You can find the previous part of this article here: Threats Part One.
Today we are beginning right where we left off, with Red cards, and then finishing with some juicy Artifact Creatures.
So they press fit a Goblin Piledriver onto a Goblin Assault. I can dig that. With the notable exception of Protection from Blue, this has pretty much everything those cards had and, to be honest, those cards are surprisingly strong. A 2/2 is very easy to get rid of in Commander, but forcing your opponent to use precious removal on your early plays can clear a path for your haymakers to stick later in the game. Every deck needs a certain percentage of these medium impact, cheap plays, in order to be successful. Rabblemaster can fit that role nicely.I am just glad that there is so much text on this card that they didn't have room print an idiotic joke.
At some point, marketing communicated to design that the customer base liked dragons. Since then they have printed a dragon in just about every set. Nowadays, when I look at a spoiler for a new set, I am not thinking: 'Oh wow, look at this awesome new dragon.' Instead I am thinking: 'Oh lord what abominable fan service have they had then unenviable obligation of printing this time.'This dragon hoses walls. Not that anyone cares. There are many wall Creatures and maybe five are playable in Commander. Save me the trouble of ridiculing you and just never play this. I have only included it in the review because I want to mention the design decision that goes into printing something like walls.
For years design had been moving away from the subtype wall because, well let's be honest they don't make any sense. If it is a wall it isn't a creature. Even if it were some sort of living wall, it then isn't really a wall, it is just a strangely shaped creature. The Defender ability essentially renders the identity of walls obsolete while also opening of the creative space that they can occupy in terms of creature type and as story elements. I realize that Aaron Forsythe is the head of the R&D department for Magic and that he can essentially do what he wants, but...why do this? Why regress the game to an objectively less refined state by reversing previously established decisions.
Sure, this card's effect is substantially better than Starfall, but still. It conjures up an all-to-familiar image of poor cost/effect balance. I would say that this is the weakest in the cycle if not for the fact that it DIRECTLY counters and consumes the Soul of Zendikar's ability. Tragic.
Geroge Fan of Plants vs. Zombies fame brings us, what else, a plant. Why is it a plant? Arbitrary creative. Why is it a hydra? Well, do you remember what I said earlier about dragons?Mechanically, this card is very powerful. Getting stuff for free is an easy way to take over the game. It calls back to some very excellent cards like Thicket Elemental and Maelstrom Wanderer. Expect to see a lot of this at the Commander tables. It will have massive fan appeal for a short time after it is released, but then will likely fade away to some extent.
Of all the spiritual predecessors that this card has, only one ever saw any play at all in Commander: Dungrove Elder. Why do these cards consistently under-perform? It is simple. As I have said many times before, if all your threat does is damage, that isn't enough. It doesn't matter how big it gets. It doesn't matter that you get two of them. If it is going to cost six mana it needs to generate card advantage. That is it.I sometimes get asked, why does mono Green struggle, while mono Black thrives? On the surface it looks like Green has the better cards. The trouble is that 'swamps matter' cards are better than 'forests matter' cards. The proof is in the pudding. If you are going to be mono Green, you need a stronger incentive than this.
Previous Nissa was a stone blank in Commander...and pretty much every other format. This card, however, is hot. It hits hard, making a 4/4 every turn is going to put your opponent under lots of pressure and allows you to effectively defend your planeswalker while you take the long journey up to seven loyalty. On the other hand, four is a big chunk of mana. Sure you can only untap forests, but I can think of some pretty good forests. Bayou and Tropical Island come to mind. This is going directly into several of my Green EDH decks, where I expect it to stay until something truly broken gets printed to replace it.This is very comparable to Liliana of the Dark Realms and Garruk Wildspeaker, two of my favorite planeswalkers. In terms of mana generation, this is just about the most value you are ever going to get.
It is a plant that comes back to life! The dev team must have all gotten free copies of Plants vs. Zombies 2. I dig that it resists most mass removal. I can even dig that it has more power than it's cost so it can trade across with just about anything. However, it is a big bummer than they can take this 'titan' out of commission for a full turn cycle using just about anything they have laying around the house. If this got into a fight with a ham sandwich it would be a tie. That is kind of sad.Someone needs to inform the creative team at Wizards that fungi aren't plants. This is like saying crabs are walnuts because they have a hard shell. Also, if this is supposed to give me the idea that an entire ecosystem is just an extension of one organism, this card should be legendary. If they are all part of the same thing, could there ever really be more than 'one' of them?
