Born of the Gods Set Review: The Legends

Heya Zoners!

With Born of the Gods prereleasing this weekend, I thought we'd go ahead and kick things off a little early with my role in TGZ's Set Review as we review the hot new Legendary Creatures coming to a kitchen table near you.

THE CARDS

In our first card, the creature type claims it's one of two things Liam Neeson is most likely to unleash (The other being his particular set of skills).

However, all I see is an oversized snake with a claw and an octopus hand (which is pretty cool, I'll admit) wrecking a seaside town in a bad purple Kabuki Theatre costume (In this case, "R" comes before "E," because I'm being totally pretentious).

All I can think is he must've fallen asleep and missed the planeswalk to Kamigawa. Cause if it weren't for the rules, we'd be done and moving on.

So thank goodness we aren't judging books by their covers.

Now, I don't get the flavor of conditional Hexproof, but I have to admit, it's neat, and moderately exciting. It really does nothing for your opponent. There is nothing save a lonely and unplayable Basandra, Battle Seraph getting in the way of your opponent blowing him up in combat.

This second ability is pretty sweet, and makes him an actual threat. I already saw a list on TappedOut last week where the deckbuilder put in tap effects so that he can force Tromo's unblockable abilities, because yeah, that's a thing.

So if you really want to play this card, the questions is this: How much almost-unblockable-almost-hexproof do you want?

Kidding aside, I do like this card. I'm a sucker for sea monsters and 8/8's that are low maintenance. This will make blue decks even easier to play pure control because they don't have to play a bunch of Wizards like Azami or silly infinite combo pieces to win. So if you see it around, look forward to more counterspells, and jokes made out of bad lines which Liam Neeson has salvaged and immortalized on the silver screen.

The name of our next card was actually a misprint. Because there's really only one true Lion King, and his name is MUFASA! (I'll also accept Aslan, but I think we know this is totally Mufasa's M.O.).

So make sure you correct your friends. It's important to me that we use proper nomenclature in this obviously inconsiderate, non-hilarious world. We wouldn't want to offend anyone.

And since we're two cards in, I think the time is appropriate for an angry Grandpa Growth-esque tirade, so let's begin Brimaz's evaluation with it:

Why do we have Cat Royalty? Who is he ruling over? The SIX other cats on that have been printed in this block? And how does he rule over a wild, hexproof, and indestructible Fleecemane Lion? Many times, I think the world would be a better place if we just stopped and asked ourselves, "Where were the Parents At?" But to be more relevant, I must ask- Where are the Kittens!?!?! This guy has no frame of reference. He might as well have gone through the drive-thru at Burger King and asked them for a birthday crown, because that's how relevant his title feels to me right now.

[end rant]

Obvious flavor misgrievances aside, this is definitely something for the competitive players. He is "Diet Jedit Ojanen of Efrava," if you like oddly lengthy comparisons to cards from Future Past (Unintentional New X-Men Movie Plugs. The Jedit to which I am referring is not the Legends one, but the Planar Chaos version. Hence my labeling.). I guess this is where the cats are supposed to come from.

So if you can afford it, play it. If you play Kemba or Raksha, this is a card for that deck. This card is cool, available, and practically sells itself my making more adorable, Skullclamp-able pals. I still think it's ridiculous that he has to make his own kingdom. There's just something that's a little fishy going on with that. Talk about playing god...

Puns. Eww.

Now to talk about actual gods. First up is Ephara, being so obviously clumsy with her whole bottle of Nyx-Juice. Did Artist Eric Deschamps just catch her in a bad moment, or is it just odd? You tell me.

If all the Gods are being this carefree, then it's no wonder the dirty bohemian satyr Xenagos decided to ascend into Godhood. Seems like a pretty big party foul to me.

Anywho, Ephara. Because everyone knows "polis" means "city" in Greek, this clearly makes our U/W God the master of Urban Planning. This is the beginning of what I think is hilarious job specialization amongst Gods. I can't wait for Kruphix, God of Celery Sticks, or Pharika, God of Gorgon-Related Accessories. Apparently, there is a limit to omnipotence, and some of these guys are going to end up in really crappy cubicles.

Okay- let's actually review this card. Cool art. It's almost cool enough to distract me from the fact that this is probably the weakest god next to Nylea, but "draw a card" did get squeezed in at the last second, so- maybe it's good? I'll be anxious to see if people can get her live. I think that's necessary to make her any good.

There have just been so many U/W options to come out in the last few sets that feel more worth your time as a Commander than her, but that doesn't mean she isn't great support. Isperia's fine, but she's a chump compared to Daxos, Lavinia, and Medomai. All of these cards are just significantly more powerful.

