In case new players don't know what the obvious name is based on...
Sure, it's a 5/4 flier for 3W, but considering the critical situations people use the effect for, I'd say outside of Standard (which has no choice anyway), the split second is so much more important (also, this doesn't cover other game loss conditions), although I guess EDH wouldn't hurt for redundancy considering its restrictions...
Gyre Engineer1GU Creature - Vedalken Wizard (U) T: Add GU. "As I contemplate what is, I dive ever deeper into the depths of possibility. Then I set an experiment in motion and watch the truth rise to the surface."
1/1
Savage Smash1RG Sorcery (C)
Target creature you control gets +2/+2 until end of turn. It fights target creature you don't control. A Gruul berserker is never unarmed.
Gruul Beastmaster3G Creature - Human Shaman (U)
Riot
Whenever Gruul Beastmaster attacks, another target creature you control gets +X/+0 until end of turn, where X is Gruul Beastmaster's power.
2/2
Sauroform Hybrid1G Creature - Human Lizard Warrior (C) 4GG: Adapt 4. "Within each of us, the potential for great power waits to be released." - Zija, Simic mutationist
2/2
Kaya's WrathWWBB Sorcery (R)
Destroy all creatures. You gain life equal to the number of creatures you controlled that were destroyed this way. Teysa convened the meeting of the Obzedat. Kaya ended it.
This article was quite the mixed bag for me - on one hand I really appreciate the assurance that Sheldon had reiterated that this particular article is pretty much only his opinion and has no bearing on the RC's decision-making, which reinforced my "newsman/leader creed" of "A person wouldn't be human if he or she was not shaped by his experiences and opinions, but good information relayers and/or leaders don't let them get in the way when they're performing their duties." being one of the things I like best about the RC.
At the same time though, the article didn't exactly do wonders for my impression of Sheldon himself. I'm going to be blunt - he went for a major event that no doubt has a greater diversity of players, playing the format the committee has adopted a minimalist policy so that local social agreements can shape their own metas (which in turn should lead to a expectation that larger diverse events should basically be "expect anything")... and then ends up surprised (oh boy did I have a surprised Pikachu meme image in my head after reading the article) himself at the event.
Like I said, it's an awkward mixed bag for me - in my opinion, the RC is generally leading the format right, but it's so jarring Sheldon himself doesn't manage to hold the expectations said right decisions should have shaped players' expectations of larger events when he himself headed down to a larger event. Many criticizing Sheldon/RC often state they play in their own isolated environment and are "out of touch", which I personally feel isn't a relevant factor to begin with because they're adopting the minimalist policy, and while this article changes nothing about my stand on their lack of correlation, it was still somewhat shocking to see that the criticisms are somewhat true, even if they are irrelevant to what people are trying to utilize it for from where I am concerned.
I can't reasonably expect the RC to experience every possible meta out there (and understand Sheldon himself isn't exactly at the peak of health) and also feel that the amount of experience is irrelevant to the minimalist policy they adopted for the format, but at the same time the minor things Sheldon is surprised at really reinforced the image that they really play in a small isolated group and is somewhat oblivious to how things run outside in practice. My image of them running the format remains the same (generally positive) but boy my expectation of them being prepared for the very situation their generally good decisions have shaped the format is rather shattered, especially when it comes from someone with as many decks as Sheldon himself.
With all due respect to Sheldon, but if I don't state this I'll never be satisfied - being surprised at a decent person playing stax is basically like being surprised a decent person could enjoy playing violent, gory video games. My "newsman creed" in the first paragraph is something I feel must be applied to people in positions of power and/or information relaying, but it's also sort of applicable for hobbies as well - someone can choose to clearly define his life experiences and his hobby ones distinctly from each other, especially when it comes to "darker/griefier" hobbies. In fact many people do that and your choice of associating the two aspects sort of goes against the very own creed they adopted and is very unfair to them (I know I make it sound so important using the word "creed" when they're probably just casually dividing them consciously, but I have to exaggerate a tad to get the point across).
