The 3/4 Elephant, the 2/1 Elf that gets counters, this guy, and Drana, Liberator of Malkir, Attune with Aether, and Longtusk Cub might make a sweet little GB aggro deck in standard.
Hell, just this guy with Drana means all your attackers get 2 +1/+1 counters before dmg if Drana hits. Makes her a must deal with immediately card.
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- Rosy Dumplings
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1
I... I really don't follow your logic.
Yes, any game effect could theoretically be done with paper, dice, apps, and the like. We could play a game of Momir Vig using the random card function on gatherer if we're willing to write on basic lands with sharpies.
With that said, there are a large number of effects that Wizards does not do in paper magic for various reasons. These effects require a lot of secret record-keeping and/or judge calls to properly use in magic and cards that do so to this degree have yet to appear in paper magic. While there have been a small number of cards that involve making secret choices, there is a world of difference (quantitatively, if not qualitatively) between making a cycle of commander-legal cards where you make 1 choice, reveal it, and don't have to worry about it afterwards versus shoving a big cluster of those cards into historic in a semi-limited format where those cards are all likely to see play for anyone joining the event.
You have mentioned getting into weird situations with commander and being able to lead a 5-color urza deck without problem but do you really feel that those games are representative of magic as a whole? Do you think that the people playing historic want to manually keep track of how many turns you have been playing a game or use stickers/sleeve inserts to track the travel of a persistently altered card through hidden zones? Do you think that players want to wave over a judge every time they want to seek something?
While it is not impossible to do these effects in paper magic, there are a lot of designs that Wizards wouldn't print to appeal to the common denominator. These cards are examples of where people being dumb keeps them from being physically printed and having a digital system that tracks things for you makes it easier on the Arena client.
Actually, let's simplify your argument:
Point 1: If they are going to make cards on arena only, they had better be impossible to replicate on paper.
Point 2: Nothing is impossible to replicate on paper.
Point 3: Ergo, no cards should be on arena only.
This is just sour grapes all the way down.
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I am sorry but perpetually effects could not work in paper.
If two card with the same name are shuffled from my graveyard into my library and one of the lm perpetually has flying, the game will know which one has flying when I draw it. The fact that a perpetually altered card can keep its specific traits even if it is moved into hidden zones where opponents cannot verify that you are not cheating is not replicable.
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Okay, I think that I'm seeing the basic line of thought here. If your deck is filled with lost of situational silver bullets with something to cover every situation, the odds are that any card milled is far more likely to be a dead card (a silver bullet for a non-applicable situation) than the one you are after. By getting rid of cards that are more likely to be dead than alive, you are increasing the speed at which you can access the card you need. By this logic, are are encouraged by play as many varying silver bullets as possible as doing so decreases the chance of something usable being permanently removed by the wish.
With that, there are some problems
1. sideboards exist. Having the card you want in the sideboard is easier. You say that this card allows people to "not have a sideboard" but there is no incentive for players not to want a sideboard. The sideboard is where you want those cards to be and guaranteeing that you get what you want with a 2-mana wish is better than possibly-maybe getting to a card faster with a 1-mana wish. If you are trying to say that sideboards should not exist in the same way that you think London Mulligans should not exist, please be more specific.
2. Time Matters. While it is certainly true that the odds of a card you want being in the top 4 are much lower than them being in the bottom 48 or 49 on turn one, remember that most silver-bullet cards need to be pulled out in a very timely manner when you need them. If you need them by turn 4 (not at all uncommon), the math suddenly changes. You essentially get 4 chances of drawing the needed card outside of your initial hand (3 if you are playing first). If you cast this spell on turn 1, the real question becomes whether the card you want to draw is more likely to appear within cards 1-4 on top of your deck (which are removed by the wish) or on cards 5-8 of your library (which you would draw before it is too late to use the card). When you only compare cards 1-4 vs. 5-8 rather than cards 1-4 vs. 5-48, you have just as much of a chance of removing the card you need as accelerating yourself into it.
3. This card is random: Just reminding you that this card adds one of the four cards at random to your hand. You mention that this card allowing tactical selection but you literally choose nothing when casting this spell. Also, I wanted to point out that the random nature of this card makes it absolutely terrible at finding a specific 1-of card from your deck.
In fact, let me do the math right now.
Let's pretend that you start with a hand that contains four copies of this card and two lands that can play it (and a random 7th card) and that you are on the draw so you can thin your deck as much as possible. Assuming that the 1-of silver bullet isn't the seventh card of your hand or the top card of your library... well, your odds get bad really fast.
On your first turn, you play a land and cast the wish. The odds of the 1-of being in the top 4 cards is between 7% and 8% (check the calculator here if you don't believe me). If the card is in those top four, there is a 25% chance of adding the card to your hand instantly, a ~50.25% of adding it to your hand on turn 2 when you cast one or two additional wishes, and a 24.75% chance of adding it to your hand on turn 3 when you cast your last wish. Again, that's assuming that you had multiple wishes in your starting hand (which is not guaranteed in most games if you play a turn 1 wish and accidentally screw yourself by removing your 1 silver bullet and adding a different card back to your hand).