Overall, Ephara is probably going to be best kept in the Lavinia deck, where creatures are coming in all the time. I don't think that it'll stop her from being boss over her own decks though. This is a playable card, even if it's not the greatest.

Karametra is the God of the deck I'm backing to crack ESPN Top 10 Highlights. Welcome to Ramp Whilst We Ramp University. Do you like to play dudes? Do you like Rampant Growth? Well, now both is happening.

There's just no way you can really lose. Card Advantage doesn't matter anymore. You can now play all your lands and all your dudes AT THE SAME TIME.

At 6/7, Karametra is also going to be a creature that's smashing face. Green is a color with great ability to get devotion as well as trample, and many of the white flying creatures you probably want to be playing will have at least double white in their cost. So keeping her off devotion will be a huge part of Karametra's metagame.

The only other downside to this card is that Timmy's gonna have to wait to play, "Haaave you met Ted?" for another week (Sorry if you're not a "How I Met Your Mother" Lover. We can't all be them, can we?). This is surely going to be a relationship not even Match.com can, well, "match." Maybe she isn't all that attractive, but lumpy, amorphous Gods with dreadlocks need loving too, and I guarantee she will be loved anyway. Instantly a Commander. Probably a mistake otherwise.

Of the Gods in this set, I think Mogis is probably the one that most improves his part of the color pie.

Not only is he extremely playable as a Commander, but he also has cool flavor. He got a title I think a god should have. He has the head of a cow and is murdering people. He's pain or removal, Indestructible, and a 3-turn clock.

Hashtag, This Is What Vegetarians Were Afraid Of.

Hashtag, In Soviet Theros, Meat Murders You!

While I am worried about the damage tax being an option, and the lack of available removal against this decks biggest offender, Tokens, this card is ironically very lovable.

Especially for Rakdos players in Commander.

There are a lot of things to like about this card. Phenax is a super-cool name, and sports an equally dapper yet mysterious moniker.

Clearly, I'm willing to overlook what exactly is deceiving, and to whom Phenax believes he is doing this to, but we really shouldn't.

I don't get his relevance, and I don't get how this deck wins. Does he just hang out in Wrexial/Lazav decks? Is Phenax his own man? Will Guns'N'Roses ever stop making music? Will Cell survive Goku's Spirit Bomb?

All of these are examples of questions we're just going to have to wait to find out on the next episode of Dragon Ball Z. Cause I'm interested, just not sure what anyone could or should want to do with Phenax. Definitely a puzzle, but not one that I think is totally unplayable. Mill is a hard strategy, and this just might be the card those decks need, or the card they deserve.

Well, we knew it was coming. Xenagos is a god and he's evil. He bears the sash, the mark of Multiverse Mischief. Don't believe me? Look at Disciple of Bolas, Mindclaw Shaman, and Augur of Bolas. All sashing it up, like they're old cowboys or something.

So let's talk about Xenagos' new job. Webster's dictionary defines "Revel" as, "to engage in lively festivities, especially those with drinking and dancing." I know because I had to look this up, and it's a really stupid word to use. I think it's worth pointing out yet again that this is a very awkward position to have as an omniscient being, but hey. Party planners tend to make pretty good money, right? Isn't that the job they give to Jennifer Lopez in every film she's in?

As far as Xenagos is concerned, I'm more a fan of this art than I am of the rules text. I'm not sure Red and Green needed something like this, but I don't think these silly R/G decks and silly players will turn it away. Animar decks everywhere can continue to punish you for not playing an Animar deck, and they will do it by playing their copy of Xenagos, but that's all I god.

Overall, I'm not sold on Xenagos as a God and Commander, but I'm keeping an open mind.

Well, that's all I got for today folks. We love the comments, so keep 'em coming!

Until next time, Keep Calm and Good Luck at Prerelease!

-Ya Boi Landdrops

Born of the Gods Set Review: Answers

Welcome back! This is the second installment TGZ's review of Born of the Gods! If you missed the first segment you can check it out here: Part 1

In today's segment we will be going over the answer cards from the set. Answers deal with your opponent's threats and allow you to survive to set up your own game plan. Things like removal, counter spells, and disruption all fit into this category. This article is going to be much shorter than the first part, just because of how the cards were broken down within the set. This is a very creature heavy set and the removal so far in Theros block has been very disappointing.

The Cards:

First up we have a very narrow removal spell with some even more narrow opportunities for card advantage. Theros block has a strong Enchantment theme and removal like this needs to exist for limited purposes. With regards to constructed though, this has very little to offer even in the context of casual decks. Missing on Artifacts really limits the versatility and playability of this card.



