All Will be One being Red is deliciously ironic. Also its flavortext is something like "The Realmbreaker shall traverse the Blind Eternities and flood the Multiverse with phyrexian perfection" and it actually deals damage to "an opponent or creature/'walker an opponent controls", an important distinction since it's mandatory which means you're not forced to kill your own stuff if your opponent has hexproof.
As for the Dominus cycle, don't like the Green one but the other two seem neat. The Black one can become indestructible super easily and works wonders with Kamigawan Dragons, while the Red one is quite efficient and can win you the game on the spot if you untap with it.
My two cents for "Battle" is that it will be Space Beleren's "sectors" in card form. Cards that act like Enchantments, but you associate your permanents on the battlefield to it (i.e. creatures "in a battle") with the caveat that those creatures can only interact with creatures in the same Battle. Battles may give the creatures "in the battle" some passive bonus, and depending on certain conditions it's possible for a player to "win a battle", destroying the Battle in the process and getting a big bonus.
As for the card itself, hard to ask for a better reanimator target in Standard and Pioneer. Will absolutely stonewall any opponent immediately, draw you a bunch of cards and most likely dig for another reanimating spell in the process which will start a vicious cycle of "kill Atraxa so you don't get stonewalled, reanimate Atraxa, draw another spell to reanimate Atraxa, repeat until sun goes supernova". In Commander, she's probably better as part of the 99 though.
This seems... weird. Nissa being compleated feels off since she already earned Gaea's favor in the story, and compleating both Jace AND Vraska feels like an obvious wasted opportunity. This would also mean a mono-cycle of compleated 'walkers which is a bit of a mismatch with the previous compleated design and would mean Wanderer and Lukka are next, but... how and when did the Wanderer got compleated? Since she shares a spiritual bond with Kyodai, wouldn't compleation SEVERELY mess up Kamigawa itself? The way this was presented also feels off, it's too "clean" for a leak.
My tinfoil hat theory? This "leak" isn't a leak at all but secret spoilers for March of the Machines: The Aftermath, which in reality isn't an epilogue story at all but a "what if?" alternate reality, maybe created by Teferi's time travel shenanigans. That said, if this turns out to be the real deal, I wonder how WotC will pick up the pieces of this story after all is said and done.
The news stream confirmed that 5 of the 10 planewalkers announced to be in the set (Wanderer, Nahiri, Kaito, Jace, Koth, Kaya, Tyvar, Nissa, Vraska and Lukka) will get compleated. These three fit with the alt art mythics that will be appearing at random in the Bundle Compleated Edition
I'm fully aware of all of that, it doesn't makes the leak/reveal any less strange. Considering how OG New Phyrexia is infamous for being leaked early, if there's any one set where it would make sense for WotC to be extra safe with leaks and/or try to pull a misdirection stunt like that, it would be this one.
This seems... weird. Nissa being compleated feels off since she already earned Gaea's favor in the story, and compleating both Jace AND Vraska feels like an obvious wasted opportunity. This would also mean a mono-cycle of compleated 'walkers which is a bit of a mismatch with the previous compleated design and would mean Wanderer and Lukka are next, but... how and when did the Wanderer got compleated? Since she shares a spiritual bond with Kyodai, wouldn't compleation SEVERELY mess up Kamigawa itself? The way this was presented also feels off, it's too "clean" for a leak.
My tinfoil hat theory? This "leak" isn't a leak at all but secret spoilers for March of the Machines: The Aftermath, which in reality isn't an epilogue story at all but a "what if?" alternate reality, maybe created by Teferi's time travel shenanigans. That said, if this turns out to be the real deal, I wonder how WotC will pick up the pieces of this story after all is said and done.
Nahiri will be compleated. Too many reasons to count. First, now that Zendikar is rebuilding, the Eldrazi are gone and her kerfuffle with Sorin is solved, she really doesn't have a reason to be around anymore from a writing perspective. Second, her philosophies during ZNR align with Phyrexia's goals. Third, her compleation could also fix how poorly her and Sorin's arc was handled by giving Sorin a chance to get involved and redeem himself. Fourth, her lithomancy is really redundant with Koth around. And fifth, her siding with Nissa and Jace makes little sense unless she's trying to take them down from the inside.
