MTG Salvation

I mentioned this in the other thread, but flashback spells, that target a creature you control, will get returned by Feather, as flashback just looks that Feather's replacement effects sends the card to exile and doesn't care if it later comes back. Although there weren't a ton of good RW spells with flashback, there is one card that I think you could really do with: Past In Flames. For all the instants and sorceries you managed to lose, here's the chance to bring them back to your hand!

They were also talking about an Arcane / Splice package, but that probably takes more away from the deck.

Quote from user-11102155 »

i didnt realize he was a thing and popular. where did he have a fanbase ?

Just as a note, I can't tell you when or how, but someone's made and is successfully selling plushies.

Quote from FunkyDragon »

Quote from Stoogeslap »

Naive question alert: Why, outside of Zendikar blocks, don't they just call it "landfall?" Is it because it would push the card into evergreen territory and WotC R&D doesn't want it to be an evergreen keyword?

It's a good question. The name is self-descriptive, and they would still spell out the trigger, so it's not like it would make things hard for noobs. And they use it often enough to warrant being deciduous (if not evergreen).

I think it's a signalling problem. This is already a super complex set (as planeswalkers at uncommon will do...), which I imagine helped contribute to the whole 'two named mechanics' thing. For a new player being introduced to Magic, there's already so many things to learn -- another mechanic, even a self-descriptive one, might be too much.

They always talk about how they got complaints about Mercadian Masques not having mechanics, despite having a bunch of them (Rebels, Mercenaries, and Spellshapers as the most visible) -- because they didn't explicitly have ability words attached to them, so they were just seen as individual cards. Players' understanding of the set, at least at the time, didn't become centered around the abilities (despite the 4 full cycles of Spellshapers, or 30ish Rebels/Mercenaries). Compare to today: someone bringing up, say, Amonkhet, would probably mention Embalm / Eternalize, exert, cycling, or even -1/-1 counters, before they would mention the Cartouche/Trial double cycle or the Desert mechanics, even though there's a relatively comparable number of Deserts to exert cards (across both sets, 19 to 28, with 10 to 0 cards without the mechanic that call it out by name eg "if you control a desert...").

With that in mind, I'm assuming this is a deliberate attempt to go in the other direction -- to not provide that cohesive unity. If a new player sees a cool ability involving proliferate and land drops, they may or may not get the card, but either way they can move on until it comes up in game. If they see something labeled 'landfall', though, that's an indication that they should remember and learn that term, and look out for it in other places in the set -- when, in fact, landfall isn't even a deliberate theme of Ravnica and just happens to come up on one or two cards.

This is y'alls reminder that Nameless Race has no subtype in Gatherer. From the Errata: "This currently has no creature type. It’s Nameless."

Anyway, I just really pray this isn't Elspeth.

Agreed the exchange almost certainly has to go -- besides the previous commenter's concern about the morph-like stackless state of the exchange at the moment, it also seems like it would make the board state excessively difficult to evaluate on both sides. I would at least add a mana cost to the switching ability, if you choose to keep it (I don't really understand the flavor of it).

I also suggest making it sorcery-speed, for things like the following situation: you control one each of Bear Fold and Bird Fold attached to papers. I have a hand with 50 copies of Shredding Winds and infinite mana. However, I will never be able to destroy the Bird Fold; every time I cast a Wind, you switch in response and the spell fizzles; if you cast another one in response, I switch again in response, fizzle it, then switch back; and so on.

I dunno. Maybe these changes take away from your goal for the mechanic; that said, the mechanical child of banding and the Flagbearer mechanic at common is 1) anachronistic and probably no longer accepted under NWO due to board state and mechanical complexity, and 2) probably really weird to play with in some relatively common edge cases -- it's new, but it's weird and probably confusing/not straightforward.

Also, the whole 'discard and put into play' mechanic is weird too, but I concede I don't have a better suggestion and that it, at least, makes sense and doesn't have too many edge cases I can think of, besides eg letting Tormod's Crypt counter your spell but not actual Counterspell.

Anyway: that's a lot of mechanical nitpicks. Flavorfully, I think it's a very cool and wacky mechanic, and I certainly think there's room for designing some cool cards with it, so props on all those points.

Yeah... check out Belligerent Hatchling. That's an albino Medusa-wolf that spits bees. Why? Who knows.

Lorwyn art is usually awesome, but is often thematically incomprehensible. Primalcrux might be a case of the opposite problem: you know the thematic material (wood elemental!), you just can't understand any other aspect of the art.

If I hazard a guess, I would say it's some sort of antlered beast -- probably a moose deer et al -- the two 3-pronged clusters are legs (unusually widely placed), and there's also some random wood sticking out above the left(rel to beast, our right) leg.

