Am I the only one who noticed that the loyalty abilities aren't ordered from biggest '+' annuit ability down to the biggest '-' ability like they normally do? Almost all planeswalkers followed this pattern. Just seems strange.
There's a couple other exceptions to that rule, and it's pretty clearly because despite the loyalty cost being 0, the last ability is Ajani's "ult", it just requires a particular life total rather than loyalty count. Gideon Jura has a similar setup, with a 0 ability at the bottom because it's his unique thing.
NEW SWORD! I WANT! Sword of Truth and Justice oh how I wish they could have reprinted the whole cycle of x and y swords.
They have never printed all 5 swords in one set.... they will definitely break up the cycle over 2-3 sets. I think it would be cool if we got a second one, maybe Sword of Black and Red or Green and Red.
How would you rank the swords (for commander)?
Fire and Ice
Feast and Famine
Light and Shadow
Truth and Justice
Body and Mind
War and Peace
Though truth and justice could easily be higher if built around.
Yes however, this is not a core set. There is a good chance they will print all 5 in this set (They may also use it just to fill the rare slots easier, plus if they released a new sword in a core set, that would mean that while modern has access to all, the standard player peasant will never have had a chance to use the sword of Truth and Justice. The sword were previously released in core sets so we might have a different outcome this time. I would like to have all 5 come out in Horizons since the while point of a set is to give modern a bunch of new cards. (Even with the nice things we have, Horizons is not a commander set. The cards we are censoreding over are the rare ones.
The issue with having all five swords is that the first one was previewed at mythic. So unless they split the cycle between rare and mythic (unlikely), having all five swords would mean 1/3rd of the mythics were sword of X and Y. More importantly, it would mean that the Sword cycle would take up all the remaining mythic slots. Given the mythics we have revealed so far, we're still missing any black mythics, which means the full cycle would result in an extremely unbalanced mythic ditribution, with white and green getting 2 each, while red and blue get 1 and black gets nothing.
I guess if you want a 3rd big colorless PW, this is your guy, but the ramp is pretty narrow and being on a six drop feels very meh to me. So it's really all about the other 2 abilities, and the removal leaves him very vulnerable and can randomly miss some threats, and the 2/2 draw a card when it dies feels very good but 6 mana is a lot. I like new Lili at 6 more than this guy.
Edit - that +1 is gonna create some annoying memory issues since you have to track which card is tied to which spirit. I guess you just use the face-down card as the token. Also, since it sounds like you can only look at each card once, and then you're gonna have to remember which card is better and which token you want to block with.
I believe that once you've looked at a face down card, you have permission to keep looking at it as part of the game rules.
This is pushed so hard. Great tempo play regardless based on just the pushed stats and flying alone and I can think of quite a few decks I would happily run this in. I mean off the top of my head Chart a Course....you're probably drawing 4 and discarding 1 for 2U Staggershock 8 damage over two turns split in 4 increments of two for 2RR Fiery Confluence is 12 to the face (Or a wrath + damage) for 2RRRR Fractured Identity for 3 with a copy in hand? Gross.
The Staggershock copy would cease to exist upon being exiled, and thus you'd only get 6 damage for 2RR. That said, even just getting an extra "free" shock seems quite nice. The biggest downside for Kefnet seems to be that he doesn't have any way to manufacture immediate value, beyond just being a big body.
To be fair to the name, Ambushes require a great deal of planning and setup typically. And the fact that the creature doesn't get to fight back flavorfully conveys that it has been effectively ambushed, even if you're not ambushing the opposing player.
One thing to remember is that if you want this to be either hasty or ambush someone with flash, it effectively costs 6 mana, since you need a still untapped land to be Vitu Ghazi. That said, even if you consider this a 6 mana card with an optional "comes into play tapped" drawback for 1 less, it seems very strong.