Kaya will be compleated. The fact that the powerstone powering the Temporal Anchor "just happened" to overload taking one of the strongest members of the Gatewatch out of the picture was pretty convenient wasn't it? Kaya had the means to do it and to get away with it, and both ghostforming and spirit slaying would be very useful assets for Phyrexia which historically had interests in infiltration and problems with non-corporeal threats. Hell, maybe Planar Incision was foreshadowing this all along.
Nissa will NOT be compleated. Yeah I don't like this either, but I think Gaea's pep talk and her renewing her Oath pretty much ensures Nissa's role in this story will be to be a radical agent on the Gatewatch's side, arguing against saving the compleated 'walkers contrasting against the more optimistic characters like Chandra or the ones that lost someone dear to the other side (more of that in a bit...).
I find it somewhat likely that...
Kaito will be compleated. With Tamiyo and Ajani's compleations, it's clear that "drama" is a big factor for potential compleation. Pitting Wanderer vs Kaito would be a very dramatic moment that would really drive the story forward in interesting and new ways, and since compleating The Wanderer would be very difficult both from a story (How would Phyrexia even track her? Could they even do it considering her bond with Kyodai?) and a metanarrative (What's next for Kamigawa if their emperor is compleated?) perspective, I think Kaito is the most likely target. Kaito is also a bit aimless at the moment, and just like Nahiri his own goals would align with Phyrexia's goals easily. The only reason he's in "somewhat" is, well... he's very new to the story. I feel like compleating him would curb a lot of potential out of him as a character.
Lukka will NOT be compleated. Nahiri standing as the W/R PW of choice for Phyrexia, Lukka feels more like an intentional red herring to me than anything else. He still has unresolved plot threads, but he's not the most popular in the fanbase's eyes... but on the other hand his actions are also often misunderstood, so him not being compleated and showcasing his more "humane" side and fighting to take down the Orthodoxy would be far more interesting than the other option and in-character with what we saw on Strixhaven and maybe Ikoria... and that "maybe" is the only reason why I put him in "somewhat likely": the fact that Broken Bond exists. With how drastic the differences in characterization between Card Lukka and Book Lukka is, it's hard to pin down "which" Lukka Wizards decides is "this story's Lukka". IMO Card Lukka wouldn't be compleated, but Book Lukka would.
Oh god please no...
Vraska will be compleated. Please don't do this WotC, my heart couldn't take it... but sadly everything I said about Kaito above applies. Pitting Jace vs Vraska once more would be their arc's greatest climatic ending. It would be a dramatic echo to their struggles in Ravnica. It would be a touching end to their relationship. And most of all, it would make the mind mage, a man that spent his life forgetting his past and holding back to go all out for the first time since Alhammarret... and to never want to forget ever again. And I would hate it. I hope Ryperior is right, maybe they'll flip the script and Jace gets compleated instead, but one simply doesn't kills off Mickey Mouse for good.
That would give the phyrexians one (W/P)/(R/P), one (W/P)/(B/P), one (U/P)/(B/P) and one (G/P)/(B/P) 'walker, a pretty even distribution that nicely rounds up the already existing (U/P)/(G/P), (G/P)/(W/P) and maybe(R/P)/(B/P) (if Vorinclex's "seed" really compleated Tibalt back in Kaldheim).
Reminder that Zask's second ability isn't a replacement effect. If you can give your Insects Flash (with, say, Yeva, Nature's Herald) you can easily bypass the drawback by recasting them with the trigger on the stack.
Not sure how I feel about this.
On the plus side, new cool mono-White Commanders are always exciting, and I've been saying that W deserved a Blink Commander since forever. This is a really cool design that can even be a funny way of making a Illusion Tribal or mono-White Reanimator if you want to.
On the other hand... It's so pathetically easy to go infinite with this by playing Felidar Guardian or similar which is already the kind of cards you'd want to run anyway. I feel like this could end up as a "cool on paper, linear and boring on practice" Commander like Prime Speaker Vannifar.
Also, holy crap they are REALLY drip-feeding us on this Anthro/Fable Plane aren't they?
are there enough tools accessible to monowhite for that kind of infinite flicker to actually matter?
i mean yeah, cathars' crusade will make a third (or more) creatures infinitely large, but that's already a card that gets out of control really easily. its not like monowhite has a purphoros or impact tremors
Infinitely flickering a creature with Preston will make an infinite number of creatures, and mono-White has Anthems up the wazoo. There's no real difference between Glorious Anthem and Craterhoof Behemoth when you're at the realms of infinity. Infinite life (and making use of said infinite life) is also pretty trivial for White.