I like 'big wraths' quite a bit, but seven mana is really stretching things. At this price point I would expect it to destroy literal everything or only our opponents' things. There are even better ways to get this effect at instant-speed. This card and cycle and really this whole set are all together unexciting. A very lackluster follow up to Theros, which was one of the most powerful sets in recent memory.



I rarely talk about combat tricks in these reviews. Most often they are too weak to be useful and creature combat is often not the main focus of Commander games. I think this card mainly has implications for Pauper, where Blue is really starting to mount an impressive collection of pseudo-removal combat tricks that let you interact favorably with the board. This signals a slow, but significant change from Magic's early years where Blue was basically stuck trying to answer threats before they got to the board.



This has several disappointing aspects. It has a generally unacceptable targeting restriction, but it also has the restrictive cost that is typical of more flexible counters. It is probably just worse than Swan Song, which basically sees no play because of how weak it is. The fact is that there are plenty of ways to deal with Creatures, even in Blue decks, so a new answer really has to beat the average power of those cards by a significant margin to have an impact on the format.

I am not much of a grammarian, but you definitely don't nullify people.  Nullify would be much more appropriate for a Negate-style effect. This card should be called 'Fork It'. Or 'Fork You'. 'Fork Your Guy', maybe. At least, 'Stick a Fork in it'. Did I mention that the choice by the creative team to use a BIDENT instead of a trident as Thassa's weapon of choice was absurd?



This on the other hand is pretty decent. It is definitely worse than some of the other soft counters like Miscalculation or Condescend, but soft counters are pretty good in Commander despite what people seem to think. The truth is that people never stop tapping out, even in the late game. Also, consider this: Soft counters are usually cheaper and more effective in the early game. Every game has an early game. Not every game has a late game. Tempo decks love cards like this because they plan to win before the late game ever happens, so they don't mind playing cards that are bad in the late-late.

That said, you have to do a decent amount of work to make this as good as Mana Leak and it is never going to be as good as Counterspell, so you can probably find something better.


IT'S THE BLUE WRATH OF GOD! Hide your children, hide you wives, the wave is coming and it is going to wreck your whole neighborhood! I like this card quite a bit. It buys you a ton of time in the early game and is almost just as good as a Wrath if they have to end up discarding some number of things because their hand is overflowing. This card was probably nerfed a little bit by design. If you think of it from a flavor perspective, there isn't a great argument as to why this returns fish, merfolk, and fliers, but that would make the card significantly more powerful if it didn't

Speaking of flavor, I cannot see why this appeals to Thassa. As the god of the sea isn't the largest portion of her constituency fish, merfolk, and plants? What about whales? Save the whales man. If I ever have a Water Elemental in play when this resolves, I am not picking it up.



This has been billed as the premier removal spell from the set and it is a pretty nice one. In Commander it doesn't kill a whole lot of the real threats, but it is perfectly suited to getting rid of utility creatures, mana dorks, and tokens. Token hosers are definitely important to include in any deck list, but I like the next card on our list much more for that task.

This reminds me a lot of Echoing Decay. Let me tell you a story from long ago. Echoing Decay was meant to keep Frogmite from getting out of hand, but instead Affinity became the most degerate Standard deck of the last decade. Bile Blight is obviously aimed directly at Burning-Tree Emissary, which has been tearing up Standard for months. The problem with these answers is that they aren't as good as just having your own Frogmites or BTEs and they usually aren't playable in the mirror because of color requirements. Sometimes you see innovative deck builders like Gerry Thompson tune popular lists to fight the mirror by adding Black or Red to include more efficient answers to the key cards in the matchup. While I love that kind of strategic deckbuilding, a mana cost of BB makes it slightly more difficult to pull that off.


This is a strict upgrade to Infest, a card that sees only minor play in Commander and next to no play in any other format. Adding Scry 1 is a modest, but relevant bonus and has the potential to push this card into the mainstream. As I was just saying token hosers are important in EDH and getting a little bit of extra value out of a card that you already needed anyway feels great.




What a delightfully weird little card! Black rarely gets the ability to generate mana and even then, it is almost never mana of any color. This also produces non-Creature tokens which, while not unique, is very rare.  This presents a reasonably efficient way to answer all of the new god cards that Theros has brought us, although the upside of generating a free Lotus Pedal is not enough to justify this card costing four mana. Cute, but ultimately mediocre at best.



It is not often that I get to talk about burns spells in our set reviews. Often they are too small in scale to be relevant in EDH, but 5 damage isn't completely irrelevant and this is the first card in this cycle that is actually reasonable to cast on your own turn. Burning a potential blocker to get in profitable attacks is very reasonable. Going straight to the dome in the late game is also fine. You reduce your opponent's life total and solidify your next couple plays by stacking your draws. This card isn't incredible by any stretch of the imagination, but is probably playable and is the best of the cycle in my opinion.



