Personally, I'm not much of a fan of the "slang-as-rules-text" approach. Technically, there is no such thing in the rulebook as "commander damage," even if it's easy to understand due to being, well, slang. The actual rule is that a player who takes 21 or more damage from a single commander in a game loses as a state-based action. Wouldn't it be more straightforward and flavorful to just straight-up make the Marit Lage token your commander?
yeah, having too many mana rocks was something i ran into while playtesting. much less of them now. The copy spells that you are suggesting though, just don't fit my combo. Their perfectly good cards, but this deck wants to hit you for 20 in the face, not 6 or 9. Repeated gives he enough copies to one-shot my opponent. The spells you suggest have to have multiple copies in order to take effect.
Frankly, I don't even know what running two Chromatic Lantern even does for you. You're in two colors and neither splashing nor running anything particularly color-heavy (although Niv-Mizzet, Parun would be a nice backup win condition here), and you aren't in a particular rush to hit 5 mana. If you were serious about ramping into a huge Explosion, then you might want to go Temur for Wilderness Reclamation and green ramp. Otherwise, you're just spending 3 mana on something that isn't Narset.
Dig Through Time belongs in the mainboard. It's a massively powerful draw spell, and you fill your graveyard fairly easily without using it.
I'm not sure how crazy I am about the mana rocks here. Technically they enable the all-in combo plan to go off a bit earlier, but they're very passive plays. I'm not sure you can get away with tapping out on turn 2 or 3 on your own turn, since it clashes with all of the interaction you run. What you really want is to leave mana up for a counter or removal or card draw. Those slots would be better served being, well, more of those three things. I'm also surprised that you're running Repeated Reverberation over more efficient copy effects like Doublecast or Narset's Reversal. The latter is particularly flexible.
The prices for cards in this set have tanked really bad. I figured the foils would drop, but Sen Triplets is 16 bucks! A friend was really excited he pulled two Expropriates, and it was a decent pull for sure, but not at all what he expected. On the flipside, this is a really fun draft environment and I look forward to doing it as much as possible!
Isn't that one of the goals with reprint sets? To depress prices by making cards more accessible.
I actually think I'm with Rosy on this one. While the flash on this isn't as big of a flash on Containment Priest, playing this guy the turn after your opponent plays a planeswalker and then upticks it feels really bad. Without flash I'm not sure I would ever play this card unless it was against a very specific deck that only cared about playing walkers. Even with the flash, I feel that way. But I think the flash is the most important part because it doesn't let your opponent uptick correctly.
I mean, yeah, of course the card would be stronger with flash. Nobody's saying that flash would be useless. The question here is whether this needs flash, which is important because this card is red. Red's color pie is dead last in how often the color gets flash, so it can't just be thrown on like you would first strike or haste. Instead, red's flash comes on a strictly as-needed basis, so the real question is whether flash is necessary for this card to function. The answer to this is a resounding no, since this creature has a lower CMC than most planeswalkers. Decks that rely on planeswalkers are going to take damage if this guy comes down on curve, regardless of whether he is vanilla or has flash, first strike, haste, or anything else that makes him better than a bear.
No. A player can not use Murder, etc. on a creature card in exile. This can be a little tricky for newer, and even moderately experienced, players, but, essentially, objects in Magic can fall into one of three broad categories: permanents, spells, and cards. An object is a permanents while it is on the battlefield, a spell while on the stack (excluding abilities), and card while in any zone other than the stack or battlefield. The tricky part is that, while anything that affects cards and spells will name cards and spells in their text, permanent status is usually implied.
It says "creature spell," so it only affects creatures on the stack.
Now look at Raise Dead:
"Return target creature card from your graveyard to your hand."
It says "creature card," while naming the graveyard, so it only affects creatures in your graveyard. Anything that affects cards will name the zone.
Lastly, take a look at the text of Murder:
"Destroy target creature."
It says neither spell nor card, so it actually defaults to "creature permanent," even though affecting permanents is only ever spelled out on cards that can affect more than one card type, like Assassin's Trophy. Thus, since Murder does not affect spells nor cards in a given zone, it can only target creature permanents on the battlefield.
The Stonecoil Serpent will, after being flickered, enter the battlefield with 0 counters. Neither rule 107.3k nor Last Known Information (LKI) are relevant in this scenario.