Minor nitpick incoming: I don't like how the eternals are handled in this set artwise. I mean, they were created from the cream of the crop of Amonkhet, from a culture entirely devoted to perfecting various martial arts and combat styles. And they get consistently owned in art by run of the mill Boros legionnaires, wurms, trolls and even vines? What the...
To be fair, the same applies in reverse if you show the eternals only ever winning. "The guilds of Ravnica have been at each others throats for ten thousand years, and you expect them to just get rolled over by a bunch of zombies in blue makeup?" It turns out that in war, both sides will have victories and defeats. We've seen some of Bolas' victories, and now we're seeing some of the Ravnicans. I'm sure there will be plenty more cards with eternals beating on people to come, we're just in the section of the story where the good guys are making up some progress.
Just to make sure I'm right on the rules here- this trigger happens on cast, right? I get that if it gets countered, it goes to the graveyard, because it never resolved. But once that cast trigger goes on the stack, as long as the spell resolves, you're getting it back, no matter what happens to Feather, right?
That is how the trigger reads to me.
That's not how it works. If the spell never resolves, you never exile it. Since the "return to hand" bit has "if you do" at the beginning, you can't return it to your hand if you don't exile it to her ability.
Naive question alert: Why, outside of Zendikar blocks, don't they just call it "landfall?" Is it because it would push the card into evergreen territory and WotC R&D doesn't want it to be an evergreen keyword?
It's a good question. The name is self-descriptive, and they would still spell out the trigger, so it's not like it would make things hard for noobs. And they use it often enough to warrant being deciduous (if not evergreen).
I think it's a signalling problem. This is already a super complex set (as planeswalkers at uncommon will do...), which I imagine helped contribute to the whole 'two named mechanics' thing. For a new player being introduced to Magic, there's already so many things to learn -- another mechanic, even a self-descriptive one, might be too much.
They always talk about how they got complaints about Mercadian Masques not having mechanics, despite having a bunch of them (Rebels, Mercenaries, and Spellshapers as the most visible) -- because they didn't explicitly have ability words attached to them, so they were just seen as individual cards. Players' understanding of the set, at least at the time, didn't become centered around the abilities (despite the 4 full cycles of Spellshapers, or 30ish Rebels/Mercenaries). Compare to today: someone bringing up, say, Amonkhet, would probably mention Embalm / Eternalize, exert, cycling, or even -1/-1 counters, before they would mention the Cartouche/Trial double cycle or the Desert mechanics, even though there's a relatively comparable number of Deserts to exert cards (across both sets, 19 to 28, with 10 to 0 cards without the mechanic that call it out by name eg "if you control a desert...").
With that in mind, I'm assuming this is a deliberate attempt to go in the other direction -- to not provide that cohesive unity. If a new player sees a cool ability involving proliferate and land drops, they may or may not get the card, but either way they can move on until it comes up in game. If they see something labeled 'landfall', though, that's an indication that they should remember and learn that term, and look out for it in other places in the set -- when, in fact, landfall isn't even a deliberate theme of Ravnica and just happens to come up on one or two cards.
I don't see how it would be worse than, say, Kaladesh only having one creature with prowess, or Eldritch Moon only having one card mention double strike.
The difference is that both of those abilities are evergreen keywords, and thus something the player would have to learn sooner or later. Landfall is not evergreen, nor is it a keyword.
One factor that I think may be being discounted too much is that her ability does not solely trigger off models killed by the initial -1/-1. Even after that initial trigger resolves, her triggers can be activated on that turn by other removal, sacrifices, or even combat. I can see a lot of non-obvious use cases for this, from skullclamping your own x/2 to get the train rolling, using it post combat after a "bad" attack, or using the threat of it to get a swarm of x/2's past large blockers in a game of mutually assured destruction that leaves you with a 4/4. And, as with other cards that have symmetrical effects on the battlefield, characterizing it as having a downside strikes me as off, when you can play with the knowledge of it in your hand/deck in mind.
