Faerie Miscreant "I r dissapoint". Ravnica faeries are garbage though, so its expected. But Lorwyn is a plane covered in this set, so can we get some good blue faeries please? lol a 2/1 flyer for UU would be fine
This is the first 1 mana flyer ever printed with an upside and no drawbacks (including less than 1 power as a drawback) at common. It's a COMMON. A very good one.
In what format is a 1 mana 1/1 flyer good? Maybe if you had like 4 or more of these in a limited deck, sure, I'd think about it. Other than that? Sb filler.
Jace is fast but doesn't do much as a 0/2. Nissa is very slow and will never flip in some games against aggro decks, might be something for the sideboard.
I don't know how I feel about anything that dies to Wild Slash really. This whole cycle might just be weak sauce. Hopefully Gideon has 3 toughness.
Actually, I think Nissa is fine against aggro just for the creature side. It gives you a blocker while making sure you dont miss land drops on your way to going over the top of them. It might not flip, but I dont think Nissa has to flip to be playable, and if she does flip, she becomes quite good.
I feel like Nissa is being undervalued, even if she never ends up seeing play. Green control decks could play her, if there's something like Sultai that comes back. It's card advantage even if it doesn't flip.
And if it's not a mainboard card, I could easily see it being used in the sideboard for control mirrors. You wouldn't build around it, but it seems to be pretty good.
When it flips it gets to make a 4/4, and then potentially start drawing you lands. All these little things add up to pretty decent value.
Unless there's some unforeseen support, like a combo deck, I don't think Jace is very good. Merfolk looter isn't really playable, and when it flips, I dont think its worth playing a merfolk looter.
First, there was a standard where u/w talkig control did play Mind Spring in Standard. That deck had to worry about its own life total so I don't think you'd see it play this card.
Invoke the Firemind saw play, but that was because it was part of a wacky combo deck that could tutor for cards that cost 3 mana, and it does a lot of what this card wants to do.
This card is likely to see very little play and not be worth much, although I'd hold onto foils for the off chance that it becomes a pricy EDH card.
I agree with others, this seems to be a tough card to evaluate. The thing is, Disentomb is a sorcery effect, this is an instant speed spell, so that kind of throws the idea that every effect is a 1-mana effect out the window. Most instant speed Disentomb effects are 2 mana (although most also have some other upside... but then again, this card has a lot of upside, because there are 4 modes to choose from).
Disentomb is a really bad effect....
you spend mana just to swap a card in your hand for a card in your graveyard, it's hardly efficient, and as you can only grab creatures, it's not really versatile.
needs a load of preparation (or a really late game status) if you want that to be really useful.
It's like an awful tutor or a weird "draw a card" effect... it's better than draw if you have that creature you need in your graveyard, and worse if you don't.
Should it be a Shallow Grave or Unearth effect and the card would be a lot better IMO.
Yeah, the card, as it is, really has a lot of value, but at rare I'd expect it to be a little more pushed....
still, it's a nice card.
Disentomb is generally bad because because you end up card neutral, but you paid a mana, and there are times when Disentomb can't even bring anything back.
While placed on this card, though, you cannot judge it versus Disentomb. At the end of casting Kolaghan's Command you should be up a card. Kolaghan's Command also doesnt suffer from being a dead draw like Disentomb (for the most part.)
The playability of this card, as it stands now, hinges on how good shock is against the field. If shock isn't ok to cast, Kolaghan's Command won't be useful, with the caveat we don't see an increase in artifact power any time soon.
shock for 3 mana is hardly ok to cast in any meta.
but, yeah, if shock can actually kill an actually nice number of creatures, than it might be pretty decent.
Electrolyze, and Staggershock are both shock variants for 3 with upside and both were playable. As long as one of the modes (the shock or artifact destruction) is constantly good, the bonus modes and flexibility will make this a good card.
