Not sure if anyone else has mentioned this reason for not liking Ulrich, but he's suffering the same problem a thousand other yet to be made Legendary creatures will also suffer from and that is this: Legendary creatures are now, by definition, Commanders and Commanders need to be leaders; they need abilities that constantly affect the battlefield, or somehow strongly support a theme or style of play. Being "generally high powered" isn't enough to be legendary anymore. Strong cards are for the 99. FLASHY cards are for the commander slot, and this guy is anything but flashy (especially when your opponents know you have a titanic growth sitting there, his front side becomes 95% more boring).
If there truly is a mythic rare vanilla creature, that would, in my opinion, support the double-dual-face Emmy theory. One side of one of his cards is a vanilla creature; The other card has the flip conditions, and flips them both together; The backside of the two cards combine to become uberakul (or just the big bad of the set, Emrakul or otherwise).
I can't imagine any other way "vanilla" could ever meet the complexity requirements to be mythic rare. Either, it must have a backside and since it can't flip itself (it has no text on its front), it must be something truly special; or it must be like Hearthstone's C'thun, that is referenced so often on other cards in the set that it can become something truly special despite being a boring loser on its own.
My craziest suggestion? Something with Madness:Discard a card, whose text reads along the lines "does x for each card discarded this turn", such as "each opponent discards x cards, where x is the number of cards you have discarded this turn".
If a rule were to be made, it would need to be simple. A proxy player is more complicated than most infinite combos.
Personally I dont like people scooping in response and screwing up expected results (denying triggers etc), but I dont think tactical scooping is a bad thing. My suggested rule would thus read, simply, a player cannot concede while they or a spell or permanent they control or own is being targeted, attacked or activated or has a delayed trigger waiting to resolve at end of turn, and the decision to concede is subject to the stack (players can respond by affecting the conceding players permanents, such as to activate stolen permanents before they leave the battlefield)
This allows tactical scooping - if I pass turn, the next guy is going to insurrection the table to death so I may as well scoop - but it doesnt let me scoop in response to bribery countering their spell. Once targeted, I must let it resolve. If they choose a creature... It gets complicated whether or not The proposed rule should allow me to then immediately concede or not, but if they only need etb triggers they can at least get those or one activation (or more if they can combo off the stolen permanent) and if the rule doesnt allow players to concede until end of turn effects (like control target permanent until end of turn) resolve, then once bribery is cast the unforunate dead player cant scoop until end of turn (since at minimum, at cleanup it is guaranteed that there are no effects affecting the player trying to concede).
This does open up some new areas for abuse like forcibly locking a player into the game until end of turn by reacting to their decision to concede with instants or activating random abilities towards them, but since there is a limit on the abuse, as stated previously at cleanup there are no effects at all and a player refusing to let a turn end is actively enforced, it should not be a major problem.
If you evoked Ingot Chewer for 1 while Kalemne was out you would get an xp counter right? What about other alternate ways to cast like Madness, Suspend or Dash? Morph?
unless a spell has an X in its cost, CM nere changes. its always the thing printed in the top right corner, no matter what you pay to cast it
I'm pretty sure that only applies to "cards." "Spells" have converted mana cost equal to what you paid for them.
Honestly, I really like this dork. He adds any color mana early game and has haste late game (when all those fun rally triggers go off and make him not a 1/1, for at least the turn he ETB). Haste on an Ally is a huge bonus I don't think everyone is taking into consideration. If he weren't an ally, he'd be utter garbage (well, in the grand scheme of mana dorks anyways; sometimes you just need another dork and he does do that ... kind of): Consequently, if you aren't putting him in an ally deck, you probably wish you had something better to replace him with.
Now the real question: How many/has there been spoiled any converge creatures to take even fuller advantage of his cobra abuse?
Not sure about Modern... Could be good against Jund, as a way to deal with Abrupt Decay and kill off Dark Confidant without feeding Scavenging Ooze. Not sure if using 4 mana to stall Abrupt Decay is worth anything, but it could find a deck.
Or, when you are gaining value off the shock, you could just bounce your own creature and fizzle their decay (negative tempo in exchange for value). The flexibility is whats super amazing about it and what pushes it from 3 to 4 cmc.