Lastly before anyone points out I'm talking too much about Sheldon and not enough about the format, a reminder that is essentially what the article itself is, pretty much opinion from Sheldon and hence therefore the only new conclusions (of my views) I can draw are about Sheldon himself - the format itself is status quo with the states we've discussed and agreed on numerous times elsewhere and the article changes nothing. Just like Sheldon enjoyed drawing information about people he played with (although as I said I don't agree with his tendency to rely on association based on hobbies) I'm basically drawing information about him from this article (which isn't a common type of article) with the way I infer information, although if I had to sum it up in an image I'd really use the surprised Pikachu meme.
It hasn't been 24 hours since the preview and I managed to make myself already sick of Vannifar combined with Lightning Greaves and Intruder Alarm just by thinking about it (and with the fast mana we have it's T2 possible in christmasland, so hasty Blightsteel with a dozen ETB and/or death triggers T2 is now a possible reality.)
I'm a whole lot more excited about Wilderness Reclamation than most, I may have found a linchpin that would assist Freyalise greatly ever since I've decided to adopt stax to both assist the deck's tokens and fill the deck quality, all because I decided it can't have creature cards at all (which also meant no Seedborn Muse).
The person playing this clearly isn't playing for efficiency, but at the same time is also certainly having fun (because clearly the deciding factor to throw this into a deck is "will I have fun with it regardless of results" and the answer is dependent on the individual).
Just as Rakdos himself intended.
Also, is this Flample the set? First a Jellyfish Hydra Beast, then a 4/4 demon, then Rakdos himself. G's flying hate game better be strong this set, or there'll be plenty of running over each other even in the skies (granted, they're all Mythic, but still...)
The activeness of the Secondary Market is what makes the hobby cheap to maintain. You definitely don't have to be an "investor", just keep an eye out and recognize how card prices behave generally and act accordingly with your collection and you can basically minimize costs of continually maintaining the hobby.
Note my use of words - "hobby" and "maintain" instead of "game" and "play". Comparatively to the "outside" gaming industry we are relatively more expensive to initially get in because gaming is currently in the generation of luring players with Free-to-Play tactics, which in turn creates a generation of players used to getting into a game for free to test if they like it or not, then simply throw it away if they don't like it because it costed them nothing.
The paper card game cannot provide such free incentives because anything printed can immediately enter the Secondary Market due to its nature of being a physical product and honestly Magic does need to feature some of its costly best to entice more players to begin with - the new unaware players will not take the effort to go and sell the cards while the enfranchised secondary market is already ready to pounce for their own advantage, easily destroying the purpose of these "free" products to entice new players to begin with.
Notice how well Arena attracted new players? Because there isn't a Free-Secondary Market (the "dust/wildcard" system they're using is basically a very controlled-by-wotc version of it and isn't remotely the same), WotC can easily give out free booster packs to players (something that has never been done on paper, even MPR requires playing first to get free cards) without fear their current market would just destroy the effort. If they paywalled it from the start, MTGA would have ended up like Artifact (FYI it's not even in the top 100 played games on Steam before 2018 ended...) which is basically how paper MTG feels like to the outside world, but at least paper MTG is restricted by the nature of its product and market rather than just stupid decisions.
Of course, like any other game, the more competitive you are, the more it costs because you have to make sub-optimal choices regarding minimizing costs when it comes to buying/selling cards because of the urgency requirement of the cards, but on the casual level (which may even extend to FNM depending on location/meta), the game is relatively cheap to maintain compared to a lot more hobbies. It's the high wall to entry that scares people starting from zero off mainly - on some technicality I'm still spending the same thousand dollars I already spent in the past decade right now and the increment to this "pool" is actually pretty minimal.
Her -1 does look better in an aggro meta, with its plentiful 0-1-drops. Affinity, Hardened Scales Robots, Collected Company decks, BR Hollow One, Dredge, Burn, Humans, and Spirits all have something to lose.
