Ramping to omnath can't be called a control strategy unless your deck is very unfocused - which is just not competitive. Nobody calls G/R devotion a control deck at the moment, do they? I believe Temur control may be viable, but as U/R splashing green for value creatures and/or planeswalkers (hi sarkhan) - of which omnath definitely could be one in a slower metagame.
As for ramping straight to omnath then going nuts - this assumes 1) you get to omnath in time and 2) you actually get to keep omnath long enough to get insane value from him. I find it highly difficult to imagine what sort of deck will not pose at least one of these problems, but it's such value to untap with omnath that he probably sees a little play anyway.
I do think you can have a seven drop on turn 4 assuming a nut draw with no disruption.
No one calls GR devotion a control deck because it doesn't pack a ton of removal and counter spells and it's goal isn't to stop the opponent from doing things until the game is locked away and it's safe to cast a game ending threat. Like I said; The rampant growths are value early because control decks want to get their lands out and if you don't have a 2 mana counterspell or have reason to think you wont need to use it why not rampant growth. Get ahead in an archetype that can make the most use of getting ahead. If you get Omnath a turn early that's fantastic. If you just get your one land a turn and play him on turn 7 hoping he makes it that's not such a great plan but, like I said if you can get to a position where you can cast him and then play a land, preferably a fetch, then you're in value town. And Omnath completely negates the downside of running Rampant Growths into the late game because they're normally terrible top decks. But if you've got Omnath they're fantastic. I mean this is all spitballing but I think it's worth looking into.
Temur control, with rampant growth effects? Exactly what sort of control deck is this? I think temur control may be a thing, but definitely not because of omnath.
He would be decent to supplement the atarkas in a ramp plan though, I think.
Because early game if you're not doing something else with your lands you can fix your mana and late game it's straight up card advantage? And hell, the aforementioned Embodiment of Spring isn't a terrible consideration. It slows aggro decks down, gets your mana and becomes a 2 mana 5/5 with a bolt attached late game. I think he makes a damn fine control finisher.
I'm getting visions of Temur control. Am I the only one? I mean if we get Rampant Growth or something functionally identical it's not out of the question to get him down on turn 5. And in a control deck packing counterspells and burn you could wait until you could do something stupid like play Hulknath then play a fetch and crack it all in one turn. Throw in Nissa for consistency, Evolutionary Leap for sacs (and awesome filtering if we get anything that looks at the top of our deck. Wonder what Oracle of Mul Daya is doing these days), and Ugin as an alternate finisher and methinks you have a deck.
Elves aren't the same species as other "creatures." I don't think it can be correctly called "racism." I don't like (Earth) cats. Am I racist? Sapience doesn't change that. It might be yucky (Planet of the Apes), but it's pretty far removed from any political issues here in our plane, right?
Racism, Specism. Whatever. If we had other sapient species on earth it would definitely be a problem. We can't handle someone having an ancestry that promoted the expression of extra melanin due to geographical location. Elves might not be so much a problem as they often look almost exactly human but could you imagine if we had leonin, ainok, orcs, or goblins?
"Listen here, boy, it worked for 5000 years until a certain mind mage came along!" Ugin bellowed.
BTW I find it both amusing and further proof of the absolute crapiness of Wizards production quality for these things. Yesterday when they previewed Guardian of Tazeem the "cover slide" so to speak said Battle for Zendikar Hedron Archive. I thought that was the name of the card they were showing until they showed the sphinx. So I thought huh maybe it's a flavorful name for the previews they'll be giving out. Turns out no it's a strictly better Ur-Golems Eye.
This will definitely be a limited bomb. I like the effect, and making it lean towards mono colored makes me happy! Here's hoping there is a cycle of these badboys, maybe as intro pack rares as has been stated.
So white has angel, red elemental, black demon, green hydra?
Why would everyone get their iconic creature except red? There's no reason it can't be a dragon. I mean it will share most of it's standard life with Dragons of Tarkir so there'd be plenty of synergy.
Blue control has so many better options already that this won't see play. Weird card to spoil first.
Well technically it's not the first spoil. Also it makes perfect sense here. They want to save the really good stuff for the BFZ preview show and then the official spoiler season in a few weeks. So if they were going to give us something this early it makes sense for it to be something kinda middling in level but still show off something new in the Landfall that cares about land types.
Also: Do we think this does anything for the likelihood of non-basics with basic types? Even if it's just an ETBT land with the basic types.
