Man, there are going to be some red faces when people realize this is the highest-pick green common.
(Okay, I'm exaggerating my level of confidence just to be contrary, but that's actually not a ridiculous position. In draft formats where ramping mana is good, 2-cmc mana dorks with upside can easily be top commons; see Golden Hind, Journey into Nyx's best green common and one of the set's top commons overall)
I don't think it's unlikely. This card is very relevant early and late - a classic good card for limited.
That said, I'm fine with the info-dump for the limited-only cards, as someone who plays mostly limited and some EDH. Even though this card will surely have a much bigger impact than any given rare or mythic, it's more fun to fantasize about cracking a Gisela than deal with the nitty-gritty of all the C-range commons, at least during spoiler season. Once I'm actually drafting and have to face the reality of having opened a soul extractor, that's when I want to think about the merits of ulvenwald captive, not so much during spoiler season.
I can appreciate that position. Personally, though, I like getting to imagine and speculate about what the draft format will be like, and my own enjoyment is a lot higher if I get to experience that as a gradual unveiling of information than a giant, hard-to-process lump right at the end.
Man, there are going to be some red faces when people realize this is the highest-pick green common.
(Okay, I'm exaggerating my level of confidence just to be contrary, but that's actually not a ridiculous position. In draft formats where ramping mana is good, 2-cmc mana dorks with upside can easily be top commons; see Golden Hind, Journey into Nyx's best green common and one of the set's top commons overall)
Also, can I just say that I'm over the moon (no pun intended) about this improved spoiler rollout? God, I hated having to wait until the last week to see the draft commons I actually care about while Standard players got new goodies (or at least things to argue about) most days through the whole spoiler season? This is so, so much better.
I hate to break it to you, but there is a nonzero chance that these spoilers are actually supposed to impress us and/or get us excited for the set.
?
Did you think I was being sarcastic or something? I'm legitimately very, very pleased that they are spoiling Limited commons alongside the other cards this time. I basically only play Draft and EDH, and it sucks getting all the relevant draft cards in a giant info dump the last week. This is way better!
Really, just an additional toughness and it needs defender mechanically? (Yes I know it can transform instant-speed and what-not, but ultimately it's a mana dork and the Eldrazi Werewolf mechanic is less relevant (along with P/T outside of blocking to mana dorks considering the transformation costs, I'll say).
I also understand it's a "weak werewolf" held captive.. but considering we got a [MANA]G[/MANA 2/1 that looks fit (even if undernourished) I don't think a 1/2 Werewolf is that "weak" either. Oh well.
I think this is better than Scorned Villager, maybe a lot better. Scorned Villager is a mana dork that punishes your opponent by ramping you harder if they have an awkward start and don't have a play on an early turn (or compensates you with extra ramp if that happens to you, though after you've played a turn-2 mana dork you should generally be able to cast spells for at least a couple turns).
On the other hand, this is a mana dork that transforms, under more controllable conditions, into a relevant threat in the late game, thus ameliorating the chief weakness of mana dorks in Limited (i.e., causing you to play more mana sources that don't impact the board and increasing the chances that you'll flood into no ramp payoffs and leading to bad late game topdecks). I think that's better.
I'm curious where this will end up in Limited, because I think it will be largely format-dependent. Voyaging Satyr was very good in Theros, and I think adding pseudo-Monstrosity is worth a lot more than losing the ability to attack.
On the other hand, Whisperer of the Wilds was pretty bad in Fate Reforged, so this could be anywhere from bad to great depending on how good ramp is in typical green decks in EMN-EMN-SOI draft. The werewolves all being effectively Monstrosity creatures could suggest a ramp-friendly format, but it's too early to say.
Also, can I just say that I'm over the moon (no pun intended) about this improved spoiler rollout? God, I hated having to wait until the last week to see the draft commons I actually care about while Standard players got new goodies (or at least things to argue about) most days through the whole spoiler season. This is so, so much better.
