Seven mana sorcery is sorta win-more, but it's a nice split with a land that you can play early. May pick up a copy of it, but I'm less excited about this one than the red one (and about the same for white).
i think decks that will run this usually wont want to oay the 3 life, and 7 mana darw 1 or 2 cards seems bad. This just has edh only written all over it to me
If you still have 4 or 5 cards in hand by turn 7 I think you've either already essentially won the game or the opponent has lethal on board, and this card is bad in both situations. I'm confidant I'd rather just play a basic island over this card every time, but on the bright side this might be the first time in years that in a cycle of anything the blue one was the worst. At least it's an emotional victory
This card looks awesome. Just like all the other ones, the opportunity cost is almost 0, and the ceiling is huge. 7 mana to draw any number of cards is still great when the alternative is to draw a land that does nothing in that same spot. And everywhere else, you can still play this as a land that enters tapped or untapped, whatever the situation calls for.
Card really feels like memorial to genius to me. I do like the fact that I can choose to have it uptapped but the percentage of games where it doesn't get played as a land is pretty small. And really I am not sure I have room for such a low impact card in my blue section. Edge cases like what wtwlf123 and mystical tutor are fine, but blue really doesn't needs this. Opt can draw me a land a lot of times and the good blue draw/cantrips are even better at it.
Don't get me wrong I get the idea that it can fill a land spot, but blue has already had the ability to run more cheap draw and fewer land. Compare this to a card like scour all possibilities or boon of the wishgiver. I am willing to concede SGR is better in the opener if my hand contains exactly one other land. But if I have at least 2 lands I would rather have either other card. I would also rather draw either other card until the very late game and even then, both could very well be better.
I like this way more than the draw spells that have cycling. When I'm cycling a draw spell, it's almost always because I need to hit a land. And this one can't miss. This card is everything I ever wanted Boon of the Wish-Giver to be. I can keep hands with this card in it that would be unkeepable with other options, because you don't have to risk "missing" a land. And unlike cards like Memorial to Genius, this card doesn't have to enter the battlefield tapped if you can't afford to let it. And the ceiling on the draw spell is pretty nuts. Playing this early after a couple of big ramp spells or casting it after a draw-7 or something and you can draw an insane number of cards with it ...and keep them all. And even in it's fail-safe mode, it replaces itself when you'd otherwise have nothing to do at all with your mana, since this can be drawn in situations where you'd otherwise be drawing a basic land. Flexibility seems valuable, ceiling is high, opportunity cost is next to nothing. Great design; just like all the other mythic ones.
Every blue deck will play this card, but it will also almost never get picked over any other blue card in a pack for a blue deck. Does that make it cubable? Especially when the 7 mana part will probably be a draw 3 at most?
I'm not even sure this is really THAT good of flood protection. If you're flooding out I'm not sure how much you want to spend turn 7 doing nothing to try and find a turn 8 play. If you are in topdeck mode and draw this it's a 7 MANA DRAW ONE. And paying 3 life or CIPT is a real cost. I think this is much, much worse than the white one (which protects you and gives you a win condition all at once), and not even on the same plane (HA!) as the red one, which is great (as it's in a color that can more afford to pay the life and is a MUCH higher impact card when flooding or as a topdeck). This feels like a safe pass to me.
Edit - Obviously these are all higher impact than actually drawing a land, but my point is it's not very high impact and there's a real cost both in terms of cube managing and in putting this land in your deck.
Gotta hard disagree with that entire assessment. It's better flood protection than a basic land would be, no matter how poor of a floor you want to paint for it. And I expect it to draw more cards than people think. There are some big mana blue decks that can make 7 mana pretty fast, and this seems like a hell of a draw spell when you can play it early. And again, it costs you nothing to unlock that potential, since it can reliably replace a land during deckbuilding. "sEveN maNA dRaw OnE loL" is such a horrible and disingenuous evaluation of this card it's laughable. It's more reliable and consistent than cycling to find a land, and the effect is potentially insanely powerful. It might be worse than the white and red ones, but those cards are ALSO insanely good. But I hope more people evaluate it like the haters are, maybe it'll drive the price down.
Edit: Maybe the spell side won't come up enough to justify a cube slot for some folks, but I think the versatility/flexibility and such a low opportunity cost/high ceiling needs to be tested to be sure. I expect it to be worth taking from a pack to have access to in your deck. Only time and testing will tell, I guess.
It's not that I hate it. I think your argument has value,so much so that all of these will see crazy constructed and edh play so it will be plenty expensive. My issue is that my cube only has so many cards. I am a huge advocate of high land % of lands in your cube to make more picks matter but I am really trying to wrap my head around how many games a seven mana does not affect the board card will be cast. 10% of games? I am probably on board. 5% of games or 2% of games, I am not so sure.
