He's a Phyrexian Arena that beats face. A decent late-game drop when your mana reserves are high and your hand is low. Of course, by that time your life total might be a little on the low side, so tread carefully.
EDH is a format that requires finding and including clever redundancies in your deck. If Phyrexian Arena is important to you, this guy is good to run alongside it. He is obviously less good as a straight-up replacement, of course.
I'd actually compare him to Mind's Eye than Arena. In a four player game, drop Mind's Eye with 8 lands and draw 3 cards by your next upkeep. This guy draws 4 instead, and has a 7/7 body to boot, for the same mana and a few life points. Considering that Mind's Eye is a fantastic Commander card, that should give some perspective on how good this Force guy is.
What would this ever do in limited? Meaning that this would have to be rare. People are already complaining about Chained on the Rockss being rare, so image what flack this would receive.
Cycling lands and/or manlands at lower rarities, plus Terramorphic Expanse, maybe could make it uncommon? Just throwing ideas around.
I for one love the LD card. Ever since Ghost Quarter was printed, I have thought that we need more LD like that: let me get rid of Mazes and Coffers and Valakuts and Eyes of Ugin without feeling like a jerk for mana screwing people.
For those who say Ruiniation is better: I agree with you for 1v1, but in a 4 player game, Ruination paints a big ol target on your forehead. If you can't quickly use the mana advantage to kill everyone before they get back in the game, you'll end up paying hard.
Personally, I think they could have been a bit more creative with bestow.
They all seem to be "Bestow: Pay extra mana, staple this creature to another creature"
They could have done a LOT more than that.
First of all, they could have included alternate costs for bestow instead of just mana. That's most common in black, but it isn't unknown in other colors.
What I'd REALLY like to see is bestow effects where "enchantment mode" is different from "creature mode"
For example, maybe something like:
Angel of Holy Strength: 3WW
Flying
4/4
Bestow, 1W: the enchanted creature gets +1/+2
Neither mode is really aggressively pushed by itself, but the modes provide distinctly different options in a vacuum and something like that would almost certainly see play in decks like Aristocrats that feature an abundance of sac outlets.
Maybe some bestow creatures that can act as enchantment based removal like pacifism, claustrophobia, or dead weight when enchanted to a creature would be nice. Control would probably love that. Lock their stuff down with soft removal bestowers and then later wipe the board with a wrath and swap your soft-removal over to creature mode.
Agreed. I personally have been referring to bestow as "kicker-banding".
I'm confused why so many are taking Gift of Immortality. Indestructibility in M14 is not good, is it? Gift of Immortality is (arguably) worse.
I chose Griptide.
I would argue that Gift can be better, since it interacts well with sacrifice effects and ETB stuff.
I think they meant it has a strong destroying enchantment theme
Seriously. For some reason, in an "enchantment theme", it's set up so that being an enchantment creature is a downside in limited, because you're so much more vulnerable to removal than normal creatures, with no cards giving you any real upside.
And not one global enchantment besides the 5 artifacts?! I understand people saying we don't want tons of them flooding limited, but seriously, that's waaay less than most other sets.
Well, at least that "wait for the full spoiler"-argument in the enchantment-theme-thread is gone now
Seriously. By my count, the only non-creature non-aura enchantments in this entire set were the 5 enchantment artifacts. Also, by my count, 4 total cards that care whether other cards are enchantments or not (not counting removal/hate). Considering Innistrad was a successful flavor-based block that completely supported 2 mechanical themes (tribal/graveyard), this is a real let down.
On the other hand, Urza's block is celebrating at finally having a friend in the category of "blocks that were supposed to have an enchantment theme, but barely anyone noticed."
By my count, Mirrodin had 46 cards that cared whether your other cards where artifacts. This does NOT include: artifact removal/hate, cards that care about equiment, and cards that say non-artifact. 46/301=15%. If Theros had even just HALF this concentration of cards caring if other cards are enchantments or not, it would have 19 cards that care. The probability that only one of these would be spoiled in the first 103 (non basic lands) spoiled is about .0000005 (it's okay I'm a math major).
This is why we are calling foul on "enchantments matter".
So far Commune with the Gods is the only card that gives a damn if you play enchantments in your deck or not.
Bestow is weak and its counterpart mechanic Heroic is weak. The gods require devotion to be good which may or may not actually work. Limited looks like who ever gets their monstrous guys online first wins. M14 is more of an enchantment set than Theros so far.
So yeah still waiting for cards that actually say enchantments matter. I don't think they will come though after hearing Maro say enchantment creatures was how they let black and red deal with the enchant theme. So bestow, the gods, and their weapons ARE THE enchantment theme, which just feels like enchant was stapled to cards for no reason.
Four days later, and this is still true. I know this is supposed to be a top-down block, but so was Innistrad; and yet it is ridiculous to picture being nearly halfway through Innistrad previews, and only having one "graveyard matters" or "tribal matters" card. Part of the reason why Innistrad worked was that it supported two very popular mechanical themes in addition to its flavor tropes. Right now, the only mechanical theme of this block I see is "look, we made 4 new random keywords and reprinted scry". The flavor may be there, but this is looking even less like an enchantment block than Urza's, which even Wizards quotes as a flop in terms of enchantment support.
I'd actually compare him to Mind's Eye than Arena. In a four player game, drop Mind's Eye with 8 lands and draw 3 cards by your next upkeep. This guy draws 4 instead, and has a 7/7 body to boot, for the same mana and a few life points. Considering that Mind's Eye is a fantastic Commander card, that should give some perspective on how good this Force guy is.
I'll wait and see full decklists before I decide to commit to one.
Cycling lands and/or manlands at lower rarities, plus Terramorphic Expanse, maybe could make it uncommon? Just throwing ideas around.
For those who say Ruiniation is better: I agree with you for 1v1, but in a 4 player game, Ruination paints a big ol target on your forehead. If you can't quickly use the mana advantage to kill everyone before they get back in the game, you'll end up paying hard.
Agreed. I personally have been referring to bestow as "kicker-banding".
I would argue that Gift can be better, since it interacts well with sacrifice effects and ETB stuff.
Laggona-Band Elder, Commune with the Gods, Pharika's Mender, and I forget the fourth. Maybe it was just 3.
Seriously. For some reason, in an "enchantment theme", it's set up so that being an enchantment creature is a downside in limited, because you're so much more vulnerable to removal than normal creatures, with no cards giving you any real upside.
And not one global enchantment besides the 5 artifacts?! I understand people saying we don't want tons of them flooding limited, but seriously, that's waaay less than most other sets.
Seriously. By my count, the only non-creature non-aura enchantments in this entire set were the 5 enchantment artifacts. Also, by my count, 4 total cards that care whether other cards are enchantments or not (not counting removal/hate). Considering Innistrad was a successful flavor-based block that completely supported 2 mechanical themes (tribal/graveyard), this is a real let down.
On the other hand, Urza's block is celebrating at finally having a friend in the category of "blocks that were supposed to have an enchantment theme, but barely anyone noticed."
This is why we are calling foul on "enchantments matter".
Four days later, and this is still true. I know this is supposed to be a top-down block, but so was Innistrad; and yet it is ridiculous to picture being nearly halfway through Innistrad previews, and only having one "graveyard matters" or "tribal matters" card. Part of the reason why Innistrad worked was that it supported two very popular mechanical themes in addition to its flavor tropes. Right now, the only mechanical theme of this block I see is "look, we made 4 new random keywords and reprinted scry". The flavor may be there, but this is looking even less like an enchantment block than Urza's, which even Wizards quotes as a flop in terms of enchantment support.