May I just say that I love the wording of "when" rather than "if" the creature dies this turn. I understand it was for mechanical purposes that they had to use "when" but it adds a vibe of confidence to it. THE CREATURE WILL DIE.
Cool idea, but it feels like it may be a bit slow against the powerhouses of standard right now (master of waves/bident decks and green based devotion)
As someone who lost multiple games to merchant I can tell you that it is every bit as good as people are evaluating it as. Even the baseline isn't awful as it provides a nice, defensive body and a couple of life that help you make it to the late game, and you can often just fireball your opponent out with it. It's also great on either side of rescue from the underworld.
Also- merchant becomes INCREDIBLE if you're able to open/pick up a whip of erebos. Whip almost guarantees an 8 point life swing.
I think as the format evolves, heroic will get better because you'll be able to bluff through damage when people learn to respect the potential for blowouts
From the prerelease I could already tell that this set is incredibly deep. There are a bunch of viable deck options, including ramp, hyper-agressive agro, midrange, tempo, and control. From my experience, diversity in viable options is what makes formats good (see INN, RoE), and lack of diversity is what makes draft formats less fun (see M14, AVR). I think this draft format will go down in history on par with triple Innistrad.
Also: people keep saying there's a lack of removal but I don't see it. There's a whole lot of removal at common, most of it is just pretty weak.
It's worth noting that it only has 3 power and therefore dodges the new elspeth's -3 ability. I can see both of them being played alongside eachother in a azorious control frame.
I feel like these would have been just fine to print at uncommon. Alternatively if they had included the basic land types, that would have been a way of very slightly upping their power.
I don't understand you all. Searing Spear is an eye sore. The name is bad, the art is bad, really everything is bad about it except its effect which is replicated in this card which has 10x better art, name and flavor. How can you be upset? It's a way cooler version of a previous card that fits the theme and isn't demanding you spend more than fifty cents to replace your old bad versions.
I think it would have been cool if they had redeemed searing spear with some awesome, flavorful artwork that replaced the old lame one
No, thats a spear on fire, that isn't a spear made of fire lol. There could've certainly been searing spears in Theros, but there aren't. That's my point. They don't exist on Theros lol.
So your argument is that is isn't flavorful because it wasn't printed?
Peak eruption looks like it could lead to some ridiculous blowouts against chained to the rocks. Blow up a land, deal them 3 damage, and get your dude back all for 3 mana. Seems like a pretty potent metagame scalpel.
Isn't the spear a magical object though? It's not a spear on fire, its literally a spear of fire. Akros soldiers aren't magically trained. For the record I have no stake in either card one way or another. Got a couple spears but don't really care if they're nothingness now.
It's not the financial value that bugs me in this case since the cards are dirt cheap. It just feels.... awkward. Like they weren't planning ahead far enough to know they should have just picked one or the other and stuck with it, especially since one of them was in the core set and therefore the flavor of either would have worked fine there.
And the name doesn't necessarily imply that the spear is made of fire. A new piece of artwork with an Akros soldier throwing a spear lit on fire could have made it very flavorful IMO.
This card is AWESOME! I'm not sure if it will see play in standard, but I wouldn't be surprised (will definately be a fun EDH card). It lets you defend it with countermagic unless they have instant speed removal ready the turn it comes down, and it lets you play more powerful sorcery speed draw spells on your turn and still leave up countermagic or potential threats on your opponents turns. Imagine playing this guy then dropping an urban evolution next turn.
Alright then show me where the spear would come from. Who is throwing flaming spears on Theros?
It's such a silly thing to even be angry about. It's not like they made a good card you had useless.
They had potential for a cool reprint with new art, or a awesome new card with this art/flavor but they made a weird, kind of clunky feeling functional reprint so close to the original. I feel like it's generally a mistake to make a functional reprint of a card that's less than 2 years old.
And off the top of my head, a spartan-like soldier could be throwing it at a minotaur
I'll bet anything there was a clear decision made after Core 2011 that we wouldn't see Bolt again.
The problem, like I stated above, is no one in Theros would actually throw a spear of fire. Unless you just want them to crowbar things in so you don't to re-buy a $.40 card
There was also a clear decision made way back when not to print it again until m11 came out. Times change. The future future league is generally pretty good at recognizing problems and fixing them before they wreak havoc. Power creep is a real thing, though slow moving. Cards that were broken at some point may be fair in the future (I'm not saying that future is now, but WotC knows better than I do).
And I fail to see how someone throwing a flaming spear at his/her enemy would be "crowbarred" into greek mythology. Sure there may not be any examples of that specific incident in mythology, but remember this is magic's take on it. Every card doesn't need to be an allusion to mythology.
I'm kind of weirded out by this card. Making a new card, then a little over a year later (directly after it rotates) creating a functional reprint seems rather odd to me, especially since searing spear could totally fit the flavor of greek mythology. My guess is that this was originally lightning bolt, then after they commissioned the art for it they determined that it was too powerful for standard and had to do a weird audible.
Also- merchant becomes INCREDIBLE if you're able to open/pick up a whip of erebos. Whip almost guarantees an 8 point life swing.
I think as the format evolves, heroic will get better because you'll be able to bluff through damage when people learn to respect the potential for blowouts
Also: people keep saying there's a lack of removal but I don't see it. There's a whole lot of removal at common, most of it is just pretty weak.
I think it would have been cool if they had redeemed searing spear with some awesome, flavorful artwork that replaced the old lame one
So your argument is that is isn't flavorful because it wasn't printed?
It's not the financial value that bugs me in this case since the cards are dirt cheap. It just feels.... awkward. Like they weren't planning ahead far enough to know they should have just picked one or the other and stuck with it, especially since one of them was in the core set and therefore the flavor of either would have worked fine there.
And the name doesn't necessarily imply that the spear is made of fire. A new piece of artwork with an Akros soldier throwing a spear lit on fire could have made it very flavorful IMO.
They had potential for a cool reprint with new art, or a awesome new card with this art/flavor but they made a weird, kind of clunky feeling functional reprint so close to the original. I feel like it's generally a mistake to make a functional reprint of a card that's less than 2 years old.
And off the top of my head, a spartan-like soldier could be throwing it at a minotaur
There was also a clear decision made way back when not to print it again until m11 came out. Times change. The future future league is generally pretty good at recognizing problems and fixing them before they wreak havoc. Power creep is a real thing, though slow moving. Cards that were broken at some point may be fair in the future (I'm not saying that future is now, but WotC knows better than I do).
And I fail to see how someone throwing a flaming spear at his/her enemy would be "crowbarred" into greek mythology. Sure there may not be any examples of that specific incident in mythology, but remember this is magic's take on it. Every card doesn't need to be an allusion to mythology.