So you are absolutely right, having a cad that makes a big comeback 2-5% of the time and minimal deck building cost... That is amazeballs. Placing a card into my tight blue 360 cube section is a real cost though. Compared to a solid card that makes a medium impact in 25% of games. Or a narrow but powerful card that makes a impact in 80% of games if it gets played? That is what we have to decide. Castle Vantress has a minimal deck building cost and is seeing very few people include it in cube because of the cube building cost.
This card is a slam dunk. When two of your modes are “painless colored source” and “untapped color source” there’s a heckuva lot of leeway in the 3rd mode.
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I primarily play limited, so most of my spoiler season comments view cards through that lens.
True enough dschumm, there's definitely a cost with the real estate it takes up. Hard to find room in a super small cube, for sure. I just want to experiment with all these mythic ones, because there seems to be so much potential for such a low cost. But I'm 100% on board with tiny cubes struggling to find cuts. Even in my large cube, whatever the cut winds up being will almost assuredly be hard. I just want to test it out to see if that difficult cut might still be the correct one.
In a way, this is a lot like shelldock isle, almost every blue deck will run this or shelldock isle over a basic island and be a better deck. This however only gives you the ability to draw cards, while shelldock actually lets you cast the card. I think this is great for every blue deck, but dosnt belong in the cube to ve drafted. Large cubes with a high density of combo will want this, but tughter cubes without combo pieces shoild probably pass
True enough dschumm, there's definitely a cost with the real estate it takes up. Hard to find room in a super small cube, for sure. I just want to experiment with all these mythic ones, because there seems to be so much potential for such a low cost. But I'm 100% on board with tiny cubes struggling to find cuts. Even in my large cube, whatever the cut winds up being will almost assuredly be hard. I just want to test it out to see if that difficult cut might still be the correct one.
reminds me of the triomes in a way. I think they are awesome. I was determined to test them. I did. I liked them. Then I cut them. I think a lot of the flip lands will be the same for me. I can always make room in white though.
Gotta hard disagree with that entire assessment. It's better flood protection than a basic land would be, no matter how poor of a floor you want to paint for it. And I expect it to draw more cards than people think. There are some big mana blue decks that can make 7 mana pretty fast, and this seems like a hell of a draw spell when you can play it early. And again, it costs you nothing to unlock that potential, since it can reliably replace a land during deckbuilding. "sEveN maNA dRaw OnE loL" is such a horrible and disingenuous evaluation of this card it's laughable. It's more reliable and consistent than cycling to find a land, and the effect is potentially insanely powerful. It might be worse than the white and red ones, but those cards are ALSO insanely good. But I hope more people evaluate it like the haters are, maybe it'll drive the price down.
Edit: Maybe the spell side won't come up enough to justify a cube slot for some folks, but I think the versatility/flexibility and such a low opportunity cost/high ceiling needs to be tested to be sure. I expect it to be worth taking from a pack to have access to in your deck. Only time and testing will tell, I guess.
So my main problem with this one is that there's a lot of times the spell side is just BAD. The white one will probably win you the game most times you cast it. The red one will win you the game or kill a creature/PW. I would be shocked if this drew more than 2 cards on average. Yes, every blue deck would run this. Every white deck would run Flagstones of Trokair as well, since it's basically strictly better than a plains in cube. But the impact of that is low enough that I'm not gonna run it. That's true of a ton of lands. I already find it hard to make cuts in my 465 cube for new cards. I'm just not interested in adding a card that will be just a land 90%+ of the time, even if it makes it into every blue deck. Other people will make that evaluation differently of course.
Luckily, I still run Conclave in blue, Stronghold in black, and Treetop in green, while red and white have no lands. So if the black and green one are also meh, that will give me some nice balance and I can just run the white and red ones.
asmallcat made me realize something. From an aesthetics perspective, I’m trying to figure out categorization. I’m planning to categorize the mythic cycle of these as lands, but any stray lower-cost ones like Bala Ged Recovery as spells. It feels weird, though. Is this a reasonable assessment from a management perspective?
@asmallcat: I do not think this is remotely comparable to the low-impact nature of lands like Flagstones of Trokair. If you do, then we're evaluating on completely different axis, and should probably just stop wasting our time debating.
@Cythare: I don't think it matters. I think in general the mythic cycle can be slotted into the lands during deckbuilding and the ETBT MDFCs will be played as spells in more scenarios, but they're largely interchangeable, so ultimately it doesn't really matter.
I mean, I understand that it doesn’t matter, but it’s still bothering me because it’s a split card that I want to easily classify but can’t, and the layout of my cube in CubeCobra is weirdly important to me.
