MTG Salvation

Quote from ilovesaprolings »

Is that a Dora the Explorer reference?

If not, it's one helluva coincidence. Good catch.

Well that's just delightful. It'll usually dig through the top five cards at least, potentially more. I think the critical thing here is that it does something decent on its own, and can improve if you're even incidentally on theme.

Quote from quitequieter »

Quote from Ritokure »

Cunning Geysermage is decent Limited fodder

Is it really? I don’t see anywhere this card is good.

In this set's environment where blue cares about kicker? Yeah, it's usable in certain styles of decks. It'll probably be pretty important to the GU archetype in Limited, despite being quite overcosted for a standard effect. Note that I'm not saying it's good, just usable in specific Limited archetypes in the set.

ETA: it also plays into UR's Wizard/instants/sorceries schtick, though I don't know if it's as useful there.

Well, the green-blue Limited archetype is fairly obvious. I wonder if we'll get an URG Kicker legend for Commander, since that's where the kicker support and cards that care about it tend to be.

What a wonderful card!! A great use of landfall to enable explosive turns while keeping a regulator on it so it can rarely get oppressive. Unless someone finds a way to break it in half by going infinite or semi-infinite, but then he's still an evasionless 6/6 for 6.

Skydiver is good. But so is the Falconer, there is a mammoth backlog of kicker cards going back literally decades. If there's going to be a kicker deck, it'll be take advantage of the mechanic's innate flexibility and being able to setup your draws on a 4/4 flying body for 5 would be useful for that deck so you always have the best tools on hand to respond to the game state.

I like this, even nonkicked it's usable. And kicked, I'd be content even if there weren't a player with cards in hand to discard because you're still getting a creature back plus killing another creature. The individual effects aren't impressive in the least, but the flexibility is worth it. That's something of the narrative from the set, only this card isn't sacrificing potency of the various modes or cost efficiency for that flexibility like a lot of the others (which makes them less impressive if still technically solid because of the flexible utility).

Well *****. I really despise this mechanic, not for any specific power issues, I just find it exceptionally clunky and frustrating to play with. I also don't own sleeves and to a degree resent needed to invest in them (or some other method of making DFCs workable physically) to make a mechanic work. I have never once played with a DFC and I'm not going to start this year.

I'll say that the flavor of DFCs can be amazing, though I tend to picture Innistrad DFCs when I think of flavor masterpieces than these MDFCs from Zendikar. The Zendikar flavor seems to be crossroads of sorts, you get a land or a representation of hazards on that land. It's cute, but I don't think as evocative as Innistrad's transformation flavor that could be applied in different ways to evoke different horror tropes. Maybe they'll mix it up in coming sets.

This is a wonderful card! It's aggressively, though fairly, costed and will very quickly be a huge finisher. I'm happy that their intent to structure landfall around GW seems to be working.

Quote from Neuroticneurok »

Rootgrazer is weird. Ramps you, but that second ability just seems useless? I mean, when are you wanting to bounce a basic land? There aren't any basic lands that have ETBs, are there? I can see it being useful in Landfall, but...has GW Landfall ever really been a thing? Land destruction is a thing in other formats, yes, but I don't think this is going to be useful.

It enables landfall consistently, enables you to 'reuse' a basic (tap it, bounce it, replay it, tap it again) if you didn't have a land to play that turn, and it can save land creatures in a pinch (I have an awaken deck that is very interested in that utility).

The second ability doesn't offer much on first glance, but it does serve some interesting roles.

Quote from Xcric »

This mechanic is not for me and every single newly revealed party card inspires me to save my money

I'm not typically one to check out on a set mid-preview, but this set is really losing me. I wonder if it's just their preview strategy skewing perceptions? It does seem like they're giving out little cohorts of meh Limited cards without much impressive stuff to balance it out. Maybe they aren't, but it sure feels like all we're seeing is unimpressive chaff.

I will say that the flavor is great, and the mechanics aren't on their face bad. Kicker, landfall, and party are all good mechanics, they just aren't inherently flashy (all three are mechanics that don't "do anything" on their own and rely on how individual cards use them to make a mark) and they're just being applied to unimpressive cards. I've said it elsewhere, but the set feels very "just fine" so far. Some useful cards, some with flexible utility, etc. Even the planeswalkers aren't very flashy.

I'm not going to argue the set is bad (we haven't even seen it yet), but preview season has been unimpressive and, dare I say it, boring. And that's coming from someone with a soft spot for maligned or underpowered sets/blocks. I like the last Zendikar block. I like the Masques block. They tried things and they certainly failed more than succeeded, but I see a lot of interesting elements in them. Here I just feel meh. I'm hoping some cards start getting previewed that make me want to do anything with this set.

Roiling Regrowth slots right into my Awaken/land creatures Commander deck, at least. Even the Surge is appealing for that deck as it does both things the deck wants (gets lands, adds +1/+1 counters to creatures), though it likely won't be kicked often.

Interesting mix of disconnected abilities and flavor, but it's certainly a good utility card. That seems to be the presiding feeling from the previews thus far. Aside from a couple interesting things, it's mostly been "not impressive or flashy, but has its uses" and the related "I guess Limited needs this" to the point where it's barely worth it to comment on the cards. Yasharn at least will have impacts in a couple formats for shutting down very common strategies.

Even outside the last ability, a Commander landfall deck in GW with him at the helm could be interesting.

Quote from Marl Karx »

Quote from mikeyG »

Lands with proper titles that aren't legendary are one of my biggest pet peeves in the game. I am not a fan of these DFCs (or DFCs in general, honestly), so this is just a big fail for me all around.

They claim its the rules baggage of the supertype Legendary that makes things messy but I don't think that argument holds up. If there was a keyword Unique with no rules meaning and lands like this had it..that would be, literally, meaningless. I have no idea who would think that makes the situation better.

Yeah, and balancing legendary lands has not always been a thing they've done, so I get it. I think it's stupid and lazy, but on some level I do get it. My feeling is don't name these lands like they're a legendary location if it's not a legendary card. When it started back in Ravnica 1.0, I did not like it and nothing has changed in the intervening 15 years.

Lands with proper titles that aren't legendary are one of my biggest pet peeves in the game. I am not a fan of these DFCs (or DFCs in general, honestly), so this is just a big fail for me all around.