Blindsight Blessed3CC Creature - Eldrazi
Vigilance
You may play cards from exile but not from anywhere else. You may look at face down exiled cards you own.
Whenever combat damage would be dealt to or dealt by Blindsight Blessed, prevent that damage and exile that many cards from the top of your library.
1/1
I'm not sure the second line is worded right, but the idea is that if you, for example, block a 3/3 with this, you'll exile four cards total, one from the prevented damage dealt and three from the prevented damage taken. Also, yes, I am aware this would be very broken with cards like Temporal Mastery that exile themselves.
Almost didn't recognize Sorin and Arlinn. Sorin because the shading on his face took away the usual bleached whiteness I'm used to, and Arlinn because she seemed way too young in that art.
Well, Garruk is trapped on Zendikar, as Jace transferred Ob Nixilis' binding hedron into him. Sorin being freed is more surprising, in my opinion.
EDIT: Oh, yeah, Koth isn't here either. He's probably too busy fighting phyrexians to make it.
Yeah, I'm hella excited. The woman with the staff and the one with the sugegasa hat and whip-thing are new characters. Notably absent are many of the ancillary product Planeswalkers, excluding the deceased ones: Dack, Daretti, the Battlebond twins, Aminatou, Istrid, and Mu Yanling.
Modern WU Dual Land : Add or .
Lands you control lose all activated abilities except mana abilities.
Basically, they'd be a way for people to build good manabases without fetches, assuming all ten color pairs are printed. The downside to this Blood Sun-esque drawback is that it shuts off manlands and Field of Ruin. Notably, specifying activated abilities keeps ETB triggers and stuff like Urborg working as usual. An alternative rider would be "You can't search your library", but that would have far more of a negative effect on multiple strategies.
This is going to be amazing. Gives me something to draft over the summer instead of the core set, AND adds sweet, cheap new stuff to the best eternal format.
This idea is super neat. Using the second template for Gideon, you could remove the mana requirement entirely to make them feel more like Walkers. Something like this:
Flare -- At the beginning of your first main phase each turn, you may choose one:
* Put a +1/+1 counter on Gideon.
* Remove two counters from Gideon. If you do, put two 2/2 white Soldier creature tokens onto the battlefield.
I was debating whether or not to put some number of Ratchet Bomb in the sideboard for precisely that reason, and I will if it turns out Blood Moon is indeed a problem.
This is the first brew I’ve made in a while that I’m confident will actually work, so I’m sharing it. The game plan of the deck is simple, really. It’s essentially a black-red version of the old Twin decks, starting off like a control deck until it pieces together a two card combo that wins on the spot. Step one is sticking either Crackdown Construct or Ceaseless Searblades onto the battlefield. Then, next turn, either Lavaclaw Reaches or Wandering Fumarole can provide an arbitrary number of 0-mana ability activations. Basically, we’re building an Infinity Elemental. Notably, the fumarole can provide the blue mana to turn itself on, and since we don’t ever plan on taking it into combat, no other blue sources are required.
Obviously, this is a bit slow compared to other combo decks in modern. However, there are other advantages to make up for it. The list gets to include eight copies of each combo piece for redundancy, so the odds are good you can find replacements fast if you do get disrupted. Also, half the combo is built into the manabase, so there’s a ton of room for interaction.
Plenty of discard spells and removal keep the board clear of threats, and blockers, until we go off. Many of the pieces are similar to those found in Mardu Pyromancer builds. Most of these cards are commonly played in modern already, and need no justification. However, due to all the taplands, keeping the mana curve low is critical, which is why I’m running Duress and Dismember over Collective Brutality and Kolaghan’s Command. Anger of the Gods is perfect for us, though, and can always be pitched to Faithless Looting in matchups where it’s unneeded. It even leaves the Ceaseless Searblades alive, though Crackdown Construct is superior at attacking into blockers when we’re going off.
The only other combo pieces in the main deck are Apostle’s Blessing and Key to the City. If you wait to play one of the creatures until turn five, Blessing can protect it from a removal spell. Or, you can use it to attack through blockers. Key to the City, played in an earlier turn, can make our Saitama lookalike unblockable for no mana, and also acts as a backup looting engine. (And really, the mayor should have given him one for his service by now.) Out of the sideboard, Grim Discovery is a nightmare for other control decks, allowing us to recur one or both halves of our combo.
I'm in the process of building this in paper right now, and I'll post my FNM results later. In the meantime, let me know what you guys think.
It's not totally useless in all constructed applications. For example, it's a third four-drop creature in casual bat tribal decks. Second if you want to stay mono black.
Agree with above. Many of these can be insanely good if you build around them, particularly Dreadrot, but in a vacuum they're all very well designed compared to the stupidly versatile original.
I feel like the easiest route would be to find and ramp into Thrumming Stone, then flip like twenty of them onto the battlefield in one shot. A green-blue shell with Ancient Stirrings, Serum Visions, and burst mana seems good. Pentad Prism and Lotus Bloom both enable turn four wins.