I don't completely side with her in the story either: She's commiting a world wide genocide to get even with Sorin, yet I don't side with him either, he had the story of overreacting at the lightest provocation, such as locking Nahiri within the Helvault (Though he asked her to leave Innistrad at least once) and forsaking Innistrad just to go and trying to kill her.
I also have to point that Sorin now is in the same state that Nahiri: Thinking that the only thing that remains is revenge, because the world is doomed.
Being attacked because of a flippant attitude = lightest provocation, I guess.
I feel like people forget that Sorin pretty much had two options at this point; trap Nahiri in the Helvault or KILL HER. WE know that Nahiri didn't intend to kill Sorin, but she made no attempts to convey that to the vampire.
But this isn't true at all; we were kind of lead to think it was true when we saw the scene from Sorin's perspective, but Nahiri's side provided some much-needed context. It reminded us that Nahiri and Sorin were pre-mending walkers unshackled from mortal bodies, and that attacking each other with lethal-to-normal-people swords just to convey a point was an established part of their relationship. And it's not like Sorin didn't know that, since he's the one who established that mode of interaction in the first place.
After seeing Nahiri's side, we now realize that Sorin was never in mortal danger and knew he wasn't (or at least ought to have known). Nahiri was doing what, for them, was the equivalent of throwing your drink in someone's face.
Basically, up to the point that he sealed Nahiri in the Helvault, Sorin was completely in the wrong. Nahiri may share a little blame too, since she might have been able to handle things better, though it's worth pointing out that we don't actually know that's true. Nahiri thought she had to use force to make Sorin respect her before he'd listen, and she might not have been wrong. Do we really think that if she'd been submissive and let Sorin act like a dismissive jerk, once he'd regained his strength he'd have gone and helped her? Or would he have just found another excuse to blow her off, and then another, ad infinitum? It seems pretty clear that she was right that he'd decided to build a shield for Innistrad so he could stop caring so much about the rest of the multiverse.
What Nahiri did after getting out of the Helvault is another matter entirely, but in their older interaction, Sorin was wrong and Nahiri was, at most, guilty of not handling him as well as possible.
Nice to see this back. We all knew it was going to be uncommon when it got reprinted, right? I enjoyed casting common Doom Blades in Limited as much as anyone, but uncommon is obviously the right rarity for this effect. You'd first-pick Doom Blade/Murder over every common, essentially every uncommon (exceptionally busted examples like Mind Control or Fireball aside), and at least half the rares. That's clearly on a totally different level from other commons.
I've been increasingly coming to suspect that the creative team is deliberately subverting the brooding vampire antihero trope with Sorin. I think we've been trained to see him that way by other media because he's done some things that were really good for other people. So we're kind of primed to expect him to talk about humans like they're cattle but actually care about them, and to have, beneath an arrogant jerk exterior, a hidden core of compassion. But it turns out that Sorin really does see humans as cattle, and under his surface arrogant jerk is an inner lazy arrogant jerk.
And we've found out that even some of the good things he's done were actually far more selfish than we thought. It turns out that creating Avacyn didn't just protect the humans of Innistrad (as a food source for vampires), it also got him off the hook for caring about the rest of the multiverse so he could dick over his old friends and blow off his responsibility to the other good thing he did, sealing the Eldrazi.
It would be interesting if it turns out that werewolves who've given in to their bestial nature are especially susceptible to Emrakul's call while Arlinn and perhaps other werewolves who've achieved some level of control are especially resistant to it. There'd be some logic to the idea that beings accustomed to surrendering their minds and bodies to transformation would immediately fold to manipulation by Emrakul, but those who'd become experts at knowing and managing those forces within themselves might be better at resisting changes from outside.
As much as I'd like to see the Gothic versions of all the gatewatch's outfits, Innistrad seems to be mid-apocalypse at the moment. Where would they even get local fashions right now?
The gatewatch aren't getting new wardrobes because Innistrad's clothiers were the first to be consumed by Emrakul. If that doesn't prove the Eldrazi are capable of deliberate malice, I don't know what would.
