Convince me that Rona's Vortex is not on average better than Vapor Snag. Yeah sometimes that 1 life is critical but does that come up more often than the 25% chance you're in UB as opposed to any other UX combination?
I think it's good because it's a typical aggro 1drop that also has the failure mode where it can get you out of trouble if plan A (go fast) fails and you start having to play the topdeck game. Most 1drops are garbage in that scenario.
If I'm playing Savannah Lions, you better believe I'm going to want the ones which aren't useless on turn 6.
In addition to Nimbus Naiad, I'm pretty sure I wasn't the only one running Leafcrown Dryad back in the day. I have a feeling I've seen Thassa's Emissary in a few lists over the years as well. It's a shame we've lost the historical archive on CubeTutor.
I like Bestow (and Theros was the first set I played when I came back to Magic) but I can appreciate wanting to cut an unintuitive mechanic that newer players probably won't know.
I'm trying to find the Peasant Theros thread to check what cards people were adding but it looks like we didn't have one. I wasn't active here back then but I did find the Pauper Theros thread. I tried checking the Peasant general but besides realising we used to have multiple pages of discussion each month (lol) I couldn't see people talking much about it in what I imagine should have been spoiler season:
Unsets not selling well is why there was a 13 year gap between Unhinged and Unstable. And even then, Unhinged sold find if Wizards didn't try and print it at the volume of a standard set. Unstable was popular enough to get multiple print runs and is the reason new un-sets now appear so frequently. They wouldn't be making new sets if it wasn't selling.
Protip: there was already an eternal legal card in every Un-set booster which carried most of the secondary market value for the set.
That said, I have 0 interest in this set from a cube perspective, it's just really parasitic.
Interesting paragraph in Making Magic this week about the use of uncommons in this set:
As we designed cards and playtested the decks, we noticed that the gameplay was getting too complex. Every new card was a rare, and every card was doing something quite distinct. We used two means to reduce complexity. The first was to make "uncommon" cards that were simpler and less impactful than we would normally make rare cards. We assigned uncommon expansion symbols to these cards even though they appeared at the same frequency as the new rare and mythic rare cards in the same product. (This is different from how we have used the uncommon expansion symbol in previous Commander decks, where it also indicated new cards that appeared in more than one, but not all, of the decks in a set.)"
Makes sense and i hope it becomes a standard thing as they move forward. More reasonable (but still relatively pushed) uncommons in future commander decks would be nice.
Pretty good set overall if you're willing to run 40K themed cards. I hope the big hitters can get a normal release at some point. I'll happily count them as uncommons regardless of whatever rarity WotC decides to actually print them at.
Come to think of it, the scifi stuff in 40K isn't that far removed from some of the Thran/Brothers War/Neo Kamigawa stuff...
There's some decent cards in here. I'll update this post tomorrow once the Imperium stuff has been spoiled.
A Tier Triarch Praetorian - Obviously good. I don't actually mind the weird frame on an artifact creature. Sicarian Infiltrator - I think this would make the cut in my cube. There's a lot going on here and the ability to mana sink late game and get some fat card advantage seems quite good.
B Tier Noise Marine - This seems pretty juicy for the Big Red enthusiasts out there, but I don't think I'd have a slot for it even if it was a normal card. I could see this going up to A tier. Genestealer Locus - Do we have a Cumber Stone on legs yet? This is pretty close. Not sure if anyone is even playing that anymore.. Heralds of Tzeentch - I might be overrating Cascade but a 3/3 flyer that comes with potentially significant bonus value seems reasonable for 4U. Trygon Prime - Not where my UB wants to be (yet), but I could see this getting a home in like 10 years when enough Ravnica sets have been printed to give us a competitive UG +1/+1 counters deck. Space Marine Scout - 2 power first strikers can eat a lot of creatures, especially when paired with vigialance. I like the fetch rider as well.
I can live without the Triarch in my list so I'll be skipping this set. Maybe some of the LotR cards will find a home since they'll hopefully clash less with the more normal Magic stuff.
1G
Creature - Phyrexian Fungus
1, Sac: Choose one:
-Destroy target artifact
-Destroy target enchantment
-Proliferate
3/2
Talk about power creep.
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/63971d077d7d9776ad49f7c4
Thanks again for your contribution Calibretto, always appreciated.
E: oh, and Cubetutor has shut down and we all use CubeCobra instead. It's basically better in every way except the draft bots are worse.
How often are people bouncing their own guy?
If I'm playing Savannah Lions, you better believe I'm going to want the ones which aren't useless on turn 6.
I like Bestow (and Theros was the first set I played when I came back to Magic) but I can appreciate wanting to cut an unintuitive mechanic that newer players probably won't know.
I'm trying to find the Peasant Theros thread to check what cards people were adding but it looks like we didn't have one. I wasn't active here back then but I did find the Pauper Theros thread. I tried checking the Peasant general but besides realising we used to have multiple pages of discussion each month (lol) I couldn't see people talking much about it in what I imagine should have been spoiler season:
Protip: there was already an eternal legal card in every Un-set booster which carried most of the secondary market value for the set.
That said, I have 0 interest in this set from a cube perspective, it's just really parasitic.
Makes sense and i hope it becomes a standard thing as they move forward. More reasonable (but still relatively pushed) uncommons in future commander decks would be nice.
Pretty good set overall if you're willing to run 40K themed cards. I hope the big hitters can get a normal release at some point. I'll happily count them as uncommons regardless of whatever rarity WotC decides to actually print them at.
Come to think of it, the scifi stuff in 40K isn't that far removed from some of the Thran/Brothers War/Neo Kamigawa stuff...
A Tier
Triarch Praetorian - Obviously good. I don't actually mind the weird frame on an artifact creature.
Sicarian Infiltrator - I think this would make the cut in my cube. There's a lot going on here and the ability to mana sink late game and get some fat card advantage seems quite good.
B Tier
Noise Marine - This seems pretty juicy for the Big Red enthusiasts out there, but I don't think I'd have a slot for it even if it was a normal card. I could see this going up to A tier.
Genestealer Locus - Do we have a Cumber Stone on legs yet? This is pretty close. Not sure if anyone is even playing that anymore..
Heralds of Tzeentch - I might be overrating Cascade but a 3/3 flyer that comes with potentially significant bonus value seems reasonable for 4U.
Trygon Prime - Not where my UB wants to be (yet), but I could see this getting a home in like 10 years when enough Ravnica sets have been printed to give us a competitive UG +1/+1 counters deck.
Space Marine Scout - 2 power first strikers can eat a lot of creatures, especially when paired with vigialance. I like the fetch rider as well.
I can live without the Triarch in my list so I'll be skipping this set. Maybe some of the LotR cards will find a home since they'll hopefully clash less with the more normal Magic stuff.