I'm a little bummed about the Golos ban, only because I was converting my Lord Windgrace deck into a 5-color lands deck (mainly to add blue for Tatyova, Benthic Druid and Trade Routes) and Golos was the perfect commander for it. I wasn't even going to take advantage of his activated ability. But I understand the RC's reasoning - having a "colorless" 5-color commander that was so generically powerful that it could lead any deck kind of invalidated too much else.
What good choices are left for 5-color lands? Child of Alara is a natural fit, but I don't like it.
I did four color Vial Smasher and Thrasios landfall deck for a while so I could cram Tatyova, Gitrog, and Angry Omnath all together. Thrasios gave me extra lands and card advantage, while Vial Smasher gave me my other colors and supplemental damage.
I totally forgot about multicolor partner commanders! Thanks for the reminder! Yeah I don't think white is a necessity so I could probably do something like that. Tatyova, Gitrog and Angry Omnath were exactly the three I wanted to play together. I don't even own the white Omnath so no need to try and cram him in.
I'm a little bummed about the Golos ban, only because I was converting my Lord Windgrace deck into a 5-color lands deck (mainly to add blue for Tatyova, Benthic Druid and Trade Routes) and Golos was the perfect commander for it. I wasn't even going to take advantage of his activated ability. But I understand the RC's reasoning - having a "colorless" 5-color commander that was so generically powerful that it could lead any deck kind of invalidated too much else.
What good choices are left for 5-color lands? Child of Alara is a natural fit, but I don't like it.
Golos is a artifact for gods sake, how is a table not able to simply kill it over and over again forever?
The fact that you tutor a land each time it enters the battlefield certainly helps - as noted in the announcement, its commander tax is effectively 1, not 2. (There are also plenty of cards on the banned list that are easily killed, the issue is that if not immediately killed they too quickly take over the game, so it forces opponents to have removal on the spot or be at a huge disadvantage. Golos isn't quite one of those cards, but its dangerous activated ability plus its incredibly useful enters battlefield ability makes it very strong)
No idea why the unbanned Worldfire. Not a fun card, and if they were ever going to unban it, I would have thought it would have been part of a group unban with Coalition Victory, Sway of the Stars, maybe even Biorhythm.
"Phoenix with set mechanic" is getting somewhat tiresome, but I guess rising with the dawn is pretty cool flavor. Rising at nightfall as a beacon of light against the coming night works too.
Card seems pretty good too. For a deck that can operate at instant speed, taking your turn off to have it turn from day to night to get back the phoenix (untapped!) at the beginning of their turn seems nice.
Meathook Massacre is great with aristocrats / sacrifice / tokens shenanigans in EDH, and can even help protect you from your opponents trying to do similar things. They can't burn you out with a blood artist and infinite-sacrificing their own stuff if you are gaining 1 life each time they ping you.
Memory Deluge looks sweet too. Love both "sides" of it at 4 or 7 mana.
Funny how Vindicate, once a source of awe, is now barely playable.
This is better than Vindicate, and literally everything you mentioned is better than Utter End.
You must have never known the evil joy of vindicating an opponent's land when they are mana screwed, or the anguish of having this done to you. Stone rain mode puts vindicate a cut above the others, at least in 1v1, in my opinion.
But hey, this is still good. In token decks or anything with sacrifice synergies, I think this is VERY good.
So a vampire in this set that actively goes against "if an opponent lost life this turn" (due to this giving a blocker to all your opponents)?
...Yeah, this vampire is not looking very viable right now.
I think that mechanic is pretty much limited-only, and this looks more like a potential constructed card. But its raw power level should be more than good enough for limited vampire decks too, despite the non-bo synergy.
I like that new Teferi, and the article explaining how they came to his abilities and the right loyalty costs for them. They should write one of those for Oko.
At common, organ hoarder seems pretty good and eaten alive looks great with decayed zombies.
Jack-o-lantern is cute but, as I also noted in the Mystic Skull discussion, really doesn't cut it as mana fixing. Are these the only limited multicolor support we are getting?
Very cool flavor! Definitely a risk that your opponent can make better use of the token, or just that they'll use it to chump to buy time for something that answers her. But the power level on this is hard to ignore.
So... How exactly does this work? Let's use let's say the burn spell does 3 damage to all creatures and players. Will it prevent damage to me and my creatures, while still damaging my opponents & their creatures? Or because damagee to me & my creatures was prevented, all damage is then prevented?
I think that Anger of the Gods fails to dent your other guys, offs poor Rem, and dents the opposing creatures for 4 damage each.
I think so too. Preventing the damage that a spell would deal to some victims doesn't necessarily impact the damage it deals to others. (Like if your opponent just cast healing salve to save their 3/3 from your earthquake, the earthquake would still hit everything else)
Too bad about the word "another" on Rem, so he's not immune to damage himself. Still, a powerful pushed card in (or against) a deck with damage spells. Is this worth a splash in monored burn decks? What about decks that already were splashing white for boros charm?
Wow, I did not think those were mana abilities but I just looked it up and you're right. That really adds to this thing's potential in commander, where untapping with a caged sun in monoblack often means you win.
Is this the "single pushed rare with otherwise weak set mechanic that will keep that mechanic around kinda forever" of the set? Honestly I like this just for its stats and its graveyard sniping, but the almost-protection will come in handy if you ever get a coven going.
Yeah, I'm still not entirely sure how but this will be a combo enabler Commander for sure. In other Constructed formats it's still a good card, if you're already deep on graveyard shenanigans it's a huge beater for just GB that can also be a mana sink to help your other synergies, but in Commander this definitely feels problematic.
