Considering our ability to do untap/tap shenannigans, isn't yosei, the morning star a rather powerful inclusion? (along with combo pieces if you want to get degenerate and go infinite off of him, but since you said you don't want elaborate combos his interaction with the general on his own is hugely powerful) I get that the deck is supposed to be lower curve, but I feel like his ability is just too powerful with derevi not to include him.
So, I believe you should keep thespian stage but add in another card. Dark Depths combos with that, so you'll get the 20/20 indestructible flying token immediately.
And another card recommendation is Craterhoof Behemoth.
I cannot stress enough the fact that this will win you many games on the spot. Its freaking incredible. Especially in a deck where the general can create as many tokens as this guy can.
So, I think that new grixis general (jeleva) looks pretty cool.
4 mana ensures she'll hit every game - and if you have greaves on field you can potentially pop something REALLY NASTY like apocalypse for free.
Plus grixis is the best color for annoying sorceries/instants that cost a lot of mana!
I like the green one.
The blue one too - this is probably just because of the synergy with evolve allowing them to sac this after a single attack. (assuming it evolves enough first)
Other than that they're kinda meh.
Witches in Magic are not female wizards, nor are wizards female witches. There are female wizards and male witches. A witch is a Black-aligned wizard or shaman.
mistmeadow witch
Not necessarily black aligned. (admittedly, all non-black witches are from lorwyn though)
A witch in magic as far as I've seen is just a spellcaster who is more in tune with nature.
That is, witches use herbal remedies, boil stuff in pots, blood sacrifices, etc for spells.
Wizards are your typical warlock/necromancer/harry potter spellslinger types.
Shamans of course use more focus on summoning elementals, spirits, animating lands etc.
But yeah, you are right that either no one read the thread or they just want to stir up controversy. Feminism is a hot button issue online nowadays and they might just be trolls trying to get some people riled up.
"God" is correct. The term goddess came into use around 1350 - in other words the ancient greeks called both male and female deities God.
I ran this in my old school sharuum deck.
My favorite combo in that deck was to use this to pitch darksteel forge then sharuum it into play. Though that deck had an uncanny amount of 1cmc artifacts including stuff like lotus petal and bajillions of artifact grave revives which made this tutor far more useful.
But yeah, in the right deck I'll swear by this card. Won me more games than i can count fetching up mana crypt or sol ring early on, executioner's capsule/dispeller's capsule,Sensei's Divining Top or a mox later. Plus using it as a discard outlet is swell in the right setting.
Thassa.
3cmc is super low.
Blue has an E-Z time hitting 5 devotion. (Maybe? Sorry, I'm theorycrafting here as i mainly play commander, so IDK if this holds true in the standard meta or not)
Free scry every turn is awesome.
Unblockable beaters is awesome.
Heck, she beats for 5 unblockable pretty quickly.
No other god does as much for you alone as she does, she's simply phenomenal support.
After her, the red one is insane.
My problem with him though is
A) 4 mana - in red you most likely want to drop most of your creatures before T4, thus somewhat neutering his ability's effectiveness.
B) Devotion - Red will probably have the hardest time of all the colors getting to 5 devotion. (I may be full of it here, see earlier note about me mostly doing edh. I just base my assumption on red having a lot of small, weak creatures which its willing to let die to deal more damage, so the stability of keeping devotion up would not be there)
These two factors I think will make thassa more powerful than him overall. The thing is, the red dude is certainly a killer, but he's a killer you need to build around to maximize his potential.
Thassa can go into pretty much any blue deck and be amazing.
And built around she'll be just as harmful as the big red giant, if not moreso due to coming out a turn sooner and being unblockable.
Black god is 3rd, he's good, just not as good as these two.
The white one could be really good - mostly depends on enchant support since those tokens could be amazing with the right support.
Green is worst imo the activated ability is simply really, really, REALLY bad and most green creatures with big attack have trample already.
I feel like with how powerful obzedat is this might see maindeck play.
They planned it so you drop this, if it sticks around drop obzedat, on t6 at the start you do the bottom ability in response to obzedat coming back in (so they lose 4 life instead of 2 no?) then drop a land, slap lifelink on obzedat and have him swing for 10 to their face.
Total damage they take: 14, you gain 7 life, so 21 total life swing seems pretty worthwhile.