If you cast a Stonecoil Serpent for X=3, it will enter the battlefield with 3 +1/+1 counters. That is what rule 107.3k does; it bridges the gap between X spells, for which X is the chosen value and permanents with X in their casting costs, for which X is 0. To restate that rule, it essentially says that "Yes, Stonecoil Serpent does indeed enter the battlefield with 3 +1/+1 counters even though X is 0 while it is on the battlefield."
If that same Serpent then becomes the target of Flicker of Fate, Last Known Information will indeed say that it had 3 +1/+1 counters on it when I left the battlefield, which would be important if it had, say, a Leaves the Battlefield trigger that cared about its counters. That's what LKI does, it lets dies and Leaves triggers function, in addition to other effects that care about what used to be in a given zone, but has just moved. The Serpent that re-enters the battlefield will then enter with 0 counters on it, and presumably die. Why? Because the creature that re-entered the battlefield is not the same one as the creature that left it. Once a card changes zones, it becomes a new object. The new Serpent was not cast (that was the one that left), and, as such, X was not set to a particular value, which then defaults to 0.
Still utterly fails to explain why it wasn't in Modern Horizons like tons of people were asking for but ok.
A better question would be to ask why anybody though Modern Horizons would be such a natural fit for it in the first place. The damn thing is near unprintable. For one, it's a relic. Not only does it predate the modern color pie, getting an effect normally reserved for white, it does so with a massive wall of text. The 2-part Oblivion Ring template has been dead for years, so there's no way something with it was going to end up in a product that was supposed to represent the future. All of that text exists to serve a weird aura/counter preservation mechanic that, respectively, results in a wall of text or has been written much more elegantly the few times it has appeared since Oubliette's printing. All told, the sheer number of reasons to not reprint it is damning. It would probably just be forgotten if it wasn't printed at common.
Folks should be happy that Wizards is thinking at all about how to reprint the unreprintable, not get mad about not jamming cards where they obviously don't belong.
What about a mechanic that works depending on what turn you started?
Even by the standard of other mechanics that directly reward players for going on the draw, this has serious memory issues. Now, remembering that you were on the draw is no big deal, though it is one more thing to note on top of everything else that happens in the game. The real problem comes in the form of how you adapted this cycle to suit formats with more than two players. Now you have to remember who went first and how many players took their turn before you started, which isn't trivial at all. If you walked up to me four or five turns into a 4-player EDH game and asked me who went first, I would have some trouble answering, and I consider myself above average at tracking complicated boards. If you came back several turns later after one of two players have been eliminated, I would definitely draw a blank unless I wrote the first player down beforehand. EDH game states are complex enough without being asked to remember turn 1, and having the cycle be difficult to use without notetaking is a huge design flaw.
1. Yes, you can choose the order in which they resolve because you control both.
2. No, the token will cease to exist before the triggered ability resolves. While tokens do go to the graveyard and trigger "dies" abilities, state-based actions are checked every time a player gains priority. Being a triggered ability, it uses the stack, which means players get priority before it resolves. In the case of the actual card, your opponents can get the chance to exile it with graveyard hate. The token will just vanish because state-based actions will be checked in the interim.
Mairsil's reappearance in card form absolutely can be a coincidence because Commander products are a dumping ground for neglected legendary figures, the vast majority of whom are irrelevant to contemporary sets.
While its value probably won't spike, I disagree with your assessment of Bygone Bishop. It has applications outside of clue-based decks; for example, it makes every creature that Collected Company decks hardcast replace themselves. If any sort of white weenie crops up (human or spirit tribal?), Bishop would give the deck crucial staying power in the mid and late games.
Frankly, I don't even know what running two Chromatic Lantern even does for you. You're in two colors and neither splashing nor running anything particularly color-heavy (although Niv-Mizzet, Parun would be a nice backup win condition here), and you aren't in a particular rush to hit 5 mana. If you were serious about ramping into a huge Explosion, then you might want to go Temur for Wilderness Reclamation and green ramp. Otherwise, you're just spending 3 mana on something that isn't Narset.
Dig Through Time belongs in the mainboard. It's a massively powerful draw spell, and you fill your graveyard fairly easily without using it.
Isn't that one of the goals with reprint sets? To depress prices by making cards more accessible.
