It is still equipped to the original creature while the ability is on the stack. This means you can only target the elvish piper.
502.33. Equip
502.33a Equip is an activated ability of artifact Equipment cards. The phrase "Equip [cost]" means "[cost]: Move this Equipment onto target creature you control. Play this ability only any time you could play a sorcery."
Notice how it only moves on resolution. It will "fizzle" like any other spell or ability on the stack with no legal targets and remain attached to the arbor elf.
Let's say I'm too poor/cheap to buy Shocks and/or Temples. In a 2-color control deck with some color-intensive mana costs, is it worth running Guildgates?
How do the probabilities for hitting certain spells you want to cast look with just basic lands? If they can be improved by the addition of ETBT duals without the loss of tempo (verdict on 5 instead of 4 hurts) then yes, it's worth it. In my experience, almost every two color control deck can afford to, at the minimum, have 4 ETBT duals without any problems.
As an aside, if you're too poor to buy the shocks, that's fine, but if you're being too cheap, I would urge you to reconsider your ways. Shocks are the 2nd best dual lands printed, are essentially required for modern, and even allow you to play many legacy decks, albeit sub-optimally. A playset of them all, gotten for as cheap as they are going to get at the moment (and maybe cheaper at/just after rotation) is a pretty good pickup from a playability perspective.
The most important blow against her is that she sucks.
Pithy, but not accurate. She is another Night Soil or Necrogenesis effect in EDH, so right away that community can justify her $5.00ish price tag as a mythic. She's not going anywhere in Vintage or Legacy, sure, but in Standard and Modern I think you want to wait and see what happens with decks like green devotion before deciding how you feel about her. Remember, green devotion runs lots of dorks. If you're doing well, Pharika is a 5/5 indestructible monster. If you've been boardwiped, she generates blockers while you get back on your feet with all the dorks in your yard.
In short: she has a very large amount of potential if she gets a home. I would expect her to durdle around $5.00 until then, shoot up to $20.00 on market panic when someone finally 8s using her down the road, and then sink back down to $5.00 - $10.00 long term.
Those two cards are barely played in any format. Pharika also has the downside of giving your opponent the token if you're attempting to stop some graveyard shenanigans. She'll probably stay at 5 purely off of being a mythic and a god, but in no way deserves that price point. Even if there's a standard spike, there's no way she'll maintain that post rotation (granted, that's a long time from now).
Curse of the Swine doesn't make this playable. Nor does Thaumaturge makes Swine playable. A card that promises so much but offers real little.
While I totally agree that any x spells are high cost multiple target spells are cute and not serious enough, this + mana confluence might actually open up some new aggro decks. A 2/1 for 2 that makes your spells cheaper is not amazing, but it's not awful either. Unfortunately, this guy is basically a 3 drop if you want to protect him which makes it much worse. It would have been really interesting if it just had hexproof always.
Clearly this card is the first half of a combo! The second half is sure to come out in M15 and will look like this:
Omen Seer1GR
Creature - Human Shaman
0/2 tScry 1, then add G to your manapool
~ untaps whenever an opponent looses life.
...But yea, lacking something silly in the next expansion, Knowledge and Power is trash. But let's not judge an expansion solely on the worst card in it, okay?
Players don't ever loose life, so its triggered ability is worthless, =P. The sad truth is even that creature wouldn't be enough to have this see play.
I think the problem is that the best cards in this set are also worthless (for competitive, non-standard constructed play). Keep in mind that standard, by it's very nature, is forced to use bad cards (relative to the non-rotating formats).
I think its at least better than Sword of Body and Mind as it ads more momentum to the Board, while its often easier to "activate".
And its by far the best think to put on a Batterskull!
I'm not sure about adding more momentum. Pro blue/green is still pretty strong, and connections result in creating a token which can at least wear the swords again. The p/t boosts are pretty much equivalent. The more important thing is that 1WW/3 is fairly different from 3/2.
More of a 1 for 0 since your oppoent is static but you get +1 card.
No, it's a 2 for 1. You're using one card to get two cards. It's not the same as a 1 for 0 would have to involve you doing nothing, for all intents and purposes. Looting away a land late game is kind of a 1 for 0, assuming you already got plenty of value out of the looter to justify its existence and you weren't going to attack or block with it anyway. Or something like having your opponent play a Falkenrath Aristocrat on MTGO and then accidentally sac it to itself.
While this is true, using the phrase x for y really makes sense as an interaction between players, i.e. I traded one card of mine for 2 of my opponents cards. While you can also use it to mean "I used 1 card of mine to gain 2 cards of mine" because there's no actual definition, using it like this seems overly pedantic and it feels like it's actually making the meaning less clear (you know, the opposite goal of effective communication). I'd argue that using this phrasing in that situation (spending a turn to draw cards) is just wrong, not grammatically, but semantically.
