Just a note, but I don't think Necrotic Ooze combos with Pili-pala/Grand Architect, at least not without an external way to turn Necrotic Ooze (or Lazav, once he's copying the ooze) blue or into an artifact creature.
I don't see why they keyworded Prowess in the first place. Like unblockable, there are too many variations of the ability to justify keywording only one. I think it should be dropped altogether.
That leaves UR and UB still without evergreen creature keywords, but what else is new.
I don't know that there were that many variations. Either it was all noncreatures or it was Instants and Sorceries.
And UB seems to be leaning towards Flash as its shared Keyword.
Flash is still secondary in green as well as black, so we're not exactly there right now, but it looks like it could be the case if they at least push it so green is lower end of secondary and black is higher.
I think they're more likely to do something similar to creature pumping, where Green gets flash on big dudes that might just eat a guy, and black gets flash on small dudes that are most likely to trade. Stuff like Ambush Viper is probably going to move out of green, while stuff like Swift Warden and Snapping Sailback are more of what we'd expect out of green.
Additionally, it's the only practical way they can ensure the proper rarity for mythics. By having one mythic, and 7 other rares, they can ensure the 1 in 8 rarity of mythics is maintained. Barring going up to 16 cards (and you've already seen how hard it is to just put together a list of 8 rares/mythics that fit), any other number would require duplication of some of the cards to maintain that 1 in 8 ratio, which would result in wonky rarities.
If all the lists of the first seven cards for each guild in Sylve´s post plus Gruesome Menagerie from the post above mine are all correct, and there are in fact 8 promos for each guild, we are only missing the last Boros card. Though to be honest, I think those lists are looking a bit too hard for cycles/patterns.
Nah, something is wrong or we can get more than 8 possible promos. Beast Whisperer was the promo for Selesnya in a russian preprerelease video (2 posts above...)(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viJosJ7AgGk ) Gruesome is promo confirmed since it was first leaked.
Beast Whisperer probably just means that Bounty of Might isn't in Selesnya packs as a promo, which makes some sense. I think Thousand-Year Storm shows that they didn't put the Planeswalkers as guild mythics, which also makes sense since they probably didn't want the balance warped by half the guilds getting lots of planeswalkers, plus that would drive down the rarity of said planeswalkers. So that would give Golgari Underrealm Lich as their mythic, instead of Vraska.
They've had different commons and uncommons for a while now in seeded packs, so that's not really evidence of anything. The things that could disprove the current theory is a 3rd Selesnya non-watermarked rare, a 2nd non-watermarked rare for any of the other guilds, or seeing Ral or Vraska or the non-guildleader mythic for Boros, Selesnya, or Dimir. Otherwise, we've got a fairly solid idea of what could be in each pack, with the exception of the Boros non-watermarked card.
Weird that they'd go with Izoni and Etrata over Jarad and Lazav.
But I think I like this Izoni more than the regular one.
Jarad, at least, already got an alternate art in the Izzet vs. Golgari deck, and might not be popular enough to warrant yet another version like Niv Mizzet.
It's safe to say Gruesome Menagerie is Golgari's eighth promo. The leak of it showed it as a Prerelease Promo.
If they want a different color for each guild's monocolor that means Dimir gets Blue, Izzet gets Red, Boros gets White and Selesnya gets Green. We can't assume they're doing this when we only know one of the promos, but I still wanted to say which guild would get what color if they did a different color for each.
That makes sense. Theoretically, it could also be a Dimir kit, but that seems pretty unlikely.
I can't imagine a cube composition that would only run one of these two. Frankly if you only run 2 aggro green creatures it should probably be these two. I support collected company decks, recurssion deck and aggro decks all would e great here. Plus if you are into kalonian hydra/doubling season counter nonsense it has value there.
Rules question. If I play a deranged hermit how many counters to I get?
1, unless you have a way of further pumping your squirrels or shrinking your pelt collector. It has an intervening if clause, so it will check both when it initially triggers, and when the ability goes to resolve. So you can remove counters or shrink him between triggers, but otherwise they'll fizzle because the squirrels have equal power.
Hmmmm. This card would be really cool of it didn't exile itself. As it stands it seems far too narrow and random to be useful once. I would love for this to be recurrable.
Also, why does Dimir get 4 Mythics? I HATE when Wizards does this lopsided crap when they don't make guilds / tribes / whatever have the same, equal amount of stuff to play with.
Because two of those mythics are mono-color cards that easily slot into (and potentially work really well in, given how much Surveil synergizes with the Undergrowth and Jump Start) decks in the other two guilds. The mono color cards have never been perfectly balanced in which watermarks are given out, because different guild mechanics have differing amounts of space, and they've got fairly strict rules about what deserves a watermark. Divine Visitation, for example, isn't watermarked as a selesnya card, but that doesn't mean it's not going to be good in selesnya decks.
What happen if the opponent doesn't have creatures?
The defending player takes 3 damage and, sadly, Etrata's owner shuffles her back into their library.
Since it's a targeted triggered ability and since it's all one block of text, if there's no legal targets doesn't the whole combat ability get countered (by the rules)? So she doesn't shuffle herself into the deck?