That 8% chance that I mentioned above? The odds of getting the card that you want from this wish drops DRASTICALLY from there if you don't get this card on the first wish. Thanks to the changes you made to the card design, you can remove another set of 4 cards when you cast your second wish instead of adding a card that you know will be bad. Let's assume that the one silver bullet you were looking at was in the second set of 4 cards (another 8.1% chance) and that you have 3 chances to get it into your hand... except that you are now selecting from among 7 cards at random (the three junk cards from the first time plus the four new cards). The odds of ever getting that 1-of silver bullet into your hand if you pick it up the second time drops from 100% (albeit with a chance that you'll need to draw every copy of the wish) to... 43.36% (and if you consider both the 8.1 percent chance of the second wish getting the spell and of the 43% chance of the second, third, or forth wish adding it to your hand... that's a 3% chance).
We aren't saying that the design isn't interesting. It is. We are simply pointing out that it wouldn't be powerful as you seem to believe.
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This statement is as hilarious as it is true.
“This version of the card is indestructible, taps down threats, and can attack in the late game but we can put the weaker version in our white section to use this blue 4-slot on a REAL card.”
I’m starting to think that this game of ours is kind of nuts, guys.
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The bad: as everyone says, this card would be mechanically superior if it ignored the wish angle and just said “Mill 3. Draw a card”. More stuff interacts with the graveyard than “outside of the game”.
The good: surprisingly, I can still imagine this card or something similar existing (albeit as a draft filler card). This type of card would let wizards print a “wish” card at common for a set like modern horizons as a minor reference. I could see a design like this (but removing more cards) being used as some sort of excuse to allow wishes to function in some form in commander (even though it would still require an adjustment to the rules). I could even see wizards using some similar function to create effects similar to the Eldrazi processors from Battle for Zendikar, banishing your own cards to nowhere and later return them to your hand or graveyard (while dodging the problems of moving cards from exile such as powerful self-exiling spells being looped).
Those are my 2 cents, anyway
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I don't think that a comparison to Kalitas is appropriate here. I think that getting tokens from blocking enemy creatures is secondary to making untapped tokens from your attacking creature... including attacking zombie tokens. Like, it isn't remotely close.
This card is unique in that it allows normally fast archetypes to pivot into an inevitability engine in the late-game if the opponent stabilizes.
Between all of those factors, I definitely think that this card is worth testing, at least in mid-sized cubes.
If I'm crazy, feel free to inform me.
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Tell you what. We will talk about the functionality of the design once it actually functions.
We do not operate on what something is "intended" or "implied" to do.
We talk about what it does.
"It works except for the technicalities" = "it doesn't work".
Address the technicalities. Make it work.
You are not being creative for making it not work when told how to do so. You are being lazy and obstinate.
I feel that I need to outline exactly how stupid this is with an example:
What you are doing is the equivalent of handing a napkin-drawn picture of a car with jet engines on it over to an engineer and asking how fast it would go. When informed that your napkin jet-car would explode instantly, you are saying "You know what I mean. Other than the technicalities of the engineering flaws, how fast would it go?" The engineer told you how fast it would go. The car would go 0 miles per hour. The car would explode. The actual speed of a jet-mounted car would depend on the specifics of the design and you designed incorrectly. Seeking criticism and commentary on the speed of a car design that would not function is an absolute waste of breath and brain cells. You are not "creative" or "innovative" for making a car design that does not work.
You are not innovative for making card designs that do not follow the rules. You display no understanding for why the rules are the way that they are and so your recommendations that the rules be changed thus have no water. In fact, I would say that you have failed to even argue for rules to be changed as you have no ability to identify what rules you want changed, do not know how you want the rules changed, and do not care what the implications for changing those rules would be within the game. You are seeking criticism on your card that ignore "technicalities" (AKA RULES!!!) that make your card not work and that is an utterly meaningless request.
The sad thing is that you would get THE EXACT CRITICISM YOU ARE LOOKING FOR if you fixed up the technicalities. If you fixed the card to work within the bounds of the work, then we would start talking about the merit of the card effect itself instead of the myriad flaws that keep the card from working in the first place. The request to skip that functional first step and look at the card effect first, though... that is simply not happening.
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1. Plays well with self-mill and discard as it can revive itself and it is resilient against most kill spells.
2. The attacking or blocking creature need not die from combat damage to leave a token. You can sac a doomed attacker to a sac outlet or aim a kill spell at a blocker that would survive to make a token, which is pretty cool. Also note that an attacking death tyrant can leave behind a token.
3. Attacking zombie tokens that die leave behind zombie tokens, meaning that there is essentially minimal cost to attacking with your zombie army each turn. This card really works well with other token strategies for this reason. Especially as...
4. The zombie tokens enter untapped. If your opponent blocks an attacking zombie, you get a new untapped zombie that can block.
Honestly, I think that what really attracts me to this card is the critical mass of 1-drop 2/1s that self-animate in black. This card adds serious late-game value to dread wanderer and gravecrawler and gutterbones and the like as repeatedly attacking into your opponent with these 2/1s ends up netting you a growing number of zombies over time.
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1. It represents a fast clock that essentially has haste.
2. It plays really well in slower and more responsive decks that may rely on the inevitability (and allowing mana to stay open for counters until end step)
3. It trades well with most things very well and can essentially "regenerate" for
4. It plays well with self-mill and discard outlets.
5. There are plenty of decks out there that simply don't have the means to respond to this thing.
This is one of the cards that kind of blurs the line between "baneslayer" and "mulldrifter" in my opinion. It doesn't have an ETB and it doesn't offer immediate value beyond beneficial trades and blanking kill spells (the latter of which would be aimed at this card fairly rarely unless your opponent is about to win) but the speed, inevitability, and synergy with discard/sacrifice/mill effects really makes up the difference for me.
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