This just seems like backwards logic to me. Once the player has drawn effectively their entire deck, the Sphinx draws less attention because that player likely wins on the spot or dominates the entire game while they durdle their way uninterrupted to victory. This makes Sphinx a SIGNIFICANTLY more problematic card, because it comes with a hard deadline.
Edit: This is like saying that Primeval Titan stops being a centralizing threat once its controller has 20 lands in play. Sure, because it doesn't really matter at that point, you've already lost (even if you can't realize it yet)
I disagree. Not every deck can win on the spot by drawing twenty or more cards through Sphinx. That player will certainly have a generous advantage over everyone else, but that player is still limited by the amount of mana that they are able to produce as well as whatever cards already exist on the battlefield that restrict or limit their choices. They are further limited by the cards that they've chosen to include in their own deck.
I find Consecrated Sphinx to be less problematic than Prophet of Kruphix because players can easily continue to play an ordinary game of Commander after a Sphinx has taken its course and drawn numerous cards, but cannot do so after a resolved Prophet. Recurring Divination over and over again may not lead to abuse (although it still probably will). Recurring Time Warp every turn is another story.
Time Warp every turn is a huge chunk better than Prophet. In the same way not every deck can win off of a huge draw from Consecrated Sphinx, not every deck can refill their hand efficiently enough that Prophet approaches that much power. They aren't drawing cards or getting attacks, they have the ability to use creature cards and instants, and abilities they have access to each turn with their lands. Some decks certainly do have the depth of counterspells and draw required to make this one of the most one sided situations around, but you either have to have access to them now to play prophet or wait (of course big enough draw can be generally find you a counterspell too). If you have (extreme example) just one thing to do with Prophet, it's not that much better than just playing that spell.
Spirit of the Labyrinth lets you exile their creature and they draw no cards (their turn) or just one (any other turn). Containment Priest makes creatures never come back from exile. Rings of Brighthearth lets you double up on activations without being an untapper.
The craziest untapper is probably Thousand-Year Elixir, it lets you use one of the exiles that same turn.
If they block with both the 1/1 and the 4/4, you have to assign 1 to the 1/1 and 4 to the 4/4 before you can trample over. It has been this way as long as I've been playing (Since around Lorwyn/Shards of Alara).
If they have both but block with just the 1/1, you don't/can't damage the 4/4 at all.
Hm? The set comes out January 23. One week before that (the 17 like you said) is prerelease weekend. I believe you are right that they will show the spoiler this weekend to line up with the past few sets.
If five color works, I would suggest either Progenitus or Sliver Queen. Both are threats by themselves that your opponent will have to deal with in addition to your planeswalkers, and the queen can make tokens to block.
That is correct, Gisela will prevent half of the 6 damage, and then Balefire's trigger try to deal 3 to the creatures, and gisela will prevent half of that and the creatures will each take 1 (Gisela's ability rounds up how much she prevents)
In addition, I think that WotC would put reminder text that a face-down permanent is always a 2/2 creature. Yes, it's an ability on a Mythic-Rarity card in a regular expansion, but I just feel that the face-down rule is one of the more "obscure" rules that WotC would put reminder text for (For example: Ixidron). Like the first ability, there is more than enough space for the reminder text.
So, at the moment, I think this card is not real.
Moreover, I can't imagine they would forget to specify 'nontoken' like Ixidron, even if it technically doesn't matter in the rules.
Even if you fixed it so paying mana during the resolution of cards like Scent of Brine kinda works, you would hugely depower sorcery speed actions, because your opponent would always see how much mana you are adding. They could guess ahead to Shock your morph in response to making the last mana to unmorph Sagu Mauler if you don't have another land to tap in response. When you try to tap mana for Whip of Erebos they could just Shatter it in response to you trying to make the fourth mana.
Which brings up a question - can you kill your own planeswalker by for example pinging yourself and assigning the damage to him? I would assume yes, can you attack your own planeswalker? I guess no, although I think you should be.
No, you can't attack your own planeswalker, and you can't redirect damage that would be dealt to you to a planeswalker you control. If you could you would be able to do weird things with cards that damage their caster as a downside.
in 2 minutes, I have: "Your deck may only include mana sources that can produce mana in your color identity. Your deck may not include cards that have costs that can't be paid with mana outside your color identity."
I'm sure it could be worked a little bit but it seems pretty straightforward to me.
