I kind of hate this card. It can't fix you turn 1 like ash barrens and the evolving wilds variants can and it costs you 2 mana to do any fixing. Sure, it's nice that it can tap for mana so you can try and find a time to squeeze in the fixing while tapping it for mana in the interim, but you still need 2 mana to do it and that's a tall ask. This card seems bad to me. I don't even like fabled passage anymore because the land ETBing tapped before turn 4 was too harsh a penalty, and if you have to crack this on turn 2 to fix you mana it's a disaster.
Edit - and I think we're a long way from the days of recurring something like this from the yard being good enough for any cube deck, especially when any fetch, prismatic vista, and strip mine are all in cubes and all such better lands to be recurring.
This card is incredible. It's floor is 2 1/1's with flash that get to ping something on the way down, and its ceiling is absurd. Flashing this in in response to a brainstorm, or any draw 2, or even a draw 1, is just great value. Even a draw one nets you a 1/1, a 2/2, and 2 splittable damage. Absurd card and an auto-include.
Show and Tell is a bad cube card nowadays lol, so a card that supports Show and Tell decks is not one I'm gonna bother with.
Now, on to the card itself. 3 mana 2/4 flyer is a decent floor, but it's much harder to manipulate the top of your library in cube and a lot of great reanimator targets have power ETB's, which this won't of course. Sure, if you get to put Griselbrand on top with a brainstorm and attack with this it's great, but there's a lot of games where this just never flips a creature that's a better attacker than a 2/4 flyer. This especially suffers when what I think is a substantially better 2/4 flyer for 3 is in the same set.
Edit - And I found Artisan way too slow and fragile. Yeah, it's great if you cast it on 3 and if you have a great target in hand and if it lives until your next upkeep, but it's the most telegraphed cheat spell of all time and just never got there for us.
If you like a playtest card mechanically but dislike it being a sticker it’s pretty easy to whip up some AI art and print it out with MPC.
That's certainly true, but to my brain when something has never actually been printed as a real magic card (even if it's not legal in any format) it just feels like a custom card that a magic designer happened to make. If your cube runs custom cards, I'd absolutely run this. But like, is this more of a real magic card than Alchemy cards are? I'd say no.
Apparently I have 9 elementals in my cube, and 13 elves. There are some surprisingly good elf hits - the 2 hermits, rec sage, oracle, bloodbraid.
I will say, fetchlands are valued highly enough and are few enough in number that you can't rely on just them for cards like this. If your deck has 2 fetchlands (which I think is probably a little above what the average deck has), you can't count on triggering this from just those. However, its floor is a 3/3 lotus cobra for 3, not great but not a disaster, and it combos with all the explore and rampant growth variants. I think this might be worth testing, although green 3's are tight.
This is like something the custom MTG subreddit would make, and I don't really mean that as a compliment. I'm sure "pledge" was intended to have a larger design space, but as written this card is "Artifact. 2. When ~ ETB's, choose two colors. Tap: Add either of the chosen color."
This would make it the best non-Mox, non-vintage-cube-level mana rock ever printed. It's leaps and bounds above every signet and talisman because it fixes for all 5 colors, whatever you don't have in your opening hand. If you're in vintage or love the playtest cards, sure, this seems fine, otherwise unless you're running a custom card cube I don't see the need for this.
Isamaru and YoshimaruW
Legendary Creature - Dog
Whenever another legendary creature or creature with mana value one enters teh battlefield under your control, put a +1/+1 counter on Isamaru and Yoshimaru.
2/2
This card looks ridiculous. Base rate 2/2 for W is good. Played turn 1, then followed up with 2 one-drops on turn 2, it attacks for 4. Also strong when followed by Kari Zev, Skyship Raider since the Ragavan tokens will trigger this each turn. Also just followed by Thalia on turn 2 and attacking for 3 is also very good.
Almost certainly the best white 1-drop creature ever printed, but I won't be running any of these. I hate that they don't have art, and I hate that most players will have no chance of knowing what this card does until they see it in my cube and that it looks so jarringly different from other cards.
Plus, including un-cards (which I do) and the playtest cards (I did run growth charm) is always a fine line - many of them are just brokenly good, which sort of defeats the purpose of playing them as fun cards, and a lot of them are just either bad or don't work in the rules, so you have to walk a very fine line of cards that are powerful enough for cube but not just a top 10% cube card that's also not legal anywhere. This falls on the "too powerful" side of the line for me.
