Several people have mentioned that you can Mystical Tutor for a land with this. Definitely a cute interaction, that might be the best play in certain situations. However, I think those situations will be very rare, as 2-for-1-ing yourself for a land that bolts you if you want it to enter untapped means you are in pretty bad shape to begin with. However, there are other similar situations were it will be relevant. For example, finding a land with Narset, Parter of Veils seems sweet.
However, I haven't seen any mention the flip-side, which is that this "land" can also be duressed. While something that won't be relevant too often, I can definitely see someone lose a game because of this every once in a blue moon. There is a reason all targeted removal typically says "non-land". Luckily, IoK doesn't hit it.
I think this looks quite good. I think the most natural comparison is to Tamiyo, the Moon Sage, as they are both big blue walkers with very similar abilities. Will costs one more, but protects himself (and you) better than Tamiyo's +1. Will also has a much more consistent draw on the -2. The ultimate is a bit better for Tamiyo, but seeing as they both start at 4, Will having a +2 over Tamiyo's +1 means he will reach his ultimate much faster.
I haven't been playing Tamiyo much in my 450, but sometimes slot her in at 540 and she is serviceable. At first glance, Will just seems better in a blue control deck to me, and the interaction with cards like upheaval looks great. I think Will is playable in the 450-540 range, and will try him out.
On first read I thought the third lore counter gave all creatures +2/+1 and was super psyched for this. With it only pumping Knights, its not good enough for me, but looks cool for larger cubes.
Starting with XLN this can now search for any planeswalker!
Just to expand on this for anyone who have not heard: With XLN they are changing Planeswalkers to be legendary permanents that obey the normal legendary rule, and they are getting rid of the Planeswalker uniqueness rule. This has two important impacts:
You can now control different planeswalker of the same type, i.e., you can control Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Jace Beleren and Jace, Architect of Thought at the same time.
Some cards that care about legendaries now affect planeswalkers as well. Most cards do however explicitly
state Legendary Creature and so will not work. The two most exciting/fun seem to be Thalia's Lancers and Empress Galina.
With this change I think I will try Thalia's Lancers out, seems pretty strong to me - and seems very fun in both flicker and superfriends decks.
It might be worth replacing Larry Nevin's Disk because it can hit planeswalkers. That's the best thing going for it that I can see.
Overall I would call that a drawback, not a benefit, as sweepers see more play in the grindy control decks that usually play more walkers to begin with. My favorite part of disk is that it clears away everything but my walkers, letting me pull further ahead straight away.
This is about oath of nissa, but a similar analysis could probably be done here.
Both look at 3 cards, if you have 17 creatures in your deck, your whiff chance is ~17%, which is a lot less bad on a repeatable effect than on oath of nissa (which obviously hits lots more cards). I think 17 creatures is a reasonable minimum before you include this guy, so it's probably safe assume you have a 17% whiff chance as a WCS when evaluating, that goes down as you add more creatures (at 20 creatures you have about a 10% whiff chance.)
I already did this. See the results on the previous page. At 17 creatures the whiff chance is about 16 % on average.
Did some quick number-crunching to see how reliable the activated ability is. The results are shown in the spoiler below where the first column shows the number of creatures the deck contains and the second the probability of hitting a creature.
In a creature-heavy deck it seems to be quite reliable, but it will still feel pretty bad paying 3 mana to basicly do nothing. There are some cute interactions with cards like Sylvan Library, where you can use it to remove unwanted cards and such. Seems pretty decent in superramp which can run out of steam, with access to 10+ mana this card basicly let's you find the fatty you want.
I have not tested Endless One in my cube, but I am quite sure he would be lackluster. I have played both with and against him in both BFZ sealed and draft. While he definitly is good in that format, at no point did I feel I was doing something very unfair or efficient. I often reevalute some cards after crushing with them in limited and seeing how they play, but playing with Endless One just reaffirms my initial suspisions.
However, I think he fits _very_ nicely into a "begginer" cube. I see some people build lists specially for newer players where they stick to cards with smaller text boxes and evergreen mechanics. In that context I think Endless One is absoloutely perfect, the design is very clean, it is easy to understand that he `goes in every deck' and I think it helps newer player really think about what the curve means for a deck.
Overall a cool limited card due to it's versatility, but not powerful enough for a regular cube, be it powered or unpowered.
