Rishadan Dockhand looks pure mean in decks that can enforce enough mana denial and choking. I have located a BUG Lurrus of the Dream-Den Companion Midrange deck on MTGO that is interested in this card.
Dakkon, Shadow Slayer might be fine in Esper Control, but in some ways, he's ironically a narrower version of Teferi, Time Raveler. He can't bounce noncreatures, he can't mute counterspells, he can't draw cards, and he can't hose any combo decks. He might not need his ult to be decent, though, as he can exile creatures.
Timeless Dragon wishes Eternalize wasn't only doable as a sorcery. Being a large uncounterable threat might have its uses, though.
Yusri, Fortune's Flame needs to survive to attack, but has a heck of a payoff (if a risky one) if it can survive to swing. It'll only be good in decks with removal magnets like UR Prowess and maybe Bring to LightScapeshift, but now I'm really tempted to try it in UR Prowess. Yeah, I'm interested in drawing around 2 cards per turn and taking about 4 damage per turn if it lives.
Cabal Coffers looks abusable, especially with Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, but I can't quite come up with any Swamp ramp decks right now. On this land and 2 Swamps (i.e. Turn 3 Tron number of lands), all you can make is 2 mana. Bump that up to 3 Swamps and that's only 4 mana. Bump that up to 4 Swamps and now you're hitting 6 mana. ...Yeah, you're not out-competing Tron decks anytime soon.
Thrasta, Tempest's Roar looks too expensive, needing to be the 4th spell cast this turn to cost 3 mana.
Yer no idea why they couldn't put it at rare in a premium product.
What makes it worse is I don't even think it's Modern playable, it's just purely an EDH reprint. Yer there's the stuff with Urborg, but I'm to be convinced there's a deck there. It's not that quick to get on board and Modern is just a super powerful format.
Bruh, people tried to make Cabal Stronghold work in Modern, and that card does jack with Urborg. Mono-B Devotion has a devoted fanbase.
Edit: Forgot to mention, Thrasta could be cute in Elves. IDK about Storm, GG is a heavy requirement - Could be playable in Vintage with Lotus and cheap / free spells, but it's SUCH a bad topdeck once you're low on cards.
Cannot wait for Yusri, though, that's exactly my jam.
I'm struggling to think of a deck that Cabal Coffers can slot right into. Like, between Primeval Titan being able to grab Coffers/Urborg and Dryad of the Ilysian Grove, it's really easy to imagine a shell where you can just make stupid amounts of mana. Buuuuut, if you're already playing Titan and Dryad, wouldn't you prefer to just kill your opponent NOW with Slayer's Stronghold/Valakut then to just generate a bunch of mana for the sake of making mana?
Some of these are set on a powerlevel that is to guarantee they will see play and somewhat obvious interactions that are already nasty.
At some point they dont really care for balance anymore, as long as theres enough crap that combos with other already played cards, and people slam them in as many decks as possible.
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Cabal Coffers should have been Rare at least, not mythic.
Uncommon only made sense in a set that was heavy shifted on black, that was a exception.
But mythic is only based in its value, and upshifting rarities only because the card has value in money is plain dirty business practice (which further doesnt help in a good way to drive the cards price down).
Could have instead made a different version of similar powerlevel instead of the versions they printed in standard which flat out didnt work as promised.
The problem with defining this format by what is "fun" is that everyone seems to define fun as what they don't lose to. If you keep losing to easily answered cards, that means you should improve your deck. If you don't want to improve your deck, then you should come to peace with the idea that you are going to lose because you chose to not interact with better strategies.
LOVE Dakkon and that new premium Coffers art!
That Izzet Ifreet is going to lead to some amusing rounds,
usually because its controller got greedy and ate a lot of damage
Cabal Coffers not sure a deck that would like it, at least if the Urbord combo happens to be a thing theres alread land hate in the format soo its ok. Would not mind if they did other lands for a "cycle".
Coffer is further evidence that WotC pays attention to secondary market.
I think after the Secret Lairs we can stop being surprised and accept fully accept they care and at this point acknowledge and emulate the secondary market. Maybe we can refer to stuff like this and Secret Lairs/From the Vaults/Commander Collection: Green/whatever else as the 1.5-ary market?