Edit - also they are apparently just stickers on top of cards, not even real cards, and are barely available. Easy pass.
I assume copyright 100%. They shot themselves in the foot with the 40k since they used type likes like "astartes" that make a reprint hard/expensive to do.
"'Hobbit' is a trademark owned by the Middle-earth Enterprises, as some of names, places and artifacts included in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien.'
Using halfling means they can reprint those without licenc8ng issues.
Surely "gandalf" is also owned by Middle-earth enterprises? I guess I don't see what the difference is between using Hobbit and using Gandalf when it comes to reprtints.
I've been wondering about the lack of hobbits also
I have to assume it's to match existing creature types an enable future "hafling" synergies if they print them in non-LOTR sets. I can't imagine it's a copyright thing (wasn't that the reason Magic originally had kithkin?) since they are making a LOTR set.
Yeah, I see white getting these conditional counterspells in the same vein as blue getting conditional removal. White should never get straight up counterspell, but taxing and delaying should be well within the pie for white.
Edit - and I think we're a long way from the days of recurring something like this from the yard being good enough for any cube deck, especially when any fetch, prismatic vista, and strip mine are all in cubes and all such better lands to be recurring.
Now, on to the card itself. 3 mana 2/4 flyer is a decent floor, but it's much harder to manipulate the top of your library in cube and a lot of great reanimator targets have power ETB's, which this won't of course. Sure, if you get to put Griselbrand on top with a brainstorm and attack with this it's great, but there's a lot of games where this just never flips a creature that's a better attacker than a 2/4 flyer. This especially suffers when what I think is a substantially better 2/4 flyer for 3 is in the same set.
Edit - And I found Artisan way too slow and fragile. Yeah, it's great if you cast it on 3 and if you have a great target in hand and if it lives until your next upkeep, but it's the most telegraphed cheat spell of all time and just never got there for us.
Happens to the best of us lol.
I don't understand how any of those things help Vial?
Yeah, the line should be cast it -> tap it whenever before your next turn -> let the upkeep trigger resolve and lose a life -> tap and draw 2.
That's certainly true, but to my brain when something has never actually been printed as a real magic card (even if it's not legal in any format) it just feels like a custom card that a magic designer happened to make. If your cube runs custom cards, I'd absolutely run this. But like, is this more of a real magic card than Alchemy cards are? I'd say no.
I will say, fetchlands are valued highly enough and are few enough in number that you can't rely on just them for cards like this. If your deck has 2 fetchlands (which I think is probably a little above what the average deck has), you can't count on triggering this from just those. However, its floor is a 3/3 lotus cobra for 3, not great but not a disaster, and it combos with all the explore and rampant growth variants. I think this might be worth testing, although green 3's are tight.
This would make it the best non-Mox, non-vintage-cube-level mana rock ever printed. It's leaps and bounds above every signet and talisman because it fixes for all 5 colors, whatever you don't have in your opening hand. If you're in vintage or love the playtest cards, sure, this seems fine, otherwise unless you're running a custom card cube I don't see the need for this.
Almost certainly the best white 1-drop creature ever printed, but I won't be running any of these. I hate that they don't have art, and I hate that most players will have no chance of knowing what this card does until they see it in my cube and that it looks so jarringly different from other cards.
Plus, including un-cards (which I do) and the playtest cards (I did run growth charm) is always a fine line - many of them are just brokenly good, which sort of defeats the purpose of playing them as fun cards, and a lot of them are just either bad or don't work in the rules, so you have to walk a very fine line of cards that are powerful enough for cube but not just a top 10% cube card that's also not legal anywhere. This falls on the "too powerful" side of the line for me.
Edit - also they are apparently just stickers on top of cards, not even real cards, and are barely available. Easy pass.
Surely "gandalf" is also owned by Middle-earth enterprises? I guess I don't see what the difference is between using Hobbit and using Gandalf when it comes to reprtints.
I have to assume it's to match existing creature types an enable future "hafling" synergies if they print them in non-LOTR sets. I can't imagine it's a copyright thing (wasn't that the reason Magic originally had kithkin?) since they are making a LOTR set.