I would probably run this if it said "put the rest on the bottom of your library in any order" instead of "exile the rest". Seems a bit of a risk if you draw into something good that is supposed to help you win the game.
If it was 'put into your graveyard' that would be even better, since it would enable graveyard shenanigans.
It's not bad, I don't get people's hate. It increases the quality of your normal draw with only a one time early-game cost. The land side can be used on your opponent's turn, so again, you're probably keeping mana open in Blue anyways. In fact, if you don't use open mana to play something on your opponent's turn, you can then dig for a spell for next time. Major psychological effect there.
I think its success will depend on how fast the meta is.
I'm more interested in how this demonstrates their ability to print art to the edge. There's been examples in the past, but I always wondered why they kept the border when they could enlarge everything on the card if they removed it.
That said, these lands are great, though I would have preferred the old token brass name plaque instead of a colored bar for the land name.
It's unfortunate that they kept the bottom half of the border black, looks kinda weird, but I guess it has to be that way for the machine reader.
The humor style is good, functional with thematic humor.
I don't understand the Nerf War's background, shouldn't it be gold? I can't tell what it's supposed to be... Grimlock's back-side also has a unique background, curious.
I think you guys are conflating Magic the product with other kinds of products and what leaks do. Some products need very little hype because the majority of the product is attractive. This is not true for Magic because of the limited environment, which is function (balance) over form (splashy). Although there can be powerful commons and uncommons, rares, mythics, and 'walkers generate the most hype. Once that part is known, the boring parts of the set begin to detract from the buying allure because you're 'paying' for those boring parts too, which you may not want. That's like only being able to buy the thing you want by also buying 3 things you don't want; it's frustrating.
Consider a similar product; video games. They don't sell video games with footage of the most boring parts of the game, they advertise the best parts. But it's kinda hard to leak the boring parts, and easy to forget that the game will certainly have them. I suspect that if you knew that only 25% of the game experience would actually be entertaining and fun, you might not buy it at the normal cost, if at all.
So I think low-profile leaks are fine, but high-profile leaks do hurt because of players buying decisions. Magic has to satisfy many different kinds of players and platforms, so the percentage that is attractive to each type of player is low, making it seems like there's a lot of tacked-on 'junk' that you're stuck with. We know that Magic sets are hard to evaluate and most people under-estimate WoTC's work. So Wotc basically needs this hype to help offset this too-early biased no-data negativity.
This is why I think this is a quality control reject and not taken right off the line.
I kinda believe this. If you look at the full sheet image, the cards are not printed in the center of the sheet, they are shifted quite a bit to the right and down. So much on the right that the right-side black border is not on the foiled part of the sheet. You can see this shift at the top right corner of the cards, the black clearly extends past the foiling.
If their print process can shift that much, then no wonder they can't do fancy printing tricks. I'm curious now how many bad sheets there are on average.
I've been waiting for a cheaper Conspiracy for ages, and we've finally got it in Arcane Adaptation from the Ixalan leak.
Arcane Adaptation 2U
Enchantment
As ~ etb, choose a creature type.
Creatures you control are the chosen type in addition to their other types. The same is true for creature spells you control and creature cards you own that aren't on the battlefield.
I've mainly been waiting because it enables a few combos that were too hard to set up with Conspiracy costing 5.
Some notable ones:
Arcane Adaptation:
> (samurai) + Kentaro, the Smiling Cat = Pay (X) for all creature spells.
> (any) + Call to the Kindred = Always cast a creature from the top 5 for free every turn.
> (myr) + Myr Turbine + Tap 5 creatures = Etb any creature from your deck for free.
> (soldier) + Preeminent Captain = Etb-attacking any creature from your hand when it attacks.
> (dragon) + Sarkhan Unbroken (ultimate) = Etb all creatures in your deck.
> (dragon) + Dragon Tempest = Each of your creatures that etb can deal X damage, where X = # of creatures you control. Includes tokens.
> (zombie) + Rooftop Storm = Cast any creature for 0.
It's really hard to search for tribal effects, there's many forms and wildcards only go so far.
I don't expect any of these to break anything, but I'm guessing wotc is printing this now because they want tribal support to be easily achieved.
It would be interesting for Karn to go back to Dominaria, looking for another way to destroy the Phyrexians, given the history there.
Does anyone know what happened to Urza's spirit? Undead spirits is well established, so I see no reason why Urza of all people would not be lingering around in some form.
The only thing I'm interested in out of this is having 3D models of the walkers. The inconsistency in the face and wardrobe across all walker artwork, fan art, and cosplay has always bugged me.
