But surely it is a 1/1 . . . it is part of a cycle. A 1/1 cycle . . .
It's probably not best to guess. I definitely agree with you, but it's not unusual for Wizards to TRY to keep a cycle as similar as possible but still have to buf or nerf one of them because of power level.
Demise makes me sad. Yes, it's realtively strong and relatively cheap, but it's rare....RARE! I know that WotC has to keep limited in mind when designing, pricing, and tiering cards, but this is just horrible. I play limited more than anything else, but quite frankly, if you have to move a card like this to rare just to avoid limited issues, I'd rather it just not be printed.
well... is it just me or is wizards REALLY pushing the cycles a little too much? i mean, i remember an article in which they named them all and there weren't so many. Now, there'S at least 3-4 per set. maybe they're trying to get off with 5 cards per design idea.
I, for one, very much enjoy card cycles. They tend to have either very flavorful or interesting mechanics and do a great job of demonstrating the specialties of each color. One of the reasons I am interested in this set so much is BECAUSE of all the cycles. So, I guess it's really just you.
Getting back on topic, I do think he really shines in team games more than anything else. I suppose in constructed you could try to power him out and do something big with all the mana, but I'd much rather leverage him to untap all my teammates.
The more I think about it, I wonder if they made it 4/4 w/o trample instead of a 3/3 w/ trample to help distinguish it from Pulse of the Tangle. Granted, the pulse doesn't create creatures with trample, but it does create 3/3 critters.
Pulse kinda rewards you for letting your opponent keep their critters. Yeah, it could get countered, but in a worse case scenario, you have the option of chumping all day and creating a new critter afterwards. It those regards, it's pretty defensive, reactionary.
The genju kinda rewards you for keeping your opponent from having any critters. As long as they have critters, your 4/4 monster is gonna trip over those chumps all day long. However, if it had trample, your could just roll over the chumps rather than having to remove before attacking. In that regard, the Genju could be aggressive or defensive.
I really like the artwork for this card. Plus, actually seeing it in the card face, all pretty and printed, make me like it even more than before. Yeah, this guy *may* not see play in contructed, but in limited, I actually prefer the beefer 4/4 body over a 3/3 trampler.
As for everyone who keeps talking about how geddon would help affinity more than ww, I think it's time to look to the future. Yeah, affinity will still be around for, what, another six months, but what about after that? I don't think they'd want to add it to 10th, but I'm willing to bet they made a compromise that fits into your hopes and fears as well as the comments from the article: although it was originally planned for insertion in Betrayers, they moved it to Saviors.
If geddon was in Saviors, affinity would have minimum time to abuse it before it rotated out. WW would have a year to exploit it and justify to development whether it was a good idea. It rotates out faster than if it was in the core set. It makes the article's comments true because playtesters may have felt affinity used it more than WW but really wanted geddon back, so printing was pushed back to a later set in the block.
The Shuko is like a crappy tooth of chiss-goria for affinity, I'd rather have the tooth, and that's not even played much.
Woah, buddy. You're comparing apples to giant meteors that fall out of the sky and destroy all of humanity - you just can't do it. Yeah, in affinity, tooth is just sick because it normally cost zero, can be played as an instant, and can apply at instant speed rather than the sorcery equip. Thankfully, not everyone plays affinity. In a non-affinity deck, that tooth may very well cost 3, and now which is better? Personally, I'd probably take the equipment.
he works well with shoals, since u can discard an instant to the shoal, and then recur it later. yah, it would be a 1-3 casting cost spell, but definatley useful ealry on, when u dont want to discard, say a myojin to kill a disciple or samurai. instead you can dicard a terror, or glacial ray, and then use it next turn. it at least makes up a bit for the discard of the shoals.
Mr Blonde was right about it not working with the cards rfg by the shoals, but it is pretty beastly with with the red shoal none the less. Imagine this: you have an unblocked attacker and Toshi down. Use the ACC on Blazing Shoal to give the critter say +9 (so we DO get some use out of that searing wind ;)), the shoal goes to the yard. Kill one of your opponent's critters somehow. Use the ACC on the Blazing Shoal in the yard to give the critter another +9 (wow, those searing winds really sit in your hand...maybe they ARE too expensive :-)); the shoal is rfg as well. Now, if it was Toshi attacking, you've performed lethal damage as early as turn 4.