Actually, the 'planeswalker in every pack' idea could work with just the previously printed planeswalker deck walkers, including the new Dovin and Domri. Almost all the story-relevant ones have had a planeswalker deck already. WotC would only need to omit multiples (picking the most interesting iteration of Chandra, etc), and swap out Huatli and Angrath for new cards of Kaya, Jaya, and Karn. There may be mechanical issues with this, though. Off the top of my head, Liliana, Death Wielder uses -1/-1 counters, so they'd have to use Liliana, the Necromancer.
Creature - Eldrazi
Vigilance
You may play cards from exile but not from anywhere else. You may look at face down exiled cards you own.
Whenever combat damage would be dealt to or dealt by Blindsight Blessed, prevent that damage and exile that many cards from the top of your library.
1/1
I'm not sure the second line is worded right, but the idea is that if you, for example, block a 3/3 with this, you'll exile four cards total, one from the prevented damage dealt and three from the prevented damage taken. Also, yes, I am aware this would be very broken with cards like Temporal Mastery that exile themselves.
Well, Garruk is trapped on Zendikar, as Jace transferred Ob Nixilis' binding hedron into him. Sorin being freed is more surprising, in my opinion.
EDIT: Oh, yeah, Koth isn't here either. He's probably too busy fighting phyrexians to make it.
Land
Lands you control lose all activated abilities except mana abilities.
Basically, they'd be a way for people to build good manabases without fetches, assuming all ten color pairs are printed. The downside to this Blood Sun-esque drawback is that it shuts off manlands and Field of Ruin. Notably, specifying activated abilities keeps ETB triggers and stuff like Urborg working as usual. An alternative rider would be "You can't search your library", but that would have far more of a negative effect on multiple strategies.
This is going to be amazing. Gives me something to draft over the summer instead of the core set, AND adds sweet, cheap new stuff to the best eternal format.
Flare -- At the beginning of your first main phase each turn, you may choose one:
* Put a +1/+1 counter on Gideon.
* Remove two counters from Gideon. If you do, put two 2/2 white Soldier creature tokens onto the battlefield.
4 Ceaseless Searblades
4 Crackdown Construct
3 Apostle's Blessing
2 Key to the City
4 Faithless Looting
Removal: (11)
4 Anger of the Gods
3 Fatal Push
2 Dismember
1 Lightning Bolt
1 Dreadbore
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Thoughtseize
2 Duress
Lands: (24)
4 Wandering Fumarole
4 Lavaclaw Reaches
4 Foreboding Ruins
4 Blood Crypt
2 Mountain
6 Swamp
1 Mugging
1 Bontu’s Last Reckoning
1 Pithing Needle
1 Lightning Bolt
2 Damping Sphere
2 Lost Legacy
3 Grim Discovery
4 Rakdos Charm
This is the first brew I’ve made in a while that I’m confident will actually work, so I’m sharing it. The game plan of the deck is simple, really. It’s essentially a black-red version of the old Twin decks, starting off like a control deck until it pieces together a two card combo that wins on the spot. Step one is sticking either Crackdown Construct or Ceaseless Searblades onto the battlefield. Then, next turn, either Lavaclaw Reaches or Wandering Fumarole can provide an arbitrary number of 0-mana ability activations. Basically, we’re building an Infinity Elemental. Notably, the fumarole can provide the blue mana to turn itself on, and since we don’t ever plan on taking it into combat, no other blue sources are required.
Obviously, this is a bit slow compared to other combo decks in modern. However, there are other advantages to make up for it. The list gets to include eight copies of each combo piece for redundancy, so the odds are good you can find replacements fast if you do get disrupted. Also, half the combo is built into the manabase, so there’s a ton of room for interaction.
Plenty of discard spells and removal keep the board clear of threats, and blockers, until we go off. Many of the pieces are similar to those found in Mardu Pyromancer builds. Most of these cards are commonly played in modern already, and need no justification. However, due to all the taplands, keeping the mana curve low is critical, which is why I’m running Duress and Dismember over Collective Brutality and Kolaghan’s Command. Anger of the Gods is perfect for us, though, and can always be pitched to Faithless Looting in matchups where it’s unneeded. It even leaves the Ceaseless Searblades alive, though Crackdown Construct is superior at attacking into blockers when we’re going off.
The only other combo pieces in the main deck are Apostle’s Blessing and Key to the City. If you wait to play one of the creatures until turn five, Blessing can protect it from a removal spell. Or, you can use it to attack through blockers. Key to the City, played in an earlier turn, can make our Saitama lookalike unblockable for no mana, and also acts as a backup looting engine. (And really, the mayor should have given him one for his service by now.) Out of the sideboard, Grim Discovery is a nightmare for other control decks, allowing us to recur one or both halves of our combo.
I'm in the process of building this in paper right now, and I'll post my FNM results later. In the meantime, let me know what you guys think.