Not as extreme as what Red or Black can accomplish by going infinite, true, but cards that couple easy combo potential AND powerful value engine in one package tend to be very strong.
Could be wrong, but is Lita the first actual robot from Kaladesh? She's not qualified as a Construct, and most Kaladeshi machines are simple mechanical servants, vehicles, thopters or constructs based off natural fauna. Guess that's why she's Legendary, but would be nice to know how that happened.
As for her abilities, as cool as smacking opponents down with an army of Zeppelins piloted by robots sounds like, she does nothing to fix the inherent problems of Vehicles and seems far more suited for the 99. You wouldn't want your steampunk fleet of Zeppelins to run out of steam.
Not sure how I feel about this.
On the plus side, new cool mono-White Commanders are always exciting, and I've been saying that W deserved a Blink Commander since forever. This is a really cool design that can even be a funny way of making a Illusion Tribal or mono-White Reanimator if you want to.
On the other hand... It's so pathetically easy to go infinite with this by playing Felidar Guardian or similar which is already the kind of cards you'd want to run anyway. I feel like this could end up as a "cool on paper, linear and boring on practice" Commander like Prime Speaker Vannifar.
Also, holy crap they are REALLY drip-feeding us on this Anthro/Fable Plane aren't they?
Is ashcoat better than Marrow-Gnawer for rat tribal… not even close.
gnawer can make the rat number rise in commander way faster than ashcoat also gives the rats “fear” which makes them ridiculously hard to block in commander. but ashcoat has a advantage of Craterhoof Behemoth buff for number of rats when attacks
I feel like Marrow-Gnawer is better in Rat Colony.dek, while Ashcoat is better in decks that are less linear and can use other Rats to support the strategy. Of course, we are still a long ways to go before the latter is as effective as the former, but it's always nice to have options.
With the glut of Monored haste in lower ranked and unranked on arena, it was the only life gain to get you back out of the hole against red. While it was definitely over tuned, I wish there were at least some other serviceable early game board wipes.
I've seen some people saying mono-B is dead without Meathook, but they still have an excellent curve and being on the wrong side of Invoke Despair is still one of the most brutal things that could happen to you in current Standard. Meathook ban means that mono-B has an exploitable flaw on their game plan, as opposed to before where no matter wether you tried to go wide, tall, grind or aggro them, they could always one-up you with the right cards.
Fable will be annoying, but Red's card pool is otherwise a bit lacking at the moment so I think it's fine. Aggro will be on the rise which is great to counterbalance Blue Djinn which is even more obnoxious. Esper will still be strong, but I think the combo of "adjustable wrath + creatures that grow themselves" was always the main draw of the deck so dunno how it'll fare. Overall, I'm excited for the ban.
As for Yorion... Yeah, screw Companions and good riddance.
Best case scenario, we'll get Cloud, Black Mage, at least one Summon (probably Shiva/Ifrit, Bahamut also likely), a Moogle and a Chocobo.
Most likely scenario, it's the FF7 crew plus Sephiroth all over again, and the bonus card will be a reskin of a mana rock called "Green Materia".
As for Assassin's Creed, I personally think there's some cool potential for new material there, but considering how AC borrows a lot from "real" history (can't stress enough how important those quotation marks are here) and how usually WotC operates I expect something more akin to the Fortnite SL.
I don't really care about this kind of product, but I feel like if the FF cards aren't somehow connected to Triple Triad, they'll have really missed the mark.
A creative idea that sadly will definitely not happen considering how creatively bankrupt Square Enix is.
I'll have to agree, Disney is NOT an easy megacorp to deal with, and the cons of doing a crossover seem to vastly outweigh the pros. I think it's far more likely that we'll get the Dracula crossover treatment of "just go straight to the public domain source" and get straight-up Kenrith-as-Arthur or something like that.
I don't mind this really, not a huge Transformers fan but these cards seem neat. I'm a bit off-put by the art style in some of them but it DOES captures the artstyle of the show very faithfully so I guess fans will appreciate it more than I do. Also, the designs seem pretty safe both powerlevel-wise and design-wise, so they seem to be collector's items first and foremost, and by that lenses, yeah they are cool. I really like Starscream's design, and I got really excited about Soundwave until I realized he doesn't say "or less" which makes him REALLY situational.