The issue is the same as the issue elves face now, just at a much lower magnitude because haha wacky premodern Elf cards. If they pushed K&P power level into the easily playable range, it'd make it hard for any other scry support down the line. With the pool of Scry cards we have now, none of the examples for how to handle it (except maybe Dao's item, as that's way too splashable and starts the Shock countdown way too fast) would actually break Standard. But somewhere down the line, if they wanted to print easily repeated Scry cards, they would look back at this and decide they can't.
To me, the safest push version they could do would be:
Knowledge and Power 1RR
Whenever you scry, you may pay R. If you do, K&P deals 2 damage to target creature or player.
The requirement for R makes it very hard to mix the deck with any repeatable U scry tricks. Which is where any ridiculous overdoing it with Scry would go. I agree that the version they made is way too casual and safe, but putting this at the very early game drops makes for a very big stumbling block on printing more Scry in later sets.
Actually, they could push it to 1R and free shock activation on any scry and it still wouldn't matter much in eternal/non-rotating formats. Have you played with legacy/modern decks? What would this deck do that is better than any of the current decks anyway? Don't say scrylands. Maybe, just maybe, some scry aggro deck would be born in standard.
What, exactly, do you think I'm saying? Because I'm saying this card is fine as it is and is not the result of a mistake or everyone in development hating fun and wanting players to suffer. I don't think there's a good way to design this without either making it too good or too weak because, as has been mentioned a few times, there are a lot more ways to activate this with a lot less cost involved than there were to activate burning vengeance or . At 5 mana even just taking the activations off you're still basically warping standard here. Properly costed with no activation I'd put it around 3RRR or so and I'd still be uneasy about it. With activation, though it might have been made cheaper, but it's still priced outside of playability. 5 mana might be too much, but even 2 mana wouldn't make this card more playable.
This card seems rather terrible as is. I will be rather surprised if it sees much limited play. You seem to disagree on this point though, so I say we just drop it.
So your claim is that there is no enchantment in the world that can be triggered by scrying and deal damage that can be balanced? This is quite a strong claim and would be rather difficult to justify. Perhaps that's why you didn't justify it. Here are some potentially better designs which vary in power level...
K&P (V1) 1R
Enchantment
Whenever you scry, you may pay R. If you do, K&P deals 2 damage to target creature
K&P (V2) 1R
Enchantment
When K&P enters the battlefield, scry 1.
Whenever you scry, you may pay 2. If you do, K&P deals 2 damage to target creature or player.
K&P (V3) 2R
Enchantment
When K&P enters the battlefield, scry 1.
Whenever you scry, you may pay 2. If you do, K&P deals 2 damage to target creature or player.
K&P (V4) 2R
Enchantment
When K&P enters the battlefield, scry 1.
Whenever you scry, you may pay R. If you do, K&P deals 2 damage to target creature.
K&P (V5) 3R
Enchantment
When K&P enters the battlefield, scry 1.
Whenever you scry, you may pay 2. If you do, K&P deals 3 damage to target creature or player.
K&P (V6) 3R
Enchantment
When K&P enters the battlefield, scry 1.
Whenever you scry, K&P deals 1 damage to target creature or player.
...You see how easy it is to play with the numbers and make cards which are better than K&P while being worse than your insane version. I don't know exactly what numbers make a card which is playable because doing so requires playtesting and time I don't have, But I will gaurantee that there is a version of K&P that is balanced.
Yeah, there is a version that's balanced. It's the one that they printed. Those cards of yours are stronger sure, but that doesn't make them better. In fact, by making K&P "better" you could be actively destroying magic.
You're looking at the card in the context of the set. Wizards uses this concept called "design space". K&P is on the lower level of the power spectrum so that they can have more wiggle room in the future to design cards like it. There's only so many dials to turn on each card and if you knock each one up to 10 every time, you're cutting out future cards that could be desgined but won't because they've been obsoleted before they've even seen print. But sure let's just destroy magic so YOU can have 1 slightly better UNCOMMON.
You know, Search the City is worse that K&P and that's rare so I don't see the point in getting angry at K&P.
What cards would push this over the edge?
What deck would have trouble dealing with this?
Any. That card is ridiculously OP in standard. Terrible design. Yeah, let's just obselete Lightning Rift guys.
Stuff like K&P just reminds me that Wizards knows what they're doing, and if you make card suggestion like any of the above it proves that you don't understand magic design AT ALL.
