I could see this going in my Xenagos, God of Revels EDH deck. The sole purpose of my Xenagos deck is to use temporary theft effects to steal other commanders, pump them with Xenagos and kill their owners with their own commander damage. It’s a meme deck, but can be surprisingly effective.
I like the demon, when it enters you search for two cards with escape or any big threat and nullpriest of oblivion or agadeem’s awakening (In commander dread return or unburial rites seem like the best choices for value, if you don’t want to search out two redundant combo pieces). No matter which card goes to your graveyard, you’ll still get your next big threat the following turn.
However I don’t know if it’s impactful enough to see standard play, though I could see it being played in historic God-Pharaoh’s Gift decks.
I feel the need to add that arcane denial’s delayed draw trigger says “Its controller may draw up to two cards...” so while flashing in hullbreacher will prevent that draw, they can always choose not to draw those cards after hullbreacher enters and as a result deny you the treasure. Their choice on “yes I’m drawing” or “no I’m not drawing” happens on the resolution of arcane denial’s delayed trigger and therefore isn’t something you can respond to, you can only flash in hullbreacher when priority is passed to you after the trigger goes on the stack (which is before they have to make their choice to draw or not draw).
He could be really fun with things like Gift of Immortality and any number of the other enchantments in black similar to minion’s return, you just need a sac outlet that isn’t destroyed by his own ability.
Apex Devastator is pretty great design. Most decks that can afford to cast it before the 10th turn will probably be hitting two~ish ramp spells off of the four cascade triggers making the card less powerful than it first appears. Though it goes perfectly in my Karametra, God of Harvests almost-all-creatures deck which doesn’t need much ramp to get rolling, since Karametra fills that role. In that deck it might replace Genesis Hydra, which I typically cast for x=8 or more anyway.
Rootwater druid is funny. I don’t know if it’s good or bad since your opponents can always choose to not search and therefore the card doesn’t even guarantee you’ll get land out of it, unlike tempt with discovery.
Seems fun, so long as you have a way to tap the turtle without attacking. I bet a deck with him in the command zone would share a lot of pieces with my Kalamax deck. Using cryptolith rite, paradise mantle, springleaf drum, and lands like Holdout settlement as free ways of tapping him if attacking doesn’t seem like a good idea.
I’m kind of surprised about the Escape to the wilds ban, but I can see their point in that it acted as a bridge between cobra and Ugin. Honestly after the last two years I get the feeling like WOTC is trying desperately to end the dominance of ramp decks in standard and that Omnath, Locus of Creation might have been intended for Commander so it didn’t get much testing in the Future Future League and they ended up being blindsided that it was playable outside of EDH.
Could be fun in a deck using the Ozolith and all the +1/+1 counter cards in standard like Stonecoil Serpent and that legendary monogreen giant from Eldraine.
I like how it makes golos, tireless pilgrim activations painful, comboing with Bolas’s Citadel becomes positively lethal and cards that use only Phyrexian mana become much less free feeling. Looks fairly useful for burn decks in eternal formats depending on the meta, though it seems like it was meant to be a counter to fires of invention in standard which has already been banned.
I wonder if white weenie in standard wants 3 or 4 of these?
If you’re the aggro deck a bolt or two to the face doesn’t matter much and these mean you can basically play four less lands in your deck. Sure these will just be worse plains 90% of the time, but when you flood in 1 in every 10 games or so, this card means that four of your lands aren’t dead draws. Also casting it allows you to swing in without being afraid of blockers and it gives you two 4/4s to help defend. Then your opponent faces a hard decision, do they let you untap with two 4/4 fliers or do they try to survive another turn and save their board wipe until they can kill everything?
However I don’t know if it’s impactful enough to see standard play, though I could see it being played in historic God-Pharaoh’s Gift decks.
If you’re the aggro deck a bolt or two to the face doesn’t matter much and these mean you can basically play four less lands in your deck. Sure these will just be worse plains 90% of the time, but when you flood in 1 in every 10 games or so, this card means that four of your lands aren’t dead draws. Also casting it allows you to swing in without being afraid of blockers and it gives you two 4/4s to help defend. Then your opponent faces a hard decision, do they let you untap with two 4/4 fliers or do they try to survive another turn and save their board wipe until they can kill everything?