Specifically, the ability won't even get put onto the stack at all. Similarly, she won't shuffle in if your opponent makes the target illegal in response (such as with a sacrifice or protection spell).
If I had to guess, I'd say that they ended up getting constrained by Dominaria's Saproling support. Dominaria had some decent saproling support cards, so if they had any tournament quality token producers, they would have to assume that they could be played with Saproling lords and such. So rather than risk having to tone down cards like March of the Multitudes, they changed the token to not synergize with Dominaria, and that allowed them to give it the small bonus of lifelink.
I get these "when you surveil" cards are to make Surveil into a distinct limited playstyle or whatever, but "when a card enters your graveyard from your library" would just be so much less parasitic for older formats - plus none yet would be breakable with that clause.
They probably didn't want to force people to dump good cards just to trigger their triggers. It would suck to try and, say, pump your thoughtbound phantasm to trade with a surveil 1 card, only to find yourself staring at your bomb and either losing your phantasm.
Its not as aggressive as rabblemaster. If you're swinging in every turn, this is capped out at creating 1/5/7/9 power on the board on T3/4/5/6 respectively, maybe a bit more if there's a pushed 1/1 double strike applicable but this would be hard pressed to scale past ever adding a +1/+1 to anything but a 1/1 base- even if you give it a lord effect, your 1/1s will get that too and become 2/2s, so it can't mentor them past 3/3. So count this as 1/5/7/9 power. Rabblemaster makes 1/6+x/8+x/10+x power where X is the number of other gobbos you drop. Which is usually going to be 2+, maybe 4+. So rabblemaster piledrives it in whereas this just poops mogg-sized gobbos. And that's also an advantage against spot removal, because after swinging once this can leave you with larger 2/2 tokens leftover
Now that's in terms of pure goldfish aggressiveness. This is better equipped for attacking into some 2/2 or larger blockers and less all-in aggressive since it can sit back and generate tokens without attacking, and won't force the rest of your field to suicide. But its also a pretty sad token generator if you don't swing in- it won't mentor- and its a contrived board state you'd have to be in where you want 1/1 tokens that charge in but your horde doesn't.
/e wow I got that off in the original, brainfarted those numbers hard, fixed
I mean, your opponent having a X/1 and not much else doesn't seem that contrived of a board state, especially on early turns. You probably wouldn't want to trade your Warboss for their dude, but you're happy if they trade your token for their dude.
I... really don't think that Jump-Start is worse than Retrace. You cannot play the card infinitely like Retrace, but you do get the following upsides:
1) The cost is WAY cheaper.
2) It can self-fuel, while Retrace cannot. (I.e., I can discard Jump-Start cards to Jump-Start cards.)
3) You are not required to discard a land. While lands are likely going to be the preferred discard, unless your deck is made with 2) in effect, it's not required... and that's a good thing.
Finally, I would expect a card, similar to what they print in Flashback blocks, to get an Instant or Sorcery back from exile.
1) cost is way cheaper than Retrace? how?
2) discarding Jump start cards to activate jump start isn`t fueling anything, just losing the opportunity of casting that same card from your hand for the same cost.
3) ok, now an upside.... but I`d take the ability of casting it again and again over it any day of the week
Spitting Image says this card would likely cost at least 3UU if it had Retrace (Restricting it to your own creatures has traditionally made these things cost 1 less, as evidenced by Mirror Image.)
Is there some reason we've never seen the most basic version of this card?
We keep getting stuff like this and Fated Infatuation.
Speaking of Mirror Image, it seems likely that's the most basic version of this card. They're not going to turn it into a token unless they have a reason to, such as Fated Infatuation being part of a cycle or wanting to give it flashback.
They've had different commons and uncommons for a while now in seeded packs, so that's not really evidence of anything. The things that could disprove the current theory is a 3rd Selesnya non-watermarked rare, a 2nd non-watermarked rare for any of the other guilds, or seeing Ral or Vraska or the non-guildleader mythic for Boros, Selesnya, or Dimir. Otherwise, we've got a fairly solid idea of what could be in each pack, with the exception of the Boros non-watermarked card.
Each color has a 3 or so non-affiliated options left for the final slot (Green has 4, but that's counting Bounty of Might as non-affiliated, when it seems pretty likely to be Selesnya). White gets Bounty Agent, Citywide Bust, and Dawn of Hope, Blue gets Drowned Secrets, Narcomobea, and Omnispell Adept, Black gets Gruesome Menagerie, Midnight Reaper, and Ritual of Soot, Red gets Erratic Cyclops, Experimental Frenzy, and Runaway Steam-kin, and Green gets Beast Whisperer, Pelt Collector, and Vivid Revival. There's some I can definitely see not being used as prerelease promos, like Runaway Steam-kin, but it definitely feels like there's a lot of combinations that would work. My guess would probably be Narcomobea for Dimir, Citywide Bust or Bounty Agent for Boros, Erratic Cyclops or Experimental Frenzy for Izzet, and Pelt Collector or Beast Whisperer for Selesnya.
Speaking of Mirror Image, it seems likely that's the most basic version of this card. They're not going to turn it into a token unless they have a reason to, such as Fated Infatuation being part of a cycle or wanting to give it flashback.