I agree with others, this seems to be a tough card to evaluate. The thing is, Disentomb is a sorcery effect, this is an instant speed spell, so that kind of throws the idea that every effect is a 1-mana effect out the window. Most instant speed Disentomb effects are 2 mana (although most also have some other upside... but then again, this card has a lot of upside, because there are 4 modes to choose from).
Disentomb is a really bad effect....
you spend mana just to swap a card in your hand for a card in your graveyard, it's hardly efficient, and as you can only grab creatures, it's not really versatile.
needs a load of preparation (or a really late game status) if you want that to be really useful.
It's like an awful tutor or a weird "draw a card" effect... it's better than draw if you have that creature you need in your graveyard, and worse if you don't.
Should it be a Shallow Grave or Unearth effect and the card would be a lot better IMO.
Yeah, the card, as it is, really has a lot of value, but at rare I'd expect it to be a little more pushed....
still, it's a nice card.
Disentomb is generally bad because because you end up card neutral, but you paid a mana, and there are times when Disentomb can't even bring anything back.
While placed on this card, though, you cannot judge it versus Disentomb. At the end of casting Kolaghan's Command you should be up a card. Kolaghan's Command also doesnt suffer from being a dead draw like Disentomb (for the most part.)
The playability of this card, as it stands now, hinges on how good shock is against the field. If shock isn't ok to cast, Kolaghan's Command won't be useful, with the caveat we don't see an increase in artifact power any time soon.
Still here? Well let me remind you of some good ones. More people (or at least half) thought Jace, the Mind Sculptor was bad, or at least not playable because it was worse than original Jace Beleren. Stoneforge Mystic was janky because equipments are usually pointless. The scry lands in Theros were almost universally decried at first, with one of the prevailing attitudes being anger at Wizards for providing bad fixing.
Stoneforge mystic was not that good at the time it was printed. You could basically only fetch 3 cmc cards or less with it (there were more expensive equipments, but not any good ones). Batterskull broke it. That said, it was quite clear, to me, that mystic would be good at some point and I did get one early (for edh - tutoring skullclamp was the thing back then).
Agreed, but this helps make my point. Many people are quick to dismiss a card because the card doesn't neatly slide into an existing archetype. This thinking is natural, the scientific process wants proof. The fault lies in the assumption that the metagame will not change. I agree with you about Mystic, it wasn't initially sought after because all of the support cards weren't available yet. The mistake then was that a certain percentage of people are going to equate current unplayability with the cards inherent power level. This same thing happens literally every single spoiler season. I thought Valakut was going to be good, but that card had even less people on its side than this command does. People thought so little of that card that it was mostly ignored as chaff. I immediately built a sweet mono red control deck that revolved around Valakut for pseudo card advantage and I ended up placing second at a 60+ person extremely competitive FNM. This proved some value, but I was shortsighted and my deck was very short lived. Very soon after, the pairing of Valakut and Primeval Titan proved to be the most powerful thing to do in standard. Funnily enough, most people forget that Primeval Titan was ALSO derided by a large portion of players as the worst of the cycle because it was the only one that didn't immediately slide into an existing archetype. Those in favor of the card had the same message, 'I'm not really sure what Primeval Titan is going to do exactly, but the card has abuse potential.'
Back to the immediate topic of the command. More than half of the cards that this command will share a standard with haven't been released yet. Even so, I may have already found a place to use it, while also finding a place for two other extremely powerful yet underplayed cards. I've been trying to make a Mardu deck work for a few weeks, messing around with Soulfire Grandmaster and its ilk but the deck just isn't quite good enough to get over the hump. I just got back from GP Miami where I saw an interesting tokens version doing quite well that sported Raise the Alarm, Hordling Outburst, Rabblemaster and Brutal Hordechief. This deck certainly took advantage of the Hordechief and if you could recur that or a Rabblemaster with the command, you could continue to overwhelm your opponent with card advantage and pressure, especially with the mainboard Outpost Sieges. I believe that this deck could also finally be the answer to 'where does monastery mentor go?' Spell heavy deck that wants to take advantage of tokens and also has a way to recur the fragile 2/2 seems like a plan. Add a high end to pump the team with something like Kolaghan (fate reforged version) Soul of Theros (which you could actually discard from your hand if need with the command) or Sorin.