---
I'm going to go against the grain and say I really like the gatewatch showing up. It's not because I'm desperate for the story to become all about them (and honestly I don't think it's going to; the tidbits we've seen so far suggest more that they're going to face a comeuppance and need Liliana and maybe others to save the day). I'm pleased because I'm glad they're avoiding the "Avengers Problem," where people on teams never get their friends to help, for narratively contrived reasons, even with the fate of the world at stake, just because this is an Iron Man movie so they don't want Thor and Captain America to be in it. If we're going to have a planeswalker super-team, then let's be consistent and when a dire planar threat turns up in one character's story, let's have them go round up the gang.
That doesn't mean I want the whole gatewatch to star in every story. I hope we get some lower-stakes conflicts that can plausibly involve just one or two planeswalkers, and I hope that when the whole team does show up they don't always equally share the spotlight (as I think will be the case here). But if characters actually call the gatewatch when an Eldrazi titan or Phyrexian invasion force shows up, I consider that a win for narrative logic.
That is not a bad reasoning, but there is a problem of maintaining the theme. Gideon, Nissa and Chandra, as they currently are, are unfit for a storyline based on Innistrad. Gideon is a typical knight warrior character, made for battle in an army, and his past with the knights of Bant and the Boros Legion reinforces that. Gideon is not at all in theme with ghotic or cosmic horror (though he was a fine character for BFZ), and to improve that you would have to make him look more like Odric - maybe creating an arch where Gideon reveals a bit of his faith or uses a weapon other than his sural (which is extremely non-innistradian). He would basically need to become a Knight Templar or a Swashbuckler to fit more into the theme.
Nissa also is completely and utterly lost, and the primary reason for that was the poor character development she received after her retcon. With all her worry about Zendikar and its life forms I question her intentions on Innistrad and I don't see an animist as being a fit character for ghotic horror as well. Maybe you could have it done, but once again, more development would be needed and she would have to look like a Somberwald Sage: more like a druid in connection with shamanic powers than what she was in BFZ - which was a human version of the Swamp Thing from DC comics, basically.
And last but not least pyromancers are also out of theme. Chandra could maybe learn how to manipulate Geistflame or learn something from Kessig Forgemaster, I don't know. She would have to pass on a different kind of treatment.
I think it goes without saying that the Gatewatch, as cliche as the idea is, feels much more appropriate for the Zendikar setting, because original Zendikar was about a band of people with different skills working together like in an RPG. In ghotic horror Innistrad you need a better reason for that or else you're risking ruining the theme. Just saying that the presence of Emrakul suddenly trapped Jace on Innistrad forbidding him to planeswalk to contact the gatewatch would be a perfectly fine solution. It would probably increase the dimension of thing for him, because he would know that if he failed to save Innistrad he too would definitely die.
In any case, the cards that depict the Gatewatch already look completely out of Innistrad's theme to me, not sure if it is the same for everyone else.
I think I agree with all of that, and well-said.
I guess it doesn't really bother me because I'm expecting them to have a fairly minor role, showing up mostly to acknowledge that Jace would naturally go get them, then getting their asses kicked to underscore the seriousness of the situation. I'm expecting the gatewatch focus to stay on the more on-theme Jace, and for the advancement of the plot to come mostly from the interactions of Jace, Liliana, Sorin, and Nahiri, and maybe Arlinn, some legendary creatures, and/or Tamiyo (I'm sure she's not going to just abruptly disappear from the story, but I won't try to guess whether she still has a big part to play, or if she's going to be stepping to the background).
Honestly, if someone told me that the rest of the gatewatch's only on-card appearance is the single artwork of them getting overwhelmed by Emrakul, I wouldn't be too surprised.
Also mad!Gisela and mad!Bruna (prior to The Thing) were mono-WHITE, so there!
Perhaps English isn't your natural tongue but, mate that's not an intelligible series of words and punctuation. Try again?
