MTG Salvation

Anti-Constrictor tech (sorta)!

So... It's cost-efficient, dodges fatal push, counters constrictor, can kill aether harvestor and shrink vehicles at instant speed, and provides you with an answer to Saheeli as long as you have a free discard engine (even olivia's dragoon would work)... and you can cycle it if you need something else.

Edit: Just realized that Collective Brutality will also be standard legal.

Yeah, I like this card.

Wow, this might just be my new favourite demon.

1) It puts itself in the GY for reanimation
2) It has Synergy with self discard like LotV, smallpox, and Zombie Infestation
3) 5/4 Flying for 5 is very respectable.
4) No Downside (which is a big deal for a demon)

I want to try putting it in Modern Loampox or something similar.

You and Collective Brutality may wind up being great friends in Standard.

Wait... looking at this card, something tells me that noose constrictor will be the new snake of choice in B/G decks. Nice.

Living End decks just got a god card.
You cycle it, put it into play with End, then kill your opponents' creatures when you cycle other creatures.
Plus, it flies. Disgusting.

When you cycle, you would discard anyway. This wording suggests that there will be a twist to cycling that doesn't cause discarding of cards.

Just saw Shadow of the Grave, which allows you to return cycled and discarded cards to your hand from the grave. That means that my "recycling" theory is wrong. Now I'm 99% sure that a form of "sacrifice-to-cycle" form of cycling will be in the next set.

I generally agree with you. My hope is that it will feel more like Morph and Megamorph, where the action you do is essentially the same. It might not be "sacrifice-to-cycle." It might be "recycling" from your grave to exile to get a card. In any case, I do hope that if they do make a variant of cycling, then it feels very tied together and natural with the current cycling. There honestly really is no other reason for their wording other than this, though.

I truly hope you're wrong. Mostly, I play casual Magic...FNM, Pre-releases, etc. In these formats, with relatively inexperienced players, similar keywords are a dreadful situation. Especially when they are in the same set.

I can't count the number of times I've had to explain the difference between Menace and Skulk. To an experienced player, they're nothing alike. But, to newer players, they are very similar. They both create a limitation on blocking. Another example is Goad and Provoke, which should never be in the same set as both words have essentially the same meaning. Poison, Withering, and Infect in the same set would be a nightmare for new players.

So, Cycling and Sacrificial-Cycling (or whatever) would be highly confusing. And then there's the fact that if that happened, they'd be drastically changing the meaning of "Cycling", which seems to me like a bad decision.

What I mean is... the only reason why the wording would be the way that it is, is if WotC creates a subtype of cycling that doesn't include the discarding of cards.

My bet is that there will be cards printed that cycle from play, and you'll have to sacrifice them to draw the card. Essentially, they would work like the cards I linked from Urza's Destiny, but will actually use the word "cycling," so to trigger the Archfiend and others worded like it.

This means that unlike the Urza's Destiny "sacrifice-to-cycle" cards, which did not trigger cards like Astral Slide, there will be cards that do trigger them. If the Archfiend only said discard, it would not work with the "sacrifice-to-cycle" cards; if it only said cycle, it wouldn't work with discarding cards. This way, all scenarios are covered.

It makes no sense to me either. It's just several extra words added in for no reason. I guarantee that at the Pre-Release, I'll run into at least one player that Cycles a card and then claims that this thing triggers twice because he both Cycled a card and discarded a card.

"Also by not directly tying them to cycling, they did not work with the cards to come that cared when other things were cycled."

I don't see how this has any relevance here. Archfiend isn't Cycling. It just triggers off a Cycling effect. The only way this could matter is if there is a card that says something unbelievably specific like, "Whenever a card with "Cycle" in the text is triggered, trigger it again". Or, I suppose, "Whenever you Cycle a card, abilities that would be triggered are instead not triggered." Though, in that case including "or discard a card" still would have no effect.

The more I think about this, the more I talk myself out of any possibility that there's any purpose to the extra text.

What I mean is that if the card only said "whenever you discard another card...," it would function the same way with the current cycling as the actual text "whenever you cycle or discard another card..."

Adding the "you cycle" part is redundant because cycling is already discarding. It only becomes non-redundant if they came up with a new variant of cycling that doesn't discard. MaRo mentioned years ago that the Urza's Destiny cards Yavimaya Elder, Slinking Skirge, Plague Dogs, Marker Beetles, Illuminated Wings, Heart Warden, Capashen Standard, and Brass Secretary, were supposed to use the word cycling, but for some reason they weren't.

I'm expecting that we get something like that either in this set, or in the next one.

EDIT: MaRo is the lead designer of this set.
Relevant text from the article: "We talked at the time about putting something on the card to reference cycling but everyone felt that the cards were much cleaner written as is. They were, but what got lost was that no one ... saw these cards as having anything to do with cycling. Also by not directly tying them to cycling, they did not work with the cards to come that cared when other things were cycled."

That last sentence is important, because this phrasing specifically makes sure that those cards would trigger when being cycled.

I think it's mostly because Cycling and madness are both in standard.

Very much reminded of Noxious Ghoul. Funny that this would actually have MORE synergy with Zombie Infestation than that did while also just being soundly better. Can't wait to one sided board wipe with this thing.

Edit: One upside the Zombie had is that it had Etb for itself. Other than that, outclassed.