So yea, I rather like this ard but still, -2: sometimes do something. Feels a little weak for a "best" ability on the planeswalker. Personally I would have preffered -2: make a derp sword with equipped creature gets +2/+2 and equip:3 or some such mediocre but usable equipment and then change the ult to -10: get an emblem with "derp swords you control gain 'equipped creature gains +3/+3 and double strike.'" That way all three skills synergize directly, are usable even if you arent an equip theme deck and the ultimate threatens to actually end the game.
I think the real issue with Unleash is more about how it is treated rather than how good it is. If treated properly as a disadvantage you can opt out of, and therefor used to allow aggressive and/or very strong cards at lower than normal cost, I think it could be a great mechanic. If treated as the 'slight boost' needed to make a card aggressively costed, then it's probably going to stink.
Basically I should be able to ignore the unleash mechanic (just pretend it isn't there at all), and still like the card I see without it (which is basically true of the drudge skeletons we see). Then, if I am already winning, I can win more by having that tiny boost from Unleash.
That said, I'm not sure I completely trust Wizards to treat Unleash as a negative/neutral (NOT beneficial) ability on a card, and I thoroughly expect to see a whole score of Unleash cards that are just 1 mana away from playable (not that all of them will be, but many that should be playable won't be).
Also, an interesting realization I came to thinking about how this could have been better, I noticed that Standard is only going to have +1/+1 counters until M14 at least (They don't print +1/+1 counters and -1/-1 counters in the same block).
I'm aware, I was just referencing the time travel theme and possible forced reprints/timeshifts.
Or in the inevitable reboot time-warp that resets EVERYTHING just so they can do it all over again. Everyone loved Time Spiral the first time right?
I can't imagine any other way "vanilla" could ever meet the complexity requirements to be mythic rare. Either, it must have a backside and since it can't flip itself (it has no text on its front), it must be something truly special; or it must be like Hearthstone's C'thun, that is referenced so often on other cards in the set that it can become something truly special despite being a boring loser on its own.
Not gonna lie, that parenthetical with that profile picture is a hilarious combination (It's ok; I'm PC too).
Personally I dont like people scooping in response and screwing up expected results (denying triggers etc), but I dont think tactical scooping is a bad thing. My suggested rule would thus read, simply, a player cannot concede while they or a spell or permanent they control or own is being targeted, attacked or activated or has a delayed trigger waiting to resolve at end of turn, and the decision to concede is subject to the stack (players can respond by affecting the conceding players permanents, such as to activate stolen permanents before they leave the battlefield)
This allows tactical scooping - if I pass turn, the next guy is going to insurrection the table to death so I may as well scoop - but it doesnt let me scoop in response to bribery countering their spell. Once targeted, I must let it resolve. If they choose a creature... It gets complicated whether or not The proposed rule should allow me to then immediately concede or not, but if they only need etb triggers they can at least get those or one activation (or more if they can combo off the stolen permanent) and if the rule doesnt allow players to concede until end of turn effects (like control target permanent until end of turn) resolve, then once bribery is cast the unforunate dead player cant scoop until end of turn (since at minimum, at cleanup it is guaranteed that there are no effects affecting the player trying to concede).
This does open up some new areas for abuse like forcibly locking a player into the game until end of turn by reacting to their decision to concede with instants or activating random abilities towards them, but since there is a limit on the abuse, as stated previously at cleanup there are no effects at all and a player refusing to let a turn end is actively enforced, it should not be a major problem.
Now the real question: How many/has there been spoiled any converge creatures to take even fuller advantage of his cobra abuse?
Or, when you are gaining value off the shock, you could just bounce your own creature and fizzle their decay (negative tempo in exchange for value). The flexibility is whats super amazing about it and what pushes it from 3 to 4 cmc.
No, he means add/remove a +1/+1 counter. They do not print +1/+1 counters in the same block as -1/-1 counters.
Basically I should be able to ignore the unleash mechanic (just pretend it isn't there at all), and still like the card I see without it (which is basically true of the drudge skeletons we see). Then, if I am already winning, I can win more by having that tiny boost from Unleash.
That said, I'm not sure I completely trust Wizards to treat Unleash as a negative/neutral (NOT beneficial) ability on a card, and I thoroughly expect to see a whole score of Unleash cards that are just 1 mana away from playable (not that all of them will be, but many that should be playable won't be).
Also, an interesting realization I came to thinking about how this could have been better, I noticed that Standard is only going to have +1/+1 counters until M14 at least (They don't print +1/+1 counters and -1/-1 counters in the same block).