MTG Salvation

Quote from EyeballFrog »

So here's a question. Why does Embalm use up valuable complexity points by removing the mana cost of the token?

Embalm as a whole seems incredibly ham-fisted and it really feels like it eats up way too much future design space for accomplishing something that will only be less than 20 cards between this and the next set. Having creatures that create straight token copies of themselves (no extra junk thrown in like "now they are white" or "but no CMC" needed, just a copy) by paying a cost to exile them from the graveyard seems like more than enough on its own - embalm has a ton of baggage and I'm not really feeling it. A less restrictive "creature flashback" could have been used by all colours, too.

Day one spoilers seem underwhelming so far. The most exciting card is a red one drop.

Flametongue Kavu was a card that shaped an entire format - this is about as close as Standard is going to get to that, I think.

That being said, the difference between 4 mana and 5 mana CMC is a huge difference even if you do get flying + haste for your extra mana. Repeatable "free" removal is always good but how useful this is will be determined by what its primary opposition will be both in the air for combat and what it has to shoot.

Bloodbraid this is not (no Haste and doesn"t trigger on cast) but there are advantages to being colourless. This is more "combo" than "aggro". I like it.

Quote from Nightshade1233 »

Really not a best card, but... Anyone noticed that they printed a new card with affinity for artifacts?

Gearseeker Serpent

Gearseeker is actually really useful - good cost reduction and can break board states without any outside help.

The 'Fire' half of Fire // Ice is always welcome in Standard.

On one hand, Crucible is nice here - but on the other hand now I am worried we aren't going to see it reprinted normally anytime soon...

So...no good burn spells in the set, then?

Quote from Raptorchan »

The main use of this card that I can see - it's a perfect candidate for discard. Seriously, how Kaladesh with huge token theme can interact with SOI discard engines? This is the answer. Discard, return with investigate/fabricate, repeat.

This. It makes cards like Veilborn Ghoul look like a joke - satisfying the criteria for returning is really easy to fuel a discard effect. Then if you don't need your discard engine anymore you can chump block or attack with 4 power several times. Very solid.

Quote from Sephon19 »

This cycle bothers me a bit - not because of the gameplay. But are the original fastlands reprintable outside Mirrodin? Aren't they way too setting specific to get reprinted here in Kaladesh, for example? Does anyone see an unawkward solution to this?

Welcome to the reason why we haven't seen the allied painlands in a while.

The only format this is nuts in is Commander. In Standard this is a 4 mana card thar does nothing the turn it comes down, only castable in main phase and will have to deal with lots of targeted hate.

Quote from PochetteRecharge »

Re: Glint-Sleeved Artisan: Has mono-white ever gotten a 3/3 for 3 at common? Much less one with an option to go wide as well? That's something new, for drafters at least.

Attended Knight comes to mind. Always goes wide but has first strike instead of +1/+1 (and the token isn't as useful as an artifact is as a tradeoff).

Also, Blade Splicer for a similar card, but not at common.

I was waiting for them to reveal that the vase was made out of silver at some point in the short story. No dice.

I find it interesting that they have such a hard time with telling a story through cards as they used to be really, really good at it for a very long time (see: Ice Age block through Invasion block).

The only "miss" of this set is Inquisition at rare - and even then just because it makes no sense in a set designed to be played in 4 player multiplayer games and the average CMC of the "good" cards takes most of them out of Inquisition range. It could easily have been an uncommon.

Otherwise, the set looks fantastic. The world of Fiora is a little more bland this time (all of the interesting artifacts are gone, etc) but that is a small price to pay for some actual reprints and even a few new viable cards in older formats.

If this set has the ally painlands in it then I doubt any other set will ever top getting so many things off of my buylist, EVER.