As someone that was hyped and thoroughly dissapointed by prophetic flamespeaker, I expect this card to not be good enough.
In an agressive deck, it absolutely requires a bunch of 1 cmc spells to be good enough, and might force you to sequence your spells in a way you don't want.
Connecting on your opponent isn't a trivial task... and the magical christmas land of throwing equipment on this and getting a fact or fiction is going to be very rare.
There will be shells where this card is a very solid playable in, but many shells where it's the first card you cut from your deck.
I don't think the upside justifies the narrowness, but it's close and I could be wrong.
Minor note, but this card does not need to connect to activate its ability. It triggers on attack.
You really don't need to be able to cast everything in your deck. You just need a decent chance to cast most things in your deck.
Things this does:
- Bypasses counterspells.
- Gives flash.
- Grants card selection.
- Fixes mana costs.
- Bypasses additional costs.
For all that upside, you get the chance you might whiff. That chance can be lowered by deck construction. And if you don't want that chance at all, topdeck manipulation is quite easy these days, with Scry being evergreen, Surveil being currently in Standard, and a variety of other one-off topdeck tricks existing.
Whether this is highly played will depend on what lives around it, but it certainly seems to have potential.
Okay then, in Standard, at what cost do you think it's correct to start activating this? 3 seems ambitious. 4 is pretty borderline. 5? Is the plan to play this on 2 and then just wait 3 turns for any payoff? CoCo this is not.
Assuming you've built with this in mind, 4 mana isn't terribly borderline. With 28 hits (so less than half the deck), you're looking at a 93% chance of hitting at least one creature, and likely (65%) having some room for selection. If you've built a low to the ground deck, the same 28 hits nets you an 86% chance of hitting on 3. So it's most likely to start hitting on 4, in a deck that's properly built for it. And in those decks, turning extra lands into dude selection is going to be printing money, since it likely doesn't need many lands.
Also why not just Davriel Cane and Teyo Verada as well?
Two reasons I can think of: One, this will be the introduction to these characters for many players, so letting them know what their power suite is is very helpful for establishing those characters for future appearances. Secondly, if they do want to do "First name Last Name" versions of these characters, they'd likely want to save those iconic names for good cards.
So, is there a way to break the Ghostform? It resets walkers, so it certainly gives some Saheeli Cat vibes...
Not currently as far as I know. You would need a walker that you can get to 0 on their own, as well as return the aura to play. I can't see a design doing that.
Aww and here I thought the hat lady would've been Pauline from Super Mario Odyssey
Another 'walker where the - abilities leave a remainder of 1 loyalty Maybe The Wanderer and Tibalt ought to get a room or something to pass the time if they're just gonna stand around and do nothing after.
Edit: Still good abilities nonetheless.
'buster
That seems to be an intentional theme among the uncommon walkers. Between the static abilties and Proliferate, getting use out of the 1 loyalty walkers should be fairly common, even if it's just something like your opponent being forced to kill them in order to gain life/deal damage to you.
Also, for those looking for a backstory, the official bio starts at 9:05 of the preview video.
So who is the Wanderer? Nobody knows where she came from or her real name. What they do know is that the Wanderer is one of the most efficient and most deadly warriors they've seen on any plane, with a magical ability to absorb kinetic energy and redirect it through her massive sword. When facing the Wanderer it's very true the bigger they are the harder they fall. Able to down the largest foes with a single stroke, the Wanderer is also cursed to make an effort not to planeswalk. Unlike most planeswalkers, who are tired by the process of planeswalking, the Wanderer can planeswalk and then planeswalk again almost immediately, but only because if she doesn't focus she will be pulled at random from plane to plane. How she came to be this way and if her spark is different from all others maybe at the heart of her endless journey through the multiverse and her desire to hide her identity. Whether she seeks a person, place, or thing remains to be seen but a peaceful resolution to her never-ending quest seems unlikely
Also, for those looking for a backstory, the official bio starts at 9:05 of the preview video.