Granted I haven't played Modern in over a year already, but as a traditional Affinity player back then, I feel like this would only do some work if you're going first and dropped Kaya on turn 2 (following a mana dork). You would probably be dead if you spent turn 3 (even going first) removing the tiniest piece of the affinity board... and that's only if Ravager isn't there to convert it to a +1/+1 counter to begin with...
This does a good Insurrection imitation in EDH. If you can generate a boatload of mana the text basically reads: You win.
At the same CMC you only get 2 creatures.
With a non-infinite boatload of mana that's a lot of math for lethal to do if you can't cover everything... and as far as I'm concerned with my meta I'm definitely not spending all that time only to be greeted with Swan Song.
Then we get to the real kicker - it doesn't grant haste, so it's really poor imitation of insurrection to begin with. Sure, the theft is "permanent"... but never trust one turn cycle to pass without the whole table scrambling for wipes after someone has essentially took everyone else's board. Then there's the fun fact that this by itself also gets walled by shroud/hexproof...
Even with infinite mana it's dependent on board-state... dead card in hand if someone just wiped the board.
It's only timmy in cost, but so situational on effect and a poor imitation of a card that's not even really played that much nowadays. The meta must be really casual (emphasis on really) for this to even successfully pull off.
Flample Hydra that becomes half a Sphinx's Revelation even if it gets countered? Sign me up.
My usual Palinchron plan involves drawing into Apocalypse Hydra and I think I've found the perfect companion.
New leader for Jellyfish tribal.
Not Legendary enough.
Apparently the current Prime Speaker of the Simic could be an Elf-Jellyfish hybrid though...
Anyway, I'm having Drana tender her resignation in Alesha in light of Judith. Drana has always been so situational she actually rotated in-and-out of the deck several times to begin with but I'm quite confident Judith displaced her from the deck permanently. Sure, on paper Drana's evasion and potential stacking of power looks better but in practice there's just so many factors the whole thing becomes so situationally diluted I think the pings would actually do more lasting damage in the long run.
*Real* Rakdos players will point Judith's damage at *themselves*.
Why haven't they printed Rakdos Ascendancy except it pings any target for 1BR and adds a pain counter for every 1 damage dealt to you by a source you control yet?
Sure, it's a 5/4 flier for 3W, but considering the critical situations people use the effect for, I'd say outside of Standard (which has no choice anyway), the split second is so much more important (also, this doesn't cover other game loss conditions), although I guess EDH wouldn't hurt for redundancy considering its restrictions...
Gyre Engineer 1GU
Creature - Vedalken Wizard (U)
T: Add GU.
"As I contemplate what is, I dive ever deeper into the depths of possibility. Then I set an experiment in motion and watch the truth rise to the surface."
1/1
Source: Official MTG Youtube Channel (Brazil) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vp5lCaD-V9k)
Savage Smash 1RG
Sorcery (C)
Target creature you control gets +2/+2 until end of turn. It fights target creature you don't control.
A Gruul berserker is never unarmed.
Gruul Beastmaster 3G
Creature - Human Shaman (U)
Riot
Whenever Gruul Beastmaster attacks, another target creature you control gets +X/+0 until end of turn, where X is Gruul Beastmaster's power.
2/2
Source: Paste Magazine (https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2019/01/magic-ravnica-allegiance-preview-cards.html)
Sauroform Hybrid 1G
Creature - Human Lizard Warrior (C)
4GG: Adapt 4.
"Within each of us, the potential for great power waits to be released." - Zija, Simic mutationist
2/2
Source: Destructoid (https://www.destructoid.com/magic-s-next-expansion-ravnica-allegiance-is-out-this-month-here-s-an-exclusive-card-535832.phtml)
Kaya's Wrath WWBB
Sorcery (R)
Destroy all creatures. You gain life equal to the number of creatures you controlled that were destroyed this way.