I'm not sure if putting 6 damage on the stack with the red genju and then switching to the white works for life gain. First, I'm not sure if spirit link acts as a delayed trigger (meaning that, when the creature puts damage on the stack, the life gain is also implicitly there until the damage resolves, at which point the life gain is on the stack) or a regular trigger (whenever the critter's damage resolves, it puts the life gain on the stack). Second, even if it's a regular trigger, since switching the animation makes it forget about it's past life, it shouldn't realize that the 6 damage came from the plateau.
My favorite combination is still blue genju for evasion and then switching to the red after blockers are declared. Yeah, blue and black work as well, but you've already blown 4 mana to have essentially made a 2/2 filer. If you even want to reach the potential of the red genju, you have to spent another BBBB. I'd rather have 6 damage for 4 than 6+ damage for 4BBBB+.
Whatever their names, they can be good, especially Yomiji. Not only is it good with Mindslaver, but it combos with the Dragon Spirits, too. The way I read Yomiji, abilities that trigger when a permanent goes to the graveyard will activate. Am I wrong on this?
Until we get some good wording, I'm not sure if the two work together. The way the original post translated it, both are triggers on going to the graveyard, so no matter how they are stacked, the dragon's effects should occur. However, I'm tempted to believe that Yomiji's ability is a replacement effect, in which case the dragon is never in the yard, meaning it never triggers. If this thing does act as a trigger rather than a replacement, it's pretty sick.
Of course, I was wrong about Neko-Te requiring combat damage...
Moving on.
- I don't see the white flier getting used too much. Frankly, by the time you've hit that threshold of mana, it seems like there are so many better things you could do. As people have mentioned, it would do very well in slaver decks, but are slaver decks even doing well right now with Extraction in the environment?
- We've seen the spirit draw card before, but it used to be called Airborn Aid and cost 1 less. Granted, there weren't many good birds that could stand on their own unlike the spirits, but I expect this card to be about as useful as the Aid, which was not very.
- The artifact seems fun. I'm guessing the clause 'as though it were in your hand' is there, otherwise it's pretty sucktastic.
And Wizards continues the marches of the card fixes. The intent of this block seems to be fading for me from 'lets tell a cool story set in Japanese context' to 'lets take all the old, broken cards, attach them to a creature, and nerf them but make them recur.' I guess I don't mind TOO much, but aside from ninjas, this set doesn't seem to introduce anything new to me - just fixed versions of previously powerful or important cards.
That aside, it seems like a neat card. It feels like it should be able to slide into any spiritcraft deck pretty easily, allowing a few utility enchantments to go in there for tutoring.
You know what I do see this thing working well with? The genju. Who wouldn't want to buff their animated land +1/+0 every turn for free! Since you're already devoting three lands to the animated critter (two to pay, third attacking), I think paying the extra mana every turn for a bonesplitter equip is too much.
I guess the white one had to be less powerfull since it is the color of wrath of god... I'd still try it in some WW deck
I don't think that's a very strong argument. Granted, we're dipping into extended a bit here, but using that logic, most of the other enchantment critters would need to be nerfed as well:
- black: Mutilate
- blue: Upheaval
- red: (pick any number of mass damage spells)
Nah - I think that white is just plain defensive by nature at the single-creature, non-flier level.
Two words. Insanely expensive. Unless you can find a way to reduce those costs, I don't think searing wind is a good partner for Toshi. Since you're more than not going to be playing multiple instants per turn (one to kill, one being flashed back), they'd probably need to be fairly efficient or just cheap.
Wow....I soooo read that as 'Ichigo who goes topless.'
Does anyone know if the prelease cards will be alternate art again? That seems to be standard fare recently (as much as I hated the kaldra equipment, it would've been nice to get the full set of foily alternate art).
It's probably not best to guess.
I, for one, very much enjoy card cycles. They tend to have either very flavorful or interesting mechanics and do a great job of demonstrating the specialties of each color. One of the reasons I am interested in this set so much is BECAUSE of all the cycles. So, I guess it's really just you.
Getting back on topic, I do think he really shines in team games more than anything else. I suppose in constructed you could try to power him out and do something big with all the mana, but I'd much rather leverage him to untap all my teammates.
/me reminisces about the good ole days sitting around at 3 am talking to total strangers on EFNet...
The more I think about it, I wonder if they made it 4/4 w/o trample instead of a 3/3 w/ trample to help distinguish it from Pulse of the Tangle. Granted, the pulse doesn't create creatures with trample, but it does create 3/3 critters.
Pulse kinda rewards you for letting your opponent keep their critters. Yeah, it could get countered, but in a worse case scenario, you have the option of chumping all day and creating a new critter afterwards. It those regards, it's pretty defensive, reactionary.