I love the diverse and exciting design space that the Fight mechanic created. This is very similar, but obviously better because it doesn't require you to break the symmetry. This will let you leverage any lead on board into targeted removal and likely profitable attacks. Unlike most Red removal though, this can't go to the face and sucks post-wrath. I definitely think that this is playable in the right decks and helps Red as a color, but it isn't going to crack the Commander format wide open.

I dig this art. It makes me think that Purphoros is playing a gigantic game of croquet all across the plane of Theros. Thousands of innocent bystanders are left dead in his wake as the destruction reaches epic proportions.


This is the most important removal card in the set by far. The gods have had a profound, format-warping effect on Commander. The way we build our decks must accommodate permanent solutions that allow us to remove the gods without falling behind on cards. This is a functional reprint of Deglamer, for those who don't remember. Tuck and shuffle effects are generally very good in Commander because of the physical nature of the deck building restrictions. Hiding a single card in a big pile of 99 other cards is a good way to get rid of it. I am certainly glad that we have another card to use in a singleton format, but this is still in the same color, so Black and Red decks still don't have an answer to an active god AT ALL and that isn't likely to change any time soon. I love that this made it to print, but we will need to see more before I feel comfortable at the kitchen table again.

On a side note, unravelling aether sounds like a Blue thing to do. This effect definitely needs to be Green or White, but if you look at all of the cards with aether in their name, about half of them are Blue. The other half are split between Red and colorless. Now I think that Green and Black will have one each. The more you know.

AAAAAND that is all folks. I told you it would be a bit shorter. Next up I'll be back with the final installment where we cover the last few cards in the set. That article will be even shorter still as their are only a couple of cards left that are worth discussing. After the set review finishes up we will be back to our regularly scheduled posts. Make sure to like, comment, and follow us here at The General Zone and I'll see you again soon.
-GG

Born of the Gods Set Review: Threats

Welcome to The General Zone's set review of Born of the Gods! I am your host, Grandpa Growth, and we are going to be taking a look at the new cards from the set together! I will share with you my thoughts on how they are going to be used in Commander and other casual formats. First, let's begin by laying the ground rules:

• I will not be reviewing any of the Legendary Creature cards from the set. For a complete article discussing the new potential generals, that will happen in a separate post by Uncle Landdrops.
• I will not be reviewing any reprints, only new cards. For old cards, it is already clear what their place is in the format and reprints usually only affect the card's availability, not its playability in casual formats.
• I will not be talking about every card in the set. Only cards that I believe will have an impact on the format at-large will make it into the article. If I miss talking about your favorite cards or you think there is a case for something that I left out, let us know in the comments!
• The review will be broken down into parts based on how those cards are used in decks: threats, answers, utility, and mana, with another post dedicated specifically to the Legendary Creatures, as I mentioned.

In today's installment we will begin with the threat cards. What is a threat? A threat is something that you use to win the game. It pressures your opponent, creates an advantage, or ends the game outright. These are often Creatures, but Planeswalkers and certain Artifacts or Enchantments definitely fit into this category.

A caveat before we begin: Among the mythics and rares of the set, almost half of the Commander playable threat cards are Legendary. The power level in this set is also very low across the board. Because of this I am going to be talking about some cards that wouldn't normally make it into my reviews. Most of the juice from this set is eaten up by the five ally-colored god cards and there wasn't enough to go around. Also, this is a small set, so expect this review to be shorter than others from the past.

THE CARDS

For our very first card, we have a representative of the Archetype cycle. They all share the common characteristic of giving your whole team a keyword ability, First Strike in this case, and denying that ability to all your opponents creatures. This one in particular stands out because it gives the most relevant ability of the five, has a reasonable cost, and existing White token decks can actually take advantage of it. The others in the cycle are much weaker comparatively. Expect to see some of this, but not much, and very little of his brothers.

My second comment about this cycle is the waffling that is going on within R&D. Back in the day all "banner cards" were templated this way. Stuff you have has this. Then they decided that was confusing and made it look like Rhox Pikemaster. Now it seems they have transitioned all the way back with last year's slivers and now this. All I want is some consistency. The game is complex, having multiple ways to template the same thing isn't helping make it less complex. Quite the opposite. If you wanted to remove complexity from the game to make it easy for new players, stop printing six new mechanics in every block.

At this point, I am going to assume you are all familiar with the "First World Problems" meme. That is what this reminds me of. "I have a huge army of dudes, but I can't win the game." What are you doing? In the game, I mean. Your deck is finely tuned to make a huge board and then...do nothing? Attack. Win. If you can reliably build and protect a huge army you don't need anything else, you won. Congratulations! There is basically no reason to play this outside of limited, but someone will try and I can't wait to explain to them the error of their ways.

