested creatures can be turned face up for their mana cost, Ixidron'd creatures cannot by default by turned face up at all.
Ixidron is cool as hell, although weirdly inconsistent with manifest. It's a mono-blue quasi-wrath which is pretty nice. I've never played this card, but it's actually not bad...
Why is it inconsistent with manifest?
Manifested creatures can be turned face up for their mana cost, Ixidron'd creatures cannot by default by turned face up at all.
Ixidron was printed when morph (and that one random card from mirsge) were the only ways to have a face down creature. It turns everyone into a morph. It's shaped like an onslaught block morph and named after Ixidor, who invented morph on Dominaria. I believe that manifest would not be printed until 7 or 8 years later.
I think that this is one of the reasons they created different card msrkers for morph and manifest, to make it clear that they are very different abilities. Ixidron is basically a card that causes everything to become morphs, not manifests. Manifest is a keyword action that makes a player put the top card of their library or from exile (i suppose they ciuld do more in the future) onto the battlefield face down, then that gets the rules baggage associated with being able to turn it face up if its a creature. The key with manifest is that if it replaces a creature it doesn't actually turn that creature face down, it makes an entirely new object, while morph actually uses the creature. This even holds true for Jeskai infiltrator, as it leaves the battlefield first and is not considered the same creature by the game, whereas a creature turned upside down by Ixidron would be (for instance, if a creature was dealt damage, then turned face down, the damage would still be marked on it, and then if it was still alive it could be killed by Orzhov Euthanist). Normally, its because you are putting a creature from your hand face down for 3 mana, but there was a card in Onslaught that let you turn creatures with morph face down (so you could use their morph trigger again). Ixidron just took this ability and did it for all creatures. Basically, its an unnamed ability that morphs creatures that are already in play and which has existed since morph was a thing. It's not inconsistent with manifest so much as it is really just a different ability, like comparing destroy to exile.
The Meaning of Life: "M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations"
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
Prior to manifest, Ixidron was the only way to turn a non-morph creature face down. If it didn't have morph, you just couldn't turn it face up. Then, years later, they made an entire mechanic around putting things without morph face down. In design, it worked like Ixidron. This was changed because it wasn't interesting enough when most decks don't have tons of morphs in them. Thus they added a way to turn any creature face up.
My point here is that Ixidron feels weird because it's the only card in all of Magic that can put things face down without there being a built-in way to turn them face up. Probably it was intentionally done that way to synergize with Ixidor, Reality Sculptor himself. But it breaks the "rule" that if something is face down, it can be turned face up. I suspect if Ixidron was designed today, the precedent from manifest would lead them to add a way to turn the things face up.
I think it's quite silly to use Backslide as precedent for Ixidron working the way it does. It was surely an intentional choice when designing Onslaught to avoid it being possible for a creature without morph to turn face down, for precisely that reason. I agree that if there were a whole bunch of cards that work like Ixidron it wouldn't feel weird (which is basically tautological) but there aren't, and so it does feel weird when placed next to manifest cards. That's all.
Prior to manifest, Ixidron was the only way to turn a non-morph creature face down. If it didn't have morph, you just couldn't turn it face up. Then, years later, they made an entire mechanic around putting things without morph face down. In design, it worked like Ixidron. This was changed because it wasn't interesting enough when most decks don't have tons of morphs in them. Thus they added a way to turn any creature face up.
My point here is that Ixidron feels weird because it's the only card in all of Magic that can put things face down without there being a built-in way to turn them face up. Probably it was intentionally done that way to synergize with Ixidor, Reality Sculptor himself. But it breaks the "rule" that if something is face down, it can be turned face up. I suspect if Ixidron was designed today, the precedent from manifest would lead them to add a way to turn the things face up.
I think it's quite silly to use Backslide as precedent for Ixidron working the way it does. It was surely an intentional choice when designing Onslaught to avoid it being possible for a creature without morph to turn face down, for precisely that reason. I agree that if there were a whole bunch of cards that work like Ixidron it wouldn't feel weird (which is basically tautological) but there aren't, and so it does feel weird when placed next to manifest cards. That's all.
Then I was really just arguing semantics, I'm sorry. Yes, manifests clause allowing non morphs to be turned face up for their casting cost is an improvement over Ixidrons ability when done as a major theme. Ixidron was done as a more powerful version of Weaver of Lies, more powerful because it could hit everything and permanently lock non morphs as 2/2s unless you had a way to get them off the battlefield.