Maybe this deck sucks (I actually think it sounds quite good) and maybe the deck is good but gets blanked by something else that I also can't see yet. Either way, I feel like Ive demonstrated that with a little thinking you can find ways to make this card really good.
This is the part of the thread where a long time poster comes along to remind everyone that the majority of the people here are terrible at predicting card playability. Move along veterans.
Still here? Well let me remind you of some good ones. More people (or at least half) thought Jace, the Mind Sculptor was bad, or at least not playable because it was worse than original Jace Beleren. Stoneforge Mystic was janky because equipments are usually pointless. The scry lands in Theros were almost universally decried at first, with one of the prevailing attitudes being anger at Wizards for providing bad fixing.
We (and by that I actually mean most of you) are outright terrible at this.
Having said that, I'm not comparing this card to any powerhouse of any format. The potential exists for this card to be a format staple if one of the best decks in the format is trying to answer a 2 toughness threat while also probably wanting to recur that same 2 toughness threat. If the most important card of a matchup is something like this, after you get your first copy of your important creature, it's very likely that this card becomes the most optimal draw in the matchup after that, and the player who draws more will win the attrition matchup.
More likely, there will be a deck or two where this card is pretty good, and others where it is still borderline playable based solely on its inherent strength, and not synergy.
If this card doesn't see play in Standard, that's probably more a condemnation on a black red midrange decks ability to thrive moreso than it is a knock against this card. It's certainly good, those who can't see that probably don't build too many decks and aren't realistically good at spotting potential.
Except it's sorcery speed. There's a world of difference between instant and sorcery speed.
Also, no black equivalents for Brainstorm nor ponder that are not on the banned list.
Even green gets Green Sun's Zenith, and arguably Birthing Pod, when black is supposed to be the color about tutoring and yet the best it gets is Grim Tutor.
This comes across as whining about what blue used to get. Most of the things you are complaining about are things in the past, and most of it was the pretty far past. The worst part is that a lot of your arguments about the past are incorrect as well. Mono-black has had plenty of tempo decks. Mono-white combo is a fringe deck in current legacy and modern. I played a mono-red ramp deck in Standard 4 years ago at FNMs, and won with it. I'm not going to sit here and try to make sure theres an instance of each one, but Im sure I could if I tried.
This card is squarely in blues color pie. Furthermore, I'll be shocked if this shows up in any high-tiered decks. It's not very good.
It should be obvious that I am not a blue fan by my avatar (etc) but one of the things that annoys me to no end is when people who don't like blue cry about it incessantly. One could make the argument that blue is the weakest color in standard right now (I think the argument would be pointless since all of the colors are pretty evenly matched, with green maybe a tiny bit out front.)
I can't help but to see your arguments as incredibly immature.
Yes, it was a rant about what blue used to be.
Despite that, the black decks you refer to as tempo, I call them aggro, and to me Death and Taxes is a control deck. I don't consider Puresteel Paladin a competitive reliable deck, and Second Sunrise wasn't a mono-white deck. On second thought, red rituals are basically ramp.
And I accept that my argument of blue having a huge part of the color wheel was based on the older times of magic, and by looking at modern's card pool one can see that's not the case anymore. It's just that I still see the marks of the past every time I see legacy events or whenever I play commander, but that isn't true for modern nor standard.
The other side of my argument was that cards like Song of the Dryads and Hornet Sting shouldn't exist. It’s not about power; it’s about a color not being allowed to deal with some things by itself.
I thought at first that Reality Shift should have been white, because white has always had creature removal in the color pie since the beginning of magic, and it has had cards that swap creatures as Afterlife, Crib Swap, or even Humility. Creature transformation to get rid of creatures didn't used to be blue´s thing. Pongify comes from a set where the color pie’s mechanics got scrambled, and ovinize is a colorshifted humble.