Slamming the Ally creature type on his inevitable Beatstick ability has literally no opportunity cost. He probably won't do anything else with them, but that's fine.
As we've seen, the new allies don't necessarily work like ETB slivers, so Gideon not triggering it also doesn't necessarily need to be bad for an Ally deck. The creature type alone should be enough, nothing else needs to be tribal about the card (and hopefully isn't so).
Also, Gideon doesn't make tokens. Elspeth and Sorin do. They've been consolidating on planeswalker design space, and therefore I think its unlikely that he will make tokens. The template for Gideon is generally to be a beatstick and have some abilities that interact with the board in a more direct way.
No I'm totally fine with that. If they give him an ally creature type when he animates sure. What I have a problem with is if they have him make ally tokens and base is P/T on your number of allies and blah blah blah.
But... Nobody was arguing the fact that it's Kiora in the artwork.
Is that so?
Quote from Ucross »
Quote from echelon_house »
I just realized that the art they showed us at SDCC spoiled something big for us that I haven't seen anyone else mention. By the time of these stories, Sea Gate has already fallen and Kiora still hasn't even been introduced yet, but the art shows her, Gideon, and Nissa all fighting Eldrazi together at the Lighthouse. Apparently at some point the three of them team up to retake the city. My guess is they're probably successful, it's the first big victory against the Eldrazi, and it marks the turning point in the war.
That is likely NOT Kiora and just our new merfolk Jori En IMO.
No one calls GR devotion a control deck because it doesn't pack a ton of removal and counter spells and it's goal isn't to stop the opponent from doing things until the game is locked away and it's safe to cast a game ending threat. Like I said; The rampant growths are value early because control decks want to get their lands out and if you don't have a 2 mana counterspell or have reason to think you wont need to use it why not rampant growth. Get ahead in an archetype that can make the most use of getting ahead. If you get Omnath a turn early that's fantastic. If you just get your one land a turn and play him on turn 7 hoping he makes it that's not such a great plan but, like I said if you can get to a position where you can cast him and then play a land, preferably a fetch, then you're in value town. And Omnath completely negates the downside of running Rampant Growths into the late game because they're normally terrible top decks. But if you've got Omnath they're fantastic. I mean this is all spitballing but I think it's worth looking into.
Because early game if you're not doing something else with your lands you can fix your mana and late game it's straight up card advantage? And hell, the aforementioned Embodiment of Spring isn't a terrible consideration. It slows aggro decks down, gets your mana and becomes a 2 mana 5/5 with a bolt attached late game. I think he makes a damn fine control finisher.
Racism, Specism. Whatever. If we had other sapient species on earth it would definitely be a problem. We can't handle someone having an ancestry that promoted the expression of extra melanin due to geographical location. Elves might not be so much a problem as they often look almost exactly human but could you imagine if we had leonin, ainok, orcs, or goblins?
"Listen here, boy, it worked for 5000 years until a certain mind mage came along!" Ugin bellowed.
BTW I find it both amusing and further proof of the absolute crapiness of Wizards production quality for these things. Yesterday when they previewed Guardian of Tazeem the "cover slide" so to speak said Battle for Zendikar Hedron Archive. I thought that was the name of the card they were showing until they showed the sphinx. So I thought huh maybe it's a flavorful name for the previews they'll be giving out. Turns out no it's a strictly better Ur-Golems Eye.
Why would everyone get their iconic creature except red? There's no reason it can't be a dragon. I mean it will share most of it's standard life with Dragons of Tarkir so there'd be plenty of synergy.
Well technically it's not the first spoil. Also it makes perfect sense here. They want to save the really good stuff for the BFZ preview show and then the official spoiler season in a few weeks. So if they were going to give us something this early it makes sense for it to be something kinda middling in level but still show off something new in the Landfall that cares about land types.
Also: Do we think this does anything for the likelihood of non-basics with basic types? Even if it's just an ETBT land with the basic types.
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/columns/uncharted-realms-archive
At the bottom is a week by week archive that's a little better than the "By setting" portion they have just below the origin stories.
Well I'm pretty sure that's not meant to be a constructed card. But that thing is a limited bomb for sure.
No I'm totally fine with that. If they give him an ally creature type when he animates sure. What I have a problem with is if they have him make ally tokens and base is P/T on your number of allies and blah blah blah.
Is that so?