If it had been made today, I'm not sure what it would look like. To get the same functionality, it would have had to be a mass reality shift, or at least that's similar functionality. Making it manifest the creatures themselves ala jeskai infiltrator would be much weaker, and functionally much different. It depends on how important it was to the design for this particular card that non morphs would be stuck as 2/2s. Your right that it's highly unlikely that it would have been printed as is, though it's possible if it was timespiral being released today that caused its printing rather than being printed in, say, a commander set as one of the new 52 cards. Of course, I don't think time spiral block would have ever been made today, too experimental and too complex.
The Meaning of Life: "M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations"
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
Well, the obvious comparison is Talrand's Invocation. Cantrips are usually worth 2, but scry 1 isn't. At the same time, you do get to take advantage of bird tribal, FWIW, and constellation; it does have obvious synergy with Doomwake Giant.
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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!
If it weren't 20 bucks on such a conditional card i wouldn't mind getting one for Talrand, Sky Summoner. With just 2 lands untapped and everyone expecting Muddle the Mixture, Counterspell, Reality Shift or else the illusion would be perfect.
Turnabout is still a better card, but can't be found by Muddle the Mixture slammed into an Isochron Scepter or get past Gaddock Teeg.
Bottom line, a card you have to push to make it worthwhile, but in the right deck still a great card. Mad flavor points with Noyan Dar, Roil Shaper! Decent pick for Rashmi, Eternities Crafter.
Well, on the plus side an instant speed combo means that you can wait until it can't be interrupted. Which if its the fireminds insight package basically means once the blue player is tapped out (and doesn't have FoW).
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
This card inspires me to bring up one of personal list of the 3 worst rules in Magic: the Gathering.
That's stupid. While I'd agree, it's better to do nothing than to have werewolves transform when Ixidron enters, they seem to have ignored the possibility of turning double-faced cards face-down anyway. If you're playing DFCs, you have to have a way to turn them face down, whether its a checklist card or a sleeve to put it in, because you have to be able to bounce the card to hand or shuffle it into your library anyway, so why they wouldn't just have you do that, I don't know. It's a stupid rule.
-You can wait until the perfect time to avoid disruption, including during others endsteps when they dump mana into mana sinks.
-It's totally noninteractive outside of counterspells, discard, and mass LD, basically.
-There's no way to tell when you have it available since all pieces are in hand.
-You're doing it in response to someone else trying to win the game, so for the other players, they don't even really care since they were going to lose anyway (less applicable if you were going to die first, but even more applicable if other players were eliminated before you). So people are less likely to remember it in future games when threat assessing.
That's the reason why I've basically avoided it. Those sorts of combos make the game really trivially easy until everyone figures out what you're doing, and if they do then it either becomes archenemy or everyone starts holding up all the counterspells all the time. That's not the sort of dilemma that makes for fun games imo. It's basically everything people hate about other infinite combos, except way harder to predict and to interact with.
EDH Primers
Phelddagrif - Zirilan
EDH
Thrasios+Bruse - Pang - Sasaya - Wydwen - Feather - Rona - Toshiro - Sylvia+Khorvath - Geth - QMarchesa - Firesong - Athreos - Arixmethes - Isperia - Etali - Silas+Sidar - Saskia - Virtus+Gorm - Kynaios - Naban - Aryel - Mizzix - Kazuul - Tymna+Kraum - Sidar+Tymna - Ayli - Gwendlyn - Phelddagrif 4 - Liliana - Kaervek - Phelddagrif 3 - Mairsil - Scarab - Child - Phenax - Shirei - Thada - Depala - Circu - Kytheon - GrenzoHR - Phelddagrif - Reyhan+Kraum - Toshiro - Varolz - Nin - Ojutai - Tasigur - Zedruu - Uril - Edric - Wort - Zurgo - Nahiri - Grenzo - Kozilek - Yisan - Ink-Treader - Yisan - Brago - Sidisi - Toshiro - Alexi - Sygg - Brimaz - Sek'Kuar - Marchesa - Vish Kal - Iroas - Phelddagrif - Ephara - Derevi - Glissa - Wanderer - Saffi - Melek - Xiahou Dun - Lazav - Lin Sivvi - Zirilan - Glissa
PDH - Drake - Graverobber - Izzet GM - Tallowisp - Symbiote Brawl - Feather - Ugin - Jace - Scarab - Angrath - Vraska - Kumena Oathbreaker - Wrenn&6
So in the case of Manifest, you just plop it onto the battlefield face up...? Bizarre.