Over the last years wizards decided that mono-blue should be able to get rid of big threats through polymorphing (polymorph wasn't originally meant as a reliable way to get rid of opponent creatures), and that green should be able to do so as well with fight. When I first looked at fight, it was a completely red mechanic to me, but I grew used to see it in green.
Thing is, in this day and age, creatures are the primary focus of magic. WotC wants the game to revolve around them as much as possible, and in order to do so, each color needs some way of dealing with them.
Black has tempo in the form of removal. If I spend 1 mana on Deathmark to kill something that costs 4 mana, and then I play another small threat the same turn, I am using tempo to my advantage. Black just does it differently than blue.
Target creature gains double strike until end of turn.
Ferocious — That creature also gains trample until end of turn if you control a creature with power 4 or greater.
Yup, it's going to be a problem. I'm going to jam as many of those as a I can pack 1 and then pick up all the green pump I can find in Khans. This and Become Immense are going to end a lot of games together.
This card is squarely in blues color pie. Furthermore, I'll be shocked if this shows up in any high-tiered decks. It's not very good.
Apologies, for English is my 2nd language, but how exactly is this card "squarely" in blue's colour pie? The only other card I could find to permanently! unconditionally! exile! an opponents! creature was Curse of the Swine, a fairly new card.
Also, I honestly don't get all those comparisons to Pongify. If it would destroy the creature then yes, very similar. But it exiles, which makes it quite different(=better) to me. The only similar thing is that it is removal with a possible positive upside to the creature's controller, but that is it.
Off the top of my head, this will be the 7th time blue has gotten this effect, and it'll be the third block in a row. In addition to Curse of the Swine, Mass Polymorph also exiled. The important part of the card is the transformation though, that is certainly a blue ability. The change to exile happened because it makes more flavor sense. In flavor land, transforming a creature shouldn't kill it, it just makes it a new thing, but with destroy effects you can target indestructible creatures (like the gods) and end up keeping your God and getting an Ape out of it. That doesn't make sense. Also, what if turn my Grizzly Bear into an Ape token, then next turn return my Grizzly Bear to the field right next to the Ape token. That also doesn't make flavor sense.
The card fits into blues color pie, and the change to exile probably makes the card worse in more instances that will matter competitively. This card is fine.
I never said that the effect was not blue flavourwise, which I know it does well, given cards like Ovinize or Polymorphist's Jest already exist, even though the are only temporary creature transformation. Of the cards you mentioned, only Curse of the Swine fulfills the parameters I gave(those with exclamation marks). Flavourwise, an aura version of Turn to Frog would have made much, much more sense than exiling the card. Exiling still makes it leave the battlefield, except it doesn't land in a graveyard but rather in whatever afterlife it believes in. Actually, the new manifested card gets polymorphed, especially if it's a non creature card. Nothing more polymorphed than a walking, lasting instant spell.
My point was that targeted, conditionless exiling of enemy creatures is quite rare in blue. Rare abilites do not, in my opinion, make up a colour pie. I also highly doubt that the change to exile makes it worse, but we will see, hopefully.
Exiling the creature makes it better when you are trying to remove a creature defensively, but with these effects you generally want to 'break' the card and use it on your own creatures, where exiling it makes it worse than straight destroy effects.
Phyrexian Ingester will permanently, unconditionally exile an opponents creature, without a downside, so there is that.
This card is squarely in blues color pie. Furthermore, I'll be shocked if this shows up in any high-tiered decks. It's not very good.
Apologies, for English is my 2nd language, but how exactly is this card "squarely" in blue's colour pie? The only other card I could find to permanently! unconditionally! exile! an opponents! creature was Curse of the Swine, a fairly new card.
Also, I honestly don't get all those comparisons to Pongify. If it would destroy the creature then yes, very similar. But it exiles, which makes it quite different(=better) to me. The only similar thing is that it is removal with a possible positive upside to the creature's controller, but that is it.