Teysa convened the meeting of the Obzedat. Kaya ended it.
Source: ChannelFireball (https://www.channelfireball.com/articles/the-4-mana-wrath-returns-ravnica-allegiance-preview-card-kayas-wrath/)
At the same time though, the article didn't exactly do wonders for my impression of Sheldon himself. I'm going to be blunt - he went for a major event that no doubt has a greater diversity of players, playing the format the committee has adopted a minimalist policy so that local social agreements can shape their own metas (which in turn should lead to a expectation that larger diverse events should basically be "expect anything")... and then ends up surprised (oh boy did I have a surprised Pikachu meme image in my head after reading the article) himself at the event.
Like I said, it's an awkward mixed bag for me - in my opinion, the RC is generally leading the format right, but it's so jarring Sheldon himself doesn't manage to hold the expectations said right decisions should have shaped players' expectations of larger events when he himself headed down to a larger event. Many criticizing Sheldon/RC often state they play in their own isolated environment and are "out of touch", which I personally feel isn't a relevant factor to begin with because they're adopting the minimalist policy, and while this article changes nothing about my stand on their lack of correlation, it was still somewhat shocking to see that the criticisms are somewhat true, even if they are irrelevant to what people are trying to utilize it for from where I am concerned.
I can't reasonably expect the RC to experience every possible meta out there (and understand Sheldon himself isn't exactly at the peak of health) and also feel that the amount of experience is irrelevant to the minimalist policy they adopted for the format, but at the same time the minor things Sheldon is surprised at really reinforced the image that they really play in a small isolated group and is somewhat oblivious to how things run outside in practice. My image of them running the format remains the same (generally positive) but boy my expectation of them being prepared for the very situation their generally good decisions have shaped the format is rather shattered, especially when it comes from someone with as many decks as Sheldon himself.
With all due respect to Sheldon, but if I don't state this I'll never be satisfied - being surprised at a decent person playing stax is basically like being surprised a decent person could enjoy playing violent, gory video games. My "newsman creed" in the first paragraph is something I feel must be applied to people in positions of power and/or information relaying, but it's also sort of applicable for hobbies as well - someone can choose to clearly define his life experiences and his hobby ones distinctly from each other, especially when it comes to "darker/griefier" hobbies. In fact many people do that and your choice of associating the two aspects sort of goes against the very own creed they adopted and is very unfair to them (I know I make it sound so important using the word "creed" when they're probably just casually dividing them consciously, but I have to exaggerate a tad to get the point across).
Lastly before anyone points out I'm talking too much about Sheldon and not enough about the format, a reminder that is essentially what the article itself is, pretty much opinion from Sheldon and hence therefore the only new conclusions (of my views) I can draw are about Sheldon himself - the format itself is status quo with the states we've discussed and agreed on numerous times elsewhere and the article changes nothing. Just like Sheldon enjoyed drawing information about people he played with (although as I said I don't agree with his tendency to rely on association based on hobbies) I'm basically drawing information about him from this article (which isn't a common type of article) with the way I infer information, although if I had to sum it up in an image I'd really use the surprised Pikachu meme.
EDIT: Spelling
I'm a whole lot more excited about Wilderness Reclamation than most, I may have found a linchpin that would assist Freyalise greatly ever since I've decided to adopt stax to both assist the deck's tokens and fill the deck quality, all because I decided it can't have creature cards at all (which also meant no Seedborn Muse).
Just as Rakdos himself intended.
Also, is this Flample the set? First a Jellyfish Hydra Beast, then a 4/4 demon, then Rakdos himself. G's flying hate game better be strong this set, or there'll be plenty of running over each other even in the skies (granted, they're all Mythic, but still...)
Turn 1 Elvish Spirit Guide, Sol Ring, Mana Crypt/Mana Vault, Tropical Island, Lightning Greaves and Intruder Alarm.