I mean, yeah, of course the card would be stronger with flash. Nobody's saying that flash would be useless. The question here is whether this needs flash, which is important because this card is red. Red's color pie is dead last in how often the color gets flash, so it can't just be thrown on like you would first strike or haste. Instead, red's flash comes on a strictly as-needed basis, so the real question is whether flash is necessary for this card to function. The answer to this is a resounding no, since this creature has a lower CMC than most planeswalkers. Decks that rely on planeswalkers are going to take damage if this guy comes down on curve, regardless of whether he is vanilla or has flash, first strike, haste, or anything else that makes him better than a bear.
No way, this is too weird and specific to be an uncommon. Niche Johnny cards like this are good candidates to be weak, but necessary rares.
For example, take a look at the text of Essence Scatter:
"Counter target creature spell."
It says "creature spell," so it only affects creatures on the stack.
Now look at Raise Dead:
"Return target creature card from your graveyard to your hand."
It says "creature card," while naming the graveyard, so it only affects creatures in your graveyard. Anything that affects cards will name the zone.
Lastly, take a look at the text of Murder:
"Destroy target creature."
It says neither spell nor card, so it actually defaults to "creature permanent," even though affecting permanents is only ever spelled out on cards that can affect more than one card type, like Assassin's Trophy. Thus, since Murder does not affect spells nor cards in a given zone, it can only target creature permanents on the battlefield.
If you cast a Stonecoil Serpent for X=3, it will enter the battlefield with 3 +1/+1 counters. That is what rule 107.3k does; it bridges the gap between X spells, for which X is the chosen value and permanents with X in their casting costs, for which X is 0. To restate that rule, it essentially says that "Yes, Stonecoil Serpent does indeed enter the battlefield with 3 +1/+1 counters even though X is 0 while it is on the battlefield."
If that same Serpent then becomes the target of Flicker of Fate, Last Known Information will indeed say that it had 3 +1/+1 counters on it when I left the battlefield, which would be important if it had, say, a Leaves the Battlefield trigger that cared about its counters. That's what LKI does, it lets dies and Leaves triggers function, in addition to other effects that care about what used to be in a given zone, but has just moved. The Serpent that re-enters the battlefield will then enter with 0 counters on it, and presumably die. Why? Because the creature that re-entered the battlefield is not the same one as the creature that left it. Once a card changes zones, it becomes a new object. The new Serpent was not cast (that was the one that left), and, as such, X was not set to a particular value, which then defaults to 0.
A better question would be to ask why anybody though Modern Horizons would be such a natural fit for it in the first place. The damn thing is near unprintable. For one, it's a relic. Not only does it predate the modern color pie, getting an effect normally reserved for white, it does so with a massive wall of text. The 2-part Oblivion Ring template has been dead for years, so there's no way something with it was going to end up in a product that was supposed to represent the future. All of that text exists to serve a weird aura/counter preservation mechanic that, respectively, results in a wall of text or has been written much more elegantly the few times it has appeared since Oubliette's printing. All told, the sheer number of reasons to not reprint it is damning. It would probably just be forgotten if it wasn't printed at common.
Folks should be happy that Wizards is thinking at all about how to reprint the unreprintable, not get mad about not jamming cards where they obviously don't belong.
Even by the standard of other mechanics that directly reward players for going on the draw, this has serious memory issues. Now, remembering that you were on the draw is no big deal, though it is one more thing to note on top of everything else that happens in the game. The real problem comes in the form of how you adapted this cycle to suit formats with more than two players. Now you have to remember who went first and how many players took their turn before you started, which isn't trivial at all. If you walked up to me four or five turns into a 4-player EDH game and asked me who went first, I would have some trouble answering, and I consider myself above average at tracking complicated boards. If you came back several turns later after one of two players have been eliminated, I would definitely draw a blank unless I wrote the first player down beforehand. EDH game states are complex enough without being asked to remember turn 1, and having the cycle be difficult to use without notetaking is a huge design flaw.
Mimic Vat
1. Yes, you can choose the order in which they resolve because you control both.
2. No, the token will cease to exist before the triggered ability resolves. While tokens do go to the graveyard and trigger "dies" abilities, state-based actions are checked every time a player gains priority. Being a triggered ability, it uses the stack, which means players get priority before it resolves. In the case of the actual card, your opponents can get the chance to exile it with graveyard hate. The token will just vanish because state-based actions will be checked in the interim.