It is a sad day when even the "play it in Commander" cards aren't playable in Commander. Actually, for the most part, it has been that way since Rise of the Eldrazi, but oh well. This card is over-costed, undersized, and generally unexciting. Zur and Bruna decks are already very good, so it seems like this would have a place, but they aren't interested in junk like this. Only getting back one Enchantment at a time is too slow for the voltron combo decks. They need to lock up the game in one or two successful swings, and can already do that at a cheaper cost.

If I have learned one thing from Final Fantasy games, it is that gods are rarely interested in serving justice. The model of Greek mythology helps reinforce the pettiness and selfishness of the deities of Theros. I just don't know if a single line of dull flavor text is doing anything to enhance that theme. Phew, successfully made two critical observations about religion without alienating the entire fan base. Nailed it.

It's cheap, sized for beatings, and stops people from doing degenerate things, this has to be awesome right? Well, it's really not much of a road block, more like a speed bump. Basically every removal spell ever printed hits this thing and it can't survive combat with anything. It doesn't have evasion or protection. It is a cute hate bear, but not much else. Bonus: more horrible flavor text.

I am going to call shenanigans here. This whole "Enchantment Creature" thing is a very stupid gimmick. I didn't complain because Bestow is fun and it made sense. I didn't complain about the gods because they weren't always Creatures. Now I am complaining. There is no reason this should be an Enchantment. This is how Wizards tells us that card type doesn't mean anything unless Tarmogoyf is in play. All hail the hypnogoyf.

Here we get a look at our first Inspired card...and it is anything but inspired. This is a six drop that is slightly undersized and doesn't give you anything unless it untaps. It is funny how nitpicky we have all become, but this just isn't a realistic card anymore. Frost Titan, this is not. There is little if any value to be found short of pipe-dreaming until you slam an eldrazi into play. Honestly, I don't have any idea why they made this card miss on Enchantments of all things. I am sure they have their reasons, but without the bonus putting any permanent straight onto the battlefield this is going to be a limited-only rare.

Inspired is a horrible name for this mechanic. In fact, I don't think it should even have a name. They ran out of original ideas, so the crack design team just dusted off something old and handed it to the creative team to vomit on. I can't wait to try and Bestow my Observant Alseid onto an Inspired guy and just frown my way to the loser's bracket.


As you can see here, there is a precipitous drop in quality with these lesser Archetypes. In fact, this is your archetypal bad card: costs too much, doesn't have good stats, does something most decks in Commander don't care about, and the decks that do want an airborne finisher for their team have better options. RUG decks, Bant Decks, and perhaps Momir are the only things capable of producing a big army and Blue mana, but they also have access to Overrun or Craterhoof Behemoth already, which provides plenty of power to finish the game and punch through to unreachable opponents.

This is our first look at the Fated cycle. These all have triple mana requirements and mediocre effects! I don't know if that is a unifying characteristic that I can get behind. Much like the Time Spiral block cycle that included Careful Consideration, this cycle gives you a bonus for playing your Instants on your own turn. Scry 2 is not irrelevant, but unfortunately that doesn't help this card much. With the M14 rules change, copy effects are at their lowest power level of all time. Ambushing an attacker by copying the best creature in play and blocking is the only value you could ever hope to eek out of this, but then you have to forego the Scry effect. Pretty miserable. It's like the version of the "punisher" mechanic that only punishes you! .....Wait, what? That already happened? Ten years ago? Crazy...good thing they won't do that again!....Wait, WHAT?! "Punisher" is back, in this very set AND it's worse than ever? I quit.

All sarcasm aside. This is a beautiful and flavorful adaptation of the myth of Narcissus. And look, they didn't even have to cheese out the story by changing the names or beating me over the head with flavor text! Look Wizards, we get it. Now stop punishing us with bad cards...and puns.

I admit, I am perplexed, but also...intrigued. This card is all kinds of weird. I don't know how I am going to win with it, but there just has to be a way to get an advantage out of this. I am not saying it is good. In fact, I am not saying anything else about this card at all; it's just too strange to evaluate.


This card is fated to drown in obscurity. There are very few instant-speed effects like this, mostly because of how powerful they are, but this is far too expensive to be realistic. At seven man with a triple Black requirement, you are competing against some seriously game breaking spells. What else looks like this? Army of the Damned. Rise of the Dark Realms. These cards just do so much more than Fated Return. Adding Indestructible is of very little benefit. For this much mana you should be getting something back that can win the game by itself and, while that helps increase the power of the Creature this becomes, you won't win unless that Creature was awesome to begin with. Again, what I said earlier about the potential Scry effect is equally true here. If you cast it on your turn, you can't ambush attacking Creatures. If you cast it on their turn, you don't get to Scry. I know it seems silly to complain about having a "good problem" like this, but honestly, why play this when you could already play cards that are cheaper and let you have your cake and eat it too.


