MTG Salvation

@Glokks, I'm sorry you play in a group that bans Sol Ring yet is OK with Mana Vault. Chrome Mox seems actively bad in a deck with so many artifacts. If I was hellbent on ramping out a Turn 2 Daretti I'd probably play Lotus Petal instead.

"All of you...I can't believe all of you." Kylie continues northward with Nahiri's party in silence, ignoring the babbling of the elven girl and the serenity of the monk.

When she gets back to Kozal, she's going to have some hard questions for the general.

So did anyone else notice this:

Quote from The First World Is the Hardest »

"Some ruins, indeed. The people that lived in this place were called the Keocian. Their empire lasted nearly three hundred years, before they brought about the Seventh Cataclysm. They were demon-callers; the best this world had ever seen. Artisans of magic and war. Their language was a direct predecessor of our own, you know, although we adopted our modern alphabet from the Liex. They had a word that meant 'victory at any cost.' Do you know what it was?"

He shook his head.

"Victory. The distinction is for lesser souls than ours."

Quote from At Any Cost »

Option three: Team up with a greater power. Oh, it's never my first choice, but sometimes it's the only way. I had studied the Eldrazi almost as thoroughly as I had studied the hedrons. While they couldn't be bargained with, they had shown themselves willing to work through allies—old Kalitas learned that the hard way—and I would certainly relish helping them bring this world to ashes and end. But then what? They have no sense of gratitude, no sense of fairness. The idea that they would reward me in any way would be impossibly alien to them. A pyrrhic victory is merely the most palatable kind of defeat.

It's not a contradiction because Nik wrote both stories (also the repeat of the phrase "beings of power want to be called" makes me think he had that UR in mind when writing this one). Looks like Ob's decreased his bloodthirstiness in favor of survival in the long years since his fight with Nahiri.

Quote from smashkicker »

Here's to hoping that it is Omnath. The only legendary yet to appear in a story. And may he wreak havoc on everyone.

I've been a fan of the four-armed blob of pure volatile energy ever since he appeared in Original Zendikar. If Zada can get a one-off cameo surely Omnath can, too? He's even MYTHIC! In both versions!

Took a long time to get to Ob, but it was well worth it.

This makes me worry that they're going to have to pull an even more ridiculous suspension of disbelief than "Gideon holds off Ulamog single-handedly" to get the Oath of the Gatewatch into any kind of reasonable shape, though.

Yes, Chandra shows up to help, but literally all she can do is light things on fire.

"We won't. He's not getting away, not until he explains to us exactly what happened to our men." Kylie flourishes her blade. An array of shimmering blades appears in the air before her, hovering all around the retreating Vaerlov mage.

Cage of Cowardice 1W
Enchantment - Aura (C)
Enchant creature with power 3 or less
Enchanted creature can't attack or block, and its activated abilities can't be activated.

Although Kylie had never personally cast the spell on another human being before, she had seen it in action in some of the city-fortresses she had been stationed in over her time of service. A fitting punishment, it was deemed, for one who was unwilling to take up arms in battle, to be denied that very reaction when Kozal's enforcers finally caught up with him. Although it did no harm to the prisoner, it was merely a test. Those who proved their resolve and broke free of the cage were welcomed into the ranks of the army. Those who did not awaited a more...permanent fate.

Quote from VashBismark »

Quote from Guerte »

Yeah, at the moment I'm not considering the Oracle at all. There are other, better, things to run instead.

Most likely am thinking about cutting Codex Shredder for Thought Vessel. Thoughts?

I think Thought Vessel is okay, but Shredder provides better utility for the deck. Still not sure what I am going to cut for my trial of Oracle... but it will definitely get a shot at the very least.

Yeah, I want to dig a Shredder out of my random commons box to add to my list at some point. Fills the yard for Daretti and can get back non-artifact things like the aforementioned Goblin Welder.

I want to like the Oracle, but I wish it was a smaller body that cost a mana or two less. Compared to the other things I run at that CMC (Spine of Ish Sah, Myr Battlesphere) it doesn't have that much immediate board impact.

I notice you picked up a Recruiter! How's he been doing for you? (Also, Forcefield is a 3cc card, not 1cc.)

She left Jund and went to Grixis. She could have made a new "life" there for herself, but she decided to go back and exterminate her clan because she had a personal grudge against them, in particular Kael (and red is the color that places the highest value on family/friendship):

In the madness, she hunted for one face in particular. She wanted to make sure he didn't die at the anonymous hands of a Borrowed. She wanted to see his face, to witness his fear, to make him regret.

