So this is a very nice card, it's cool and everything, but I have a few observations:
Has anyone else noticed that WOTC has really been using some of the same themes for the past couple of years over and over again? Between this, Panharmonicon, Naban, and Tesya we've been getting a lot of "If etb/deah happens, do it twice" type of abilities. Similarly, the number of legendaries that are monocolored but with 5c abilities has ballooned expoenentially in a very short amount of time. Tazri, Najeela, Sisay, Morophon, Golos, Ramos, etc. They've been milking these types of designs hard in the last couple years or so.
Somebody at WOTC really has a hard on for sultai because not only do they keep releasing super powerful sultai legends every year, it seems, these cards are also always more generically good than their counterparts from other wedges, let alone other color combos. Muldrotha grabs any permanent, this triggers off of any permanent. Maybe you can say the new Jeskai bird legend is nearly this generically powerful but have Abzan, Temur or Mardu gotten anything this powerful or wide open in years? Compare the narrow new Kaalia to this or the new Naya angel. This wouldn't be as apparent if this triggered off of lands or creatures or something but it literally reads "If anything you play triggers anything else you have, double that." For EDH in particular, this puts sultai even farther ahead than it already is as the best three color combination possible in the format. And with WOTC literally coming out and saying they're designing with commander in mind with most sets now... What gives, Wizards?
I mean 7 mana is not terrible, especially in Commander. There are few cards that can net back instants and sorceries, and this does that. Plus, you can blink it, reanimate it, cheat it, bop it, slap it...
I think this could actually be good in Jodah, Rashmi, Intent, maybe Golos too. Moatly anything that could take advantage of this card's high cmc or make it irrelevant. This definitely isn't just something that can be put into any blue deck that likes spells, though.
This is a crazy, crazy good card. Float mana from your rocks, bounce your rocks, disrupt everything your opponents have on board, get something crazy for free, replay your rocks, continue your plays? Yeah I'll take it.
That hydra is good at any point in the game. I expect it to see play in standard but I'm especially happy for more creature removal for mono green edh decks.
Hopefully this combined with the Chandra comic and her being on the title card for the new Magic netflix series really means that she's basically the new main character of MTG rather than Jace.
Inferno Chandra is great. Your opponents WILL be taking damage for the rest of the game once she's cast.
To air out a concern I have on a touchy subject: As someone who is of mixed ethnicity, I wish Chandra looked more mixed. Obviously she was first designed all those years ago as she still appears: A pale, red headed woman with very european features. But then they went back and explained in her origin that she is from a plane based on India with at least one parent who is obviously meant to be analogous to an indian person from our world. So if we compare Chandra to her parents... She doesn't look like she is related to either of them. In fact, we've been to her home plane and no one on Kaladesh bears any resemblance to Chandra whatsoever. I'm not saying that they need to completely redesign Chandra, that would be jarring. But tweaking her design a little bit to make her look more related to her parents would be great. They did it for Gideon already.
I think Wizards finally figured out that Jace is super unlikelable so they made him likeable in Ixalan and then almost immediatley reverted his character back to being unlikeable.
Chandta at the very least is much more compelling.
This doesn't mean the dream of Mecha-T-Rexes terrorizing the Ixalan countryside is dead though, just that they won't have infect
Well this is just bad naming. Ichor is almost always used to refer to Phyrexian Oil in Magic and thst flavor text sounds ominous. Is ichor even used irl to refer to regualr oil?
It's an irregular use of the word's meaning, but not wrong?
In the 'a watery discharge from a wound' definition.
Realize there is no 'in real life' use for an ancient Greek term for Godblood. All uses are going to be fairly out of use.
I don't necessarily agree with that. A word of similar origin is ambrosia, the food of the gods in ancient greek myth, but today it is used as another term for honey or simply in refernece to the actual desert named after it. As another example, a derivitie of ichor, petrichor, has a very specific definiton. I don't agree that a word's mythological origin bars it from having a real definition.
I just think that it's very odd for Wizards to use Ichor in refernece to regular crude oil when, to my knowledge, it isn't used to refer to crude oil at all irl and it already has a very well known, very specific meaning within Magic. They could have used other terms that actually refer to regular oil, simply "oil", "petrol", or even "black gold" (which would have actually been a clever thematic choice because Ixalan already has an entire city of regular gold, setting up a sort of parallel).
At the very least I hope that the discovery of actual oil on Ixalan means something going forward and isn't just a footnote. It would be interesting to see some factions begin to industrialize and come into conflict over this new resource.
Has anyone else noticed that WOTC has really been using some of the same themes for the past couple of years over and over again? Between this, Panharmonicon, Naban, and Tesya we've been getting a lot of "If etb/deah happens, do it twice" type of abilities. Similarly, the number of legendaries that are monocolored but with 5c abilities has ballooned expoenentially in a very short amount of time. Tazri, Najeela, Sisay, Morophon, Golos, Ramos, etc. They've been milking these types of designs hard in the last couple years or so.
Somebody at WOTC really has a hard on for sultai because not only do they keep releasing super powerful sultai legends every year, it seems, these cards are also always more generically good than their counterparts from other wedges, let alone other color combos. Muldrotha grabs any permanent, this triggers off of any permanent. Maybe you can say the new Jeskai bird legend is nearly this generically powerful but have Abzan, Temur or Mardu gotten anything this powerful or wide open in years? Compare the narrow new Kaalia to this or the new Naya angel. This wouldn't be as apparent if this triggered off of lands or creatures or something but it literally reads "If anything you play triggers anything else you have, double that." For EDH in particular, this puts sultai even farther ahead than it already is as the best three color combination possible in the format. And with WOTC literally coming out and saying they're designing with commander in mind with most sets now... What gives, Wizards?
Inferno Chandra is great. Your opponents WILL be taking damage for the rest of the game once she's cast.
To air out a concern I have on a touchy subject: As someone who is of mixed ethnicity, I wish Chandra looked more mixed. Obviously she was first designed all those years ago as she still appears: A pale, red headed woman with very european features. But then they went back and explained in her origin that she is from a plane based on India with at least one parent who is obviously meant to be analogous to an indian person from our world. So if we compare Chandra to her parents... She doesn't look like she is related to either of them. In fact, we've been to her home plane and no one on Kaladesh bears any resemblance to Chandra whatsoever. I'm not saying that they need to completely redesign Chandra, that would be jarring. But tweaking her design a little bit to make her look more related to her parents would be great. They did it for Gideon already.
I think Wizards finally figured out that Jace is super unlikelable so they made him likeable in Ixalan and then almost immediatley reverted his character back to being unlikeable.
Chandta at the very least is much more compelling.
I just think that it's very odd for Wizards to use Ichor in refernece to regular crude oil when, to my knowledge, it isn't used to refer to crude oil at all irl and it already has a very well known, very specific meaning within Magic. They could have used other terms that actually refer to regular oil, simply "oil", "petrol", or even "black gold" (which would have actually been a clever thematic choice because Ixalan already has an entire city of regular gold, setting up a sort of parallel).
At the very least I hope that the discovery of actual oil on Ixalan means something going forward and isn't just a footnote. It would be interesting to see some factions begin to industrialize and come into conflict over this new resource.