Reach has always been something of a throwaway ability to me. It adds some value to Creatures that need a boost, but it isn't anything substantial. I have never said: 'Oh no! You're guy has Reach?! Now my Akroma does nothing!!!' But heck man, it makes 3/3s. A walking Centaur Glade is pretty sweet.Hands down the worst piece of art in the set. Possibly the worst piece of art to make it into a core set since the M10 reboot. I vastly prefer the promo art, which more clearly shows the hedrons on the beast's back...and isn't an arachnid.
This is very reminiscent of Nicol Bolas, planeswalker. It provides an immediate answer to opposing pdubs and generates value even if they don't have one. It can also answer opposing Creatures and provide you threats of your own. This has a much more multiplayer friendly ultimate, but it is still only useful against one player. That is fine, I am simply pointing out that this and Nicol Bolas both share then weakness of having their ultimate essentially kill one player, but not necessarily win the game. Like the other expensive planeswalkers, and planeswalkers in general, this card is well positioned in Commander and will see a great deal of play.So I was under the impression that, when Garruk got cursed by the power of the Chain Veil, that...ya know, it was a bad thing! Apparently it just turns you into a hulking master badass. I would like to sign up for this kind of therapy.
Well if Soul of Zendikar had the worst art, this thing has the worst name. You see, scuttle is a verb yes, but it is something that you do to ships. It is not how I imagine our terrifying robot overlords getting around.A remarkably bland colorless threat that can't be chump blocked and is weak to exiling removal? I am not sure that there is enough room in the format for a worse Wurmcoil Engine. Did I say worse? I meant terrible.
The final installment of the Soul cycle and the final card for this article, Soul of New Phyrexia offers something old to a new market. Avacyn, Angel of Hope gave the power of unlimited indestructibility to White. Now, for a somewhat inconvenient price, every color can have this privilege.This card will see a lot of play. More than it should. It isn't that good, but players are wary of board sweepers in Commander; with good reason. This will give other colors, mainly Green and Red, a way to work around Wrath of God while still advancing their plan of smashing face. That is good enough for me.
I have trouble seeing this cycle really getting off the ground. Their activated abilities are so expensive that it isn't feasible for you to cast and activate them in the same turn. If you had that much mana you could be doing MUCH more powerful things. I would guess that most of the time this cards net effect will just be making your opponent discard two removal spells. So it is basically just a worse Mind Rot, right?
That's all for this segment. Thanks for sticking with us through a longer-than-average set review, but remember that we still have more to come. Check back later this week for answers, legends, and utility cards. As always, leave you feedback in the comments and I will see you next time.
-GG
On the topic of Kalonian Twingrove- regardless of whether or not it's "worse" than Dungrove Elder, or "Swamps Matter" cards, or even Grave Titan, doesn't it still establish itself as a threat worthy of the same of removal? I guess my point is that I don't see this as an under-performer, considering that even though it's weaker, the cards that stop it are still relatively similar.
ReplyDeleteIs it unplayable? No, but it is lagging way behind the competition. You are absolutely correct that they demand the same type of removal, usually a sweeper. The problem is that sweepers are very common in Commander, particularly in multiplayer. Sticking with the comparison to the Titan cycle: Grave Titan and Frost Titan are on the weaker end of the spectrum because they are so easily answered in this way. The commentary I was making about Twingrove was that it combined the traits of two established themes, but didn't do anything to cover their weaknesses. The result is that this card has little to offer that you can't find elsewhere, that's all.
DeleteOkay. I guess I just feel like this is one of those cases where you have what I call the "value-target" creature- something that a Green player is going to play to force an answer. In this way, I feel like that makes it pretty good, considering that this card is, as we both agree, "not bad but behind the curve" in terms of being a threat.
DeleteAlso, the more I think about it, the more I feel that we aren't correctly evaluating it as it relates to other things in mono-Green. That said, how would you compare it to similar cards in its colors? And what would it need to be in talks with some of these better cards?
Compared to similar cards in its color...? It is creature itself, which makes it more vulnerable to Wrath effects than something like Centaur Glade. It is more expensive and probably produces less power than Kessig Cagebreakears. It produces few bodies, so Howl of the Nightpack is less affected by common spot removal. Those are three comparables, in that they are mediocre token makers that you typically wouldn't play outside mono green.
DeleteWhat would it need to gain to be better is a much more simple question. What if it were just like a 'double dungrove' and made two hexproof bodies. What if one of the bodies resisted removal in someway, like protection from a color, indestructibility, etc. It would be easy to take this idea and make it broken. It is fair and balanced as is, the problem is that there are plenty of broken green cards that push it to the margins.