Off the top of my head, this will be the 7th time blue has gotten this effect, and it'll be the third block in a row. In addition to Curse of the Swine, Mass Polymorph also exiled. The important part of the card is the transformation though, that is certainly a blue ability. The change to exile happened because it makes more flavor sense. In flavor land, transforming a creature shouldn't kill it, it just makes it a new thing, but with destroy effects you can target indestructible creatures (like the gods) and end up keeping your God and getting an Ape out of it. That doesn't make sense. Also, what if turn my Grizzly Bear into an Ape token, then next turn return my Grizzly Bear to the field right next to the Ape token. That also doesn't make flavor sense.
The card fits into blues color pie, and the change to exile probably makes the card worse in more instances that will matter competitively. This card is fine.
Just a suggestion, although it's probably not the case.
In what format is a 1 mana 1/1 flyer good? Maybe if you had like 4 or more of these in a limited deck, sure, I'd think about it. Other than that? Sb filler.
Actually, I think Nissa is fine against aggro just for the creature side. It gives you a blocker while making sure you dont miss land drops on your way to going over the top of them. It might not flip, but I dont think Nissa has to flip to be playable, and if she does flip, she becomes quite good.
And if it's not a mainboard card, I could easily see it being used in the sideboard for control mirrors. You wouldn't build around it, but it seems to be pretty good.
When it flips it gets to make a 4/4, and then potentially start drawing you lands. All these little things add up to pretty decent value.
Unless there's some unforeseen support, like a combo deck, I don't think Jace is very good. Merfolk looter isn't really playable, and when it flips, I dont think its worth playing a merfolk looter.
Edit: My Engrish.
Invoke the Firemind saw play, but that was because it was part of a wacky combo deck that could tutor for cards that cost 3 mana, and it does a lot of what this card wants to do.
This card is likely to see very little play and not be worth much, although I'd hold onto foils for the off chance that it becomes a pricy EDH card.
Electrolyze, and Staggershock are both shock variants for 3 with upside and both were playable. As long as one of the modes (the shock or artifact destruction) is constantly good, the bonus modes and flexibility will make this a good card.
Disentomb is generally bad because because you end up card neutral, but you paid a mana, and there are times when Disentomb can't even bring anything back.
While placed on this card, though, you cannot judge it versus Disentomb. At the end of casting Kolaghan's Command you should be up a card. Kolaghan's Command also doesnt suffer from being a dead draw like Disentomb (for the most part.)
The playability of this card, as it stands now, hinges on how good shock is against the field. If shock isn't ok to cast, Kolaghan's Command won't be useful, with the caveat we don't see an increase in artifact power any time soon.
Agreed, but this helps make my point. Many people are quick to dismiss a card because the card doesn't neatly slide into an existing archetype. This thinking is natural, the scientific process wants proof. The fault lies in the assumption that the metagame will not change. I agree with you about Mystic, it wasn't initially sought after because all of the support cards weren't available yet. The mistake then was that a certain percentage of people are going to equate current unplayability with the cards inherent power level. This same thing happens literally every single spoiler season. I thought Valakut was going to be good, but that card had even less people on its side than this command does. People thought so little of that card that it was mostly ignored as chaff. I immediately built a sweet mono red control deck that revolved around Valakut for pseudo card advantage and I ended up placing second at a 60+ person extremely competitive FNM. This proved some value, but I was shortsighted and my deck was very short lived. Very soon after, the pairing of Valakut and Primeval Titan proved to be the most powerful thing to do in standard. Funnily enough, most people forget that Primeval Titan was ALSO derided by a large portion of players as the worst of the cycle because it was the only one that didn't immediately slide into an existing archetype. Those in favor of the card had the same message, 'I'm not really sure what Primeval Titan is going to do exactly, but the card has abuse potential.'