This card requires a bit of work to get going, but it can be very powerful in the right context. The ability to return multiple Creatures directly to the battlefield is huge! It is easy to come up with two-card combinations that win the game immediately and this is a great enabler to add redundancy and recursion to decks that are looking to combo-kill their opponent or simply attrition them out. Sedris Self Mill has access to Kiki/Pestermite. Mono Black or Glissa can use Triskelion+Mikaeus. If you are just looking for value, constantly upgrading useless tokens or other dorks into gruesome encores of your best threats is a good way to exhaust removal and seal the game with things like Grave Pact. The trick, as usual, will be protecting this card while you set up. Also, this card is too small to win on it's own and is completely blanked by a well timed Tormod's Crypt, so that is pretty unfortunate.

Another card for the too expensive to matter file; you just don't get enough out of this for the cost. Why do I have to sacrifice two creatures to kill something?! Attrition let's be do it for one Black mana and a single creature...and it only costs three to play. Weak card is weak. This is a couple light-years behind Dark Imposter, another card that sees absolutely no play because it is garbage.

On a darker note, if you live in Hope, South Dakota, you might want to consider relocating. This guy sure looks hungry. Look at how skinny he is!


Cards like this have seen a meteoric rise in popularity with the release of the Commander 2013 decks late last year. As of yet, Nekusar decks haven't reached a critical mass of powerful effects like this. This is a big upgrade in playability over the old school Underworld Dreams, mostly because of damage output. This is a creature. It can attack. It can carry a Jitte. That alone makes it more valuable than other similar permanents. This has a decent, if a bit bland, body for its cost and can easily block other Creatures at three and four mana, which has been a core weakness of these decks so far. They needed to commit so many slots in their list to junk invest-e-nchanments, that they have to skimp on removal and Creatures. Their "threats" are often a Howling Mine or other such nonsense that doesn't actually provide a presence on the board.

This flavor text makes me think about that silly Weezer song where he explains how it feels to have your sweater thread come undone. Yea! That song sucks.


This has the right size and cost to function as a pure beater in a format like Commander. It is not unreasonable to think that you could get in several attacks with this card while slower decks use the early game to set up their mana or dig for combo pieces. Bestow gives you a great way to transform a board stall into a profitable attack and it gives you built-in protection from Wrath of God. I wouldn't expect to see much of this around the table, but that doesn't mean it isn't a decent pick up for casual or budget lists.


Bob doesn't see a ton of play in Commander and with good reason. Dark Confidant forces you to take a significant risk of damage. Pain Seer is harder to get going and sustain, but it is easier to shut off when you need to conserve your life total. I am not sure what implications that has for Commander, but this probably isn't anything to get too excited about.


Well. If you get this going you can do some...things. As a total package, this card is a little bit too weak to make it in my opinion. Because this is a triggered ability and not an activated ability like Kiki-Jiki, you can't get a loop going very easily. You need both a way to tap and untap it while simultaneously generating mana to pay for the ability. This is a safer design for modern Magic. It won't break. It won't ruin Standard. It won't ruin Modern. R&D can sleep soundly tonight knowing that their game is safe from degenerate combos and valuable cards.

This is a Mythic. A pretty pathetic one though. Here we get a look at the newest iteration of the "punisher" mechanic. This is essentially the idea that you punish your opponent by forcing them to choose between two different undesirable alternatives. The tricky bit is that they will choose the alternative that is decidedly less bad for them, meaning you always get slightly less than the expected value from your card. Let's look here, do you want a 5/5 Flying for 2RR with no drawback? Ehh, not exciting these days. What else do you got? Well, how about a 3/3 Flying Haste guy that comes back when it dies for the same price? I don't care about that either. If your opponent has removal, then he will just get rid of it. He isn't going to give you the opportunity to recur it. If he doesn't have removal well, you would  rather have Hell Rider.

The only unifying characteristic among punisher cards is that they are all too bad to play.


Let's take a look at another example. This is basically always going to be a 5/3 Haste unless you have very few cards in hand. It can certainly do some damage very quickly, but it gets significantly weaker if the opponent knows the contents of your hand. If you get to the late game with a decently full hand and an empty board, THEN you can toss a dog a bone.




