I asked Wizards about this a few weeks ago and they said it was going to be something you ordered through the event sanctioning section of the website (the way you would order FNM promos or gateway promos) and is essentially only going to be available to retail stores that run a prerelease for Alara Reborn (the way the Jace promos were only available to retail stores that ran a Conflux prerelease). That seems a weird way of having us order things, but that's what the sales dude at Wizards said...
Wizards can handle things however they want, but I will say that from a retailer's perspective, the set being spoiled so much more slowly is having a huge negative effect on our preorders for the set, and new sets are hard enough to front the money for without preorders being all but absent. I'm sure we'll get a ton this week now that the money cards have started to show their faces. It's just cutting it so tight.
I really don't think it could be anything other than Duress. Most of these points have been made already, but just to outline them all together:
1) Black got four cards and white got three, so it's likely the reprint is black.
2) The foils in these decks get exclusive artwork always, so even if they do reprint Lord of the Pit, it likely won't be with this art (especially since he got new art in 10th). It just doesn't make sense to take away from the specialness of this box set by using Lord of the Pit or Akroma's new art for anything else.
3) Demonic Tutor isn't getting reprinted for standard. Face it.
4) Stinkweed Imp has a block mechanic that they just aren't going to reprint so carelessly, after the abuse it proved capable of last time.
5) The artwork for Duress really is out of place in this set. Notice that the new Faith's Fetters shows a demon being punished. Duress commissioned specifically for this set would likely show an angel under duress.
6) It could be Faith's Fetters, but I think points 1 and 5 are just too telling.
I spoke with my store's WotC sales rep yesterday and he let me know that these are only going to be available to stores that run organized events at either the Core or Advanced level, and that more will likely be available to those at the Advanced level than those at Core, but that no store will receive more product than any other store at the same level of organization as them. It isn't based on seniority or number of events run. He didn't have numbers yet.
Can't all the people ranting about Wizards "milking the cow" shut up, stop, and exert some critical thinking for a few seconds?
It's a 35$ 15card set with an extremely low print run With means they will make as a profit: (35-manufacturing cost per unit)x(limited print run) USD.
Now compare this to the profit they make with the very large print runs of the current expansions, and you're set to go.
Get over with it, Wizards may have its reasons to market such sets (hype, keeping the players interested, etc...) but it's certainly not for the money, so stop ranting if you please
And actually, considering Wizards doesn't sell this directly to the public and that premier stores get a 49% discount on product when ordering, I'd say Wizards is only making ($17.84 - cost) x limited run.
Also, dudes, this is coming out exactly a year after the last From the Vault. Apparently the plan seems to be to make it an annual release. The timing has nothing to do with the economy. I imagine will see FTV:Angels or what have you in August 2010. Sure, the content seems a little grubby, but I doubt very much that it'll end up being so. This will appeal primarily to serious collectors and casuals, just like the dragons did.
it seems like a lot of people aren't really sure what wizards is actually responsible for, and what they should be complaining about. i'm not an authority either, but i feel like i can shed some light on the situation and maybe if there are any TOs or anybody here who can help fill in the gaps, that would be fantastic.
1) prize structure is decided by the TO. wizards doesn't mandate what can be given out and how it's given out. true, they used to provide more product support for the big TOs to provide better prize support, so the lacking prize support this time around is partially their fault, but things like gray matter's "pity pack for every person who played" and the "three packs for playing three rounds" that somebody else mentioned were not wizards' programs. those were things the TOs chose to do and could no longer afford to do with the reduced product support. in other words, requesting specific programs or prize structures back from wizards won't do any good. they just need to hear "give the TOs more product support."
2) as far as i'm aware two-headed giant is still allowed for prereleases. the place i attended my prerelease still had two-headed giant, and they didn't have drafts (which they normally do). i don't know why they'd try to sneak 2hg in behind wizards' back if they were going to obediently give up on drafts. i think stores probably chose not to run 2hg because it would've been too much of a headache and/or they had space constraints. i don't think asking for 2hg back will do anything, because my shards prerelease had 2hg, so it doesn't seem to be gone, just optional. my TO also didn't run open-dueling, which the survey suggests was available at this prerelease. they've had no luck with open dueling in the past, so they've been electing not to run it. i assume it's as optional as 2hg.
