MTG Salvation

Dragonlord Ojutai 3WU
Legendary Creature- Elder Dragon (MR)
Flying
Dragonlord Ojutai has hexproof as long as it's untapped.
Whenever Dragonlord Ojutai deals combat damage to a player, look at the top 3 cards of your library. Put one of them in your hand and the rest on the bottom in any order.
5/4

I've always had a soft spot for Lone Revenant. Any consideration for this guy?

Wish it had Hexproof after it attacked.

This looks closer to the design of one of the intro-pack dragons. Too bad, I love the art

You can drop her on curve and she's safe from removal. Then next turn, she loses hexproof when she attacks, but you have all your mana open then, so you can cast counters or whatever to protect her.

Not saying she's great, but she isn't all that bad, either.

Ojutai is a guy though.

I like the idea of hexproof when you aren't attacking like Tromokratis had. Part of me wants to try Ojutai out but I can't really justify any cuts in Azorius aside from I like the card.

If I decide to test it just because i'll probably cut Giest because Ojutai is more in like with the control decks I tend to see from U/W.

I wasn't entirely sure. It's not so easy with dragons. Atarka is female for sure and I think Kolaghan too. What about Dromoka? I'm guessing she is the third female then?

Yeah those three are the females while Ojutai and Silumgar are male. I thought they were all female at first too when they kept talking about broods in FRF.

I feel more and more tempted to preorder this guy and throw him in over Giest for a bit of testing. Am I completely crazy for this or no?

Quote from Tengu Drum »

Yeah those three are the females while Ojutai and Silumgar are male. I thought they were all female at first too when they kept talking about broods in FRF.

I feel more and more tempted to preorder this guy and throw him in over Giest for a bit of testing. Am I completely crazy for this or no?

Geist has performed pretty poorly for us in the last year or so. Giving this a test.

Yes, that's crazy. Geist is completely nutty, and this card is mediocre.

I wouldn't run this over Geist. I could see that if it had hexproof all the time, but losing the ability during attacks is pretty huge, IMO.

Solid, but uninteresting... in a guild with premium competition.

A fatter Ninja of the Deep Hours doesn't mean it's good in cube. I think he's alot closer to Sturmgeist.. Great in limited, meh everywhere else.

I think calling it Sturmgeist does it a disservice. That card can be a pretty huge blank at the worst times.

I'll be testing this over D-Sphere, which keeps going in and out of the cube. My cube has been tailored to the point where sorcery speed enchantment-based removal is very weak, and I think that just about every UW deck I support can make good use out of this. Even just using it as a hexproof defender until you can protect it is reasonable, and you've already gotten strong value if you get a single hit out of him.

Inarticulation, don't cut GoST. GoST is the hexproof Rabblemaster. You will regret cutting hexproof Rabblemaster.

I think this guy is the best Azorious card from the set. losing hexproof matters, when you aren't in UW. He has hexproof his first turn down, so you can untap and have the removal and counterspells associated with a UW mage. I feel it is much kinder a drawback then it appears, and will at least be testing him out as my 4th azorious card tonight.

I did get the promo so that might affect my decision :D.

Quote from TheTennesseeFireman »

I'll be testing this over D-Sphere, which keeps going in and out of the cube. My cube has been tailored to the point where sorcery speed enchantment-based removal is very weak

I find this hard to believe.

Did you remove all non-creature permanants and put in absurd amounts of enchantment removal or something?

Quote from LucidVision »

Quote from TheTennesseeFireman »

I'll be testing this over D-Sphere, which keeps going in and out of the cube. My cube has been tailored to the point where sorcery speed enchantment-based removal is very weak

I find this hard to believe.

Did you remove all non-creature permanants and put in absurd amounts of enchantment removal or something?

Not entirely, but recent updates have improved the Disenchant suite, and more threats than ever can't be answered at sorcery speed. Dash in particular has produced several staples, and I have a strong ETB theme where it's very easy to punish cards like these. Meanwhile, a lot of the older artifacts that you sometimes just lost to without an answer have been getting the axe.

At this point, white has 4 better versions of this effect in addition to their other removal: Oblivion Ring, Banishing Light, Unexpectedly Absent, and Council's Judgement. They're all still fine (very weak was an oversimplification), but my removal density is high enough that I don't want to waste a multicolored slot on the weakest version of this effect.

I feel the same way about DSphere, with the plethora of recent O-ring impersonators, I don't feel the need to run a multicolored one with a small upside. Meanwhile a 5 cost, resilient finisher as well as card advantage engine has me intrigued, as blue really wants the effect, and white has few comparable bodies, baneslayer is better but eh... The card is also better than Sturmgeist in about 5 different ways...

Whereas I feel that versatile removal is always welcome, but that white and blue are jammed up with amazing 5cc cards.

In general, I want players to crave all multicolored cards so much they really think about going into those colors or splashing for the card. And imho, that works best with creatures and planeswalkers. So I'm always thinking hard about swapping out one time effects and removal out of the multicolor sections.
This discussion got me really excited if I should try out Ojutai. Is it really resilient enough? The 4 toughness still irks me.

Why does 4 toughness irk you? 3 toughness is the big barrier, which dies to most red burn spells. 4 SIGNIFICANTLY reduces the number of spells that can kill it when it attacks.

-AA

Because toughness 4 is still susceptible to die to a lot of stuff, especially in combat. I just tend to want my cmc4+ creatures to have an etb effect (FTK), be a one man army(Deranged Hermit), threats a fast game ending (Kalonian Hydra) or at least survive Wildfire spells.
You're right, the biggest jump goes from 3 to 4, but 4 is still not the best place to be imho. I would've liked him more if he was a 4/5. Maybe I'm just overthinking it, though...

IMO, this card is very good. I think people might be underselling it just a bit.

I know Thieving Magpie is no longer cubeable, but it wasn't that long ago when you could run it. Look at how much more you get for just a single white mana.
1. 4 extra power
2. 1 extra toughness
3. An upgraded draw ability
4. Hexproof until it attacks

Compare him to Shadowmage Infiltrator. For 2 extra mana, you get:
1. 4 extra power
2. 1 extra toughness
3. Better evasion
4. An upgraded draw ability
5. Hexproof until it attacks

I realize multi-colored sections are really tight these days, but this card is infinitely more interesting than detention sphere (which is what I'll be swapping out to run this card). Dudes that draw cards are very powerful. This guys has the best form of evasion and is considerably more resilient than other options. Plus he's in a color combination that can protect him when he's vulnerable. I don't see how this guy won't be good.

Yes, I think I agree with the last few posters that this card was being undervalued. I think having Hexproof when played is a great boon, in a deck that will have cards available to protect it once it untaps. I definitely may have overlooked it.

I always thought Unblockable was the best form of evasion.

I value versatile removal in cube highly and am almost never lacking 4cc+ finishers in blue/white decks. If only examining power level(trying to build the best UW decks), I'm strongly convinced that Dsphere is more important than Ojutai.

That being said, Tennesee makes some good points about o-ring effects not being as good as they used to be and I'm glad I replied in the way I did since it sparked some interesting discussion. I like your idea regarding giving guild sections cards that draw people into the two color combination. Giving some Identity to the guild. I agree that detention sphere is a boring and a redundant effect. A big hexproof dragon is cool and the card seems strong.

Ahdaband makes good comparisons to semi-cubable cards that I think gives a good picture of it's power level. It blows magpie out of the water and pound for pound seems like a better card than shadowmage infiltrator.
That being said, a 1UW shadowmage infiltrator reprint wouldn't come close to making top 5 in azorious IMO and theiving magpie is VERY far from being cubebale in todays environment.