you might want to read it again on roiling regrowth
If you read it you would have seen it say they enter tapped while harrow is untapped
So it’s strictly worse not better
However it doesn't sacrifice the land as a cost so it's also not strictly worse.
If you think about copy effects it is strictly worse. Harrow costs 3+a land+copy and gives 4 untapped lands. Roilling Regrowth costs 3 + 2 lands + copy and gives 4 tapped lands.
If you think about counter spells then it is strictly better.
If you have to think about the situation it's not strictly anything. It's just different.
Mono white isnt supposed to get straight removal like this. Its supposed to be reactive, or give your opponents something in exchange, or be able to be answered. Yeah there is usually like a 5 mana exile a creature spell much of the time (and even that feels like a bit of a bend) but this is 100% just a red card.
This is a complete nitpick but Eastwood surge should have had green in the kicker cost. The tradition is when you add an additional effect with kicker (instead of just more of the first) you need another colored mana. Does this matter? No. Do I expect to play this often? Also no. But it's the principle of the matter.
Is this the most busted rare ever? No. But these are three effects that seem great for a midrange deck if low to the ground agro decks are running around. Kill a creature, win combat or negate a burn spell with a permanent boost, win a race by gaining a chunk of life. It feels like the first you cast for 2 which helps you cast the 2nd for 5.
I like seeing an increase in phasing as an occasional replacement for bounce, flicker, and O-ring effects with wizards aggressive printing of ETB and Leaves Battlefield triggers. It's always painful when you have to exile a creature with a relevant ETB trigger because otherwise it will kill you, only for them to immediately take out the permanent that's doing the exiling and get the trigger again. With this you have just traided 1 for 1 with them and are back where you were before.
2 more mana gets a mosty onesided better Furnace of Rath? Seems too expensive for regular burn strategies but right in line with some damage multiplication shenanigans. This+Bolt+Torbran is 15 damage and there are much sillier things you can do. Aim it at a creature with Repercussions in play and that's 51 damage to the dome. Just be careful about casting earthquake with this out.
One of my biggest regrets moving to primarily play singleton formats is not being able to use cards like Accumulated knowledge and Aether Burst which I loved using back in the day. I'm excited for this but outside of living the dream with a really sweet draft deck that somehow gets 5 of these I'm not sure how much I will end up playing this.
It is funny that I think a lot of the time she will be triggering off creature tokens that show humans on them but don't actually have the creature type.
I feel if you look at this as a split card that is either a 2/2 or a +2/+1 team pump it seems like a fun limited card. And I think this format wants small early creatures to mutate into and assuming you can hit RW often enough this works very well for that.
So most of the time this just seems like a "safer" crule ultimatum. Yeah its doesn't have as good an upside when everything goes right, but if you don't have a great creature in the yard and/or your opponent has a bunch of tokens this is probably better. 5 damage takes out a lot of things, 5 cards is great, and 5 life is always a nice bonus.
Everyone is comparing this to tooth and nail but the fact that this isnt just creatures shouldn't be ignored. Especially in a format like EDH it's easy to think of three mono colored spells that casting any two of them would win you the game. Even in standard it seems spicy, especially as it fills up with more mono colored bombs the further away from Ravnica we get.
What about this is blue? Red can do a spells matter theme all on its own.
As far as going to the face I kind of understand there decision since in limited this could easily be like 9 damage in the late game (between 1st and 2nd casting), but it does mean there is yet another burn spell that only hits creatures. Isn't this like the 3rd so far?
If you have to think about the situation it's not strictly anything. It's just different.
As far as going to the face I kind of understand there decision since in limited this could easily be like 9 damage in the late game (between 1st and 2nd casting), but it does mean there is yet another burn spell that only hits creatures. Isn't this like the 3rd so far?