3) drafting was definitely forbidden, and it was so because of the involvement of smaller stores. wizards didn't want to allocate the extra product for drafting to smaller stores, so they cut the program across the board. target this complaint: if you want drafts back, make sure to specify that you at least want it back at the big events. they may not be able to pull it off at the smaller events, so the cries may fall on deaf ears if we aren't specific. weirdly enough, i believe drafts are allowed at launch parties now. my local store didn't run them, but again, i think it was that they opted out of something they're allowed to do. pretty weird inconsistency...
4) i don't think anybody is complaining that wizards opened the door for prereleases to smaller stores. people love that, and there's no reason for them to change that aspect of the new way. what is at stake here is the product support for the bigger TOs. the people who didn't have to travel very far for the big events are upset that the event feels lass casual now that the prize support is so bad. it used to be that i could do badly in a sealed event and still know i had my pity pack coming, or i could do okay and get a few packs out of it. at shards i went 3-1 in my main sealed and received 2 packs for my trouble. the person who beat me and went 4-0 received 8. 8's not bad, but he had to go completely undefeated to get those packs. that feels too competitive for a prerelease to me. i liked going to have fun without worrying about having to play my tightest games ever to get my money's worth. two-headed giant was beyond absurd in its cost ineffectiveness. if they're forced into the same prize support structure for conflux, nobody will play 2hg now that they've seen how little financial sense it makes. it used to be that losing one game out of three in 2hg would still make the event well worth my while in terms of prize support. and even if i bombed out, we got our pity packs. again, i got two packs for my trouble, going 2-1 in 2hg, and i spent $25--only $5 less than the main event (in which i received something like 50% more product to build my deck).
5) admission costs are also determined by the TOs. different halls cost different amounts to rent and different areas draw bigger crowds than others. TOs have final say on what they think they have to charge in order to make the event worth running. wizards has no say in this matter (other than, again, that if they provided more product, maybe the TOs could choose between charging less or offering less prize support). chances are your local store's tournament will cost less than a big event, because the local store factors their rent costs into their everyday sales, whereas the bigger organizers are renting out convention centers for one-time events.
so, hopefully that clears some stuff up! to add my own two cents, i think it would be a great idea to just rewiden the gap from one week to two between the prerelease and launch party. i honestly think launch parties suffered from being too close to the prereleases and from having the same promo (which isn't supposed to happen again anyway). launch parties were traditionally pretty well-attended when people had an extra weekend to breathe between the two events and when a different promo gave them extra incentive to show up. prior to shards, prereleases were one of my favourite things about magic. i hope nobody seriously wants them to eliminate them just because they changed the timing of their events for the worse. they can just change it back! no harm done! (:
oh, wow. yeah, i wasn't playing during mirrodin and i'd never seen spikeshot goblin, which as you mentioned is a nearly identical card. i didn't even notice it when i did the gatherer search and got the other cards. must have been a templating nuance that caused it not to show up for whatever i typed. anyway, thanks! sorry if i came across as captain complainy. i wouldn't have minded this having the note if not for my other card also getting a disclaimer this time around! (:
oh man, i'm gonna come across as really whiny, but all my cards got power-level disclaimers this past round and i'm just not seeing why! (: i don't see what makes my submission overpowered!
i don't have as much to say about it as i did my green reach guy, but i found five common creatures with damage dealing abilities that scaled with their power (Aerie Ouphes, Dwarven Vigilantes, Laccolith Grunt, Laccolith Warrior, and Laccolith Whelp), four of them red, and granted none of them have tim abilities, but realistically, the card is in red and it has double red in its cost. there aren't many playable cards in-colour that are going to boost its power in any significant way, and it's hardly the sort of card that's justifiably played in a multi-coloured deck (where the good pump spells are) unless you're trying to use this as a win condition by comboing it with crusades or something. because of the double red, nobody would choose this over prodigal pyromancer unless they planned to take advantage of pumping his power, and having the double red seems like a big enough hoop to make them jump through for that to be okay. what are they going to use in mono-red? firebreathing? last i heard, giving somebody the chance to two-for-one you isn't too powerful for common, and the card doesn't have any sort of protection against anything. it's not black, it doesn't have shroud, it's not indestructible, and it's within range of the smallest, most insignificant burn spell.
i guess using it with incandescent soulstoke is pretty good, but probably not even as good as sunflare shaman (another common).
ultimately, it's not important because i probably wouldn't win anyway, but i'm just sayin'!