[adjective]![character name] is an internet-ism... I think it may originally be from fan fiction communities, but I'm not really sure. It's for denoting a particular version of a character.
Yeah... let's not do that here.
Some of us are adults who are not really that familiar with internet slang sometimes. And my son isn't old enough to explain it to me yet.
I feel you on that one, I'm pretty old and decrepit myself. I sometimes think the only reason I know any internet slang is that my wife is sufficiently connected to various online communities that she could probably move her voter registration to "the internet". She is, as the kids say, on fleek with the dank memes. ohgodohgod let me be using that right
The gatewatch aren't getting new wardrobes because Innistrad's clothiers were the first to be consumed by Emrakul. If that doesn't prove the Eldrazi are capable of deliberate malice, I don't know what would.
---
I'm going to go against the grain and say I really like the gatewatch showing up. It's not because I'm desperate for the story to become all about them (and honestly I don't think it's going to; the tidbits we've seen so far suggest more that they're going to face a comeuppance and need Liliana and maybe others to save the day). I'm pleased because I'm glad they're avoiding the "Avengers Problem," where people on teams never get their friends to help, for narratively contrived reasons, even with the fate of the world at stake, just because this is an Iron Man movie so they don't want Thor and Captain America to be in it. If we're going to have a planeswalker super-team, then let's be consistent and when a dire planar threat turns up in one character's story, let's have them go round up the gang.
That doesn't mean I want the whole gatewatch to star in every story. I hope we get some lower-stakes conflicts that can plausibly involve just one or two planeswalkers, and I hope that when the whole team does show up they don't always equally share the spotlight (as I think will be the case here). But if characters actually call the gatewatch when an Eldrazi titan or Phyrexian invasion force shows up, I consider that a win for narrative logic.
Also mad!Gisela and mad!Bruna (prior to The Thing) were mono-WHITE, so there!
Perhaps English isn't your natural tongue but, mate that's not an intelligible series of words and punctuation. Try again?
[adjective]![character name] is an internet-ism... I think it may originally be from fan fiction communities, but I'm not really sure. It's for denoting a particular version of a character.
There are a variety of ways for Emrakul's impact to be "permanent." The plane could be forevermore besieged by hordes of monsters from The Thing running around killing everyone, and that would certainly be a fundamental change to the character of the plane.
Or, for example, that remote coastal town where the people are a little too friendly and give off a creepy vibe? It could be home to a surviving Emrakul cult, that teaches us that we must all be one, and every full moon we all walk down to the hidden sea caves at low tide, and someone new joins the amalgamated mass of living flesh that hides there and hears our prayers. And guess who's next, you nosy traveler you?
That kind of thing would fit perfectly with SOI's cosmic horror style and Innistrad's overall Gothic horror style.
(Okay, I'm exaggerating my level of confidence just to be contrary, but that's actually not a ridiculous position. In draft formats where ramping mana is good, 2-cmc mana dorks with upside can easily be top commons; see Golden Hind, Journey into Nyx's best green common and one of the set's top commons overall)
Did you think I was being sarcastic or something? I'm legitimately very, very pleased that they are spoiling Limited commons alongside the other cards this time. I basically only play Draft and EDH, and it sucks getting all the relevant draft cards in a giant info dump the last week. This is way better!
I think this is better than Scorned Villager, maybe a lot better. Scorned Villager is a mana dork that punishes your opponent by ramping you harder if they have an awkward start and don't have a play on an early turn (or compensates you with extra ramp if that happens to you, though after you've played a turn-2 mana dork you should generally be able to cast spells for at least a couple turns).
On the other hand, this is a mana dork that transforms, under more controllable conditions, into a relevant threat in the late game, thus ameliorating the chief weakness of mana dorks in Limited (i.e., causing you to play more mana sources that don't impact the board and increasing the chances that you'll flood into no ramp payoffs and leading to bad late game topdecks). I think that's better.