Also, considering both the D&D cartoon and Transformers got special promos and then recently got a Secret Lair and Collector booster slot respectively, wonder what that means for the other two Hasbro IPs that got a crossover with MTG at around the same time (Duel Masters' Nira, Hellkite Duelist and MLP's Princess Twilight Sparkle). Duel Masters would fit well as a crossover IP for Ikoria, while MLP would feel right at home at Theros.
As for the Dominus cycle, don't like the Green one but the other two seem neat. The Black one can become indestructible super easily and works wonders with Kamigawan Dragons, while the Red one is quite efficient and can win you the game on the spot if you untap with it.
As for the card itself, hard to ask for a better reanimator target in Standard and Pioneer. Will absolutely stonewall any opponent immediately, draw you a bunch of cards and most likely dig for another reanimating spell in the process which will start a vicious cycle of "kill Atraxa so you don't get stonewalled, reanimate Atraxa, draw another spell to reanimate Atraxa, repeat until sun goes supernova". In Commander, she's probably better as part of the 99 though.
My tinfoil hat theory? This "leak" isn't a leak at all but secret spoilers for March of the Machines: The Aftermath, which in reality isn't an epilogue story at all but a "what if?" alternate reality, maybe created by Teferi's time travel shenanigans. That said, if this turns out to be the real deal, I wonder how WotC will pick up the pieces of this story after all is said and done.
I find it somewhat likely that...
Oh god please no...
That would give the phyrexians one (W/P)/(R/P), one (W/P)/(B/P), one (U/P)/(B/P) and one (G/P)/(B/P) 'walker, a pretty even distribution that nicely rounds up the already existing (U/P)/(G/P), (G/P)/(W/P) and maybe (R/P)/(B/P) (if Vorinclex's "seed" really compleated Tibalt back in Kaldheim).
Not as extreme as what Red or Black can accomplish by going infinite, true, but cards that couple easy combo potential AND powerful value engine in one package tend to be very strong.
As for her abilities, as cool as smacking opponents down with an army of Zeppelins piloted by robots sounds like, she does nothing to fix the inherent problems of Vehicles and seems far more suited for the 99. You wouldn't want your steampunk fleet of Zeppelins to run out of steam.
On the plus side, new cool mono-White Commanders are always exciting, and I've been saying that W deserved a Blink Commander since forever. This is a really cool design that can even be a funny way of making a Illusion Tribal or mono-White Reanimator if you want to.
On the other hand... It's so pathetically easy to go infinite with this by playing Felidar Guardian or similar which is already the kind of cards you'd want to run anyway. I feel like this could end up as a "cool on paper, linear and boring on practice" Commander like Prime Speaker Vannifar.
Also, holy crap they are REALLY drip-feeding us on this Anthro/Fable Plane aren't they?
I've seen some people saying mono-B is dead without Meathook, but they still have an excellent curve and being on the wrong side of Invoke Despair is still one of the most brutal things that could happen to you in current Standard. Meathook ban means that mono-B has an exploitable flaw on their game plan, as opposed to before where no matter wether you tried to go wide, tall, grind or aggro them, they could always one-up you with the right cards.
Fable will be annoying, but Red's card pool is otherwise a bit lacking at the moment so I think it's fine. Aggro will be on the rise which is great to counterbalance Blue Djinn which is even more obnoxious. Esper will still be strong, but I think the combo of "adjustable wrath + creatures that grow themselves" was always the main draw of the deck so dunno how it'll fare. Overall, I'm excited for the ban.
As for Yorion... Yeah, screw Companions and good riddance.
As said before, however, that's not how Square Enix does things in 2022.
Most likely scenario, it's the FF7 crew plus Sephiroth all over again, and the bonus card will be a reskin of a mana rock called "Green Materia".
As for Assassin's Creed, I personally think there's some cool potential for new material there, but considering how AC borrows a lot from "real" history (can't stress enough how important those quotation marks are here) and how usually WotC operates I expect something more akin to the Fortnite SL.
A creative idea that sadly will definitely not happen considering how creatively bankrupt Square Enix is.
Also, considering both the D&D cartoon and Transformers got special promos and then recently got a Secret Lair and Collector booster slot respectively, wonder what that means for the other two Hasbro IPs that got a crossover with MTG at around the same time (Duel Masters' Nira, Hellkite Duelist and MLP's Princess Twilight Sparkle). Duel Masters would fit well as a crossover IP for Ikoria, while MLP would feel right at home at Theros.