MTG Salvation

Humble Defector is quite nasty with a sac outlet on board. Discard him, give him haste, tap and sac in response, repeat for some nice early card draw.

You and permanents you control gain hexproof until end of turn.

Has Blue had access to these combined effects on a 2 mana instant before? Because this seems like the sort of card that should see a lot of play in EDH.

Can't imagine the new Karn in the command zone would be allowed to exist. Just whacking Latice down early and locking your opponents out with a 1 card combo would probably make him by default the most powerful PW. Chainveil Teferi still provides access to Blue, but requires multiple actions that you can try and interact with.

Seeing Iona on the wishlist, along with Gifts off the ban list warms my heart to you. Iona is just a rude precedent to set the tone of your games with.

I've said this in another thread, nut Jeskai is surprisingly very voltron focused in its options.

Shu Yun - Cheap pump spells
Ruhan - Because he would suck as anything else other than chaotic voltron
Narset (in her fairer, non infinite turn versions) - Slap a bunch of auras on her for her triggers

The other 2 options (!) outside of partners are:

Numot - Literally has one of the taboo mechanics slapped right on the card, along with being one of those "pay 3, costs 6" dragons that struggle to stay relevant in a world of better commander options now.
Zedru - The only unique option who has a mechanic utterly unrepresented outside of Jeskai, but doesn't exactly lend itself to "normal" gameplay patterns or deckbuilding.

I won't go over all the partner options, but the most used and arguably most synergistic option is Kraum/Ishai. When your commander options work best after your opponents are able to cast multiple spells a turn, that doesn't sound like you're packing a particularly smart game plan.

I'd love to see something like Monastery Mentor as a Jeskai commander. Spell-based tokens sounds like it fits right in with their theme, along with giving Jeskai Ascendancy a true home outside of my Kydele/Bruse wheel deck. The precedent is already set in these colors with cards like Young Pyromancer, Docent of Perfection, Murmuring Mystic, Talrand, the Sky Summoner and Monastery Mentor itself. Then all of those Raise the Alarm and Dragon Fodder cards would also fit in nicely.

Having a Jeskai precon this year (whatever the theme) would also allow them to print a new Boros commander option, similar to how Yuriko, Xantcha etc existed in their respective 3 color precons last year.

Quote from cryogen »

Lastly, Dirk you have a way of presenting your arguments and describing yourself and decks in a manner that gives me the impression you fancy yourself a very good player playing in higher power games. Not disputing this, but I mention it because if so, you aren't the type of player that the Rules Committee is concerned with. You can handle yourself in a game, and you probably play in a similarly powered group that can regulate itself through house bans or metagaming your decks. So using the argument of "I don't have a problem with this card and these cards are worse" is skewed towards a small group of players and isn't necessarily representative of the majority of players.

I don't think this is an accurate representation of the Hippo's arguments at all. He was quite clear, along with being a point I'd agree with, regarding the Teferi vs Niv analogy. New players might and have been peeved at losing to Niv/Locust/Nekusar decks drawing cards and dealing all of the damage, but that comes down to that deck doing "all of the things" between drawing cards and taking super long turns to do so. Teferi on the other hand, is a much harder interaction for them to understand that can literally stop everyone else playing the game until they win.

However, CV adds nothing the format needs right now, whilst only providing another "feels-bad" moment to annoy all those who hate Dramatic Scepter and Second Sun style wins - That being what appears to be the thought of "if my life total isn't going to 0, its not a legitimate win". The hate for Expropriate on the other hand just fits in with players hating long periods of inaction. I played my Selvala ER deck this Monday gone for example, drawing all of my opponents lots of cards, didn't even win the game or come close. The response? "Its not fun because we aren't playing". But I have to agree with them, since this concept of long periods of inaction = bad rings true for many other things other than extra turns. Should cards be banned based on this notion? Thats where I would disagree with Dirk.

Think its something like:

Vigilance, Reach
All creatures must attack each combat if able.
Whenever a creature attacks you or a planeswalker you control, put a +1/+1 counter on (insert this cards name).

Roughly speaking I think?

The Jewel looks great for group hug, not sure its worth it outside of Daretti/Breya as others have mentioned. Not sure why anyone thinks Saheeli's Directive is bad though, looks set to be fantastic in those decks that have wanted this artifact storm type effect.

I can see this being the cause of many arguments over Commander Tax.

Khans, Alara and original Ravnica had the best flavor for me. I don't its coincidence that the multicolour focused blocks with high emphasis on player choice for group loyalties sit well with me. Groups like the Sultai Brood, Azorius Senate and Esper as a shard just have so much raw character to them compared to "its pirates vs dinosaurs" or the "its Egypt/Greece/Japan" set. You could argue Khans is "the Asia set", but the diversity between the groups and their portrayal was broad enough of different regions/cultures of Asia to not feel samey.

Abzan - Western Asia
Jeskai - Tibet/China
Sultai - India
Mardu - Mongolia
Temur - Northern Asia

You compare that to "everything is Japan here" Kamigawa and you can see why that plane felt like a home run for me.

Spider, using my dodgy Japanese skills and Google Translate.

Tantis, War-Weaver 3BRG
Legendary Creature - Spider
Reach, Vigilance
All creatures attack each combat if able.
Whenever a creature attacks you or a planeswalker you control, Put a +1/+1 counter on Tantis, War weaver.
5/5

There are going to be some unreasonably angry people because Estrid isn't Serra.