Grief seems an insane card. With Ephemerate and any other black card this is T1 3/2 menace that nabs your opponents best two cards, that will be nabbing a third card on T2, gonna be hard for anything to come back from that.
Yeah, this seems like a really good interaction. It's also hard for the opponent to interact with, because you can stack the triggers in such a way that you Unmask your opponent before sacrificing it, and take a potential removal spell or counterspell before deciding to Ephemerate it. The opponent's only real recourse would be to counter the Grief itself beforehand, which feels pretty bad.
I'm excited to see what the other Incarnations will be.
The problem with defining this format by what is "fun" is that everyone seems to define fun as what they don't lose to. If you keep losing to easily answered cards, that means you should improve your deck. If you don't want to improve your deck, then you should come to peace with the idea that you are going to lose because you chose to not interact with better strategies.
Cabal Coffers has no business being mythic. Absolutely none. This is like Tarmogoyf being mythic or Snapcaster being mythic.
Timeless Dragon's flavor confuses me. Is that on Amonkhet? The art on the token doesn't look like it so I'm wondering why a random other plane has a blue (dabah dee dabah die) armored zombie. It's really just the token that gets me here.
If PWs are ever allowed to be commanders Dakkon is a powerhouse. For modern? I'm sure he's strong and might see some sort of play.
Is Grief strong? Doesn't seem all that great to 2-for-1 yourself. I guess it could be used to fight against the faster combo decks, but it just seems okay. If you can flicker it nonstop then it seems far better, but this seems like a card that will be $30 at preorder and end up being $3. Also, why is this an incarnation? It doesn't have a graveyard effect.
Thrasta is interesting. Wish they would have come up with something better than "trample over planeswalker" for the ability name, but it does the job. Thanks to Manamorphose and other mana shenanigans (Black Lotus, Mox, Phyrexian mana) you could see this come into play fairly early, but more often than not don't expect this earlier than turn five. Will this show up in a new R/G prowess build that will shake Modern? Iono, I'm an idiot and want to say something random.
Yearling should be in Standard and it's a perfect call back and a fun little card.
Timeless Dragon's flavor confuses me. Is that on Amonkhet? The art on the token doesn't look like it so I'm wondering why a random other plane has a blue (dabah dee dabah die) armored zombie. It's really just the token that gets me here.
A planesalker who got to watch the Eternal army invade Ravnica probably got the idea to get some lazotep and see if they can replicate things. Based on the token's wings, I'm guessing it's Tezzeret making a proof-of-concept to see what he can do if he ever runs low of etherium.
We saw old border Force of Negation coming a mile away, good thing I sold my foils a few days ago before the price was cut in half
The price was cut in half? I seriously doubt that even a normal reprint will cut the prices at all give how sought after and played it is. And the new reprint is in the old border and only in the collector boosters. I seriously doubt it will have any effect on prices at all. (And I doubt it would have any effect on foil prices either, but still, cool you got them sold if they actually go down in value!)
Reprinting it in the old border is cool, but only in the collector boosters. Like somebody mentioned earlier in the thread, that's not how reprints help.
Preliminary testing with Yusri as UR Prowess's top end has been promising - your opponent is often too busy killing your earlier threats, and this Efreet closes out the game fairly quickly with the high-octane card draw Prowess should not get. Being cheaper than Bedlam Reveler definitely helps. Be prepared to lose 8 life and draw a card when flipping 5 coins surprisingly often, though.
Rishadan Dockhand in BUG Midrange was fairly disappointing against UR Prowess and shockingly useless against Hulk Footsteps (i.e. the mana denial did close to jack against both), although there's probably a deck out there that hates this guy (I hear Heliod Ballista is shockingly mana-hungry).
Hulk Footsteps with Unmarked Grave and Profane Tutor has been fine so far, although Prowess is capable of killing it on Turn 3, so it may perform deceptively badly at first. I don't think Wizards wants a Turn 3 combo in the format, though, especially if we can create a Tempo Twin-like shell for it. Profane Tutor itself curves better than Grim Tutor in this deck.
