I don't really like the name of the mechanic, but if you look at it from a purely flavor perspective it does make sense of the B/W Guild.
Using the spell that Rancored Elf originally posted as a reference, you could view it as the "haunted" creature borrowed money or owes something to the Syndicate and instead of paying his debts now, the creature delays it until he dies, at which time his soul / spirit belongs to the syndicate, which then takes its payment in the form of the creature's controller suffering from the "haunts" effect (which in this case is to discard another card).
They abstracted a trade mechanic so that you only see the effects of actually paying for the service that the Syndicate was owed.
SINCE: The set is part of the Ice Age Block, it seems unlikely it will be a part of standard. The only plausible explanation so far has been: "Wizards must put it in T2 because otherwise it won't make money." However, if you look at the Un sets, Wizards is not totally trying to make money at every turn.
THEREFORE: It is unlikely that this set will be on MTGO or T2, though it may or may not be in the old face and it will have foils (old face sets like Urza's started foils).
The "Un" sets are designed to cater to a specific audiance, namely those that enjoy having a little silly fun while playing Magic (aka 'denim walk"). The Un sets are made to cater to that audiance, but exactly what audiance would a Vintage / Legacy only set appeal to?
Wizards is first and foremost a business. Now that doesn't mean it has to scrape and squeeze every possible dollar available, but it does mean that everything has to make a certan amount of business sense. "Un" sets are not put through the same kind of rigourous testing as tournament legal sets because it is known beforehand that they won't be legal for tournaments, this reduces the cost of designing the set and makes them profitable enough to release even though it won't generate a huge amount of sales (relative to a tournament-legal set).
If they made a set that was not standard legal, who would but it? If they purposely excluded standard and extended tournament players (even just regular FNM players), it greatly reduces the number of players who will buy. As far as I know, most Legacy / Vintage players are also not in the habit of buying random booster packs and cracking them open either. This means that the only players that would really buy this product off the shelf would be casual players and the fact that this is a super special release might very well be lost on them anyway.
Nope, I'm sticking with my belief that it will be Standard legal come July 20, 2006.
the problem with the 4-set block is the core set. every other year a new core set comes out a couple months after the last set in a block. plus by the time the third set comes out the mechanics tend to be stale and bland.
I agree with Insidious Mage here about them not releasing a 4-set block anytime soon, but for different reasons. Primarily a 4-set block would be highly difficult to play Draft or Sealed with, since both those formats were designed with a big set and two small sets in a block. In addition, the timing of the release of a 4-set block would have to be changed because it wouldn't make sense to release the 3rd and 4th piece of the same block closer then any other piece of a block. And I really doubt they would change the release date of a new big set from it's current Sept / Oct release date since it coincides perfectly with the start of a new school season, university season, pre-christmas, and new TV season, a lot of things start new in Sept/Oct and wizards has followed that trend for many years.
Right now all we know is that this new set Coldsnap is being released in July 2006, the exact same time in the calander year they print the core set. I think if the set was some kind of special promotional set that was not legal in standard they could print it any time of the year they wanted to (if I recall correctly, Unhinged was released in Dec 04), but the release of Coldsnap would fit perfectly in the rotating doors of Standard and I think that timing is too much of a coincidence to ignore.
Finally, the last time I checked, the list of legal sets in Standard was not listed as "the most recent two blocks plus the current core set", it was actually a list of all the sets that actually made up standard. It could be described in the way that RhodiumBoy described, but since they actually list the sets, there is little stopping them from simply listing Coldsnap in there no matter what Block it was officially part of.
If this set is gonna be the real third set for Ice Age block, there is NO reason for being Type 2 legal...it would be one lonely block with no ties in current environment. Old formats-legal? Yeah. T2? I guess not...
Wizards will make it Type 2 legal because if they don't, very few people will buy it. They are already going on a limb because it will be practically impossible to draft Ice Age / Alliances / Coldsnap as a block, but if they restricted it to just Legacy / Vintage formats that means no standard or extended players will buy it and any kid that buys it for an FNM will be utterly surprised when they find out the cards they just bought, from a NEW set, that morning cannot be used in a tournament meant for recent sets.
I doubt it would alienate players, but there would be so little value and too little profit to make it just Vintage and Legacy legal. If a player only played in those formats then chances are they don't go out and buy random packs very often, they are far more likely to buy singles instead.
I think that Coldsnap will be released as Type 2 legal and will rotate out the same as a core set rotates out two years later.