in defense of my little 9/2 dude, i think he's got really good flavour and has a really interesting tension about him mechanically too. i didn't see anywhere that said formation was 100% exclusive to blue and white, only that it was exclusive to kaemir, and that kaemir was primarily blue and white. the main thread about the setting puts giants in all colours and says specifically that some of them align themselves with kaemir, so it didn't seem too much of a stretch to align a giant of any colour with kaemir, despite the city's primary colour breakdown.
anyway, i like the card in terms of flavour because it's conceived as an enormously tall and lumbering beast (very green) that lives near kaemir and acts out in defense of its territory (also a green trait) by swatting down anything that flies too high and too close to it. it doesn't have any concept of justice (white) or rational thought (blue), but it lives near kaemir and it swats flying creatures to the ground, so theoretically the things it swats are likely to land on parts of kaemir. i like formation as a fit for this because it shows allies sucking up the damage when debris hits the ground from its battles in the air.
mechanically, i think it's really interesting because as a 9/2 with reach it's probably going to block and kill an attacking creature but also die itself, or attack once, get chump-blocked, and once again kill a creature but also die itself. it doesn't have trample, so if they have anything with power 2 or greater it's not going to live to deal any damage to your opponent. it's more of a green approach to creature removal (something needed at common, and something very rarely worth more than 5 mana, even in limited). on the other hand, it shines in a deck based around formation, where it can redirect the damage dealt to it to the rest of your army and serve as an infinite chump blocker that kills the attacker. the catch? well, it has triple green in its cost and it's the only green creature with formation, so if you want to utilize that aspect of it, it takes a pretty heavy commitment. it's certainly not uncommon for cards, even commons, to be really good as long as they require a really heavy commitment, and i think triple green in a deck that would otherwise be entirely blue and/or white certainly counts as that.
i do agree that the card makes a better uncommon than a common, but that wasn't what the contest was asking for, and i thought the card was cool enough to warrant submission anyway. it's definitely not "too big" for common, as an 8/4 with trample or a 7/5 with vigilance and trample are definitely both bigger, even if they have slightly lower power. he costs a few less mana because he doesn't have trample and he doesn't have nearly the same chances of surviving his first fight. hell, knight of meadowgrain or knight of the white orchid walks away from a fight with him. as a 9/2 for 5, he's good, albeit probably only in limited, but as a 9/2 for 7 or 8 or 9 he'd be totally unplayable, even in limited. he'd just be really, really expensive and largely untargeted creature removal.
sorry to write such a long diatribe, but i felt like adding a disclaimer to his entry might have been a little hasty, and wanted to at least explain where i was coming from. for the record, there are several other creatures submitted for this spot that would probably never be printed at common either, and there are at least four submissions that broke the explicitly written rule against further green creatures with experience, so i'd just like to ask you to reconsider the disclaimer! thanks!
Momentary Blink was the other card I really want to use from Time Spiral! I'll probably end up doing some sort of destructive U/W/R deck with Blinks, Gargadons, Boom//Busts, Riders, etc.
Also, thanks for responding to this! The decks people posted look like lot's of fun. By this point I've sort of resolved to mostly focus on putting together block decks for the active blocks, but to keep working on one old block deck at a time until I have all those done too. I'm just about done with the Ice Age block deck so it's time to pick the next old block, and I'm not sure if I want to go with Mirage, Tempest, or Onslaught from the original post, or maybe Odyssey, or? Things I now know:
My Time Spiral deck will almost certainly feature Greater Gargadon (though there was something else I wanted to try that I can't think of right now).
My Mirrodin deck will definitely feature Isochron Scepter.
My Odyssey deck will probably feature Wild Mongrel and/or Werebear.
I currently have two decks that are completely Lorwyn/Shadowmoor block legal too, and one of them (the Quillspike/Devoted Druid deck) will likely wind up being my Lorwyn-block candidate for this project. The other one is a super-fast aggro Elf Warrior deck. Here are the current lists for those:
Haha! I just came here to post my Ice Age block list since I finally have most of the cards and wanted to start testing it a little, and this thread is still one of the most current threads in this subforum, over a year later. That's really funny.
Anyway, here's what I've been toying around with from Ice Age:
It seems like it should be pretty good and it seems like a lot of fun. What are people's thoughts on it? It gets style points too, because I managed to get versions of the cards with fully updated wording but original block artwork for pretty much the entire deck (foil Necros from Deckmasters box set, Dark Rituals, Swords to Plowshares, and basic lands from Coldsnap precons, and timeshifted Enduring Renewals).