Her whole revenge seems very emotionally driven. Hence red. A blue character wouldn't go "You tried to kill me, therefore I will devote years of my life solely to ensuring I can enjoy the look on your face as you realize how wrong you were to have wronged me." As far as that goes, she also doesn't seem to have thought through this "destroy all the green magic in Jund" thing too much.

If she wasn't a shaman, I'd have pegged her as BR.

I hope the next story isn't about Kalemne. We had plenty of URs devoted to Akros and Iroas worship. Visit someplace else for a while.

Quote from Flisch »

Quote from Uii »

As for the omission of red, it's largely because they needed a strictly two color card for the decks. That aside, it can be argued that her affinity for GB slightly outweighs her motivations for revenge. Even at that, she's definitely not going berserk or is passionately driven by vengeance as red tends to. Maren seemed more calculated than that, like a black's take on revenge to prove a point and a dash of green's predation.

I could buy that if it weren't for the fact that apparently her whole motivation for going out and mastering her trade was heavily influenced by revenge. Again, it might not be the only part of her, but it's a very defining part of her overall character.

The point is, it's a new character. They could have made her fit into her colours. They could have made a true black-green character, which is actually very easy on Jund, because in its nature it has a lot of black-green overlapping elements. Instead they made a mostly-red character and omitted the red part.

Agreed. They could have played up the green more by, instead of revenge, having her embrace her "destiny" or "natural gifts" or whatnot. The fight with the shaman clan would have been justified as survival of the fittest (green) or preemptively killing them to be sure they would never hunt down and kill her (black).

My theory is that "revenge" is just an easier, all-encompassing story motivation to write.

As curious as I am about UR sphinx dude...I really want next week's story to be about Karlov. Just to check in on the whole "Teysa vs the Obzedat" subplot that got briefly mentioned then abandoned in RTR.

Quote from Guerte »

Wheel on a stick, anyone?

http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/magic-fundamentals/the-rumor-mill/645852-mtg-jp-magus-of-the-wheel

Wish these came in foil...

If only he was a 2/2 so I could fetch him with Imperial Recruiter... Yeah I might be a bit greedy.

I'm actually looking at Blade of Selves, I think it might be fun to pair up with some of the value fatties in my deck.

"Let's get out of here. This place is cursed," Kylie says in a clipped voice, standing and scanning every entrance to the room for signs of further danger.

Quote from Vorthospike »

I can't think of a reason Ulamog wouldn't be able able to swim. Even if he couldn't its not like walking along the ocean bottom would be an issue. I doubt Ulamog breathes.

I figure Ulamog locomotes like an octopus. I mean, he does have all those tentacles. Emrakul floats, and Kozilek...I'm not actually sure what's going on with the lower half of that one.

I would buy the theory that Gideon decided to walk in a straight line at the enemy because that's the only strategy he knows, except...we just had "Shaping an Army."

Now while Gideon has a savior complex, we know that even he doesn't think he has to do everything on his own (he did send those 100 Kor to Guul Draz to do recruitment). So the fact that he specifically appeared in person to recruit Noyan Dar would mean that, having heard of the roilmage's abilities, he would have conceived of some sort of a battle plan that would incorporate those decidedly un-Gideon-like abilities, no? And yet we don't hear about what Noyan Dar is doing during the first attack at all, which means that either 1) the roilmages were part of the initial "walk forward" plan and Noyan Dar somehow didn't raise a snarky stink about it, or 2) Gideon went to all that trouble to recruit the roilmages and then decided he could win without them. Neither one makes much sense.

It's almost like the writers didn't communicate with each other what story they were trying to tell.

Quote from Gutterstorm »

Oh and on the note of Tazri: someone mentioned that she was faking being an angel or something a couple pages back. That's not the case. She definitely is an angel.

Tazri is human.

She was a brown-skinned woman in elaborate plate armor, adorned with small wings at her shoulders and a glowing metal ring like an angel's halo, but around her neck. A heavy, flanged mace hung at her belt.

As for Gideon's plan, it seemed like the writers tunneled in on one character's viewpoint and kind of...forgot that they had an ensemble cast.* Or forgot that we care about characters other than Gideon. Surely Gideon would have had to float this plan past Tazri and Munda to get all the soldiers together in one place to begin with? Why wouldn't they object then, before all the casualties? What about Drana and Noyan Dar? Their magical skills are wasted on this "run straight at the enemy" plan. I mean, I'm someone who likes Gideon as a character, and would still rather have had all of the characters get actual speaking lines, perhaps in a "war council" using the Kieran Yanner art, than a section of plot spent on Gideon reminiscing and angsting.

*Heck, this is a story with more named female than male characters that fails the Bechdel Test, because every single scene has Gideon in it.