That's not very clean without adding 'mana source' to the rules. Some people think that would eat away at the theme. Just thumbing through or playing against a mono-white EDH deck and seeing Debtors' Knell, Birthing Pod, or Beseech the Queen would feel wrong. (I'm not sure which of these the second part of your rule would allow, I'm assuming you mean something like "Your deck may not include cards that have costs that can only be paid with mana outside your color identity")
A lot of this format is aesthetic (legendary creature commander, no more than 99 cards maindeck, no wishing for more, no colors outside your identity period) but the rules have to be reasonable and teachable (which is why Quenchable Fire unfortunately can't be run in mono-red).
It becomes a 1/5 with flying now that it is face up. Anything that might matter about those stats affects it. FuriousMarsupial is just clarifying that 'Creatures without flying or reach can't block creatures with flying' isn't useful because the block already happened.
It's probably not going to happen often in real deckbuilding, but it's a real consideration for any deck choosing between the two that has mana sources that don't produce red.
Maybe they only want red for Lightning Bolt and one big dragon finisher. They want to minimize the sources of red mana so they can still cast all their spells of other colors. Going from shivan to moonveil might not be plausible.
It probably was that the rules team either didn't know how to make the intended functionality work within the rules, or that it would require too drastic of a rules change to be worth it until M14.
The former is what I mean. 'Banishing Light would not work within the rules' until they could figure out how to set up the rules to achieve the behavior they wanted while having the cards text explain that behavior cleanly.
- didnt think of it.
You don't think very highly of them do you ?
- didnt work under the rules.
Pick a point in the history of comprehensive rules and explain why the template behind Banishing Light would not work at that point, please.
Before the M14 rules changes, there was no way to cause an object to change zones 'until' an event happens. Banishing Light only works because a new rule was written that laid out the specifics of such a zone change.
While we are discussing the concept of "strictly better," is it safe to say that moonveil dragon is strictly better than Shivan dragon? The moonveil dragon may have a stricter casting cost, but I imagine that that rarely matters in most situations, especially to skilled players.
It's not safe to say. Many people would agree that Moonveil Dragon is better than Shivan Dragon but it's not strictly better. As per the link from the wiki, people understand strictly better to mean 'In every way that they are different, the better card would always be the same or better than the weaker'. It's a rather strong claim. There are a number of multicolor decks that will run into situations where they can't even cast Moonveil Dragon.
Time Warp every turn is a huge chunk better than Prophet. In the same way not every deck can win off of a huge draw from Consecrated Sphinx, not every deck can refill their hand efficiently enough that Prophet approaches that much power. They aren't drawing cards or getting attacks, they have the ability to use creature cards and instants, and abilities they have access to each turn with their lands. Some decks certainly do have the depth of counterspells and draw required to make this one of the most one sided situations around, but you either have to have access to them now to play prophet or wait (of course big enough draw can be generally find you a counterspell too). If you have (extreme example) just one thing to do with Prophet, it's not that much better than just playing that spell.
The craziest untapper is probably Thousand-Year Elixir, it lets you use one of the exiles that same turn.
If they have both but block with just the 1/1, you don't/can't damage the 4/4 at all.
Moreover, I can't imagine they would forget to specify 'nontoken' like Ixidron, even if it technically doesn't matter in the rules.
No, you can't attack your own planeswalker, and you can't redirect damage that would be dealt to you to a planeswalker you control. If you could you would be able to do weird things with cards that damage their caster as a downside.
That's not very clean without adding 'mana source' to the rules. Some people think that would eat away at the theme. Just thumbing through or playing against a mono-white EDH deck and seeing Debtors' Knell, Birthing Pod, or Beseech the Queen would feel wrong. (I'm not sure which of these the second part of your rule would allow, I'm assuming you mean something like "Your deck may not include cards that have costs that can only be paid with mana outside your color identity")
A lot of this format is aesthetic (legendary creature commander, no more than 99 cards maindeck, no wishing for more, no colors outside your identity period) but the rules have to be reasonable and teachable (which is why Quenchable Fire unfortunately can't be run in mono-red).
Maybe they only want red for Lightning Bolt and one big dragon finisher. They want to minimize the sources of red mana so they can still cast all their spells of other colors. Going from shivan to moonveil might not be plausible.
The former is what I mean. 'Banishing Light would not work within the rules' until they could figure out how to set up the rules to achieve the behavior they wanted while having the cards text explain that behavior cleanly.
Edit: quotes screwed up somehow
Before the M14 rules changes, there was no way to cause an object to change zones 'until' an event happens. Banishing Light only works because a new rule was written that laid out the specifics of such a zone change.
It's not safe to say. Many people would agree that Moonveil Dragon is better than Shivan Dragon but it's not strictly better. As per the link from the wiki, people understand strictly better to mean 'In every way that they are different, the better card would always be the same or better than the weaker'. It's a rather strong claim. There are a number of multicolor decks that will run into situations where they can't even cast Moonveil Dragon.