Then again I don't play standard at all lol, only commander, so no idea how viable that actually is, but it seems good.
Looking back at these, I'm most excited about the keyrune.
Its the only keyrune I see as being playable.
2 mana for 2 damage every turn is fair. 2 damage to waste their removal would also be fair.
The added option to tap for B/U is awesome.
Obzedat of course is better but I do see keyrune as being playable.
I wish that this would be used with that goblin that gives everything haste. Would be hilarious if this thing was actually relevant in standard.
But yeah, this will be beloved by many in EDH, thats for sure.
I know I'm using it in azusa for sure.
I'm starting to worry that this set is suffering from the middle set curse. Usually we get all of the amazing rares/mythics spoiled up front and then all of the junk rares/commons/uncommons spoiled last, but so far we've had what, most of the mythics spoiled and a decent amount of rares? I'm just not seeing anything so far that really stands out or excites me. I'm not going to judge just yet, but so far we're getting some fun cards that probably aren't constructed playable and some blatantly bad cards.
RtR had tons of rares and mythics that I wanted to open, but so far the only cards spoiled that I'd want to pull from a pack in this set are the shocks, Obzedat, Lazav, Domri, Enter the Infinite, Clan Defiance and maybe Aurelia just because I'd like to have one.
On a random note, I love the artwork on the Dimir Guildgate.
You do realize that you listed 11 out of 48 cards that have been spoiled as "cards you want".
Thats actually a very high number of playable cards.
I think people just like to come up with reasons to complain.
Personally, this set looks amazing. Mystic Genesis could be a viable wincon with black decks ramping up like madmen possibly - counter their fatty, get your own fatty is a very nice deal.
The ghast is (good for edh) pretty cool, and in general most of the cards look fun.
You have to realize that Wizards is trying to appease players for every format, so not all cards will be OMG SO GOOD for constructed.
In fact, most cards have got to be trash to make draft not be broken.
@Lord Void:
You misunderstand why people hate counters. Its a weird psychology trick.
For example; comparing cancel and vindicate. Timmy plays his 10/10 creature and it gets vindicated. He goes "aww, that sucks, i woulda won."
Now instead say it gets countered, he goes "Wow counters are stupid."
Its the simple aspect of "being able to play my spell, even if it does nothing"
compared to "you are such a jackass that you didn't even let me play my spell."
Of course, I lean in favor of U/G as my slice of the color pie so I love counters, but I can see why people get upset - its not bad magic, its merely frustration at feeling locked out of the game, whereas other removal at least lets them feel as if they did something.
Same concept with land destruction, except it literally locks people out of games.
I love trostani and the guildmage.
Hate the imps. The elemental is super cool, I just can't see myself playing it. (due to not playing r/u lol)
The imps I just feel bad for anyone who pulls them outside of limited.
But trostani could be fun as hell in edh, comes down pretty early and shennannigans with super lifegain/token duping abound.
Dark Depths combos with that, so you'll get the 20/20 indestructible flying token immediately.
And another card recommendation is Craterhoof Behemoth.
I cannot stress enough the fact that this will win you many games on the spot. Its freaking incredible. Especially in a deck where the general can create as many tokens as this guy can.
4 mana ensures she'll hit every game - and if you have greaves on field you can potentially pop something REALLY NASTY like apocalypse for free.
Plus grixis is the best color for annoying sorceries/instants that cost a lot of mana!
The blue one too - this is probably just because of the synergy with evolve allowing them to sac this after a single attack. (assuming it evolves enough first)
Other than that they're kinda meh.
mistmeadow witch
Not necessarily black aligned. (admittedly, all non-black witches are from lorwyn though)
A witch in magic as far as I've seen is just a spellcaster who is more in tune with nature.
That is, witches use herbal remedies, boil stuff in pots, blood sacrifices, etc for spells.
Wizards are your typical warlock/necromancer/harry potter spellslinger types.
Shamans of course use more focus on summoning elementals, spirits, animating lands etc.
But yeah, you are right that either no one read the thread or they just want to stir up controversy. Feminism is a hot button issue online nowadays and they might just be trolls trying to get some people riled up.
"God" is correct. The term goddess came into use around 1350 - in other words the ancient greeks called both male and female deities God.