Huh... Tibalt, the Fiend-Blooded is all of a sudden right at the very top-end of acceptable power level, possibly even OP. Choice of Damnations is probably too powerful to be acceptable. Goldenglow Moth is an awesome early-game play. Hat Stand is a game-warpingly powerful card, and forms something akin to the Exarch/Pestermite half of the Twin combo with Force of Savagery. Dimir Charm and the like kill half the format. Char-Rumbler is a super powerful play.

I'm seeing many cards from Kamigawa in your future.

Maybe the ability given by Kira, Great Glass-Spinner, could be flavored as a sort of "Kill me quickly / with overwhelming force, or I'll just grow back and you'll have to try again"? Unlike persist/undying/regen/indestructible/etc., that's actually clearly part of blue's color pie, and it's not necessarily too overpowered to boot.

The bigger issue might be the impact on the set as a whole: 1) It's not a particularly compelling ability, since you can't really build around it; 2) You'd probably want to include more incidental abilities that target that you can combine with others to kill the trolls (more Forge Devil and Cinder Pyromancer), plus things like Diabolic Edict, and 3) Even then, giving a whole subset of the set an ability that invalidates lots of traditional removal might be dangerous.

In general, though, frankly I'm concerned about your very premise. Looking for a regen-type ability seems to lean towards defensive abilities, and if you're not careful then that seems like it implies 1 and 3 no matter what the specifics of the mechanic are.

Also, in general you're looking for a creature mechanic in blue, which is tricky. Maybe level up? That's primarily blue, and you could stretch it as the idea of trolls getting tougher as they age. Or maybe a level-up variant that removes counters when they take damage? It'd be hard to make sure it's not frustrating to play against.

In all likelihood, you'll draw any particular card maybe twice at most. You'd need a ton of support in both Limited and Constructed: the former would require an absolutely huge amount of self-mill, library-searching, etc. in order to make it remotely feasible to play these cards as a deck archetype; and the latter seems just a litle bit impossible considering that there's 4 cards out of 60 in a deck, and there's so much consistency in Constructed otherwise.

Of course, you could just design the cards to be perfectly fine if you draw just one of them, great if you draw 2, and don't really expect to draw 3 of them somehow. And actually, I think you've done a great job with that:
-comparing Countershot to Force Spike, as well as Flusterstorm, Stubborn Denial, and Spell Pierce, suggests it's pretty well-balanced;
-Think Fast might be a little powerful (compare Accumulated Knowledge, and considering that Ponder and Preordain are banned in Modern; I'd probably make it a sorcery, to keep the attractive cost and bring it close to the power level of those cards), but it might be fine in a contained, casual format (not sure your plans for the set).
-Fireshot might be a little weak, but then again might also be too strong. Compare Forked Bolt, Geistflame, and Lightning Bolt/Shock/Lightning Strike/Open Fire -- the power level of direct damage seems to fluctuate a lot depending on the format. Given the lack of things to change without significantly affecting the card, I think it's pretty safe as it stands.
-Scattershot is weird to me just because it's unlikely in most formats (besides, say, Commander, where Rapid Fire doesn't work anyway) that you'll have so many artifacts to deal with that you'll want to play 4 of a card that deals with them. It's just not an effect that seems super desirable to see more than once or twice a game, so putting Rapid Fire on it is just weird to me. It'd be like putting Mentor on a 1/1, Evolve on a 10/10, or Affinity for artifacts on a creature that mostly costs colored mana.

All in all, besides Scattershot, these all seem like really great designs in that vein -- "good once, great twice, don't expect anything more than that". I just wonder if that's an exciting enough theme to build a whole mechanic around -- it seems very feels-bad for the Johnnies who want to brew around a cool mechanic, it's not at all impressive for the Timmies, it's kinda-ish flavor justified -- pretty much only serious optimizing Spikes want to play this mechanic, and even then the randomness might be a turn-off.

Regardless, cool idea for a mechanic. And whether you use this mechanic or not, I think Trigger-Happy Spellslinger is one of the coolest designs I've seen in ages here -- it's perfectly costed for its abilities, has cool types and name, and it's a unique, balanced ability that can be good on its own but can also be built around pretty interestingly, and it's new. I love it!

I honestly don't get the hate on this card. It's a four-mana exile removal spell, that can also block or be a Lightning Bolt. It's not stellar, but how on earth is that bad? Not every card can be Siege Rhino, but it honestly seems outright silly to me to call it an outright terrible card.

And as for applications to EDH, this seems to me to be one of the most interesting generals to build around (bounce/vanishing/etc. shenanigans, an excellent card to play with Yuriko or other Ninjas, Assassin or unblockables theme, giving them creatures to exile) and it combines board control in an interesting political way with an alt win-con that can actually happen in the land of commander damage. I think it's a good balance of 'able to do things' and 'not a broken combo commander'.