Balanced? Overpowered? Are you kidding? Even if they made it 4/2 instead of 5/2, which is a minimum 6 mana + a condition to get a shock, this card would still be garbage. For that much mana you get an elspeth, only a "slightly" higher source of value. Mogis will essentially already do what this card does with no other investments. If you honestly think 4/2 would break standard, I would have no choice but to conclude that your card analysis skills are quite poor. Hell, I'd argue that pushing it as far to 2/2 would still be competitively worthless, but at least it would be more interesting for brews.
Obsolete lightning rift? Cycling has other benefits (not the least of which is that it REPLACES THE DAMN CARD). What are you going to do with scry? Chain into a trillion scry spells? 6 mana for a triple shock on turn 6 (the best scenario) is not what most people would consider overpowered or anything remotely close to it.
Looking at this card from any context besides people who brew with awful cards for fun, makes this a terrible card. And even then, it's awful because awful cards are what's assumed when in the context of people who brew with awful cards for fun. They keep making the trash mechanic -> burn enchantment, and people are just hoping that they could make one fringe playable instead of actual trash.
I think mono-black aggro is going to be highly viable with Tormented Hero, Gnarled Scarhide, Pain Seer, Spiteful Returned, Mogi's Maruader, Herald of Torment, and Master of the Feast. Just need one reasonable two drop black aggressive creature in M15 or the new block. Maybe Brain Maggot and 4 Thoughtseize for a potent aggro-control deck. Now I want to make an aggro-control deck.....
I think Mono-black will shift to a potent, two-color midrange deck as they're keeping hero's downfall, thoughtseize, and whip of erebos.
I don't know how strong mono-blue will be losing all its major devotion enabling creatures. Thassa and master are not independently powerful.
G/R will always be a deck, I think we've almost always had a 1 mana, mana dork, and even if we don't it still has the amazing caryatid.
I really want to see what control does after rotation. I mean I couldn't imagine what it was going to look like when it lost tamiyo, augur, think twice, and restoration angel, but it assembled an extremely powerful deck.
At the moment, it doesn't look like Theros offers any of the useful control tools (relevant card draw and sweepers) to keep up. The planeswalkers also seem really lacking. It's really going to depend on the new sets.
Since this thread already got necroed, can we continue the discussion since I don't really want to create another sphinx's rev thread while this is already on page 1?
Now that it's been roughly a year, what are peoples thoughts on holding this. They seem like a good sell since I don't see much modern/legacy/edh demand.
I've probably stated this already, but it's abundantly clear from reading through this thread which contributors have extensive, hands-on experience with Legacy, and which contributors are casual observers who get their information from reading deck lists rather than playing games.
Reanimator and Delver both play Brainstorm, Ponder, Force of Will, Daze, Fetches, Duals, and sometimes Thoughtseize. I had no idea they were the same deck.
I thought all legacy games went
t1: delver
t2: iona
t3. tendrils for 24
But seriously, those posters you're referring to do have a valid point. Many of the cards in legacy are so superior to any alternative that you virtually auto-include them in a given color. Unfortunately, this is a problem in any competitive, construced CCG format I've ever seen! Either you have certain shells with many variations because of utility (delver shells) or you end up with incredibly synergistic decks that have very little overlap and are essentially silos (things like affinity, elves combo, combo decks in general for the most part).
Thankfully, legacy uses the former to still offer quite a lot of strategic variance. This results in the same shell of cards feeling fairly different when actually playing.
Let's take a creature with a similar ability to the one described- Cunning Sparkmage. If you declare the Sparkmage as an attacker for some reason during the declare attackers step, you will tap it. When you get priority during that step, you'll see that the Sparkmage is tapped and you can't pay the cost to activate its ability.
Basically, you have to choose one when it comes to an ability with T in the cost. You can't simultaneously use the ability AND attack.
I think with the "...somehow..." Arska was implying that you'd tap to use the ability then have some effect untap the creature before declare attackers. This is a fairly vague answer on the rulings board though...
You can return it through cruel revival but not through disturbed burial. It's a Zombie card, but not a creature card. It has a type of tribal and instant, with a subtype of every creature type.
502.33. Equip
502.33a Equip is an activated ability of artifact Equipment cards. The phrase "Equip [cost]" means "[cost]: Move this Equipment onto target creature you control. Play this ability only any time you could play a sorcery."
Notice how it only moves on resolution. It will "fizzle" like any other spell or ability on the stack with no legal targets and remain attached to the arbor elf.
How do the probabilities for hitting certain spells you want to cast look with just basic lands? If they can be improved by the addition of ETBT duals without the loss of tempo (verdict on 5 instead of 4 hurts) then yes, it's worth it. In my experience, almost every two color control deck can afford to, at the minimum, have 4 ETBT duals without any problems.