This certainly doesn't seem very fair. The existence of Hexproof has warped the way we have to interact with threats. It has broken at least one format and produced some of the least fun decks in recent memory. Unfortunately, this card is the exact opposite of good. A single Hexproof creature can't be dealt with by targeted removal, so it usually demands a board sweeper. Having multiple Hexproof Creatures doesn't give you any additional protection from removal. Now you are just going lose more Creatures in the same board sweep. Removing Hexproof from your opponent's Creatures is a tangible benefit, but too narrow to be useful against the entire format.

Six power accross two bodies isn't a horrible deal and Scry 2 is a nice bonus to any threat, however, 3/3's are a bit undersized in Commander. All of the comments I have previously made about "punisher" and the distracting counterplay within these cards apply here as well. The effect of this card is generally going to be much weaker than the other members of the cycle, making it the worst of the bunch.


This isn't going to replace any of our beloved Commander standards. It is particularly bad against Planeswalkers. Most pdubs have a way to deal with a creature anyway, so your opponent is likely to just pay the tribute and still come out ahead in the deal. Whereas if you had just kicked a Mold Shambler or some such, you would get to actually kill their Planeswalker. "Punisher" cards make particularly bad answers because your opponent can usually align the choice to make your card not actually deal with their threats. If you need to blow up their Elspeth before it goes ultimate, or destroy their Doubling Season before they 'go off', then you must answer it or die. With this card, your opponent isn't going to choose to lose the game on purpose and a 6/6 isn't going to help you much after that.



Let me tell you how this is going to go: Someone is going to play this. I am not paying Tribute because, let's be honest, I don't have any creatures in play that I care about losing. Then I am going to Doom Blade this thing and move on with my life. I have said it numerous times before. If all your finisher does is damage, that isn't good enough. Removal is so cheap that your creature has to be absolutely enormous to be important. Even a 12/12 for six is not coming close. If it were at cmc 2 or 3 then I'd be impressed, but this is basically useless outside of limited. there are far superior 6 mana Creatures in EVERY color.


There is an old adage that says the fastest way to a man's heart is through his stomach. That is pretty true, but for me it is just as quick to go through the funny bone. I love hate puns. I love portmanteau. Wizards has made a lot of bad puns, but that lighthearted feel really adds to the appeal of the game. If you take yourself seriously and you suck that is bad. BUT! If you don't take yourself seriously and you suck, you are instantly hilarious. This card is terrible, but lovable.


Now we are onto something! The Planeswalker from the set, and it is very appealing. It does a lot of the things that I really like in a 'walker. It allows you to positively affect the board and lock down your opponent's best threat while INCREASING loyalty. It doesn't give you any real andvantage for doing so, but the "ultimate" ability is very realistic and will give you a constant stream of threats with which to win the game. I am most interested in the minus ability. The longer you can keep activating this, the further ahead you get on resources. There have been other Planeswalkers, that consistently draw you cards every turn and that is awesome. This gives you an extra card and an extra land drop every other turn, which is also very potent. Advancing your position on two resources at once is tough to beat.

This card also features a finely crafted piece from artist Scott Fischer, who I am not familiar with at all, but if this is any indication of his talents, we need him working on this game. It is a special achievement to combine multiple different layers and different styles for the water coloration. Lesser artists would not be able to blend these elements without sacrificing a consistent look for the entire piece. There is also something to be said for making a fish-woman sexy. Where does Wizards find all of these talented people?

Well, that concludes today's segment. This will be the longest of the review pieces by far, so expect shorter posts for the following parts. Make sure to check back later this week for Landdrops' Legends segment as well as parts two and three as they go live. Let us know in the comments how you feel about the articles, the set, the blog, or anything else!
-GG

In General: Engines and Investment pt. 3

Welcome back Zoners, this is the third and final part of my series on Investing in games. If you missed them, take a look at Part 1 and Part 2. Today, we have the prestige, as it were; the big reveal. We are going to find out what investment cards are good and which ones are bad and how to tell. First, a brief description of the resources we need to invest.

In Magic there are a lot of key resources. Most people will tell you that there are three: life, mana, and cards. That is a dramatic underestimation. Just look at some of the costs for your spells, some require you to mill a certain number of cards, so the size of your library is a resource. Some take more than one turn to set up, so time is a resource. Some investments only work in a particular situation, so we need to dedicate a lot of the slots in our deck to cards that help us reliably set up that specific board state. People often just call this "synergy" and think about it as a consequence of and requirement for good deckbuilding, but synergy is a resource AND an investment itself, because it requires effort on your part to create. For the purpose of this discussion, everything that can potentially translate into a resource, is itself a resource. E.g. cards in deck eventually become cards in hand, so "cards" as in the card advantage that we discussed above, are just part of a big value chain. Eventually cards in hand become cards in play or cards in the graveyard, yet another resouce...you get the idea.