Dakkon, Shadow Slayer has been good at offing creatures as an Esper Control member and that's it so far.
I mean... if you're on play, you play a Plains, evoke Grief, cast Ephemerate on it
you essentially thoughtseize your opponent 2 times on turn 1 and end the very first turn of the game with a 3/2 menace on the battlefield....
turn 2, you tboughtseize again for free because Ephemerate is cast again for free..... and most opponents hands will be so ruined after this that it could pretty much win the game just like that.
here are a ton of similar spells, even on color, like for example Undying Evil that can do crazy things with this card in the very first turn of a game.
Grief seems an insane card. With Ephemerate and any other black card this is T1 3/2 menace that nabs your opponents best two cards, that will be nabbing a third card on T2, gonna be hard for anything to come back from that.
Yeah, this seems like a really good interaction. It's also hard for the opponent to interact with, because you can stack the triggers in such a way that you Unmask your opponent before sacrificing it, and take a potential removal spell or counterspell before deciding to Ephemerate it. The opponent's only real recourse would be to counter the Grief itself beforehand, which feels pretty bad.
I'm excited to see what the other Incarnations will be.
I mean I get the complain. They decide to show us 12 cards. How do they select the cards they want to show us?
12 cards were shown and 4 of them were mono black or at least relevant for black because lands doesn't have a color technically.
I don't have a problem with that. We will see all cards eventually. But Grief and Profane Tutor was shown as example for a upcoming cycle. Why not chose at least one of those in another color like red where we just got to see an uncommon.
Nonetheless I am excited for the preview next week.
Wow, the Amazon prices on MH2 is the highest I have seen for a set. The Collector's Booster is $460. The standard draft booster is $299. Set booster boxes are $330. There can't possibly be enough valuable cards in a single box to be worth the pricing.
(EDIT: I refreshed the Amazon page, and the prices are moving up and down periodically. It appears that Wizard is letting Amazon's pricing algorithms to figure out an appropriate price. Wizards gets the money directly from Amazon, so they don't care what Amazon sells it for after they get paid.)
Wizards is really catering aggressively to diehard collectors, large retailers, and financial speculators who can buy enough to average out the variance. These are not for the regular players. ($460 is a good chunk of the MSRP of a PS5/XBox Series X and low-end iPads)
I mean... if you're on play, you play a Plains, evoke Grief, cast Ephemerate on it
you essentially thoughtseize your opponent 2 times on turn 1 and end the very first turn of the game with a 3/2 menace on the battlefield....
turn 2, you tboughtseize again for free because Ephemerate is cast again for free..... and most opponents hands will be so ruined after this that it could pretty much win the game just like that.
here are a ton of similar spells, even on color, like for example Undying Evil that can do crazy things with this card in the very first turn of a game.
this card is pretty strong.
I'm having a hard time fitting Grief into Modern decks. It demands as many black cards as Force of Negation demands blue cards. The only Legacy deck I ever saw with Unmask is Dredge. Grief has a hard time fitting into Ephemerate decks unless you can give me 3 playsets of black card friends for it (e.g. Tidehollow Sculler, ...Bob?). Dredge actually kinda wants Grief because it's not interested in spending mana on anything other than business spells and a bunch of graveyard hate costs 1 mana or less, and I can see combo decks using Grief as protection, but it's tough building an Ephemerate deck with enough black cards to support Grief.
I mean... if you're on play, you play a Plains, evoke Grief, cast Ephemerate on it
you essentially thoughtseize your opponent 2 times on turn 1 and end the very first turn of the game with a 3/2 menace on the battlefield....
turn 2, you tboughtseize again for free because Ephemerate is cast again for free..... and most opponents hands will be so ruined after this that it could pretty much win the game just like that.
here are a ton of similar spells, even on color, like for example Undying Evil that can do crazy things with this card in the very first turn of a game.
this card is pretty strong.
