MTG Salvation

Quote from Pete the pancreas »

The staff gets nasty with Krark-clan Ironworks, Coldsteel Heart, and Archelos, Lagoon Mystic (who honestly never hurts to throw in a sultai deck), but otherwise I can’t find much of a use besides getting back like Glacial Revelation or Dead of Winter

Sac a snowland to Sunstone, tap the staff to return the sacced snowland to the battlefield tapped.

Main reason he is not red is technically he would be a two-card combo with Aggravated Assault. Also it may not be the snow legend you like however. This just encourages Narset, Enlightened Master shenanigans as you get extra combats by utilizing extra turn spells like Time Warp. Even Savor the Moment is good with him as he can just untap your snow lands. Expect to see him played with Expropriate and the Jorn player to be a big target.

Quote from Decadent_Creed »

Am I going crazy or does this mean you can't copy legendary creatures or planeswalkers or one will die? The card is still mighty fine but those seem like significant downsides I haven't seen mentioned?

Copying a planeswalker is fine as one of the common things to do is play a copy of a planeswalker and keeping the new one if the old one doesn't have enough loyalty anymore to be doing anything meaningful anymore.

As for legendary creatures, yes you will be saccing the original as Moritte is technically better as its +2/+2 bigger. This can have an upside however if used alongside Baru, Fist of Krosa or Linessa, Zephyr Mage as you can later return either to your hand then pitch it again for the grandeur ability in edh and having it in the graveyard is preferable than having it on the battlefield.

Unless there is a disconnect between the story written and the cards: Kaya was hired to kill a monster on Kaldheim. Turns out said monster is Vorinclex who has been wreaking havoc for awhile now and had been completing the animals and people of Bretagard. She tries to kill Vorinclex but Vorinclex actually gets the upper hand and if it weren't for Alrund, God of the Cosmos stepping in and saving both her and Inga Rune-Eyes from Vorinclex by erecting a barrier, Vorinclex would actually have ended both Igna and Kaya's lives. Vorinclex escapes as a mass of oil and metal to another of Kaldheim's realms. Kaya immediately pursues after him.

(Alrund was traveling with Kaya and Igna while disguised as Asi just as Odin was want to do by disguising himself. So its not like he bopped in out of nowhere.)

Quote from Melkor »

It's....fine? just as a legendary Snake it's fine, but a serpent that wraps around the world losing a fight to Pelakka Wurm really bothers me. it's supposed to be that when this thing gets loose, the world ends, full stop. I just want one time fr these 'it will take your god and give him a swirlie' cards in the story to have a card that's...virtually impossible to cast/activate and if you pull it off, you win a game you aren't even playing. Just ONCE in a real set, get something lik BFM, just to get across 'oh yeah, this thing would take Nicol Bolas and CURBSTOMP him if it ever actually showed up'

Sacs a coil to tap your Pelakka Wurm, then slitehrs right by to bop you for 6 in the face.
Sacs a coil to tap your Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God . Nicol Bolas can't activate its sorcery abilities that turn.
Sacs a coil to tap your Maze of Ith. Then slithers right by to bop someone in the face for 6. Maze can't be activated even if later untapped during this turn.

Quote from Lectrys »

Shandalar is more than just one island in the mist, though. I call fake unless proven otherwise.

Attached image is the whole world map (its one island)

Tutorial video for Shandalar (Opening scene is mist/smoke/fog and utilizes it throughout the video): https://youtu.be/1jp4tMSIr_U

Quote from TheMartianGeek »

Phyrexians are just written to be too OP. Unless I'm greatly misunderstanding them, literally all they need to do is put one drop of oil on a plane, and it will eventually turn into another Phyrexia. And their only weakness is supposed to be that they can't planeswalk, but now that's out the window too. They basically can neither be reasoned with nor destroyed.

(Incidentally, one thing I've never been sure about...is the first syllable pronounced with a schwa, or does it rhyme with "high"?)

They had the ability to travel to other worlds back in the premending storyline through the use of planar portals such as when they invaded the plane of Moag that Urza and Xantcha were relaxing in. What you would know adays as a planar bridge. Planar portals were not as rare as they are today, just ask the djinn of Wildfire who setup an entire hub network for portals for trading with several planes. With the current storyline, there is the possibility that Tibalt used the Kaldheim item called the Sword of the Realms aka Bifrost Blade to create a bridge for Phyrexians as the blade can be used to allow travel between the various planes.

Phyrexians are scary as they are meant to be hardfought victory for planeswalkers in their pre-mending state. Which by the way, we are post-mending and planeswalkers were stated to be weaker by default. Urza had to setup a plan over 4000 years to accomplish such a feat while also having assistance from several other planeswalkers on his magnitude of power.

And the thing about the Phyrexian Oil or Glistening Oil is its a slow acting terraforming disease. Phyrexians use biochemical warfare in addition to their horrible things like theft of the body and self. During the events of the original Mirrodin block when Karn was locked out of his own plane, Memnarch was corrupted by this oil as well.