I think they will place Coldsnap as the third set of Ice Age Block because it fits better there for block reasons and because there are no Ice Age constructed tournaments these days.
This really shouldn't be very surprising, the way sets have been released for magic has not really changed in the last seven or so years. The last two biggest changes were in Mirrodin with a different card distribution and then again with Ravnica with a block that simultaneously ties in with itself better (spreading the guilds 4/3/3), but also fits nicely with the previous block (the large number of spirits). Releasing Coldsnap as an independent set (probably a small set) is just another step to keep us on our toes.
I wouldn't be surprised if they released a small set like Coldsnap on the opposite years of a core set from now on, it really only means an extra small set once every two years and it would expand Standard by another 144-165 cards, which could have really interesting effects as well.
I don't talk about the card counterspell. I ment a good Counterspell:
(1)(u)(u)
Counter target spell.
You mean something like Hinder, which will still be legal after Mirrodin rotates out. Now, ignoring the Blue Urzatron deck for a moment, since it uses a lot of artifacts to achieve victory, I think the continued top 8 appearances of a Mono-Blue Control deck in Standard is evidence that while blue is not as powerful as it used to be, it certainly is doing very well for itself (I notice there were no mono-green aggro decks in the top 8 of the US nationals).
Some people might claim that Mono-Blue is winning only because of Shackles, but I disagree, it's the entire deck. It would be like saying that Arcbound Ravager was the reason that the Ravager Affinity deck was so powerful, but you couldn't just put Ravager in any deck and dominate, and the same thing goes for Shackles.
Besides, even in Kamigawa block there is a mono-blue deck that frequently makes top 8 and it doesn't even use Gifts.
So no, blue doesn't suck at all right now. As for after rotation, who can say, with the continued presence of all the counters currently used in standard's mono-blue control (except for the no longer legal and no longer needed Annul) and with Meloku still kicking around, blue might be a dominate colour in a winning deck again.
Low Redirect
Cost: W
Type: Instant
Text: The next 3 damage that a source of your choice would deal to you or a creature you control this turn is dealt to target creature or player instead.
or...
High Redirect
Cost: 1W
Type: Instant
Text: The next 4 damage that a source of your choice would deal to you or a creature you control this turn is dealt to target creature or player instead.
Or some variation of that. It acts like removal in that it can kill a creature, but it requries your opponent to do something first, which definately fits the white colour pie. Certainly not as good as Swords to Plowshares, but I doubt white will ever see that kind of unconditional pinpoint removal again.
White Aura
2WW
Enchantment - Aura
Enchant Creature
When white aura comes into play, destroy target artifact or enchantment.
Enchanted creature gains protection from Red and Black.
Of course you do realize that the problem with disenchant on the aura is that if there are no other suitable targets when it comes into play, it will kill itself, which means that while the red one in the cycle will never miss to hurt something, and the propsed blue one will draw you cards (making it already one of the best in the cycle), the white one can kill itself or sit dead in your hand.
To actually be good, the white one has to either have a powerful comes into play ability and a marginal static effect (like Vigilance) or a powerful static effect (like protection from a color or damage redirection) and a marginal comes into play ability (like life gain).
Of course, if Wizards sticks true to form, the white one will probably gain 2 life when it comes into play, give vigilance, and cost 2W, making it completely useless.
Ok, so the white one has the worst static effect (Vigilance), even though it might be synergistic with the Convoke guild ability for White/Green, and the worst comes into play effect (life gain).
How about this for a white enchantment:
Cost: 2WW
Type: Enchantment- Aura
Text: Enchant Creature
When ~ comes into play, gain 4 life.
When ~ comes into play, choose a color. Enchanted creature has protection from that color.
or maybe just a permanent protection from Black and/or Red instead of giving the player a choice of a color (of course, choosing white would be a bad idea).
or how about a permanent redirect damage ability:
Text: Enchant Creature
When ~ comes into play, gain 4 life.
Redirect the next 2 damage dealt to Enchanted creature this turn to target creature or player.
Now these are white enchantments that I could get behind and still in flavor for white.
So if basic is a supertype that means you can have more then four of this card in your deck, why wasn't Relentless Rats listed as "Basic Creature"?
In addition, I like this change to Enchantments. I could live without the word Aura, but I think that word is a lot better then "Local" would have been.
This card is very good. The fact is that it interacts incredibly well with Divining Top, ensuring that you only take at most 1 loss of life if you want (by placing the Top on top of the library) and if you place your land in the correct order with the Top, you won't take any damage at all.
