MTG Salvation

Quote from Silent Wind »

The white monarch enchantment is thrash, well... where's the surprise right?

I honestly think this is the best one so far though. Self mill and damaging opponents doesn't hold a candle to actual card advantage and generating an army with evasion is the easiest way to maintain the monarchy. As mentioned above, White also has the best tools for pillowforting and is also the color that wants a source of continuous card draw the most.

I love how Amphin are basically MTG's equivalent of mole men or reptilians at this point.

As for the card itself... it's okay. It's a shame it has less to do with Salamanders and more to do with pillowforting though. It's also a real shame that the two things you'd want to do with him the most (keep a low creature count to get a Salamander yourself, and control the number of creatures on board to ensure multiple players get a Salamander) are the two things that UG isn't good at.

Quote from CatParty »

Salamanders earned their association with fire and flames due to the fact that people harvesting wood for fireplaces in the winter would often find salamanders scurrying out of their fireplace after adding another log. It was thought that salamanders originated in the flames of fireplaces. People didn't realize that they were just living in the damp logs harvested from the woods.

To elaborate even further, the "Salamanders as fire spirits" trope comes from the theories of the alchemist Paracelsus, which defined the four spirits as Sylph, Gnome, Undine and Salamander, each one of those mythological creatures associated with one element, which ended up defining "elementals" in fantasy. Sure old myths had stuff like Dryads and Nymphs and Fire Giants but those beings were byproducts of their ambient, it was Paracelsus's Four Elements theory that really defined the idea of a being embodying an element of nature.

Real missed opportunity to not have Tamiyo with her kids in one of the cards. Other than that, solid drop for a great cause.

Clue #3 seems interesting. What kind of drawback could balance a Worst Fears for all opponents and in a permanent's Continuous effect? My first thought would be something like Underworld Breach, aka. a permanent with a spell-like effect that sacs itself after a while, but maybe it's something super narrow, like "You control your opponents while X is being targeted by a spell" or something.

Quote from Ernart »

It's the design that made it terrible like the mechanics and etc not that it was a japanese myth theme.

It was clearly mentioned that the mechanics is the problem and it mentioned most of the time.

SO I AM RIGHT

You are "right" when analyzing an argument that was never made. Once again, you seem to be misinterpreting every reply in either an attempt of grasping at straws or an assumption based entirely on very poor understanding of the language.

Literally nobody here said that "Kamigawa was bad because it's japanese myths". The argument is that "Kamigawa was also bad because it's japanese myths done poorly". Your first reply is pretty clear stated that:

Quote from Ernart »

It's not the plane aesthetic and atmosphere that failed Kamigawa.

when every given source proves that yes, the aesthetics, atmosphere and overall themings DID contributed to the failing of Kamigawa.

Also, "misleading quoting" is a terrible argument when the original source is also provided. Every quote of any written source is shortened for brevity, be it in news or scientific/academic texts, otherwise you'd have to copy the whole thing and then you'd be doing plagiarism.
But speaking of misleading, how about that quote up there where you use bold to accentuate the "mechanics" argument while ignoring the very next sentence that mentions the failings of Kamigawa from a worldbuilding perspective were even worse? Or the one where you use bold text to accentuate something that was not said by MaRo? Or you accentuating three words of a 300ish word segment and ignoring the things that you don't like? Because THAT is misleading.

Calling it now: Lukka will be the villain of Kamigawa 2.0 and he'll be the one to bring Kaijus into the plane. No idea why he would do that, but then again it's Lukka. Dude couldn't even keep a consistent personality and motivation on a single set, nevermind a year.

Quote from Ernart »

It's not the plane aesthetic and atmosphere that failed Kamigawa. It was most of the printed cards being played was underwhelming and boring after mirrodin and before ravnica.

Not entirely true, at least based on what MaRo told us. In their attempt to make Kamigawa accurate to Japanese myths and properly portray it in Magic lore, they "dug too deep" into Japanese mythology and showcased every part of the least resonant aspects of it.
Sure we had Samurais and Ninjas and everyone liked these, but they were overshadowed by all the stuff that got shifted too much from their original source (like Akkis, which very few people even realized were supposed to be a stand-in for Kappas), stuff that was just too obscure (like Moonfolk or the Deceiver/face-stealer cycle) or stuff that simply didn't felt different enough from what already existed in Magic (aka. the entire focus of the block, the Spirit/Arcane stuff), all while missing some major players like Tengus, Kaijus or classic Obakemonos. MaRo has been discussing this idea of making a 2nd brand new Japan-inspired plane since original Innistrad, so the "time skip" solution seems both realistic and acceptable.