Mana is obviously going to be tight but Coldsteel Heart, Dark Ritual, and Lake of the Dead should help and once Necro hits the board I'm not worried. I wanted to run Thawing Glaciers, but it's banned in block, and I kept going back and forth on the different artifact mana-sources, ultimately deciding on Coldsteel Heart because it's reusable and I don't really have anything else I'd want to play on turn two anyway. Maybe Wall of Shards, but that's more of an emergency back-up plan, and if I'm lucky Dark Ritual into Necro, but I'd rather do that on turn one anyway. (:
Yeah, I only tap the order and the faeries by attacking, but that never seemed to be an issue for me. They both have relatively high toughness, the order doesn't mind dying to bring back a faerie or a vigilance dude most of the time, and if they have big flying blockers the faerie is only relevant once you have your lock in place anyway, after which point it doesn't matter if it has to attack to use its effect because all your opponent's stuff is tapped. I considered the possibility of running the "T: Make an elf" enchantment but it just seemed too card disadvantageous most of the time.
The Austere Commands seemed really good most of the time, actually, but maybe they're better served in the sideboard, along with two of the Primal Commands, all traded out for a playset of Wraths.
1) Black got four cards and white got three, so it's likely the reprint is black.
2) The foils in these decks get exclusive artwork always, so even if they do reprint Lord of the Pit, it likely won't be with this art (especially since he got new art in 10th). It just doesn't make sense to take away from the specialness of this box set by using Lord of the Pit or Akroma's new art for anything else.
3) Demonic Tutor isn't getting reprinted for standard. Face it.
4) Stinkweed Imp has a block mechanic that they just aren't going to reprint so carelessly, after the abuse it proved capable of last time.
5) The artwork for Duress really is out of place in this set. Notice that the new Faith's Fetters shows a demon being punished. Duress commissioned specifically for this set would likely show an angel under duress.
6) It could be Faith's Fetters, but I think points 1 and 5 are just too telling.
And actually, considering Wizards doesn't sell this directly to the public and that premier stores get a 49% discount on product when ordering, I'd say Wizards is only making ($17.84 - cost) x limited run.
Also, dudes, this is coming out exactly a year after the last From the Vault. Apparently the plan seems to be to make it an annual release. The timing has nothing to do with the economy. I imagine will see FTV:Angels or what have you in August 2010. Sure, the content seems a little grubby, but I doubt very much that it'll end up being so. This will appeal primarily to serious collectors and casuals, just like the dragons did.
1) prize structure is decided by the TO. wizards doesn't mandate what can be given out and how it's given out. true, they used to provide more product support for the big TOs to provide better prize support, so the lacking prize support this time around is partially their fault, but things like gray matter's "pity pack for every person who played" and the "three packs for playing three rounds" that somebody else mentioned were not wizards' programs. those were things the TOs chose to do and could no longer afford to do with the reduced product support. in other words, requesting specific programs or prize structures back from wizards won't do any good. they just need to hear "give the TOs more product support."
2) as far as i'm aware two-headed giant is still allowed for prereleases. the place i attended my prerelease still had two-headed giant, and they didn't have drafts (which they normally do). i don't know why they'd try to sneak 2hg in behind wizards' back if they were going to obediently give up on drafts. i think stores probably chose not to run 2hg because it would've been too much of a headache and/or they had space constraints. i don't think asking for 2hg back will do anything, because my shards prerelease had 2hg, so it doesn't seem to be gone, just optional. my TO also didn't run open-dueling, which the survey suggests was available at this prerelease. they've had no luck with open dueling in the past, so they've been electing not to run it. i assume it's as optional as 2hg.
3) drafting was definitely forbidden, and it was so because of the involvement of smaller stores. wizards didn't want to allocate the extra product for drafting to smaller stores, so they cut the program across the board. target this complaint: if you want drafts back, make sure to specify that you at least want it back at the big events. they may not be able to pull it off at the smaller events, so the cries may fall on deaf ears if we aren't specific. weirdly enough, i believe drafts are allowed at launch parties now. my local store didn't run them, but again, i think it was that they opted out of something they're allowed to do. pretty weird inconsistency...
