I agree Quicksilver Elemental is the best way to push his limits. It basically adds U to the cost of using each ability a second time and seems super fun.
Having just reread "The Gathering Dark", Marsil is amazing. Add to that the fact that I played Necrotic Ooze in standard and have The Mimeoplasm and Experiment Kraj decks that already exist. I am definitely getting him and building a deck.
Maro postet the collected available info for Unstable on his blog.
I promised to post the new info I gave out at the panel. Note that it’s all about Unstable. Here it is:
Unstable will have a small Squirrel theme, enough to build a deck around. There is a Squirrel lord but because its effects stack, it isn’t legendary so people can get multiples on the battlefield at the same time.
The set will have full-art basic lands with art done by John Avon. We did something with them that we almost did in Unhinged by chickened out. They look amazing.
The set will have Contraptions. I figured out a flavorful and fun way to do them but it was a bit much for black border. I consider it a home run execution. Steamflogger Boss is on the set. It appears once on the land sheet (It was the only way to get a black-bordered card in the set). Only the basic lands and Steamflogger Boss are Eternal playable. All the creatures in this set that assemble Contraptions are Riggers.
The set has a cohesive creative theme. We brought in artists and did real world building. The world is a mad scientist steam punkish world with five factions:
Order of the Widget (White/Blue) - This is the cyborg faction. They are like Esper but without any self control. They use their inventions to constantly improve themselves. You don’t need a toaster if you replace your hand with a toaster. They take self improvement to an absurd degree.
Agents of S.N.E.A.K. (Blue/Black) - This faction is the spies. They use their inventions for elaborate spy devices. The problem is, they are, for the most part, awful spies, using spy gadgets whenever and wherever they can often when not remotely called for.
Legion of Dastardly Doom (Black/Red) - This faction is the super villains. They use their inventions for death rays, weather control devices and apocalypse machines. They want to rule the world, but are constantly fighting as to who gets to destroy the world first.
Goblin Explosioneers (Red/Green) - This faction is the Goblins, it includes the Steamfloggers. These Goblins love making contraptions and are slightly obsessed with hammers. Their style is slapping thing together to see if cool things can happen. And when things don’t explode, sometimes they do.
Crossbreed Labs (Green/White) - This faction is obsessed with using their inventions to alter biology. They are all made up of hybrids of different animals. Part monkey/part spider/part leopard - sounds good. This faction mixes and matches all sorts of different animals in its quest for self improvement.
The set uses modern design and development techniques. It was designed to be drafted by itself and the release events for the product will be booster drafts. We worked hard to make the set have a lot of playability so you can draft it a bunch of times.
The set will have foil tokens, both for tokens produced by cards in the set and for popular tribes we felt the players would like in foil.
There are tons of other cool things I can’t talk about yet. The set does have a second named mechanic, along with Contraptions. It is something we’ve been trying to solve for years and with the flexibility of silver border, finally found a way to do it.
The set started design in January of 2011 and has its release date slip on several occasions. I am very proud of the work everyone did and think it’s the best Un-set we’ve ever made. I believe fans of Un-sets are going to love it.
Most intriguing I find that they are doing something special with the full art lands, something that may have been too crazy the last time they tried it. What is it? Rotated artworks, like this? It may be funny art.
My guess is borderless lands. Art goes all the way to the edge of the card.
As the one person who apparently runs Safe Haven in EDH (Ephara, God of the Polis). I will be happy to replace it with something faster, but sad that It'll no longer surprise people who haven't seen it and don't read it.
This card seems crazy. Trike's biggest weaknesses are costing 6 mana and having to spend 1 damage to kill itself when comboing. This gains fetchability with Trinket Mage and can be bigger in the late game when you need it more as a finisher than control. On top of all that, there's a gravy ability of making it bigger later if you do play it early on as a deterrent. My Experiment Kraj deck just got its new favorite toy.
Am I missing something? This seems incredibly broken for only four mana.
Your opponent plays an Ashen Rider, and you get a free Ashen Rider trigger. You also can keep the token to block with, at least until an opponent plays a different creature. Your opponent plays a Void Winnower, and you get to mirror the effect against them. Your opponent plays a Farhaven Elf, you get a free Rampant Growth in blue.
This seems like a card that basically every blue deck has the play (similar to Cyclonic Rift).
Is this a joke?