Back to the immediate topic of the command. More than half of the cards that this command will share a standard with haven't been released yet. Even so, I may have already found a place to use it, while also finding a place for two other extremely powerful yet underplayed cards. I've been trying to make a Mardu deck work for a few weeks, messing around with Soulfire Grandmaster and its ilk but the deck just isn't quite good enough to get over the hump. I just got back from GP Miami where I saw an interesting tokens version doing quite well that sported Raise the Alarm, Hordling Outburst, Rabblemaster and Brutal Hordechief. This deck certainly took advantage of the Hordechief and if you could recur that or a Rabblemaster with the command, you could continue to overwhelm your opponent with card advantage and pressure, especially with the mainboard Outpost Sieges. I believe that this deck could also finally be the answer to 'where does monastery mentor go?' Spell heavy deck that wants to take advantage of tokens and also has a way to recur the fragile 2/2 seems like a plan. Add a high end to pump the team with something like Kolaghan (fate reforged version) Soul of Theros (which you could actually discard from your hand if need with the command) or Sorin.
Maybe this deck sucks (I actually think it sounds quite good) and maybe the deck is good but gets blanked by something else that I also can't see yet. Either way, I feel like Ive demonstrated that with a little thinking you can find ways to make this card really good.
This is the part of the thread where a long time poster comes along to remind everyone that the majority of the people here are terrible at predicting card playability. Move along veterans.
Still here? Well let me remind you of some good ones. More people (or at least half) thought Jace, the Mind Sculptor was bad, or at least not playable because it was worse than original Jace Beleren. Stoneforge Mystic was janky because equipments are usually pointless. The scry lands in Theros were almost universally decried at first, with one of the prevailing attitudes being anger at Wizards for providing bad fixing.
We (and by that I actually mean most of you) are outright terrible at this.
Having said that, I'm not comparing this card to any powerhouse of any format. The potential exists for this card to be a format staple if one of the best decks in the format is trying to answer a 2 toughness threat while also probably wanting to recur that same 2 toughness threat. If the most important card of a matchup is something like this, after you get your first copy of your important creature, it's very likely that this card becomes the most optimal draw in the matchup after that, and the player who draws more will win the attrition matchup.
More likely, there will be a deck or two where this card is pretty good, and others where it is still borderline playable based solely on its inherent strength, and not synergy.
If this card doesn't see play in Standard, that's probably more a condemnation on a black red midrange decks ability to thrive moreso than it is a knock against this card. It's certainly good, those who can't see that probably don't build too many decks and aren't realistically good at spotting potential.
The white combo decks I'm talking about are Martyr of Sands with or without Proclamation of Rebirth.
Black has tempo in the form of removal. If I spend 1 mana on Deathmark to kill something that costs 4 mana, and then I play another small threat the same turn, I am using tempo to my advantage. Black just does it differently than blue.
Yup, it's going to be a problem. I'm going to jam as many of those as a I can pack 1 and then pick up all the green pump I can find in Khans. This and Become Immense are going to end a lot of games together.
Exiling the creature makes it better when you are trying to remove a creature defensively, but with these effects you generally want to 'break' the card and use it on your own creatures, where exiling it makes it worse than straight destroy effects.
Phyrexian Ingester will permanently, unconditionally exile an opponents creature, without a downside, so there is that.
Creature transformation is blue. Ovinomancer Polymorph Mass Polymorph Pongify Rapid Hybridization Curse of the Swine
Off the top of my head, this will be the 7th time blue has gotten this effect, and it'll be the third block in a row. In addition to Curse of the Swine, Mass Polymorph also exiled. The important part of the card is the transformation though, that is certainly a blue ability. The change to exile happened because it makes more flavor sense. In flavor land, transforming a creature shouldn't kill it, it just makes it a new thing, but with destroy effects you can target indestructible creatures (like the gods) and end up keeping your God and getting an Ape out of it. That doesn't make sense. Also, what if turn my Grizzly Bear into an Ape token, then next turn return my Grizzly Bear to the field right next to the Ape token. That also doesn't make flavor sense.
The card fits into blues color pie, and the change to exile probably makes the card worse in more instances that will matter competitively. This card is fine.