Dang, at a first glance, this card seems absolutely AMAZING in Red Prison / Blood Moon decks. The fact that you get a tool to fight against one of Red Prison's greatest weaknesses, aka. Planeswalkers, without even having to sacrifice any spell slots to do so AND potentially circumventing the Bolt drawback by simply letting Blood Moon do its thing probably makes this an easy staple.

Overall, really cool card. Just like the White one, seems to be at its best in Midrange. Unlike the White one, R is actually one of the best Midrange colors, so if we ever get a deck to make Terror of the Peaks work, this could see play in Standard. Don't think Mono-Red Aggro will be replacing Castle Embereth anytime soon though, and sure the life cost is mostly inconsequential but so is the upside and if you're on a mirror match the one that doesn't runs Shatterskull wins.

The Island... it's literally a giant flying Millstone.
I don't know about you guys but I'm sold.

Ooh, nice, a Legendary Azra from Kyrem. It's nice that we finally get a good Aristocrats Commander that allows us to get U color identity, we have plenty of Orzhov, Rakdos and Golgari ones but Dimir is a new one. Marchesa was pretty much the only option and building a fair Marchesa deck was kind of difficult.

Thriving Moor is really sweet, a flexible Common land that works both if you have lots of colors or just two. Considering its templating makes it a very useful budget card for Commander, I wouldn't be surprised it this saw reprints down the line, maybe even in Commander Legends.

Aside from the one "money cards" like Kels and Maelstrom in each theme, the reprints listed here are pretty meh however. I expect this to be the pattern for Jumpstart, so here's hoping the new cards are at least as exciting as Kels.

Quote from The Lord of Tresserhorn »

Quote from mikeyG »

Is there a joke I'm missing?

It's a pretty new card, and it was printed in Ixalan AND Rivals of Ixalan (that's where the meme started rolling), Masters 25 and Core Set 2019 so far...

To clarify it even further, it's because he was printed three times in three different sets in a row. Ixalan and Rivals were printed back-to-back, obviously, but Masters 25 came right after Rivals.

Don’t engage the ignorant troll, people. It’s a waste of time, and fills the thread with irrelevant posts. Already more than half the posts in this thread are devoted to the fact some moron can’t differentiate between a Moor and a moor.


Just report it, and move on.

Quote from TearingEons »

Cool card design, but it's the art that does it for me. I love that it's just a house cat staring into the heavens with eight cat legends staring back at it. The art has Ajani, his brother Jazal, Kemba, Kaheera, Jareth Leonin Titan, but I can't make out the other three. Prob Balan and Mirri too. That's a pretty fun way to do cameos haha

I see this

The translation is wrong: the first ability doesn't only add a counter, it also scries 1.

"Hey, sorry for all these broken planeswalkers. Take 1 balanced removal as an apologize"

• A card with thirty-one different options.

There are 31 different possible color combinations

1 W
2 U
3 B
4 R
5 G
6 WU
7 WB
8 WR
9 WG
10 UB
11 UR
12 UG
13 BR
14 BG
15 RG
16 WUB
17 WUR
18 WUG
19 WBR
20 WBG
21 WRG
22 UBR
23 UBG
24 URG
25 BRG
26 WUBR
27 WUBG
28 WURG
29 WBRG
30 UBRG
31 WUBRG

Evidently General Kudro has never seen John Wick.

So... it's better than Thawing Glacier. I'd go on a limb and say it's better than burnished hart as well (by the time you can sacrifice the hart, you'd have gotten an equal amount of land from the hawk for 2 less mana). While this isn't smothering tithe, this might be the next-best actual ramp spell that white has.

While these aren't huge hurdles to clear, it feels like people are complaining about the card for reasons that aren't related to the card. White now has its own version of Farseek and people are complaining because having a Farseek (even one with free buyback) doesn't keep up with Skyshroud Claim and Boundless Realms cast in subsequent turns. If the complaint is that white doesn't yet have a critical mass of ramp cards throughout the mana curve, literally no single card could have "fixed" that problem.

To be fair, I realize that white really needs access to extra mana before turn 4 (when the first land this thing grabs you untaps). That problem isn't solved by this card. As far as producing a usable ramp card, however, this card seems to deliver.