I think on my CubeCobra, the mythics will be "lands" and the other ones will be slotted into their respective spell categories. But I don't think it matters too much. Different decks and builds might utilize them differently, so I don't want to get too nailed down over where/how they get classified.
I am not particularly impressed with these kinds of cards so far. The idea of swapping land spaces for extra cards is awesome, and powerful in theory... but these lands are all just bad. In no world, would I want to pay 3 life for a single color land to enter the field untapped... ever. If it is a situation in which I need the land, I would rather just skip the modal card and run a land.
I think the spell side of this is solid, but not enough for me to consider making room in 540 or fewer in a Powered setting. Lots more impactful plays for this mana cost in those environments that I would rather stick with.
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This card is too low impact for me. When you play this its usually only going to net you 1 or 2 cards since you'd probably be playing better things if you had more cards in hand. I suppose its specifically good in blue big mana decks but that's not really an archetype I go out of my way to support. I think I'd rather have Castle Vantress in most situations. Not impacting the board is a big problem for this card and makes it much, much worse than the other bolt lands.
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Don't get me wrong I get the idea that it can fill a land spot, but blue has already had the ability to run more cheap draw and fewer land. Compare this to a card like scour all possibilities or boon of the wishgiver. I am willing to concede SGR is better in the opener if my hand contains exactly one other land. But if I have at least 2 lands I would rather have either other card. I would also rather draw either other card until the very late game and even then, both could very well be better.
Edit: I think that the mythic cycle are going to be very playable. Think of treating them as a land in deck construction that can be a spell.
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I'm not even sure this is really THAT good of flood protection. If you're flooding out I'm not sure how much you want to spend turn 7 doing nothing to try and find a turn 8 play. If you are in topdeck mode and draw this it's a 7 MANA DRAW ONE. And paying 3 life or CIPT is a real cost. I think this is much, much worse than the white one (which protects you and gives you a win condition all at once), and not even on the same plane (HA!) as the red one, which is great (as it's in a color that can more afford to pay the life and is a MUCH higher impact card when flooding or as a topdeck). This feels like a safe pass to me.
Edit - Obviously these are all higher impact than actually drawing a land, but my point is it's not very high impact and there's a real cost both in terms of cube managing and in putting this land in your deck.
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Edit: Maybe the spell side won't come up enough to justify a cube slot for some folks, but I think the versatility/flexibility and such a low opportunity cost/high ceiling needs to be tested to be sure. I expect it to be worth taking from a pack to have access to in your deck. Only time and testing will tell, I guess.
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So you are absolutely right, having a cad that makes a big comeback 2-5% of the time and minimal deck building cost... That is amazeballs. Placing a card into my tight blue 360 cube section is a real cost though. Compared to a solid card that makes a medium impact in 25% of games. Or a narrow but powerful card that makes a impact in 80% of games if it gets played? That is what we have to decide. Castle Vantress has a minimal deck building cost and is seeing very few people include it in cube because of the cube building cost.
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reminds me of the triomes in a way. I think they are awesome. I was determined to test them. I did. I liked them. Then I cut them. I think a lot of the flip lands will be the same for me. I can always make room in white though.
So my main problem with this one is that there's a lot of times the spell side is just BAD. The white one will probably win you the game most times you cast it. The red one will win you the game or kill a creature/PW. I would be shocked if this drew more than 2 cards on average. Yes, every blue deck would run this. Every white deck would run Flagstones of Trokair as well, since it's basically strictly better than a plains in cube. But the impact of that is low enough that I'm not gonna run it. That's true of a ton of lands. I already find it hard to make cuts in my 465 cube for new cards. I'm just not interested in adding a card that will be just a land 90%+ of the time, even if it makes it into every blue deck. Other people will make that evaluation differently of course.
Luckily, I still run Conclave in blue, Stronghold in black, and Treetop in green, while red and white have no lands. So if the black and green one are also meh, that will give me some nice balance and I can just run the white and red ones.
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@Cythare: I don't think it matters. I think in general the mythic cycle can be slotted into the lands during deckbuilding and the ETBT MDFCs will be played as spells in more scenarios, but they're largely interchangeable, so ultimately it doesn't really matter.
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I think on my CubeCobra, the mythics will be "lands" and the other ones will be slotted into their respective spell categories. But I don't think it matters too much. Different decks and builds might utilize them differently, so I don't want to get too nailed down over where/how they get classified.
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I think the spell side of this is solid, but not enough for me to consider making room in 540 or fewer in a Powered setting. Lots more impactful plays for this mana cost in those environments that I would rather stick with.
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