Characteristics of Healthy Investments

Liquidity

The biggest sticking point that I want to stress about resources is, again, that they can be converted into a different resource. This isn't always easy though. Sometimes the transition requires an extra cost. If you pay 2U and discard the Divination, you can turn two cards in your deck into two cards in your hand. If resource has high liquidity, then you can change it into something else quickly and cheaply. If you cast a Grizzly Bears, you easily change mana and a card in hand into a card in play. This is a fairly liquid transaction, meaning not much of your resources were lost in the transition. In fact, only the mana is gone. The card just went from one bank account to another. So, in effect, the net transaction was: pay two mana and get two damage on each of the subsequent turns where you can attack.

The moral here is: we want to invest in things that either take advantage of the liquidity of our resources or increase the liquidity. 

Return on Investment

Here we are looking to expand out total resource base. We want to translate a small amount now into a larger amount later. Remember that exchanging resources has a cost. We can mitigate the effect of that by simply having an excess amount of some resource. To illustrate this, let's look at a combo:

So, this sets up an infinite loop. We bought a Queenie and the Altar and now we can create a creature and kill it an arbitrary number of times. This is the Magic equivalent of a perpetual motion machine. You provide the inputs and it runs forever on its own. Now that isn't incredibly impressive, once we have infinite something, we can pretty easily turn that into infinite anything. Let's add another piece into the mix:

BOOM! Now we have infinite creatures and colorless mana. This is the Magic equivalent of a perpetual motion machine. You provide the inputs and it runs forever on its own. THIS is the Magic equivalent of a free-energy device. You tipped off a chain reaction that will spiral out of control producing an ever-increasing amount of value. Don't get too excited though. You might have gotten infinite return on your investment, but you spent a lot of resources to build this monster and that is a problem...

Smallest Initial Outlay

We don't begin the game with an infinite amount of resources, we have only a small amount. It is important to pick an choose what to use those resources on in order to maximize our chances of winning. That decision making process is what this whole article is about. Having a small initial outlay gives us a great chance of coming out ahead on our investments. There are less moving parts so there is less that our opponent can target to disrupt us and even if our investment doesn't pan out, we didn't lose much anyway. Most games are won and lost on this series of small, incremental investments. You don't need to go bigger than your opponent, you need to commit what you have to the right place at the right time. Example: Ponder.

This is a very small investment. One card, one mana. We never see that mana again, but we trade our card for a better card. This marginal enhancement in card quality is HUGE because not all cards in Magic are equivalent. They don't do the same thing so just having more doesn't necessarily mean that you have the right one. Cards like Ponder give you a card off the top of your deck that is better than the average random card because you get to choose from a larger selection of random cards. Using your skill and contextual information you can turn your Ponder into the best card in that situation, which is why is is so widely used in Legacy decks as a way to smooth draws and dig for gas. Incidentally, Ponder also offers a huge return on investment.

Time-Value

Every resource has a time value, which means that it becomes more or less important at particular stages of the game. A good example of this is your turn. In the early turns, not much gets done, but later in the game when you can cast multiple spells, attack, and substantially impact the board, the value of taking a turn goes up dramatically. In general, each action you take increases your likelihood of winning the game (actions that don't are what we in the business call mistakes). Any turn where you take more actions is more valuable. This is the driving force behind awesome cards like Time Stretch. In the late game, you have a ton of mana and probably have used way more cards than you started with, but with access to all these additional resources a single turn can mean a huge swing in the state of the game. As often is the case with this card, if you take an extra turn or two, you will often win on the spot.

The Final Word

As I stated in the previous segment, the best way to evaluate an investment is to compare it to the opportunity cost. "A good investment always beats it's opportunity cost." This means that the best investment you can make is the Highest Value Alternative. It gives you the highest return on your investment, requires the smallest initial outlay, maximizes the time value of your resources, and maintains or increases the liquidity of those resources. That is it. Keep in mind everything that you are spending and everything you are getting; the best cards just put you ahead no matter what. Here is an example of a perfect investment:

Four mana for a land and a creature is a modest price to pay. If you deal or prevent any damage with the body, the value will increase over time. It is also very difficult for your opponent to interact with Solemn without giving you even more value on your investment. Do they trade a creature? Well, you already got the land and you will also get to draw the card. It is just impossible to come out behind in the resource advantage game if your deck is stuffed full of things like this.



Now let's see some bad investments:

These are expensive, unpredictable, take a long time to generate any value, generate only minimal value at all, don't help exchange our resources fluidly, and do almost nothing if our opponent disrupts or destroys them. That's all the time I have for today. I hope you enjoyed this series on investment. If you love it/hate it demonstrate it! Leave a comment on this or anything else. Next week I will be back with a post on a related subject: vehicles!
-GG