Oh, sorry about that. Did a Ctrl+F to find it, but must have misspelled or something. I'll try to delete this thread, or some mod could merge the threads.
As a fan of Vinelasher Kudzu, I think this card is pretty exciting. I will have to test it out to see if the extra colored mana is simply to prohibitive. The best parts of Kudzu is using a dork to get it out turn 2 and immediately drop a fetch and crack it. Being at CMC 3 and doubled colored means you might have to spend your fetches to actually be able to cast it. Maybe the phantom ability can make up for the harder casting cost, I'll try it out and see.
If people like foreign misprints, german Ugin is bonkers. His "-X" is worded as "converted mana cost X or _more_", meaning you can clear the board for "0".
Personally, I shy away from misprints. I consider them custom cards, just like errataed chaos orb.
So some of my friends keep saying I should add Mana Drain to my cube despite not having any of the power 9 but still having things like Jitte, Balance and Recurring Nightmare. The only other card I've seen people be vehemently against in my group was mind twist. Would it be too unfair or just super good and not absolutely broken?
The fact that someone in your group wants to play with the card, and nobody seems to be against it means you might as well try the card out, at least if you have no issue with playing with proxies.
As far as power reasons go, I say mana drain is to powerful for an unpowered cube. Every unpowered cube owner has to draw the line in the sand themselves and say where the cut-off is, and that really isn't trivial. Some people just ban the power 9, which I feel is a silly approach, as those cards are definitly not the 9 most powerful cards in a cube setting.
Now, we have had power rankings of all cards on these forums before, and we're doing them again right now. From 2014, these were the top 20 overall cards in power in a P1P1 capacity (everyone was eligible to vote).
Now, I had already chosen which cards I play in my cube and which I don't before the 2014 power ranking took place. But after the results were in I noticed I don't play any of the top 10 cards, but I play all of the cards from 11 through 20 (except mana vault). If you are looking for some sort of consensus on power levels, you could base them on the power rankings. And in a month or two, I bet the 2015 results will be up, though I don't expect them to change much from the 2014 as the cards on the list are already stellar.
Going by this method I would say that playing Jitte, but excluding Mana drain for power reasons is weird. (You could still ban Mana Drain on grounds that fast mana leads to unfun games, etc). Personally, I exclude Mana drain but include Recurring, altough they have the same ranking - so this definitly isn't a perfect way to do it, in the end you have to go with your own preferences.
1. Balance
2. Armageddon / Ravages of War
3. Elspeth, Knight-Errant
4. Stoneforge Mystic
5. Gideon Jura
6. Land Tax
7. Swords to Plowshares
8. Wrath of God
9. Council's Judgment
10. Day of Judgment
11. Path to Exile
12. Catastrophe
13. Hero of Bladehold
14. Brimaz, King of Oreskos
15. Mother of Runes
16. Monastery Mentor
17. Oblivion Ring
18. Banishing Light
19. Restoration Angel
20. Elspeth, Sun's Champion
However, I haven't seen any mention the flip-side, which is that this "land" can also be duressed. While something that won't be relevant too often, I can definitely see someone lose a game because of this every once in a blue moon. There is a reason all targeted removal typically says "non-land". Luckily, IoK doesn't hit it.
I haven't been playing Tamiyo much in my 450, but sometimes slot her in at 540 and she is serviceable. At first glance, Will just seems better in a blue control deck to me, and the interaction with cards like upheaval looks great. I think Will is playable in the 450-540 range, and will try him out.
Just to expand on this for anyone who have not heard: With XLN they are changing Planeswalkers to be legendary permanents that obey the normal legendary rule, and they are getting rid of the Planeswalker uniqueness rule. This has two important impacts:
With this change I think I will try Thalia's Lancers out, seems pretty strong to me - and seems very fun in both flicker and superfriends decks.
Overall I would call that a drawback, not a benefit, as sweepers see more play in the grindy control decks that usually play more walkers to begin with. My favorite part of disk is that it clears away everything but my walkers, letting me pull further ahead straight away.
I already did this. See the results on the previous page. At 17 creatures the whiff chance is about 16 % on average.
