MTG Salvation

Can someone try and do a text-based spoiler for this? I wanna see what the new cards do!

So I wanted to redesign the old Duel Decks that WotC used to make, but essentially transform them into two Brawl decks that contained reprints as well as some new cards. The goal here was to bring a little bit to Commander and Brawl, while also taking a stab at some weird sets and mechanics from Magic's past. It sounds like a big task, but all in all I thought I could make it interesting, or at least try.

For the first set of decks, I wanted to focus on Kamigawa. Kamigawa, a "black sheep" of WotC, is both loved and hated by the community. In my opinion, Kamigawa deserves some love, and so I present the first Duel deck theme: Kamigawa.

The first deck I designed is a deck that revolves around Soulshift and Spirits. The deck is BG, and focuses heavily on black and green's strong suits, being recursion, good creatures, and some sacrifice. Who better to take the helm of this deck other than Iname? Did you forget who what was?

• Iname, Death Aspect
  
• Iname, Life Aspect
  
• Iname as One

Behold, Iname, Cycle of Rebirth:

Iname, Rebirth Incarnate 2BBGG
Legendary Creature - Spirit (Mythic)
Deathtouch
Whenever Iname, Rebirth Incarnate or another Spirit you control dies, you may return a Spirit card with less converted mana cost from your graveyard to the battlefield.
5/5

-- While not directly using the Soulshift mechanic, Iname functions as a strong contender for a Soulshift-themed deck. Most of the Soulshift Spirits are, well, to put it politely, mediocre, and so I thought a strong commander would maybe be a saving grace for the weird mechanic.

So it sounds like something like this would be best?

Archmage Vectis 2BB
Legendary Creature - Vampire Warlock (Mythic)
1BB: Return target creature card from your graveyard to your hand.
2BB: Each opponent loses 2 life. You gain life equal to the life lost this way.
3BB: Destroy target creature.
4/4

The first two abilities feel very underpowered imo when raising the ability costs by 1.

As long as we don't go back to Ravnica, Theros, or Zendikar I will be happy. I am tired of going to the same places over and over again.

Just an idea. I've always been a fan of Mortality Shift. What a weird card, right? I wanted to kind of blend this idea with Timetwister and essentially make a crazy card that does it all.

Unending 4BBB
Sorcery (Mythic)
Discard your hand, then exchange your graveyard with your library.
Shuffle your library, then draw Seven cards.

To my knowledge, Historic Brawl is simply listed as "Friendly" Brawl, and is only available to play when you link up with people online via the friend codes. Was there ever plans to make Historic Brawl just a regular old game mode just like Historic? This feels like something they would have implemented awhile ago, but I haven't heard or seen anything about it.

I think Historic Brawl would be a great way for players to get into using some of their older cards that they only had single copies of.

Not sure why the previews were pushed back... this feels like a possible passive aggressive rebuttal to the public outcry on the Walking Dead Secret Lair. Maybe it's a far-flung conspiracy, but why else would they have to move them? Some people enjoy the slower spoiler season, which I can see why, but this is the one product I was looking forward to seeing what they put in it. Due to this secret lair Walking Dead affecting Commander drastically, it feels like they wanted to just throw the previews back as backlash for our negative reviews.

So I have been brewing ideas and trying to imagine what Stryxhaven could have in store for us. Obviously we know it is a school for Mages. When most of us think of Mages, we think of Wizards, being centered in Blue and sometimes Red, and sprinkled amongst the other colors. When I think of Mages in mtg, I think of cards that are heavily "activated ability" and "instant and sorcery" themed. For this design, however, I wanted to break up a potential "School for Mages" into their respective magical class subsets: Cleric, Wizard, Warlock, Shaman, and Druid; and have it be heavily mono-colored focus to accentuate what magic each of those colors is best at. To tie all of these themes together, I came up with the idea of each House in the School of Mages having an Archmage that is a powerful legendary monocolored creature that defines the House.

Archmage Vectis 3BB
Legendary Creature - Vampire Warlock (Mythic)
BB: Return target creature card from your graveyard to your hand.
1BB: Each opponent loses 2 life. You gain life equal to the life lost this way.
2BB:Destroy target creature.
3/5

Each of Archmage Vectis's abilities represent what Black mages do best: Reanimate, Life drain and gain, and Murder. The card acts as a mana sink for abilities that represent common magic tropes for the color of Black, all while being a Warlock Vampire.

What do you guys think?

I could see Legendary cards that have a flip side of a legendary spell. This would make playing multiples of legends in 60 card formats rather interesting, as well as in Commander where you have the option to cast it as a spell from your Command Zone.

Quote from Creedmoor »

Went with both suggestions just to see how it looked.

I like this a lot! I have some ideas.

Knowledge of the Thran 2U
Instant
Reveal the top three cards of your library. An opponent choses one of them. Put that card into your graveyard and the rest into your hand.
Thran Tome

Temporal Vortex 5UU
Sorcery
Shuffle your hand and graveyard into your library, then draw 7 cards.
UU Suspend 7
Timetwister

Avatar of Desire 3UB
Creature - Avatar
Flying
1: Draw a card, then discard a card.
3/4
Unfulfilled Desires

Keeper of the Stronghold 1B
Creature - Horror Worlock
B, T: Put target creature card from your graveyard on top of your library.
2/2
Volrath's Stronghold

I like both of those suggestions. Also like the throwback in the name as well.

Quote from 5colors »

Quote from SnowBunny »

Why THE EVER LOVING HELL was Zendikar ever afraid of the Eldrazi when they had THIS THING lying around????

Kiora thought the same thing with Lorthos. May he rest in his many cut up pieces.

I was really hoping we could get our first Zombie Octopus in this set, with good ol' Lorthos emerging from the depths yet again. Not sure how it fits into Zendikar, but man I would have loved that.

Easily one of the best ones for EDH, at least.

Quote from lookingupanddown »

Isn't this a white ability?

Source: LordTupperware

Also, I don't know if that flavor text is accurate haha

It's a shame we don't have an Abzan +1/+1 counter legend for Brawl hanging out in standard right now. I guess I could use Nethroi to combine the +1/+1 counters theme from Core 2021 and this set.

This is a nice card though and definitely something I could see slotting into decks simply because its two 3/3's for 3 mana.