Ixidron is a pretty nice card. There's a lot of ways to deal with a lot of creatures in Blue to be fair, but not many of them can be reused with Crystal Shard.
What are the other 2 rules?
Did I dream this rule change?
8.RG Green Devotion Ramp/Combo 9.UR Draw Triggers 10.WUR Group stalling 11.WUR Voltron Spellslinger 12.WB Sacrificial Shenanigans
13.BR Creatureless Panharmonicon 14.BR Pingers and Eldrazi 15.URG Untapped Cascading
16.Reyhan, last of the Abzan's WUBG +1/+1 Counter Craziness 17.WUBRG Dragons aka Why did I make this?
Building: The Gitrog Monster lands, Glissa the Traitor stax, Muldrotha, the Gravetide Planeswalker Combo, Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix + Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa Clues, and Tribal Scarecrow Planeswalkers
If you did, you need to get the **** out of my dreams.
Besides a scathing opinion piece about WotC's inability to consistently structure their rules between revisions, I'm not sure the quote CR is correct.
I'm looking at the PDF from WOTC's website marked as 2020180119 and rule 711.4 is quite different. I'd quote but I'm on my phone.
The rule governing casting DFC as face down (not transformed) and turning them face up (again, not transforming) is 711.9 and 711.10
Yeah, I had navigated myself to an older version of the rules, but the 711.10 you reference still says you can't turn them face-down. Ixidron can't flip werewolves, just because.
506.6f If a spell states that it may be cast “only during combat after blockers are declared,” but the
declare blockers step is skipped that combat phase (see rule 508.8), then the spell may not be
cast during that combat phase.
Though I suppose my complaint is that those steps are skipped in the first place. The game is mostly structured that you can't skip steps and you have to pass around priority, and somehow we maage to get through the steps we don't care about just fine, but it was really important that people not have to go through the motions of declaring no blocks and taking no damage that they added a pile of rules baggage by actually eliminating those steps from the turn whenever someone doesn't attack. Which is pretty dumb.
What I put 3rd on the list is perpetually in flux. Sometimes, its layers for letting Opalescence Humility be a thing. Sometimes I'm mad that protection doesn't protect against destruction. Right now, I'm third most against this bit about mana abilities.
605.1b A triggered ability is a mana ability if it meets all of the following criteria: it doesn’t have a
target, it triggers from the resolution of an activated mana ability (see rule 106.11a) or from
mana being added to a player’s mana pool, and it could add mana to a player’s mana pool when
it resolves.
Bolded by me. That extra clause there disqualifies a lot of abilities that are just making mana, and I've yet to see a reason why they would go out of their way to protect Mana Flare mana but let you stifle something like Eladamri's Vineyard. Like, I half suspect somewhere in the game there's a card that I've never heard of that's like "Whenever you pick your nose, destroy all lands and add 1/2 a mana to your mana pool" that they don't want to skip the stack, but I've never seen it.
A key means by which to utilize break open in a combo, as with a blink outlet you can repeatedly turn that unstable HULK you donated face down so that you can turn it face up again with the break open you tucked under isochron scepter.
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
Appropriately blue, useful for morph triggers, but very relevant at all times. Worth packing some flicker to try and save some of your critters against.
EDH decks: 1. RGWMayael's Big BeatsRETIRED!
2. BUWMerieke Ri Berit and the 40 Thieves
3. URNiv's Wheeling and Dealing!
4. BURThe Walking Dead
5. GWSisay's Legends of Tomorrow
6. RWBRise of Markov
7. GElvez and stuffz(W)
8. RCrush your enemies(W)
9. BSign right here...(W)
Oops. You're right. I was referencing 711.9 (and 711.9a) but meant to expand on 711.10 in the rest of that post.
Credit to DolZero for this awesome sig!
Why is it inconsistent with manifest?
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
Oh no, that would make too much sense. Manifested DFCs are still face down, and if they're creatures, they may be turned face up (by which I mean day side). So, if I manifest, say, Delver, I can still pay U to turn him face up. Now he's a 1/1 with "At the beginning of your upkeep, look at the top card of your library. You may reveal it. If it's an instant or sorcery, transform CARDNAME." When you transform it, it becomes a 3/2 with flying.