In the deck it seems built for, black weenie, it is much better then the Arena because it has a body and it's cheaper and you don't have to worry about drawing expensive spells, because you are a weenie deck. So you lose 1 or 2 life a turn, but in exchange you get to draw an extra card a turn, I think people are willing to do that.
However, the viability of the deck greatly depends on the other cards that would go in it. Ravnica will hopefull add something interesting to the small creatures that black already has in Kamigawa.
Besides, who knows if the Arena will even be in 9th edition.
Actually, there was 9 clerics in Kamigawa block and 7 clerics in Mirrodin block. Sure, that's not a huge number, but it's not a complete void either.
Cheethorne
Why does the card need to go to the graveyard to trigger haunt? Why can't it simply be part of the spell's effects when it resolves?
Haunt (you may remove ~ from the game and target a creature instead of putting this into your graveyard. ~ Haunts that creature.)
Cheethorne
Using the spell that Rancored Elf originally posted as a reference, you could view it as the "haunted" creature borrowed money or owes something to the Syndicate and instead of paying his debts now, the creature delays it until he dies, at which time his soul / spirit belongs to the syndicate, which then takes its payment in the form of the creature's controller suffering from the "haunts" effect (which in this case is to discard another card).
They abstracted a trade mechanic so that you only see the effects of actually paying for the service that the Syndicate was owed.
Cheethorne
The "Un" sets are designed to cater to a specific audiance, namely those that enjoy having a little silly fun while playing Magic (aka 'denim walk"). The Un sets are made to cater to that audiance, but exactly what audiance would a Vintage / Legacy only set appeal to?
Wizards is first and foremost a business. Now that doesn't mean it has to scrape and squeeze every possible dollar available, but it does mean that everything has to make a certan amount of business sense. "Un" sets are not put through the same kind of rigourous testing as tournament legal sets because it is known beforehand that they won't be legal for tournaments, this reduces the cost of designing the set and makes them profitable enough to release even though it won't generate a huge amount of sales (relative to a tournament-legal set).
If they made a set that was not standard legal, who would but it? If they purposely excluded standard and extended tournament players (even just regular FNM players), it greatly reduces the number of players who will buy. As far as I know, most Legacy / Vintage players are also not in the habit of buying random booster packs and cracking them open either. This means that the only players that would really buy this product off the shelf would be casual players and the fact that this is a super special release might very well be lost on them anyway.
Nope, I'm sticking with my belief that it will be Standard legal come July 20, 2006.
Cheethorne
I agree with Insidious Mage here about them not releasing a 4-set block anytime soon, but for different reasons. Primarily a 4-set block would be highly difficult to play Draft or Sealed with, since both those formats were designed with a big set and two small sets in a block. In addition, the timing of the release of a 4-set block would have to be changed because it wouldn't make sense to release the 3rd and 4th piece of the same block closer then any other piece of a block. And I really doubt they would change the release date of a new big set from it's current Sept / Oct release date since it coincides perfectly with the start of a new school season, university season, pre-christmas, and new TV season, a lot of things start new in Sept/Oct and wizards has followed that trend for many years.
Right now all we know is that this new set Coldsnap is being released in July 2006, the exact same time in the calander year they print the core set. I think if the set was some kind of special promotional set that was not legal in standard they could print it any time of the year they wanted to (if I recall correctly, Unhinged was released in Dec 04), but the release of Coldsnap would fit perfectly in the rotating doors of Standard and I think that timing is too much of a coincidence to ignore.
Finally, the last time I checked, the list of legal sets in Standard was not listed as "the most recent two blocks plus the current core set", it was actually a list of all the sets that actually made up standard. It could be described in the way that RhodiumBoy described, but since they actually list the sets, there is little stopping them from simply listing Coldsnap in there no matter what Block it was officially part of.
Cheethorne
Wizards will make it Type 2 legal because if they don't, very few people will buy it. They are already going on a limb because it will be practically impossible to draft Ice Age / Alliances / Coldsnap as a block, but if they restricted it to just Legacy / Vintage formats that means no standard or extended players will buy it and any kid that buys it for an FNM will be utterly surprised when they find out the cards they just bought, from a NEW set, that morning cannot be used in a tournament meant for recent sets.
I doubt it would alienate players, but there would be so little value and too little profit to make it just Vintage and Legacy legal. If a player only played in those formats then chances are they don't go out and buy random packs very often, they are far more likely to buy singles instead.