4) i don't think anybody is complaining that wizards opened the door for prereleases to smaller stores. people love that, and there's no reason for them to change that aspect of the new way. what is at stake here is the product support for the bigger TOs. the people who didn't have to travel very far for the big events are upset that the event feels lass casual now that the prize support is so bad. it used to be that i could do badly in a sealed event and still know i had my pity pack coming, or i could do okay and get a few packs out of it. at shards i went 3-1 in my main sealed and received 2 packs for my trouble. the person who beat me and went 4-0 received 8. 8's not bad, but he had to go completely undefeated to get those packs. that feels too competitive for a prerelease to me. i liked going to have fun without worrying about having to play my tightest games ever to get my money's worth. two-headed giant was beyond absurd in its cost ineffectiveness. if they're forced into the same prize support structure for conflux, nobody will play 2hg now that they've seen how little financial sense it makes. it used to be that losing one game out of three in 2hg would still make the event well worth my while in terms of prize support. and even if i bombed out, we got our pity packs. again, i got two packs for my trouble, going 2-1 in 2hg, and i spent $25--only $5 less than the main event (in which i received something like 50% more product to build my deck).
5) admission costs are also determined by the TOs. different halls cost different amounts to rent and different areas draw bigger crowds than others. TOs have final say on what they think they have to charge in order to make the event worth running. wizards has no say in this matter (other than, again, that if they provided more product, maybe the TOs could choose between charging less or offering less prize support). chances are your local store's tournament will cost less than a big event, because the local store factors their rent costs into their everyday sales, whereas the bigger organizers are renting out convention centers for one-time events.
so, hopefully that clears some stuff up! to add my own two cents, i think it would be a great idea to just rewiden the gap from one week to two between the prerelease and launch party. i honestly think launch parties suffered from being too close to the prereleases and from having the same promo (which isn't supposed to happen again anyway). launch parties were traditionally pretty well-attended when people had an extra weekend to breathe between the two events and when a different promo gave them extra incentive to show up. prior to shards, prereleases were one of my favourite things about magic. i hope nobody seriously wants them to eliminate them just because they changed the timing of their events for the worse. they can just change it back! no harm done! (:
i don't have as much to say about it as i did my green reach guy, but i found five common creatures with damage dealing abilities that scaled with their power (Aerie Ouphes, Dwarven Vigilantes, Laccolith Grunt, Laccolith Warrior, and Laccolith Whelp), four of them red, and granted none of them have tim abilities, but realistically, the card is in red and it has double red in its cost. there aren't many playable cards in-colour that are going to boost its power in any significant way, and it's hardly the sort of card that's justifiably played in a multi-coloured deck (where the good pump spells are) unless you're trying to use this as a win condition by comboing it with crusades or something. because of the double red, nobody would choose this over prodigal pyromancer unless they planned to take advantage of pumping his power, and having the double red seems like a big enough hoop to make them jump through for that to be okay. what are they going to use in mono-red? firebreathing? last i heard, giving somebody the chance to two-for-one you isn't too powerful for common, and the card doesn't have any sort of protection against anything. it's not black, it doesn't have shroud, it's not indestructible, and it's within range of the smallest, most insignificant burn spell.
i guess using it with incandescent soulstoke is pretty good, but probably not even as good as sunflare shaman (another common).
ultimately, it's not important because i probably wouldn't win anyway, but i'm just sayin'!
anyway, i like the card in terms of flavour because it's conceived as an enormously tall and lumbering beast (very green) that lives near kaemir and acts out in defense of its territory (also a green trait) by swatting down anything that flies too high and too close to it. it doesn't have any concept of justice (white) or rational thought (blue), but it lives near kaemir and it swats flying creatures to the ground, so theoretically the things it swats are likely to land on parts of kaemir. i like formation as a fit for this because it shows allies sucking up the damage when debris hits the ground from its battles in the air.
mechanically, i think it's really interesting because as a 9/2 with reach it's probably going to block and kill an attacking creature but also die itself, or attack once, get chump-blocked, and once again kill a creature but also die itself. it doesn't have trample, so if they have anything with power 2 or greater it's not going to live to deal any damage to your opponent. it's more of a green approach to creature removal (something needed at common, and something very rarely worth more than 5 mana, even in limited). on the other hand, it shines in a deck based around formation, where it can redirect the damage dealt to it to the rest of your army and serve as an infinite chump blocker that kills the attacker. the catch? well, it has triple green in its cost and it's the only green creature with formation, so if you want to utilize that aspect of it, it takes a pretty heavy commitment. it's certainly not uncommon for cards, even commons, to be really good as long as they require a really heavy commitment, and i think triple green in a deck that would otherwise be entirely blue and/or white certainly counts as that.