I'm having a hard time fitting Grief into Modern decks. It demands as many black cards as Force of Negation demands blue cards. The only Legacy deck I ever saw with Unmask is Dredge. Grief has a hard time fitting into Ephemerate decks unless you can give me 3 playsets of black card friends for it (e.g. Tidehollow Sculler, ...Bob?). Dredge actually kinda wants Grief because it's not interested in spending mana on anything other than business spells and a bunch of graveyard hate costs 1 mana or less, and I can see combo decks using Grief as protection, but it's tough building an Ephemerate deck with enough black cards to support Grief.
well, plenty of times we had crazy powerful cards in a vacuum never find a deck....
and this might be one of these cases.
still, the card is crazy powerful, in the right deck, it will create absurd starts....
T1: Godless Shrine, exile something, evoke grief (opponent discards their most important card) and then you respond to the sacrifice trigger with Ephemerate and opponent discards their second best card.
Op T1: chances are he's doing nothing, unless he was stocked with 1drops or draws precisely what he needs.
T2: Ephemerate rebounds, you discard the third card from opponent's hand, then you cast something like Tidehollow Sculler or Humiliate or kill the 1drop they found, or played Bob... whatever.
this card has the potential to create a whole new deck and that deck will generate really explosive starts.
Will it really be competitive at the highest level? I dunno.... but certainly has the potential.
Dakkon, Shadow Slayer might be fine in Esper Control, but in some ways, he's ironically a narrower version of Teferi, Time Raveler. He can't bounce noncreatures, he can't mute counterspells, he can't draw cards, and he can't hose any combo decks. He might not need his ult to be decent, though, as he can exile creatures.
Yeah, Grief definitely looks like Unmask.
Flametongue Yearling looks neat at first glance, but its target being mandatory will definitely bite it in the butt at some point.
Profane Tutor looks nuts as long as you get it early enough. I suspect Ad Nauseam-Angel's Grace and Inverter of Truth Combo are interested.
I'm sure Unmarked Grave can be abused. Start your Protean Hulk and Footsteps of the Goryo engines now! Unmarked Grave can also tutor for blockers with Lingering Souls, further digging with Cling to Dust/Think Twice, hand shredding with Raven's Crime and Nightmare Void, and removal with...worse spells like Start // Finish and Firebolt. At least it also tutors for sideboard anti-hate like Ancient Grudge and Ray of Revelation.
Timeless Dragon wishes Eternalize wasn't only doable as a sorcery. Being a large uncounterable threat might have its uses, though.
Yusri, Fortune's Flame needs to survive to attack, but has a heck of a payoff (if a risky one) if it can survive to swing. It'll only be good in decks with removal magnets like UR Prowess and maybe Bring to Light Scapeshift, but now I'm really tempted to try it in UR Prowess. Yeah, I'm interested in drawing around 2 cards per turn and taking about 4 damage per turn if it lives.
Cabal Coffers looks abusable, especially with Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, but I can't quite come up with any Swamp ramp decks right now. On this land and 2 Swamps (i.e. Turn 3 Tron number of lands), all you can make is 2 mana. Bump that up to 3 Swamps and that's only 4 mana. Bump that up to 4 Swamps and now you're hitting 6 mana. ...Yeah, you're not out-competing Tron decks anytime soon.
Thrasta, Tempest's Roar looks too expensive, needing to be the 4th spell cast this turn to cost 3 mana.
Bruh, people tried to make Cabal Stronghold work in Modern, and that card does jack with Urborg. Mono-B Devotion has a devoted fanbase.
Edit: Forgot to mention, Thrasta could be cute in Elves. IDK about Storm, GG is a heavy requirement - Could be playable in Vintage with Lotus and cheap / free spells, but it's SUCH a bad topdeck once you're low on cards.
Cannot wait for Yusri, though, that's exactly my jam.
Shine on, you crazy diamond
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Spoiler EditorFor those looking for the Timeless Dragon's Eternalized token
Not a fan of this "forced" constructed cards.
Some of these are set on a powerlevel that is to guarantee they will see play and somewhat obvious interactions that are already nasty.
At some point they dont really care for balance anymore, as long as theres enough crap that combos with other already played cards, and people slam them in as many decks as possible.
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Cabal Coffers should have been Rare at least, not mythic.
Uncommon only made sense in a set that was heavy shifted on black, that was a exception.