5 30.6%
6 37.1%
7 43.2%
8 48.8%
9 54.1%
10 59.1%
11 63.6%
12 67.8%
13 71.7%
14 75.3%
15 78.4%
16 81.5%
17 84.0%
18 86.4%
19 88.6%
20 90.5%
21 92.2%
22 93.7%
23 94.9%
24 96.0%
In a creature-heavy deck it seems to be quite reliable, but it will still feel pretty bad paying 3 mana to basicly do nothing. There are some cute interactions with cards like Sylvan Library, where you can use it to remove unwanted cards and such. Seems pretty decent in superramp which can run out of steam, with access to 10+ mana this card basicly let's you find the fatty you want.
However, I think he fits _very_ nicely into a "begginer" cube. I see some people build lists specially for newer players where they stick to cards with smaller text boxes and evergreen mechanics. In that context I think Endless One is absoloutely perfect, the design is very clean, it is easy to understand that he `goes in every deck' and I think it helps newer player really think about what the curve means for a deck.
Overall a cool limited card due to it's versatility, but not powerful enough for a regular cube, be it powered or unpowered.
Oh, sorry about that. Did a Ctrl+F to find it, but must have misspelled or something. I'll try to delete this thread, or some mod could merge the threads.
As a fan of Vinelasher Kudzu, I think this card is pretty exciting. I will have to test it out to see if the extra colored mana is simply to prohibitive. The best parts of Kudzu is using a dork to get it out turn 2 and immediately drop a fetch and crack it. Being at CMC 3 and doubled colored means you might have to spend your fetches to actually be able to cast it. Maybe the phantom ability can make up for the harder casting cost, I'll try it out and see.
And how many would you run in 360 unpowered cube? What about at 540 Unpowered?
Personally, I shy away from misprints. I consider them custom cards, just like errataed chaos orb.
The fact that someone in your group wants to play with the card, and nobody seems to be against it means you might as well try the card out, at least if you have no issue with playing with proxies.
As far as power reasons go, I say mana drain is to powerful for an unpowered cube. Every unpowered cube owner has to draw the line in the sand themselves and say where the cut-off is, and that really isn't trivial. Some people just ban the power 9, which I feel is a silly approach, as those cards are definitly not the 9 most powerful cards in a cube setting.
Now, we have had power rankings of all cards on these forums before, and we're doing them again right now. From 2014, these were the top 20 overall cards in power in a P1P1 capacity (everyone was eligible to vote).
2 Library of Alexandria - 18.4
3 Black Lotus - 17.6
4 Ancestral Recall - 16.6
5 Time Walk - 15.3
6 Umezawa's Jitte - 15.1
7 ABU Mox Jewelry - 14.6
8 Mind Twist - 10.4
9 Mana Crypt - 8.2
10 Mana Drain - 8.1
10 Recurring Nightmare - 8.1
12 Jace, the Mind Sculptor - 7.4
13 Balance - 6.9
14 Skullclamp - 5.9
15 Sword of Fire and Ice - 5.6
16 Mana Vault - 3.8
17 Tinker - 3.2
18 Sulfuric Vortex - 2.7
19 Strip Mine - 2.4
19 Mox Diamond - 2.4
20 Armageddon / Ravages of War - 2.1
20 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
Now, I had already chosen which cards I play in my cube and which I don't before the 2014 power ranking took place. But after the results were in I noticed I don't play any of the top 10 cards, but I play all of the cards from 11 through 20 (except mana vault). If you are looking for some sort of consensus on power levels, you could base them on the power rankings. And in a month or two, I bet the 2015 results will be up, though I don't expect them to change much from the 2014 as the cards on the list are already stellar.
Going by this method I would say that playing Jitte, but excluding Mana drain for power reasons is weird. (You could still ban Mana Drain on grounds that fast mana leads to unfun games, etc). Personally, I exclude Mana drain but include Recurring, altough they have the same ranking - so this definitly isn't a perfect way to do it, in the end you have to go with your own preferences.
1. Balance
2. Armageddon / Ravages of War
3. Elspeth, Knight-Errant
4. Stoneforge Mystic
5. Gideon Jura
6. Land Tax
7. Swords to Plowshares
8. Wrath of God
9. Council's Judgment
10. Day of Judgment
11. Path to Exile
12. Catastrophe
13. Hero of Bladehold
14. Brimaz, King of Oreskos
15. Mother of Runes
16. Monastery Mentor
17. Oblivion Ring
18. Banishing Light
19. Restoration Angel
20. Elspeth, Sun's Champion