The genju kinda rewards you for keeping your opponent from having any critters. As long as they have critters, your 4/4 monster is gonna trip over those chumps all day long. However, if it had trample, your could just roll over the chumps rather than having to remove before attacking. In that regard, the Genju could be aggressive or defensive.
As for everyone who keeps talking about how geddon would help affinity more than ww, I think it's time to look to the future. Yeah, affinity will still be around for, what, another six months, but what about after that? I don't think they'd want to add it to 10th, but I'm willing to bet they made a compromise that fits into your hopes and fears as well as the comments from the article: although it was originally planned for insertion in Betrayers, they moved it to Saviors.
If geddon was in Saviors, affinity would have minimum time to abuse it before it rotated out. WW would have a year to exploit it and justify to development whether it was a good idea. It rotates out faster than if it was in the core set. It makes the article's comments true because playtesters may have felt affinity used it more than WW but really wanted geddon back, so printing was pushed back to a later set in the block.
Woah, buddy. You're comparing apples to giant meteors that fall out of the sky and destroy all of humanity - you just can't do it. Yeah, in affinity, tooth is just sick because it normally cost zero, can be played as an instant, and can apply at instant speed rather than the sorcery equip. Thankfully, not everyone plays affinity. In a non-affinity deck, that tooth may very well cost 3, and now which is better? Personally, I'd probably take the equipment.
Mr Blonde was right about it not working with the cards rfg by the shoals, but it is pretty beastly with with the red shoal none the less. Imagine this: you have an unblocked attacker and Toshi down. Use the ACC on Blazing Shoal to give the critter say +9 (so we DO get some use out of that searing wind ;)), the shoal goes to the yard. Kill one of your opponent's critters somehow. Use the ACC on the Blazing Shoal in the yard to give the critter another +9 (wow, those searing winds really sit in your hand...maybe they ARE too expensive :-)); the shoal is rfg as well. Now, if it was Toshi attacking, you've performed lethal damage as early as turn 4.
My favorite combination is still blue genju for evasion and then switching to the red after blockers are declared. Yeah, blue and black work as well, but you've already blown 4 mana to have essentially made a 2/2 filer. If you even want to reach the potential of the red genju, you have to spent another BBBB. I'd rather have 6 damage for 4 than 6+ damage for 4BBBB+.
Until we get some good wording, I'm not sure if the two work together. The way the original post translated it, both are triggers on going to the graveyard, so no matter how they are stacked, the dragon's effects should occur. However, I'm tempted to believe that Yomiji's ability is a replacement effect, in which case the dragon is never in the yard, meaning it never triggers. If this thing does act as a trigger rather than a replacement, it's pretty sick.
Of course, I was wrong about Neko-Te requiring combat damage...
Moving on.
- I don't see the white flier getting used too much. Frankly, by the time you've hit that threshold of mana, it seems like there are so many better things you could do. As people have mentioned, it would do very well in slaver decks, but are slaver decks even doing well right now with Extraction in the environment?
- We've seen the spirit draw card before, but it used to be called Airborn Aid and cost 1 less. Granted, there weren't many good birds that could stand on their own unlike the spirits, but I expect this card to be about as useful as the Aid, which was not very.
- The artifact seems fun. I'm guessing the clause 'as though it were in your hand' is there, otherwise it's pretty sucktastic.
That aside, it seems like a neat card. It feels like it should be able to slide into any spiritcraft deck pretty easily, allowing a few utility enchantments to go in there for tutoring.
You know what I do see this thing working well with? The genju. Who wouldn't want to buff their animated land +1/+0 every turn for free! Since you're already devoting three lands to the animated critter (two to pay, third attacking), I think paying the extra mana every turn for a bonesplitter equip is too much.
I don't think that's a very strong argument. Granted, we're dipping into extended a bit here, but using that logic, most of the other enchantment critters would need to be nerfed as well:
- black: Mutilate
- blue: Upheaval
- red: (pick any number of mass damage spells)
Nah - I think that white is just plain defensive by nature at the single-creature, non-flier level.
Two words. Insanely expensive. Unless you can find a way to reduce those costs, I don't think searing wind is a good partner for Toshi. Since you're more than not going to be playing multiple instants per turn (one to kill, one being flashed back), they'd probably need to be fairly efficient or just cheap.
Wow....I soooo read that as 'Ichigo who goes topless.'
Does anyone know if the prelease cards will be alternate art again? That seems to be standard fare recently (as much as I hated the kaldra equipment, it would've been nice to get the full set of foily alternate art).