But mythic is only based in its value, and upshifting rarities only because the card has value in money is plain dirty business practice (which further doesnt help in a good way to drive the cards price down).
Could have instead made a different version of similar powerlevel instead of the versions they printed in standard which flat out didnt work as promised.
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
That Izzet Ifreet is going to lead to some amusing rounds,
usually because its controller got greedy and ate a lot of damage
Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest WUR Voltron Control
Temmet, Vizier of Naktamun WU Unblockable Mirror Trickery
Ra's al Ghul (Sidar Kondo) and Face-Down Ninjas
Brudiclad, Token Engineer
Vaevictis (VV2) the Dire Lantern
Rona, Disciple of Gix
Tiana the Auror
Hallar
Ulrich the Politician
Zur the Rebel
Scorpion, Locust, Scarab, Egyptian Gods
O-Kagachi, Mathas, Mairsil
"Non-Tribal" Tribal Generals, Eggs
Yusri, Fortune's Flame + Personal Sanctuary is the dream for casual and commander lol
Cabal Coffers not sure a deck that would like it, at least if the Urbord combo happens to be a thing theres alread land hate in the format soo its ok. Would not mind if they did other lands for a "cycle".
Thrasta, Tempest's Roar looks to be the card to break xD, maybe the new ditch elementals +mana morphose can make it more cheatable
Timeless Dragon kinda like it in a control shell, pick the land and have a treat to end the game or in late game have a finisher with a backup.
I think after the Secret Lairs we can stop being surprised and accept fully accept they care and at this point acknowledge and emulate the secondary market. Maybe we can refer to stuff like this and Secret Lairs/From the Vaults/Commander Collection: Green/whatever else as the 1.5-ary market?
Walking Rishadan Port and retroframe Force of Negation is "not much"? :-P
Let this great clan rest in peace (2001-2011)
Interesting some kind having suspend version of the other vintage I wonder what next with the new tutor
Yeah, this seems like a really good interaction. It's also hard for the opponent to interact with, because you can stack the triggers in such a way that you Unmask your opponent before sacrificing it, and take a potential removal spell or counterspell before deciding to Ephemerate it. The opponent's only real recourse would be to counter the Grief itself beforehand, which feels pretty bad.
I'm excited to see what the other Incarnations will be.
Timeless Dragon's flavor confuses me. Is that on Amonkhet? The art on the token doesn't look like it so I'm wondering why a random other plane has a blue (dabah dee dabah die) armored zombie. It's really just the token that gets me here.
If PWs are ever allowed to be commanders Dakkon is a powerhouse. For modern? I'm sure he's strong and might see some sort of play.
Is Grief strong? Doesn't seem all that great to 2-for-1 yourself. I guess it could be used to fight against the faster combo decks, but it just seems okay. If you can flicker it nonstop then it seems far better, but this seems like a card that will be $30 at preorder and end up being $3. Also, why is this an incarnation? It doesn't have a graveyard effect.
Thrasta is interesting. Wish they would have come up with something better than "trample over planeswalker" for the ability name, but it does the job. Thanks to Manamorphose and other mana shenanigans (Black Lotus, Mox, Phyrexian mana) you could see this come into play fairly early, but more often than not don't expect this earlier than turn five. Will this show up in a new R/G prowess build that will shake Modern? Iono, I'm an idiot and want to say something random.
Yearling should be in Standard and it's a perfect call back and a fun little card.
Yusri loves cards like The Wanderer and Blessed Sanctuary.
A promo in a *checks TCGplayer and Amazon prices* $43-$46 collectors booster is definitely not much.
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Spoiler EditorThe price was cut in half? I seriously doubt that even a normal reprint will cut the prices at all give how sought after and played it is. And the new reprint is in the old border and only in the collector boosters. I seriously doubt it will have any effect on prices at all. (And I doubt it would have any effect on foil prices either, but still, cool you got them sold if they actually go down in value!)
Reprinting it in the old border is cool, but only in the collector boosters. Like somebody mentioned earlier in the thread, that's not how reprints help.
My personal dreams with Yusri involve Batterskull (4 power, Lifelink) and/or Omnath, Locus of Creation (1st landfall trigger hands you 4 life).
Preliminary testing with Yusri as UR Prowess's top end has been promising - your opponent is often too busy killing your earlier threats, and this Efreet closes out the game fairly quickly with the high-octane card draw Prowess should not get. Being cheaper than Bedlam Reveler definitely helps. Be prepared to lose 8 life and draw a card when flipping 5 coins surprisingly often, though.
Rishadan Dockhand in BUG Midrange was fairly disappointing against UR Prowess and shockingly useless against Hulk Footsteps (i.e. the mana denial did close to jack against both), although there's probably a deck out there that hates this guy (I hear Heliod Ballista is shockingly mana-hungry).
Hulk Footsteps with Unmarked Grave and Profane Tutor has been fine so far, although Prowess is capable of killing it on Turn 3, so it may perform deceptively badly at first. I don't think Wizards wants a Turn 3 combo in the format, though, especially if we can create a Tempo Twin-like shell for it. Profane Tutor itself curves better than Grim Tutor in this deck.
Dakkon, Shadow Slayer has been good at offing creatures as an Esper Control member and that's it so far.
I mean... if you're on play, you play a Plains, evoke Grief, cast Ephemerate on it
you essentially thoughtseize your opponent 2 times on turn 1 and end the very first turn of the game with a 3/2 menace on the battlefield....
turn 2, you tboughtseize again for free because Ephemerate is cast again for free..... and most opponents hands will be so ruined after this that it could pretty much win the game just like that.
here are a ton of similar spells, even on color, like for example Undying Evil that can do crazy things with this card in the very first turn of a game.
this card is pretty strong.
on top of that force of negation can't stop grief since it’s a creatue
I mean I get the complain. They decide to show us 12 cards. How do they select the cards they want to show us?
12 cards were shown and 4 of them were mono black or at least relevant for black because lands doesn't have a color technically.
Grief, Profane Tutor, Unmarked Grave, Cabal Coffers
I don't have a problem with that. We will see all cards eventually. But Grief and Profane Tutor was shown as example for a upcoming cycle. Why not chose at least one of those in another color like red where we just got to see an uncommon.
Nonetheless I am excited for the preview next week.
(EDIT: I refreshed the Amazon page, and the prices are moving up and down periodically. It appears that Wizard is letting Amazon's pricing algorithms to figure out an appropriate price. Wizards gets the money directly from Amazon, so they don't care what Amazon sells it for after they get paid.)
Wizards is really catering aggressively to diehard collectors, large retailers, and financial speculators who can buy enough to average out the variance. These are not for the regular players. ($460 is a good chunk of the MSRP of a PS5/XBox Series X and low-end iPads)
I'm having a hard time fitting Grief into Modern decks. It demands as many black cards as Force of Negation demands blue cards. The only Legacy deck I ever saw with Unmask is Dredge. Grief has a hard time fitting into Ephemerate decks unless you can give me 3 playsets of black card friends for it (e.g. Tidehollow Sculler, ...Bob?). Dredge actually kinda wants Grief because it's not interested in spending mana on anything other than business spells and a bunch of graveyard hate costs 1 mana or less, and I can see combo decks using Grief as protection, but it's tough building an Ephemerate deck with enough black cards to support Grief.
well, plenty of times we had crazy powerful cards in a vacuum never find a deck....
and this might be one of these cases.
still, the card is crazy powerful, in the right deck, it will create absurd starts....
T1: Godless Shrine, exile something, evoke grief (opponent discards their most important card) and then you respond to the sacrifice trigger with Ephemerate and opponent discards their second best card.
Op T1: chances are he's doing nothing, unless he was stocked with 1drops or draws precisely what he needs.
T2: Ephemerate rebounds, you discard the third card from opponent's hand, then you cast something like Tidehollow Sculler or Humiliate or kill the 1drop they found, or played Bob... whatever.
this card has the potential to create a whole new deck and that deck will generate really explosive starts.
Will it really be competitive at the highest level? I dunno.... but certainly has the potential.
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#BLM
#DefundThePolice