i do agree that the card makes a better uncommon than a common, but that wasn't what the contest was asking for, and i thought the card was cool enough to warrant submission anyway. it's definitely not "too big" for common, as an 8/4 with trample or a 7/5 with vigilance and trample are definitely both bigger, even if they have slightly lower power. he costs a few less mana because he doesn't have trample and he doesn't have nearly the same chances of surviving his first fight. hell, knight of meadowgrain or knight of the white orchid walks away from a fight with him. as a 9/2 for 5, he's good, albeit probably only in limited, but as a 9/2 for 7 or 8 or 9 he'd be totally unplayable, even in limited. he'd just be really, really expensive and largely untargeted creature removal.
sorry to write such a long diatribe, but i felt like adding a disclaimer to his entry might have been a little hasty, and wanted to at least explain where i was coming from. for the record, there are several other creatures submitted for this spot that would probably never be printed at common either, and there are at least four submissions that broke the explicitly written rule against further green creatures with experience, so i'd just like to ask you to reconsider the disclaimer! thanks!
I also have a serious soft spot for Chronozoa.
My Time Spiral deck will almost certainly feature Greater Gargadon (though there was something else I wanted to try that I can't think of right now).
My Mirrodin deck will definitely feature Isochron Scepter.
My Odyssey deck will probably feature Wild Mongrel and/or Werebear.
I currently have two decks that are completely Lorwyn/Shadowmoor block legal too, and one of them (the Quillspike/Devoted Druid deck) will likely wind up being my Lorwyn-block candidate for this project. The other one is a super-fast aggro Elf Warrior deck. Here are the current lists for those:
4x Shriekmaw
3x Soul Snuffers
BLACK NONCREATURES
2x Beseech the Queen
4x Makeshift Mannequin
3x Profane Command
2x Rite of Consumption
3x Chameleon Colossus
2x Cloudthresher
4x Devoted Druid
GREEN NONCREATURES
2x Primal Command
MULTICOLOURED CREATURES
4x Kitchen Finks
4x Quillspike
5x Forest
4x Gilt-Leaf Palace
4x Mutavault
6x Swamp
4x Twilight Mire
4x Bramblewood Paragon
4x Heritage Druid
4x Imperious Perfect
4x Nettle Sentinel
4x Talara's Battalion
4x Twinblade Slasher
4x Wren's-Ren Vanquisher
3x Garruk Wildspeaker
3x Gilt-Leaf Ambush
4x Snakeform
22x Forest
Anyway, here's what I've been toying around with from Ice Age:
3x Garza' Assassin
BLACK NONCREATURES
4x Dark Ritual
4x Grim Harvest
4x Necropotence
WHITE CREATURES
2x Adarkar Valkyrie
4x Martyr of Sands
3x Wall of Shards
4x Enduring Renewal
2x Sunscour
4x Swords to Plowshares
COLOURLESS NONLANDS
4x Coldsteel Heart
COLOURLESS LANDS
2x Kjeldoran Outpost
2x Lake of the Dead
9x Plains
9x Swamp
It seems like it should be pretty good and it seems like a lot of fun. What are people's thoughts on it? It gets style points too, because I managed to get versions of the cards with fully updated wording but original block artwork for pretty much the entire deck (foil Necros from Deckmasters box set, Dark Rituals, Swords to Plowshares, and basic lands from Coldsnap precons, and timeshifted Enduring Renewals).
Mana is obviously going to be tight but Coldsteel Heart, Dark Ritual, and Lake of the Dead should help and once Necro hits the board I'm not worried. I wanted to run Thawing Glaciers, but it's banned in block, and I kept going back and forth on the different artifact mana-sources, ultimately deciding on Coldsteel Heart because it's reusable and I don't really have anything else I'd want to play on turn two anyway. Maybe Wall of Shards, but that's more of an emergency back-up plan, and if I'm lucky Dark Ritual into Necro, but I'd rather do that on turn one anyway. (:
If only Ice Age had had the enemy painlands...
The Austere Commands seemed really good most of the time, actually, but maybe they're better served in the sideboard, along with two of the Primal Commands, all traded out for a playset of Wraths.
Thanks for the suggestions, dudes!