To give you a small sample of the horror that their mere presence should instill: Eldamari and Lin-Sivi, two prominent non-planeswalker characters who had military might and prowess, would rather enter a suicide pact than face Yawgmoth's forces on the eve of the Phyrexian invasion.

The only blessing is that Yawgmoth himself is dead and he was so powerful as a non-planeswalker that he easily rivaled the might of oldwalkers who themselves had godlike power.

For pronunciation of Phyrexia/Phyrexian(Fi-rex-e-ya or Fi-rex-e-yin)

Phyrexians are the best spice for the drama as they get you to care about the fate of a world as you know in your mind that will fade away.

Glissa Sunseeker was compleated by Vorinclex ( ), her own body naturally had metal on it. The Virdian Elves would be hunted down by Phyrexians, including those compleated who had become part of a faction known as 'The Vicious Swarm'. Ezuri, an elven leader and bandit, saw this threat early but he was captured by Jin-Gitaxis's faction ( ) and compleated.

So we are on another plane with elves, and these elves have a special connection to metal they wear. We have another of these elven leader types. Oh hey, we also have changelings who are and and they look rather...odd and foreboding.

What if you just equipped the squirrel with a helm of the host?

The answer to what plane a Phyrexian should invade is: Yes.

This is because Phyrexians are meant to be multi-planar level threats that are a fusion of various sci-fi horror stuff like Alien and the Borg. It doesn't matter what that world is as that plane will be assimilated and compleated.

Remember the stuff with Emrakul on Innistrad? That is of a similar level threat, but instead of being an eldritch monstrosity with unknowable motives aside from hunger, the Phyrexian's strive for perfection in compleation and will force this perfection on others.

Or that stuff with Nicol Bolas decimating an entire plane then taking its survivors and turning them into what he believed as the perfect army through mummification and lazotep plating? That is like a cute science fair project in comparison to what Phyrexians are.

The biggest difference between Phyrexians, Nicol Bolas, and Emrakul though is fairly simple in terms of multi-planar level threats: Nicol Bolas and Emrakul's vision lives and dies with them, not literal death mind you but in their abscene. The Phyrexian's vision however is an instinctual dogma and to battle an ideology is harder than to battle simply a big bad threat.

Yawgmoth died, we thought his vision died with him. But when the oil in Karn's heart leaked onto what we knew as Mirrodin at the time, that created a new breed of Phyrexians with the same core beliefs of 'all will be compleated' as though nothing had changed even though they are divorced from Yawgmoth himself. The vision lives on. The only infighting came from the fact that there was no Father of Machines to guide them, so we had five praetors who took different roads for the same destination.

Thank you for coming to my ted talk about Phyrexians.

Quote from Flamebuster »

At this point Kaldheim was assumed to be the snow plane based on a novelty card in a novelty product with no further reference point prior to that.

Except when the plane was referenced again with Ramaz and was still snowy

Quote from ThyLordQ »

I just don't think this particular situation deserves the amount of vitriol we have seen in the forums.

If not now (with the release of a viking themed set on a plane only described as being a big snowball) then when? It would be a huge and massive flavour fail for a set like this to not have snow.

Quote from Gruul Storyteller »

Reviewing the spoiled cards again, as I'm working on a cube project, I noticed these have a fairly low power level. I just personally hope this is just a small selection and its actually really good and we don't have a Born of the Gods 2.0 for power.

I was ready to disagree, but looking back, you're kinda right. Even in a weaker (mostly) peasant cube, there's not a lot going on here. I have an enchantment theme that I really want to add some payoff to, but despite loads of enchantments, few of them are really worth looking at. There are lots of cards with constellation,but all the payoff basically amounts to a small one-turn advantage, like "tap target creature" or "flying until end of turn". The "gain 2 life" guy is the only one worth recurring Flickering Ward for.

Likewise, I play a major graveyard theme, and the escape cards we've seen tend to be mediocre at best. The spider's not terrible, and the 4/4 that becomes a 7/7 is good for a common, but nothing is really worth bringing to the cube forum. Even for the B-listers like myself, there's not much to talk about.

That Narcissus guy is interesting... probably not good, but interesting if you can get value out of the fact of the two bodies. Of course you'd have to be taking advantage of the high stats to make it as good as Eldrazi Skyspawner.

Elspeth does do some interesting stuff for cube: she supports the graveyard in white (the weakest graveyard color), and does so in a planeswalker slot. She also produces two bodies at once to support swarm strategies. Her -1 and -2 make her a playable curve-topper in aggro. The life gain will occasionally save you when the other things wouldn't, and control can sorta use her as a recursive value engine. She's not as outright powerful as several other white planeswalkers, but she fills several different roles, which I personally prefer over power. She'd be a great add for my big cube, but too powerful for my mostly-peasant. She's not gonna stand a chance with the high-power cubers.

Still, this is a totally random sampling, and there are always lots of cards of this power level. Mechanics wise, I like where the set is going.

It’s gotta be awkward escaping the underworld of one plane right into your death on another lol