You don't get Void Winnower's effect because it's on cast. Also, the ability balances out because your opponents control what you are cloning. You may have a Baneslayer Angel one turn and a semi-useless creature the next turn.
I'll admit it's really hard to think of something that's going to be completely useless in Commander especially since you can use it to chump block and then it recreates itself. I'm personally putting it in my flicker deck to exploit by flickering their creatures.
I think balance wise, Lej shouldn't have both extra land effects. His ability lets you jump from 1 to 4 mana on turn 2. He should cost more so that he's not played turn 1, or have an additional drawback to generating the land such as putting it onto the battlefield tapped.
I like that it enables me to play my Willbreaker in our casual standart. I mean taking over all my opponents creatures and still being able counter his counterspell is fun.
Each target needs to get at least 1 damage.
10/4/2004 X can be zero.
10/4/2004 If X is greater than zero, you can't choose zero targets. You must choose between 1 and X targets. If X is zero, you can't choose any targets.
I'll take a stab at it. Here's as short as I can make it without changing the functionality and removing the may.
Jade's Choice 2UB
Instant
Search your library for four cards with different names and reveal them. Target opponent chooses one. You may cast that card without paying its mana cost. If you do, you lose life equal to its converted mana cost. Put the rest of the cards revealed into your graveyard then shuffle your library.
The search wording hasn't been used on an existing card, but I think it still works. Here are the relevant comps:
701.15b. If a player is searching a hidden zone for cards with a stated quality, such as a card with a certain card type or color, that player isn't required to find some or all of those cards even if they're present in that zone.
701.15d. If a player is searching a hidden zone simply for a quantity of cards, such as "a card" or "three cards," that player must find that many cards (or as many as possible, if the zone doesn't contain enough cards).
A fix for Aspire being too difficult to parse is just to give it a number. Very few situations exist where the card's converted manacost would change between triggering and resolving the ability.
Example:
Aspire 4 — Whenever you cast a spell with converted mana cost 4 or more, ~ gets +1/+1 until end of turn.
You guys need to think outside the box for morph abilities that haven't been done. They haven't done trap like morph costs "If an opponent cast a spell this turn, you may pay 0 rather than pay ~'s morph cost." Ones that "trigger" off your actions could also work "If you've cast a white spell this turn, you may turn ~ face up without paying its morph cost." And of course, they still haven't done "You may cast creatures from your hand face down as 2/2 creatures for 3." Spell morph is a frequent topic in the card creation forum and would work with rules tweaking. Lastly, off color morphs are surprisingly vacant from Magic's history.
I don't have much to add, but I too am giddy about this concept. I don't believe there will be a 1:1 correlation of cards between first and third set as that would probably make the first set require taking an extra year at least in design and development so that it's still changeable according to the needs of set 3. I do expect to see alternate timeline characters and places (basic land art changing like in Scars).
I'm personally hoping for some new time travel mechanics: A named flicker mechanic, last strike, or New World Order Suspend.
Others I haven't seen mentioned are Mirage Mirror for protection, Myr Propagator for non-discard cloning, Grenzo, Dungeon Warden for filling the yard.
I agree Quicksilver Elemental is the best way to push his limits. It basically adds U to the cost of using each ability a second time and seems super fun.
My guess is borderless lands. Art goes all the way to the edge of the card.
My mistake, I was thinking of Oblivion Sower non-bo and didn't even read the autocard.
You don't get Void Winnower's effect because it's on cast. Also, the ability balances out because your opponents control what you are cloning. You may have a Baneslayer Angel one turn and a semi-useless creature the next turn.
I'll admit it's really hard to think of something that's going to be completely useless in Commander especially since you can use it to chump block and then it recreates itself. I'm personally putting it in my flicker deck to exploit by flickering their creatures.
Each target needs to get at least 1 damage.
Jade's Choice 2UB
Instant
Search your library for four cards with different names and reveal them. Target opponent chooses one. You may cast that card without paying its mana cost. If you do, you lose life equal to its converted mana cost. Put the rest of the cards revealed into your graveyard then shuffle your library.
The search wording hasn't been used on an existing card, but I think it still works. Here are the relevant comps:
Example:
Aspire 4 — Whenever you cast a spell with converted mana cost 4 or more, ~ gets +1/+1 until end of turn.
I'm personally hoping for some new time travel mechanics: A named flicker mechanic, last strike, or New World Order Suspend.