You know what

T4 Jace, Wielder of Mysteries

T5 leveler then +1 Jace

the part that I personally hate about pod is how consistently is able to tut for answers or difficult cards against the opponents deck. pod will always find voice of resurgence against control, kitchen finks against burn and there are too many cheap creature tool effects in modern, and there will be more every set, linvala, rhino, selfless spirit, eidolon of rectoric, melira, restoration angel... If Pod had a constriction effect like, only green creatures it would be different (only plus one mana is not a constriction at all), but this way I fond it difficult to unban. Maybe one day wizards prints a "magus of the pod" or something similar without phyrexian mana or "haste".

Also Pod lets you always play on or above curve

Quote from CalvinSchwa »

Most importantly: Wurm is the reason you need to keep your library in order while searching through it. If you start to cast Wurm and fail, it goes back in where it was before. If I were able to start casting Wurm from my library, shuffle my library with Colossus as above, then fail to pay the mana cost for Wurm and thus start to undo the action, where in my library does Panglacial Wurm end up?

I think the simple answer to your question is that the rules don't currently address this scenario. Here are the relevant CR sections:

Casting Spells
601.2. To cast a spell is to take it from where it is (usually the hand), put it on the stack, and pay its costs, so that it will eventually resolve and have its effect. <snip> If, at any point during the casting of a spell, a player is unable to comply with any of the steps listed below, the casting of the spell is illegal; the game returns to the moment before the casting of that spell was proposed (see rule 717, “Handling Illegal Actions”).
601.2g If the total cost includes a mana payment, the player then has a chance to activate mana abilities (see rule 605, “Mana Abilities”). Mana abilities must be activated before costs are paid.
601.2h The player pays the total cost in any order. Partial payments are not allowed. Unpayable costs can’t be paid.

Mana Abilities
605.3a A player may activate an activated mana ability whenever he or she has priority, whenever he or she is casting a spell or activating an ability that requires a mana payment, or whenever a
rule or effect asks for a mana payment, even if it’s in the middle of casting or resolving a spell or activating or resolving an ability.
605.3b An activated mana ability doesn’t go on the stack, so it can’t be targeted, countered, or otherwise responded to. Rather, it resolves immediately after it is activated. (See rule 405.6c.)
405.6c Mana abilities resolve immediately. If a mana ability both produces mana and has another effect, the mana is produced and the other effect happens immediately. If a player had priority
before a mana ability was activated, that player gets priority after it resolves. (See rule 605, “Mana Abilities.”)

Handling Illegal Actions
717.1. If a player takes an illegal action or starts to take an action but can’t legally complete it, the entire action is reversed and any payments already made are canceled. No abilities trigger and no effects apply as a result of an undone action. If the action was casting a spell, the spell returns to the zone it came from. The player may also reverse any legal mana abilities activated while making the illegal play, unless mana from them or from any triggered mana abilities they triggered was spent on another mana ability that wasn’t reversed. Players may not reverse actions that moved cards to a library, moved cards from a library to any zone other than the stack, caused a library to be shuffled, or caused cards from a library to be revealed.

Shuffle
701.16a To shuffle a library or a face-down pile of cards, randomize the cards within it so that no player knows their order.

Per 601.2g, mana abilities (such as discarding Darksteel Colossus to Skirge Familiar) must be activated before a cost is paid to cast a spell. Upon activation, as per 405.6c, all other effects (like the replacement effect from Darksteel Colossus) happen at the same time as the mana generation, which is necessarily before the paying of the costs for Panglacial Wurm. Therefore, Darksteel Colossus is shuffled into the library prior to costs being paid for Panglacial Wurm. Then, as per the Illegal Actions rule, you cannot reverse the shuffling after discovering that you cannot pay the cost.

My recommendation, then, is that the Wurm be shuffled into the library, even though the library has already been shuffled by Darksteel Colossus. Here is my logic. Technically, since you weren't able to cast Panglacial Wurm, the game reverts back to when you hadn't cast it, so it essentially never left your library. According to the game, it should be in the exact same position when you activated the mana ability that made you discard Darksteel Colossus. This being the case, Panglacial Wurm should have been included in the shuffle. The deck is considered randomized after a shuffle, so shuffling again to put the Panglacial Wurm in a random location in the deck does not change the state of randomization. Therefore, it should be shuffled in.

I would add that if it is easily demonstrative that you cannot cast the Wurm, and you attempt to do it and reverse it as an Illegal Action, that could be considered an infraction. For example, if on T1, you crack a fetch, then pull the Wurm out on the stack as if to cast (even though you have no lands in play), that is demonstrably impossible to do. This could be construed as Stalling under certain circumstances and Cheating in a worst case (if someone could construe that you benefit somehow from your actions). An honest mistake where you thought you had enough mana is one thing. Where it is clear to any observer that you do not have enough, I would stray away from those actions.

Quote from Havrekjex »

There are so many EDH decks that want the highest possible number of turn taking spells, no matter what the cost is. This, like all the others, go right into Narset.

Unfortunately.... ):