Turn 2 Botanical Sanctum, Prime Speaker Vannifar, Ornithopter into Blightsteel Colossus for lethal, while triggering up to about a dozen ETB and/or death triggers.
Note my use of words - "hobby" and "maintain" instead of "game" and "play". Comparatively to the "outside" gaming industry we are relatively more expensive to initially get in because gaming is currently in the generation of luring players with Free-to-Play tactics, which in turn creates a generation of players used to getting into a game for free to test if they like it or not, then simply throw it away if they don't like it because it costed them nothing.
The paper card game cannot provide such free incentives because anything printed can immediately enter the Secondary Market due to its nature of being a physical product and honestly Magic does need to feature some of its costly best to entice more players to begin with - the new unaware players will not take the effort to go and sell the cards while the enfranchised secondary market is already ready to pounce for their own advantage, easily destroying the purpose of these "free" products to entice new players to begin with.
Notice how well Arena attracted new players? Because there isn't a Free-Secondary Market (the "dust/wildcard" system they're using is basically a very controlled-by-wotc version of it and isn't remotely the same), WotC can easily give out free booster packs to players (something that has never been done on paper, even MPR requires playing first to get free cards) without fear their current market would just destroy the effort. If they paywalled it from the start, MTGA would have ended up like Artifact (FYI it's not even in the top 100 played games on Steam before 2018 ended...) which is basically how paper MTG feels like to the outside world, but at least paper MTG is restricted by the nature of its product and market rather than just stupid decisions.
Of course, like any other game, the more competitive you are, the more it costs because you have to make sub-optimal choices regarding minimizing costs when it comes to buying/selling cards because of the urgency requirement of the cards, but on the casual level (which may even extend to FNM depending on location/meta), the game is relatively cheap to maintain compared to a lot more hobbies. It's the high wall to entry that scares people starting from zero off mainly - on some technicality I'm still spending the same thousand dollars I already spent in the past decade right now and the increment to this "pool" is actually pretty minimal.
Granted I haven't played Modern in over a year already, but as a traditional Affinity player back then, I feel like this would only do some work if you're going first and dropped Kaya on turn 2 (following a mana dork). You would probably be dead if you spent turn 3 (even going first) removing the tiniest piece of the affinity board... and that's only if Ravager isn't there to convert it to a +1/+1 counter to begin with...
At the same CMC you only get 2 creatures.
With a non-infinite boatload of mana that's a lot of math for lethal to do if you can't cover everything... and as far as I'm concerned with my meta I'm definitely not spending all that time only to be greeted with Swan Song.
Then we get to the real kicker - it doesn't grant haste, so it's really poor imitation of insurrection to begin with. Sure, the theft is "permanent"... but never trust one turn cycle to pass without the whole table scrambling for wipes after someone has essentially took everyone else's board. Then there's the fun fact that this by itself also gets walled by shroud/hexproof...
Even with infinite mana it's dependent on board-state... dead card in hand if someone just wiped the board.
It's only timmy in cost, but so situational on effect and a poor imitation of a card that's not even really played that much nowadays. The meta must be really casual (emphasis on really) for this to even successfully pull off.
Not Legendary enough.
Apparently the current Prime Speaker of the Simic could be an Elf-Jellyfish hybrid though...
Anyway, I'm having Drana tender her resignation in Alesha in light of Judith. Drana has always been so situational she actually rotated in-and-out of the deck several times to begin with but I'm quite confident Judith displaced her from the deck permanently. Sure, on paper Drana's evasion and potential stacking of power looks better but in practice there's just so many factors the whole thing becomes so situationally diluted I think the pings would actually do more lasting damage in the long run.
Why haven't they printed Rakdos Ascendancy except it pings any target for 1BR and adds a pain counter for every 1 damage dealt to you by a source you control yet?
Flample Hydra that becomes half a Sphinx's Revelation even if it gets countered? Sign me up.
My usual Palinchron plan involves drawing into Apocalypse Hydra and I think I've found the perfect companion.