All in all, it combines many of the most annoying tropes in boardwipes: Doing something other than damage/destroy/forced sacrifice/bounce, where I can get things back easily, like Worldpurge or Final Judgment; having a situation where most conventional anti-boardwipe cards are worthless but the deck is still stacked so it only affects its owner's opponents, like Wave of Vitriol and Mutilate; and it leaves something behind, like Bane of Progress and Phyrexian Rebirth. All for five mana. Oh, and my pet blinker isn't a creature.
It's why I run sac outlets in all my decks.
On phasing:
Ixidron was printed when morph (and that one random card from mirsge) were the only ways to have a face down creature. It turns everyone into a morph. It's shaped like an onslaught block morph and named after Ixidor, who invented morph on Dominaria. I believe that manifest would not be printed until 7 or 8 years later.
I think that this is one of the reasons they created different card msrkers for morph and manifest, to make it clear that they are very different abilities. Ixidron is basically a card that causes everything to become morphs, not manifests. Manifest is a keyword action that makes a player put the top card of their library or from exile (i suppose they ciuld do more in the future) onto the battlefield face down, then that gets the rules baggage associated with being able to turn it face up if its a creature. The key with manifest is that if it replaces a creature it doesn't actually turn that creature face down, it makes an entirely new object, while morph actually uses the creature. This even holds true for Jeskai infiltrator, as it leaves the battlefield first and is not considered the same creature by the game, whereas a creature turned upside down by Ixidron would be (for instance, if a creature was dealt damage, then turned face down, the damage would still be marked on it, and then if it was still alive it could be killed by Orzhov Euthanist). Normally, its because you are putting a creature from your hand face down for 3 mana, but there was a card in Onslaught that let you turn creatures with morph face down (so you could use their morph trigger again). Ixidron just took this ability and did it for all creatures. Basically, its an unnamed ability that morphs creatures that are already in play and which has existed since morph was a thing. It's not inconsistent with manifest so much as it is really just a different ability, like comparing destroy to exile.
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
Prior to manifest, Ixidron was the only way to turn a non-morph creature face down. If it didn't have morph, you just couldn't turn it face up. Then, years later, they made an entire mechanic around putting things without morph face down. In design, it worked like Ixidron. This was changed because it wasn't interesting enough when most decks don't have tons of morphs in them. Thus they added a way to turn any creature face up.
My point here is that Ixidron feels weird because it's the only card in all of Magic that can put things face down without there being a built-in way to turn them face up. Probably it was intentionally done that way to synergize with Ixidor, Reality Sculptor himself. But it breaks the "rule" that if something is face down, it can be turned face up. I suspect if Ixidron was designed today, the precedent from manifest would lead them to add a way to turn the things face up.
I think it's quite silly to use Backslide as precedent for Ixidron working the way it does. It was surely an intentional choice when designing Onslaught to avoid it being possible for a creature without morph to turn face down, for precisely that reason. I agree that if there were a whole bunch of cards that work like Ixidron it wouldn't feel weird (which is basically tautological) but there aren't, and so it does feel weird when placed next to manifest cards. That's all.
Then I was really just arguing semantics, I'm sorry. Yes, manifests clause allowing non morphs to be turned face up for their casting cost is an improvement over Ixidrons ability when done as a major theme. Ixidron was done as a more powerful version of Weaver of Lies, more powerful because it could hit everything and permanently lock non morphs as 2/2s unless you had a way to get them off the battlefield.
If it had been made today, I'm not sure what it would look like. To get the same functionality, it would have had to be a mass reality shift, or at least that's similar functionality. Making it manifest the creatures themselves ala jeskai infiltrator would be much weaker, and functionally much different. It depends on how important it was to the design for this particular card that non morphs would be stuck as 2/2s. Your right that it's highly unlikely that it would have been printed as is, though it's possible if it was timespiral being released today that caused its printing rather than being printed in, say, a commander set as one of the new 52 cards. Of course, I don't think time spiral block would have ever been made today, too experimental and too complex.
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
You need to make two eagles, so they can fly, eagles, fly! What are you talking about? Of course this card is completely random.
Go Birds! Crush the Patriots!
As a Falcons fan I'm with you. #BirdsOfAFeather.
However as a Magic player. This card is meh. Probably was solid in Limited. But definitely has no place in commander at that cost.
On phasing: