MTG Salvation

Elvish Rejuvinator and Militia Bugler have very powerful and pushed abilities on synnergistic bodies. Meanwhile, reasonable counterspells and cantrips are "too good." New World Order in terms of creatures > spells staying strong.

who is the green walker featured on the booster packs? tezz, liliana, sarkhan, ajani, and...?.

both lightning strike and shock in the same set. the 1 mana artifact (fountain of renewal) that gains 1 life on your upkeep might be playable as anti burn tech over something like sun droplet.

the 3 mana ramp creature is interesting. not sure if scapeshift or other ramp strategies like amulet titan would play it.

bugler...yeah im not even sure what to say about it. humans might play it as a 1 or 2 of. seems insane value for a coco deck, since it can find KotR or various combo pieces (vizier, devoted druid, etc).

edit: nevermind i found it. some new green 5 drop walker named vivien reid.

Great Googly Moogly!! This looks like EXACTLY what Jund/Grixis needs!!!

If the translation is correct, it should be
Infernal Judgement
B - Instant
"Exile target colorless creature. You gain life equal to its power."

Ulamogs and Worldbreakers come to mind, but also great for any and all kinds of Eldrazi nonsense and Affinity robots.

pretty sure that demon is holding an eldrazi in the artwork. so it would make sense.

Hits Wurmcoil Engine in Tron as well, which is also very relevant for decks that can play Judgment. This also implies that we might see some colorless creatures soon, possibly Eldrazi. This being rare instead of uncommon is kind of lame, though.

Vivian might see some play in Elf or Devotion sideboards. It probably won't see play in Ponza sideboards.

Oh good, new spoilers.

Militia Bugler is the Elvish Visionary or Silvergill Adept of Humans. 3 is an acceptable cost since you can play it turn 2 off T1 Noble Hierarch. Humans also plays a lot of creatures in their SB, and Bugler digs pretty deep for them (coincidentally, they're all power <= 2).

Elvish Rejuvenator does its best Primeval Titan imitation, but falls short. In Titanshift, Wood Elves or Growth Spasm guarantee the land, no matter whether it's in the top 5 cards or not. In Amulet...well, what are you hoping it would get? If you're hoping to hit Tolaria West, you'd rather have it in your hand than on the battlefield. As a ramp creature it's worse than Sakura-Tribe Scout and Azusa, Lost but Seeking.

Desecrated Tomb is an interesting card. In a graveyard-based aggro deck, it rewards you for doing what you want to be doing, and punishes your opponent for trying to stop you. The problem is that it costs 3 mana and does nothing by itself. Furthermore, unlike nearly every payoff card in Dredge, it needs to be in your hand instead of your graveyard, which is tough to accomplish when you're skipping draws by dredging.

Skyscanner is to Pilgrim's Eye what Elvish Visionary is to Sylvan Ranger. The only deck that even plays Pilgrim's Eye is Emeria Titan, and in that deck I'd guess Eye is better since it gets you closer to 7 Plains for Emeria, the Sky Ruin.

In regards to Militia Bugler, it is pretty much a bigger, more restrictive Foul Emissary (besides the emerge close which is mostly irrelevant)

I don't know if you humans would want it as they had Rogue Refiner as the tribe's overcosted Silvergil/Visionary and it was never part of the feck.

There is also Tireless Tracker which also provides card advantage im this slot even though it isn't at its best there.

Infernal Judgement is glorious.

It wouldn't see any play. It's 5 Mana for almost do nothing, if I wanted to kill something vraska would do it. The CA off Vivian isn't powerful enough vs. just playing garruk, caller of beast with LTS ability.

Judgment is sweet. It's a very solid 1-2 card bullet in BGx and Grixis decks. This also feels like a clear Play Design bone for Modern, which I doubly appreciate. Between random Eldrazi decks (Eldrazi and Taxes, RG Eldrazi, Colorless Eldrazi) plus top-tier Tron and top-tier Affinity, this will often be a relevant SB choice. That said, there are a few annoying misses in Affinity that I wish the card had been designed around:

Doesn't hit Vault Skirge
Doesn't hit Master of Etherium
Doesn't hit Etched Champion
Doesn't stop Ravager

It still hits Pest, Overseer, and Blinkmoth and Inkmoth, so it's not totally useless there. It just misses a lot of the heaviest hitters. Even so, blowing up Eldrazi and Wurmcoils probably justifies the SB inclusion.

if they wanted it to hit all of those it would need to be devoid, have split second, and have the 'or artifact creature' clause added. that would be quite the ridiculous card.

decent sideboard tech to be sure, but still probably lower impact than id like. sideboard slots are so tight nowadays that unless a card can outright replace others and do more on top, then its just another card that might show up in sideboards sometimes. its not like jund is going to play it over a card like ancient grudge.

i guess beggers cant be choosers though.

Quote from tronix »

if they wanted it to hit all of those it would need to be devoid, have split second, and have the 'or artifact creature' clause added. that would be quite the ridiculous card.

It didn't need to hit all of them. It just would have been nice to hit more of them. Or, better yet, hit Karn and Ugin. Adding "or planeswalker" would have been awesome and a fine consolation prize for not hitting the Affinity critters. I'm mostly just listing limitations that will prevent the card from being a true SB standout.

Infernal judgement is a lower impact card over dampening sphere to slow down the game plan enough for you to keep up. Will it see SB play atm? Not sure, Tron has to have a larger amount of copies into day 2 of any event. If there is only 2-3 copies on day 2, does it really warrant any amount of copies at all vs. a more versatile card like dampening?

Affinity + Tron together would also need a lot of numbers to see if it's an inclusion. Data also suggested, 1-2 out of every top 8-16 for each event were colorless decks. Unless you want to assume hollow one is also considered a colorless deck as it is based off a colorless creature name-wise. Then the numbers increase to warrant 2 copies, if at all.

Quote from ktkenshinx »

Quote from tronix »

if they wanted it to hit all of those it would need to be devoid, have split second, and have the 'or artifact creature' clause added. that would be quite the ridiculous card.

It didn't need to hit all of them. It just would have been nice to hit more of them. Or, better yet, hit Karn and Ugin. Adding "or planeswalker" would have been awesome and a fine consolation prize for not hitting the Affinity critters. I'm mostly just listing limitations that will prevent the card from being a true SB standout.

yeah i was just being facetious. i think being able to hit colorless walkers would have been a great idea. one because it would be much more playable in modern, and two because karn is in standard right now. more answers to mythic bombs is better imo.

though it doesnt really fit with the flavor of some demon beating up on eldrazi.

as it is right now i think its just a tad too narrow to be worth playing in an open field.

Desecrated tomb is good. It's really good. Those are 1/1 FLYING. non-tribal cause it'd be broken in a zombie deck.

Creature in graveyard:
dredge
exile
delve
flashback/eternalize/embalm
to battlefield
to hand

Gravecrawler and Viscera Seer scrying/creating tokens for as much mana as you have.

plays right into demon of catastrophes

Tomb can combo with Persist/Undying creatures and make infinite bats if you can reset the counters (with Vizier for Finks or Solemnity) and keep sac'ing them.
Might be a bit convoluted though with so many moving pieces and not actually better than Geralf + Solemnity + sac'-outlet.

i think its a fine engine card, but the mana cost is likely what will keep it from seeing play in modern and beyond. if it was 2, or better yet even 1, then i could see people trying to make something out of it.

anyone know how the 'one or more' wording works out? delve or a mass exiling effect like relic or rest in peace would only cause one trigger; however what about multiple bloodghasts or amalgams?

Quote from tronix »

i think its a fine engine card, but the mana cost is likely what will keep it from seeing play in modern and beyond. if it was 2, or better yet even 1, then i could see people trying to make something out of it.

anyone know how the 'one or more' wording works out? delve or a mass exiling effect like relic or rest in peace would only cause one trigger; however what about multiple bloodghasts or amalgams?

"If one or more..." seems to mean that any non-zero number of creatures leaving would only trigger once. IE, I cast Tasigur, delving away 3 creatures, it only triggers once. Or if I cast two Anglers, delving away one creature for each of them, it would trigger twice (once for each instance of creatures being removed).

yeah im thinking if there are multiple bloodghast or narcomoeba triggers then each resolving one by one should give separate tomb triggers as well, but just wanted to be sure.

Quote from tronix »

yeah im thinking if there are multiple bloodghast or narcomoeba triggers then each resolving one by one should give separate tomb triggers as well, but just wanted to be sure.

Oh yeah, that makes sense. With individual triggers those should make multiple tokens, right?

Militia Bugler may have a better home in Death and Taxes decks. Being mono-white is a boon in those decks.

Some cards are so stupid it's good. I am excited about Gigantosaurus. It's just so stupid.

It looks like a more vanilla take on cards like Primalcrux or Khalni Hydra, it is also mostly outclassed by Ghalta as it would cost around the same in deck that would want both.