As an aside, if you're too poor to buy the shocks, that's fine, but if you're being too cheap, I would urge you to reconsider your ways. Shocks are the 2nd best dual lands printed, are essentially required for modern, and even allow you to play many legacy decks, albeit sub-optimally. A playset of them all, gotten for as cheap as they are going to get at the moment (and maybe cheaper at/just after rotation) is a pretty good pickup from a playability perspective.
Those two cards are barely played in any format. Pharika also has the downside of giving your opponent the token if you're attempting to stop some graveyard shenanigans. She'll probably stay at 5 purely off of being a mythic and a god, but in no way deserves that price point. Even if there's a standard spike, there's no way she'll maintain that post rotation (granted, that's a long time from now).
While I totally agree that any x spells are high cost multiple target spells are cute and not serious enough, this + mana confluence might actually open up some new aggro decks. A 2/1 for 2 that makes your spells cheaper is not amazing, but it's not awful either. Unfortunately, this guy is basically a 3 drop if you want to protect him which makes it much worse. It would have been really interesting if it just had hexproof always.
Players don't ever loose life, so its triggered ability is worthless, =P. The sad truth is even that creature wouldn't be enough to have this see play.
I think the problem is that the best cards in this set are also worthless (for competitive, non-standard constructed play). Keep in mind that standard, by it's very nature, is forced to use bad cards (relative to the non-rotating formats).
I'm not sure about adding more momentum. Pro blue/green is still pretty strong, and connections result in creating a token which can at least wear the swords again. The p/t boosts are pretty much equivalent. The more important thing is that 1WW/3 is fairly different from 3/2.
While this is true, using the phrase x for y really makes sense as an interaction between players, i.e. I traded one card of mine for 2 of my opponents cards. While you can also use it to mean "I used 1 card of mine to gain 2 cards of mine" because there's no actual definition, using it like this seems overly pedantic and it feels like it's actually making the meaning less clear (you know, the opposite goal of effective communication). I'd argue that using this phrasing in that situation (spending a turn to draw cards) is just wrong, not grammatically, but semantically.
Actually, they could push it to 1R and free shock activation on any scry and it still wouldn't matter much in eternal/non-rotating formats. Have you played with legacy/modern decks? What would this deck do that is better than any of the current decks anyway? Don't say scrylands. Maybe, just maybe, some scry aggro deck would be born in standard.
The most important blow against her is that she sucks. The not being played as a 4-of is typically the effect of this.
Balanced? Overpowered? Are you kidding? Even if they made it 4/2 instead of 5/2, which is a minimum 6 mana + a condition to get a shock, this card would still be garbage. For that much mana you get an elspeth, only a "slightly" higher source of value. Mogis will essentially already do what this card does with no other investments. If you honestly think 4/2 would break standard, I would have no choice but to conclude that your card analysis skills are quite poor. Hell, I'd argue that pushing it as far to 2/2 would still be competitively worthless, but at least it would be more interesting for brews.
Obsolete lightning rift? Cycling has other benefits (not the least of which is that it REPLACES THE DAMN CARD). What are you going to do with scry? Chain into a trillion scry spells? 6 mana for a triple shock on turn 6 (the best scenario) is not what most people would consider overpowered or anything remotely close to it.
Looking at this card from any context besides people who brew with awful cards for fun, makes this a terrible card. And even then, it's awful because awful cards are what's assumed when in the context of people who brew with awful cards for fun. They keep making the trash mechanic -> burn enchantment, and people are just hoping that they could make one fringe playable instead of actual trash.
At the moment, it doesn't look like Theros offers any of the useful control tools (relevant card draw and sweepers) to keep up. The planeswalkers also seem really lacking. It's really going to depend on the new sets.
Now that it's been roughly a year, what are peoples thoughts on holding this. They seem like a good sell since I don't see much modern/legacy/edh demand.
I thought all legacy games went
t1: delver
t2: iona
t3. tendrils for 24
But seriously, those posters you're referring to do have a valid point. Many of the cards in legacy are so superior to any alternative that you virtually auto-include them in a given color. Unfortunately, this is a problem in any competitive, construced CCG format I've ever seen! Either you have certain shells with many variations because of utility (delver shells) or you end up with incredibly synergistic decks that have very little overlap and are essentially silos (things like affinity, elves combo, combo decks in general for the most part).
Thankfully, legacy uses the former to still offer quite a lot of strategic variance. This results in the same shell of cards feeling fairly different when actually playing.
I think with the "...somehow..." Arska was implying that you'd tap to use the ability then have some effect untap the creature before declare attackers. This is a fairly vague answer on the rulings board though...