Cheethorne
I think they will place Coldsnap as the third set of Ice Age Block because it fits better there for block reasons and because there are no Ice Age constructed tournaments these days.
This really shouldn't be very surprising, the way sets have been released for magic has not really changed in the last seven or so years. The last two biggest changes were in Mirrodin with a different card distribution and then again with Ravnica with a block that simultaneously ties in with itself better (spreading the guilds 4/3/3), but also fits nicely with the previous block (the large number of spirits). Releasing Coldsnap as an independent set (probably a small set) is just another step to keep us on our toes.
I wouldn't be surprised if they released a small set like Coldsnap on the opposite years of a core set from now on, it really only means an extra small set once every two years and it would expand Standard by another 144-165 cards, which could have really interesting effects as well.
Cheethorne
You mean something like Hinder, which will still be legal after Mirrodin rotates out. Now, ignoring the Blue Urzatron deck for a moment, since it uses a lot of artifacts to achieve victory, I think the continued top 8 appearances of a Mono-Blue Control deck in Standard is evidence that while blue is not as powerful as it used to be, it certainly is doing very well for itself (I notice there were no mono-green aggro decks in the top 8 of the US nationals).
Some people might claim that Mono-Blue is winning only because of Shackles, but I disagree, it's the entire deck. It would be like saying that Arcbound Ravager was the reason that the Ravager Affinity deck was so powerful, but you couldn't just put Ravager in any deck and dominate, and the same thing goes for Shackles.
Besides, even in Kamigawa block there is a mono-blue deck that frequently makes top 8 and it doesn't even use Gifts.
So no, blue doesn't suck at all right now. As for after rotation, who can say, with the continued presence of all the counters currently used in standard's mono-blue control (except for the no longer legal and no longer needed Annul) and with Meloku still kicking around, blue might be a dominate colour in a winning deck again.
Kevin
Low Redirect
Cost: W
Type: Instant
Text: The next 3 damage that a source of your choice would deal to you or a creature you control this turn is dealt to target creature or player instead.
or...
High Redirect
Cost: 1W
Type: Instant
Text: The next 4 damage that a source of your choice would deal to you or a creature you control this turn is dealt to target creature or player instead.
Or some variation of that. It acts like removal in that it can kill a creature, but it requries your opponent to do something first, which definately fits the white colour pie. Certainly not as good as Swords to Plowshares, but I doubt white will ever see that kind of unconditional pinpoint removal again.
Cheethorne
Of course you do realize that the problem with disenchant on the aura is that if there are no other suitable targets when it comes into play, it will kill itself, which means that while the red one in the cycle will never miss to hurt something, and the propsed blue one will draw you cards (making it already one of the best in the cycle), the white one can kill itself or sit dead in your hand.
To actually be good, the white one has to either have a powerful comes into play ability and a marginal static effect (like Vigilance) or a powerful static effect (like protection from a color or damage redirection) and a marginal comes into play ability (like life gain).
Of course, if Wizards sticks true to form, the white one will probably gain 2 life when it comes into play, give vigilance, and cost 2W, making it completely useless.
How about this for a white enchantment:
Cost: 2WW
Type: Enchantment- Aura
Text: Enchant Creature
When ~ comes into play, gain 4 life.
When ~ comes into play, choose a color. Enchanted creature has protection from that color.
or maybe just a permanent protection from Black and/or Red instead of giving the player a choice of a color (of course, choosing white would be a bad idea).
or how about a permanent redirect damage ability:
Text: Enchant Creature
When ~ comes into play, gain 4 life.
Redirect the next 2 damage dealt to Enchanted creature this turn to target creature or player.
Now these are white enchantments that I could get behind and still in flavor for white.
Cheethorne
So if basic is a supertype that means you can have more then four of this card in your deck, why wasn't Relentless Rats listed as "Basic Creature"?
In addition, I like this change to Enchantments. I could live without the word Aura, but I think that word is a lot better then "Local" would have been.
Cheethorne
In the deck it seems built for, black weenie, it is much better then the Arena because it has a body and it's cheaper and you don't have to worry about drawing expensive spells, because you are a weenie deck. So you lose 1 or 2 life a turn, but in exchange you get to draw an extra card a turn, I think people are willing to do that.
However, the viability of the deck greatly depends on the other cards that would go in it. Ravnica will hopefull add something interesting to the small creatures that black already has in Kamigawa.
Besides, who knows if the Arena will even be in 9th edition.
Cheethorne