My favorite combo in that deck was to use this to pitch darksteel forge then sharuum it into play. Though that deck had an uncanny amount of 1cmc artifacts including stuff like lotus petal and bajillions of artifact grave revives which made this tutor far more useful.
But yeah, in the right deck I'll swear by this card. Won me more games than i can count fetching up mana crypt or sol ring early on, executioner's capsule/dispeller's capsule,Sensei's Divining Top or a mox later. Plus using it as a discard outlet is swell in the right setting.
3cmc is super low.
Blue has an E-Z time hitting 5 devotion. (Maybe? Sorry, I'm theorycrafting here as i mainly play commander, so IDK if this holds true in the standard meta or not)
Free scry every turn is awesome.
Unblockable beaters is awesome.
Heck, she beats for 5 unblockable pretty quickly.
No other god does as much for you alone as she does, she's simply phenomenal support.
After her, the red one is insane.
My problem with him though is
A) 4 mana - in red you most likely want to drop most of your creatures before T4, thus somewhat neutering his ability's effectiveness.
B) Devotion - Red will probably have the hardest time of all the colors getting to 5 devotion. (I may be full of it here, see earlier note about me mostly doing edh. I just base my assumption on red having a lot of small, weak creatures which its willing to let die to deal more damage, so the stability of keeping devotion up would not be there)
These two factors I think will make thassa more powerful than him overall. The thing is, the red dude is certainly a killer, but he's a killer you need to build around to maximize his potential.
Thassa can go into pretty much any blue deck and be amazing.
And built around she'll be just as harmful as the big red giant, if not moreso due to coming out a turn sooner and being unblockable.
Black god is 3rd, he's good, just not as good as these two.
The white one could be really good - mostly depends on enchant support since those tokens could be amazing with the right support.
Green is worst imo the activated ability is simply really, really, REALLY bad and most green creatures with big attack have trample already.
Other than that, the new blue spell was cool. I like filtering, and instants/sorceries are quite handy in blue.
They planned it so you drop this, if it sticks around drop obzedat, on t6 at the start you do the bottom ability in response to obzedat coming back in (so they lose 4 life instead of 2 no?) then drop a land, slap lifelink on obzedat and have him swing for 10 to their face.
Total damage they take: 14, you gain 7 life, so 21 total life swing seems pretty worthwhile.
Then again I don't play standard at all lol, only commander, so no idea how viable that actually is, but it seems good.
Its the only keyrune I see as being playable.
2 mana for 2 damage every turn is fair. 2 damage to waste their removal would also be fair.
The added option to tap for B/U is awesome.
Obzedat of course is better but I do see keyrune as being playable.
But yeah, this will be beloved by many in EDH, thats for sure.
I know I'm using it in azusa for sure.
You do realize that you listed 11 out of 48 cards that have been spoiled as "cards you want".
Thats actually a very high number of playable cards.
I think people just like to come up with reasons to complain.
Personally, this set looks amazing. Mystic Genesis could be a viable wincon with black decks ramping up like madmen possibly - counter their fatty, get your own fatty is a very nice deal.
The ghast is (good for edh) pretty cool, and in general most of the cards look fun.
You have to realize that Wizards is trying to appease players for every format, so not all cards will be OMG SO GOOD for constructed.
In fact, most cards have got to be trash to make draft not be broken.
You misunderstand why people hate counters. Its a weird psychology trick.
For example; comparing cancel and vindicate. Timmy plays his 10/10 creature and it gets vindicated. He goes "aww, that sucks, i woulda won."
Now instead say it gets countered, he goes "Wow counters are stupid."
Its the simple aspect of "being able to play my spell, even if it does nothing"
compared to "you are such a jackass that you didn't even let me play my spell."
Of course, I lean in favor of U/G as my slice of the color pie so I love counters, but I can see why people get upset - its not bad magic, its merely frustration at feeling locked out of the game, whereas other removal at least lets them feel as if they did something.
Same concept with land destruction, except it literally locks people out of games.
Well looks like I'll be passing this one up.
Hate the imps. The elemental is super cool, I just can't see myself playing it. (due to not playing r/u lol)
The imps I just feel bad for anyone who pulls them outside of limited.
But trostani could be fun as hell in edh, comes down pretty early and shennannigans with super lifegain/token duping abound.