Fate Reforged Set Review: Answers

Welcome back to The General Zone's Review of Fate Reforged! If you missed the previous installment you can catch up here: Threats.

In today's segment we will be covering all of the answer cards in the set. An answer is something that you use to deal with your opponent's threats. Answers stop or delay your opponent from winning the game. Removal, counterspells, discard effects, graveyard hate, these are all examples of answers, but there are many more out there. This category comprises many different types of cards, but the important information to note when you want to evaluate an answer is what you are meant to use it against. Context is always important, but more so with answers than with threats. Let's take a look at what Fate Reforged has to offer.

This certainly does a lot, but there are many downsides too. We have seen multiple mass Reanimate effects in the last few sets and many of them are just better than this. Immortal Servitude and Return to the Ranks both come to mind as direct competitors to this card.

The problem with rally is that you will never get to attack with the Creatures, so you can't win the game with this. You also lose access to those Creatures when they go to exile. You would rather they stayed in your graveyard at that point. Despite how strong this card looks, I just don't think that it is good enough to edge out its competitors.

Reprisal isn't good enough to play. There are just better removal spells. A Reprisal that allows you to counter opposing removal spells is much more reasonable. I think that this is worth looking into, but will probably fall short. This has flexibility, which I like, but flexibility doesn't always translate directly to power.










Hands down, this is one of the most exciting cards in the set. Blue needs high quality spot removal and this fits the bill. It reminds me of both Chaos Warp and Pongify. 95% of the time it will be better than both of those. It always costs two mana, but gives the opponent a colorless 2/2 instead of a Green 3/3. A 2/2 is probably worse than a random non-Creature permanent in Commander, including lands, so this sounds promising.

In the other 5% of cases, the times where Chaos Warp really hurts you, Reality Shift still hurts you. Potentially more even, but also potentially less. This card will lead to some funny stories, but most of the time it will do its job without burning you.



I have actually seen a few dragon theme decks in my time, which is all the incentive that I would need to play this. If your commander is a dragon, or you have 5+ dragons in your deck, you will probably be favored when you cast this. I think even the potential to Wrath the board and leave you with just one good threat is enough to win most games.

The flavor of this card is pretty awesome. It shows an iconic moment in the games story while tying together the time travel plot with gusto. The name suggests that this moment in time will have far reaching consequences. This is how you make a flavorful card. I do wish that there were a time travel flavored card that actually represented whatever spell or ritual Sarkhan undertook to get to this point though. I want to see what a reverse Time Warp effect would look like in Magic.

Fleshbag Marauder sees occasional play as a cheap and aggressive sacrifice effect. There are plenty of other cards that can fill this role, but I wouldn't be surprised if I saw a handful of these in play over the next year. Beyond that though, there isn't much to see here.










If you must die today...take all your friends with you? It is strange to me that the flavor text on this card is from the human perspective, but the spell being cast makes me think that the dragon is the one who is doing the arcbonding. That is a verb right?

Also, this card is pretty horrible. There are many other Red cards like this, where things have to go very right in order for you to get anything out of it, and it is always worse than Wrath of God. It is also Red, which we know is worse than White in this format.




I have been waiting for this card for a long time. I finally got it, but it is very disappointing. I always thought that this card could exist and be completely reasonable, but I was thinking of it costing 1G or maybe 1GG and you get to choose one or two. Naturalize is a common and it has stayed relevant through the last few years, but it is definitely underpowered nowadays. It only sees play in limited and then only in sideboards. It basically never gets main decked. If you are designing cards for your limited environment, I would want you to design sideboard cards that are good enough to be played in the main deck a certain percentage of the time. Constructed level sideboard cards should look cheaper, more narrow, and more hateful. While the limited cards need to be applicable enough that you don't have to be embarrassed to play them, otherwise they are just garbage that clogs up your packs.

As far as Commander goes, this is basically always going to kill something that is on the board. The problem is that it is a little expensive and it does nothing against a God card. Gods are slightly less popular than they were last year, but it is still a benchmark of the format. Your non-Creature removal has to interact with God cards.




I don't normally like Fog effects in Commander. They just don't do enough to justify using a whole card. Cards are always at a premium and they are by far the most important resource you have in any given game. Now, if you have a card that makes any single attack by your opponent into a complete embarrassment...that card I might consider playing.

If the Ferocious is taken care of, this is as good as any fight card, but it also saves you some damage. That seems pretty cool. Of course, the question must be raised, how reliable are your 4/4's and whether you want to expose yourself to spot removal in response to this. It shouldn't be a problem for many decks, but these requirements will limit the usefulness of the card.

Speaking of fight spells, Grim Contest is a new one. I won't say that it is a good one, or even a bad one, but I can confirm that it is real. If you're still playing Doran, and you are upset that you can't have a fight spell that works for you, now you can stop complaining. Congratulations! I cannot recommend playing this in any other deck.

That is all for today guys. Let us know in the comments what you think about the new set! On Sunday I will be back with my final segment of the review in which I will cover the remaining cards from Fate Reforged!