More than that, they are both artifacts with colorless costs that are easy to reduce. You could easily turn Ramos into a mana engine.
*EDIT*
Actually, there's a couple modern infinite combos:
Casting Transguild Courier will give Ramos 5 counters; remove immediately for 10 mana. Use Temur Sabertooth to bounce Courier back, and repeat. You can also use Aegis Automaton instead of Temur, and Reaper King instead of Courier if you have a cost reducer of (2) or more.
*EDIT*
Totally didn't see that one-per-turn restriction; no wonder. Well you can make him infinitely big still, but can only get mana once per turn.
If it was 'put into your graveyard' that would be even better, since it would enable graveyard shenanigans.
I think its success will depend on how fast the meta is.
That said, these lands are great, though I would have preferred the old token brass name plaque instead of a colored bar for the land name.
This is better with Duress-like cards to help eliminate kill-spells, etc.
This guy will generate a lot of combos. The tapping for both effects is kinda a bummer, but it can be worked around.
At least with both abilities being activated, you get to use Necrotic Ooze and kin.
The unsets names so far have been synonyms for 'crazy' (Unglued/Unhinged/Unstable), and that glued/hinged conveying 'joined' is secondary.
The humor style is good, functional with thematic humor.
I don't understand the Nerf War's background, shouldn't it be gold? I can't tell what it's supposed to be... Grimlock's back-side also has a unique background, curious.
Consider a similar product; video games. They don't sell video games with footage of the most boring parts of the game, they advertise the best parts. But it's kinda hard to leak the boring parts, and easy to forget that the game will certainly have them. I suspect that if you knew that only 25% of the game experience would actually be entertaining and fun, you might not buy it at the normal cost, if at all.
So I think low-profile leaks are fine, but high-profile leaks do hurt because of players buying decisions. Magic has to satisfy many different kinds of players and platforms, so the percentage that is attractive to each type of player is low, making it seems like there's a lot of tacked-on 'junk' that you're stuck with. We know that Magic sets are hard to evaluate and most people under-estimate WoTC's work. So Wotc basically needs this hype to help offset this too-early biased no-data negativity.
I kinda believe this. If you look at the full sheet image, the cards are not printed in the center of the sheet, they are shifted quite a bit to the right and down. So much on the right that the right-side black border is not on the foiled part of the sheet. You can see this shift at the top right corner of the cards, the black clearly extends past the foiling.
If their print process can shift that much, then no wonder they can't do fancy printing tricks. I'm curious now how many bad sheets there are on average.
Arcane Adaptation 2U
Enchantment
As ~ etb, choose a creature type.
Creatures you control are the chosen type in addition to their other types. The same is true for creature spells you control and creature cards you own that aren't on the battlefield.
I've mainly been waiting because it enables a few combos that were too hard to set up with Conspiracy costing 5.
Some notable ones:
Arcane Adaptation:
> (samurai) + Kentaro, the Smiling Cat = Pay (X) for all creature spells.
> (any) + Call to the Kindred = Always cast a creature from the top 5 for free every turn.
> (myr) + Myr Turbine + Tap 5 creatures = Etb any creature from your deck for free.
> (soldier) + Preeminent Captain = Etb-attacking any creature from your hand when it attacks.
> (dragon) + Sarkhan Unbroken (ultimate) = Etb all creatures in your deck.
> (dragon) + Dragon Tempest = Each of your creatures that etb can deal X damage, where X = # of creatures you control. Includes tokens.
> (zombie) + Rooftop Storm = Cast any creature for 0.
It's really hard to search for tribal effects, there's many forms and wildcards only go so far.
I don't expect any of these to break anything, but I'm guessing wotc is printing this now because they want tribal support to be easily achieved.
Does anyone know what happened to Urza's spirit? Undead spirits is well established, so I see no reason why Urza of all people would not be lingering around in some form.
More than that, they are both artifacts with colorless costs that are easy to reduce. You could easily turn Ramos into a mana engine.
*EDIT*
Actually, there's a couple modern infinite combos:
Casting Transguild Courier will give Ramos 5 counters; remove immediately for 10 mana. Use Temur Sabertooth to bounce Courier back, and repeat. You can also use Aegis Automaton instead of Temur, and Reaper King instead of Courier if you have a cost reducer of (2) or more.
*EDIT*
Totally didn't see that one-per-turn restriction; no wonder.
Don't forget persist! Seriously, how did they not catch Vizier of Remedies combos?