Yeah - if you build your deck to just have, say, Mike n Trike as your only creatures, then Ol' Sticky can get both into your graveyard on turn 4 (or earlier with ramp). You would need to then reanimate both but that is certainly possible. It seems very useful for a glass cannon combo strategy.
Are there fun, non-awful fair (or fair-ish) uses of the card? The art and name are sweet and I'd like to do something interesting with it.
How is this an upgrade over a card draw spell? Depending on the case this card may easily end up helping an opponent by removing excess lands, or giving you a card that doesn't advance your strategy at all.
Or it might exile their best card, or even remove lands when they are in dire need of them. In the same vein, drawing from your deck instead of your opponent's could give you an excess land you didn't needed at the time. Bottom line, both are 100% entirely random at the vast majority of times and just like the fallacious "mill is disruption" argument, anyone with a modicum of experience in Magic should know better.
As for "advancing your strategy", once again it doesn't matters unless you're playing extremely linear strategies. Do you really expect your opponent to be playing bad cards? Or do you really think your deck wouldn't want a random creature like, say, Goldspan Dragon or Werewolf Pack Leader or an interaction piece like Dragon's Fire and Soul Shatter, cards that are known to be big players in the upcoming 2022 format?
But by your own logic, yes, the cards you are looking at are entirely random, so how excited are you about getting one of two random cards from not your deck? Mill isn't disruption, so why would getting a random opponent's card be better than getting a random card of your own? And no matter how good your opponent's deck is, unless they are playing the same strategy as you there's a greater chance you get something you don't need (like an aggressive 1 drop but you are playing control) than if you were drawing from your own deck. The "choose from top 2" helps here, but top 2 still isn't much selection. These cards always seem very splashy but rarely turn out as amazing as one dreams.
So, yeah. Great as a "counter" to a vampiric or mystical tutor or other deck-rigging effect, riskier but potentially more fun Think Twice otherwise.
I totally forgot about multicolor partner commanders! Thanks for the reminder! Yeah I don't think white is a necessity so I could probably do something like that. Tatyova, Gitrog and Angry Omnath were exactly the three I wanted to play together. I don't even own the white Omnath so no need to try and cram him in.
What good choices are left for 5-color lands? Child of Alara is a natural fit, but I don't like it.
The fact that you tutor a land each time it enters the battlefield certainly helps - as noted in the announcement, its commander tax is effectively 1, not 2. (There are also plenty of cards on the banned list that are easily killed, the issue is that if not immediately killed they too quickly take over the game, so it forces opponents to have removal on the spot or be at a huge disadvantage. Golos isn't quite one of those cards, but its dangerous activated ability plus its incredibly useful enters battlefield ability makes it very strong)
No idea why the unbanned Worldfire. Not a fun card, and if they were ever going to unban it, I would have thought it would have been part of a group unban with Coalition Victory, Sway of the Stars, maybe even Biorhythm.
Card seems pretty good too. For a deck that can operate at instant speed, taking your turn off to have it turn from day to night to get back the phoenix (untapped!) at the beginning of their turn seems nice.
Memory Deluge looks sweet too. Love both "sides" of it at 4 or 7 mana.
You must have never known the evil joy of vindicating an opponent's land when they are mana screwed, or the anguish of having this done to you. Stone rain mode puts vindicate a cut above the others, at least in 1v1, in my opinion.
But hey, this is still good. In token decks or anything with sacrifice synergies, I think this is VERY good.
I think that mechanic is pretty much limited-only, and this looks more like a potential constructed card. But its raw power level should be more than good enough for limited vampire decks too, despite the non-bo synergy.
At common, organ hoarder seems pretty good and eaten alive looks great with decayed zombies.
Jack-o-lantern is cute but, as I also noted in the Mystic Skull discussion, really doesn't cut it as mana fixing. Are these the only limited multicolor support we are getting?
I think so too. Preventing the damage that a spell would deal to some victims doesn't necessarily impact the damage it deals to others. (Like if your opponent just cast healing salve to save their 3/3 from your earthquake, the earthquake would still hit everything else)
Too bad about the word "another" on Rem, so he's not immune to damage himself. Still, a powerful pushed card in (or against) a deck with damage spells. Is this worth a splash in monored burn decks? What about decks that already were splashing white for boros charm?
Wow, I did not think those were mana abilities but I just looked it up and you're right. That really adds to this thing's potential in commander, where untapping with a caged sun in monoblack often means you win.
Yeah - if you build your deck to just have, say, Mike n Trike as your only creatures, then Ol' Sticky can get both into your graveyard on turn 4 (or earlier with ramp). You would need to then reanimate both but that is certainly possible. It seems very useful for a glass cannon combo strategy.
Are there fun, non-awful fair (or fair-ish) uses of the card? The art and name are sweet and I'd like to do something interesting with it.
But by your own logic, yes, the cards you are looking at are entirely random, so how excited are you about getting one of two random cards from not your deck? Mill isn't disruption, so why would getting a random opponent's card be better than getting a random card of your own? And no matter how good your opponent's deck is, unless they are playing the same strategy as you there's a greater chance you get something you don't need (like an aggressive 1 drop but you are playing control) than if you were drawing from your own deck. The "choose from top 2" helps here, but top 2 still isn't much selection. These cards always seem very splashy but rarely turn out as amazing as one dreams.
So, yeah. Great as a "counter" to a vampiric or mystical tutor or other deck-rigging effect, riskier but potentially more fun Think Twice otherwise.
I hope this is not the only colorless fixing in this set.