On the other hand, Whisperer of the Wilds was pretty bad in Fate Reforged, so this could be anywhere from bad to great depending on how good ramp is in typical green decks in EMN-EMN-SOI draft. The werewolves all being effectively Monstrosity creatures could suggest a ramp-friendly format, but it's too early to say.
Also, can I just say that I'm over the moon (no pun intended) about this improved spoiler rollout? God, I hated having to wait until the last week to see the draft commons I actually care about while Standard players got new goodies (or at least things to argue about) most days through the whole spoiler season. This is so, so much better.
After seeing Nahiri's side, we now realize that Sorin was never in mortal danger and knew he wasn't (or at least ought to have known). Nahiri was doing what, for them, was the equivalent of throwing your drink in someone's face.
Basically, up to the point that he sealed Nahiri in the Helvault, Sorin was completely in the wrong. Nahiri may share a little blame too, since she might have been able to handle things better, though it's worth pointing out that we don't actually know that's true. Nahiri thought she had to use force to make Sorin respect her before he'd listen, and she might not have been wrong. Do we really think that if she'd been submissive and let Sorin act like a dismissive jerk, once he'd regained his strength he'd have gone and helped her? Or would he have just found another excuse to blow her off, and then another, ad infinitum? It seems pretty clear that she was right that he'd decided to build a shield for Innistrad so he could stop caring so much about the rest of the multiverse.
What Nahiri did after getting out of the Helvault is another matter entirely, but in their older interaction, Sorin was wrong and Nahiri was, at most, guilty of not handling him as well as possible.
And we've found out that even some of the good things he's done were actually far more selfish than we thought. It turns out that creating Avacyn didn't just protect the humans of Innistrad (as a food source for vampires), it also got him off the hook for caring about the rest of the multiverse so he could dick over his old friends and blow off his responsibility to the other good thing he did, sealing the Eldrazi.
I guess it doesn't really bother me because I'm expecting them to have a fairly minor role, showing up mostly to acknowledge that Jace would naturally go get them, then getting their asses kicked to underscore the seriousness of the situation. I'm expecting the gatewatch focus to stay on the more on-theme Jace, and for the advancement of the plot to come mostly from the interactions of Jace, Liliana, Sorin, and Nahiri, and maybe Arlinn, some legendary creatures, and/or Tamiyo (I'm sure she's not going to just abruptly disappear from the story, but I won't try to guess whether she still has a big part to play, or if she's going to be stepping to the background).
Honestly, if someone told me that the rest of the gatewatch's only on-card appearance is the single artwork of them getting overwhelmed by Emrakul, I wouldn't be too surprised.
---
I'm going to go against the grain and say I really like the gatewatch showing up. It's not because I'm desperate for the story to become all about them (and honestly I don't think it's going to; the tidbits we've seen so far suggest more that they're going to face a comeuppance and need Liliana and maybe others to save the day). I'm pleased because I'm glad they're avoiding the "Avengers Problem," where people on teams never get their friends to help, for narratively contrived reasons, even with the fate of the world at stake, just because this is an Iron Man movie so they don't want Thor and Captain America to be in it. If we're going to have a planeswalker super-team, then let's be consistent and when a dire planar threat turns up in one character's story, let's have them go round up the gang.
That doesn't mean I want the whole gatewatch to star in every story. I hope we get some lower-stakes conflicts that can plausibly involve just one or two planeswalkers, and I hope that when the whole team does show up they don't always equally share the spotlight (as I think will be the case here). But if characters actually call the gatewatch when an Eldrazi titan or Phyrexian invasion force shows up, I consider that a win for narrative logic.
Or, for example, that remote coastal town where the people are a little too friendly and give off a creepy vibe? It could be home to a surviving Emrakul cult, that teaches us that we must all be one, and every full moon we all walk down to the hidden sea caves at low tide, and someone new joins the amalgamated mass of living flesh that hides there and hears our prayers. And guess who's next, you nosy traveler you?
That kind of thing would fit perfectly with SOI's cosmic horror style and Innistrad's overall Gothic horror style.