Welcome to The General Zone's Review of Fate Reforged! My name is Grandpa Growth and it is my pleasure to comb over all of the new cards with you and share my thoughts.
As always, the review will be broken down into four different installments. Uncle Landdrops will cover the new Legendary Creature cards and I will talk about the threats, the answers, and everything else. Let's go over the ground rules for the review articles:
- This is a blog about Commander, so my comments on cards should be viewed in that context unless otherwise stated.
- I will not discuss every card. If it isn't relevant to Commander I may leave it out of the review. Also, I will not discuss any reprints, since we already understand where they fit in the metagame.
In today's article we will be discussing the threat cards. A threat is something that you use to win the game. Mostly Creatures, planeswalkers, and spells that make Creatures or add to the board are all threats. Pretty simple. Let's jump right in!
We are going to start things off with a bang! Ugin, the Spirit Dragon is a powerhouse and is sure to become a staple of the format. Much like
Karn Liberated, his lack of color requirements will allow him to fit into any deck. The near ubiquity of generic control decks in the Commander format means that Ugin is going to become a familiar face in the land of fat stacks.
Both his plus and his minus abilities have an immediate impact on the board. Ugin is a repeatable source of targeted damage, we know very well how awesome that is. This ability to control opposing Creatures means that Ugin is going to be an important source of removal for your deck, particularly Green and Blue decks where the pool of on-board answers is more shallow.
The combination of his insanely high starting loyalty and immediate potential for a board sweep will keep Ugin in play for more turns than your average planeswalker. This means that his ultimate is easier to reach and more likely to happen. That necessitated an ultimate ability that is a little underpowered when compared to his closest competition, but it is still overwhelmingly likely that you will win any two-man game in which you activate it.
I am very excited to see the focus of Magic's story turn back to the events of Zendikar and the resolution of the
Eldrazi problem. I am interested to see how this all turns out. What important events will be affected by
Sarkhan travelling back in time? Does this mean that
Nicol Bolas is going to return to the spotlight in future sets? I hope so.
A 2/3 for four mana is not usually a good sign for constructed playability. It does have an immediate impact the turn that you play it, but that impact is admittedly going to be small most of the time. This is a cheap way to generate an ongoing advantage in Creature mirrors, but this card fails the
Wrath test. The more Creatures you have, the more counters you get, and the more exposed you are to a sweeper. In order to maximize the value of this card you have to play right into your opponent's best outs. That just isn't a reliable way to win the game.
Monastery Mentor I like quite a bit, although it has the same weaknesses as Dragonscale General. Generally speaking, it is risky to block this or to attack into it with other early Creatures because a Prowess trigger can make potential trades unfavorable. Beyond that, netting a couple of tokens is a great bonus on an otherwise unremarkable card.
This card is just full of exciting potential. Giving all your spells Lifelink is a unique and potentially very powerful ability. Giving your spells buyback for an extra fee is potentially game breaking. Some very simple effects become unbeatable when you have the ability to repeat them ad nauseum. Take
Peek for example. You draw a extra card every turn and always know what your opponent has in hand. Do you think you are likely to lose that game? Probably not.
The obvious application for this card is with Time Walk effects. Taking an arbitrary number of turns is attractive, even if you have to spend most of your mana every turn just to keep the loop going. It isn't truly infinite, but it is close enough to get the job done almost every time. Compare this to
Mind Slaver/
Academy Ruins, which is one of my favorite win conditions. They can even go in the same deck. That idea excites me.
Manifest is an interesting new mechanic. I chose not to include all of the Manifest cards in the review because I am not sure that they are good enough to play. I believe that Cloudform is worth playing, even in nearly Creatureless builds. A Flying, Hexproof threat is going to be pretty tough to deal with. This makes any Equipment or Auras extremely dangerous. I expect that it won't take long to close out the game with a
Sword,
Jitte, etc.
This card is an exciting preview of what Manifest can accomplish as a mechanic. It is funny to me though, that I would say the same thing about ANY Hexproof Flier. Manifest on this particular card is almost irrelevant. I am intrigued by this new mechanic and will be furnishing a full article on it next month. It changes the dynamic of the game and is going to cause players to think differently about the board. I am always down for making Magic a challenging mental exercise.
Repeatable bounce effects can be very frustrating to play against. If you have ever been on the receiving end of a
Boomerang/
Isochron Scepter hook up, you will know that it can difficult to win through. Sage-Eye Avengers does not have that same power level though and it isn't likely to see any play. This is under-powered when you compare it to the top threats at this mana cost. Converted mana cost six is usually a very competitive spot in my decklists.
This is deceptively powerful. It is a
Clone effect that has Flash AND bounces the chosen Creature to boot. That is pretty hot tech and definitely worth the increase in cost. I can't imagine many situations where this isn't useful. The swing in board position and tempo from this single card is enormous and not to be underestimated. You will often be able to ambush a second attacker to gain even more of an advantage. Last year was definitely the year of the Clone, but it looks like the best may still be yet to come.
I want to compare this to
Anowan the Ruin Sage. For the same mana cost you get Flying and +1/+1. The
Abyss effects are different, but nearly equivalent. Anowan is better if the opponent has few Creatures, while Archfiend is better when they have many. Overall, this is a solid role player for midrange Black decks that have a sacrifice theme.
This guy is brutal indeed. It takes a lot to make a
Hill Giant playable in Commander, but I think this definitely gets there. The attack trigger is just insane. It is going to cause so much extra life loss that the game will end a few turns early, which is huge. The ability to play
Master Warcraft whenever you want is going to wipe your opponent's board clean in short order, leaving you with a huge advantage.
Weirdly, the most interesting part of this card to me is the templating. It seems a little off, given that Wizards has been pushing to make cards acknowledge Planeswalkers as a card type. To me, this seems like it should read: "Whenever a creature you control attacks a player, that player loses 1 life and you gain 1 life." What I really want though, is for it to say this: "Whenever a creature you control attacks, Brutal Hordechief does 1 damage to the defending player or planeswalker and you gain 1 life."
Ghastly indeed. It seems like the printing of an expensive mass
Reanimate effect is becoming a
yearly occurrence. The Commander format has definitely hit the saturation point on this style of effect. You have more options for which one to play than you do slots in your list which you can dedicate to an expensive, situational finisher. That being said this card is extremely powerful and is likely to swing the game solidly in your favor. Following up on a Wrath effect with this is sure to lead to some easy victories in the coming months.
The haunting part about Manifest is that the 2/2 you get is almost unblockable. There is basically know way to tell what is under there if literally ANY card can become a morph bug. That means that your opponent will be in dire straits before they commit to blocking because the potential for a blowout is so high. This creates a very interesting mental positioning game which will be stressful, I am sure.
Also, Gengar.
Here we get our first look at the new Mardu mechanic, Dash. On a fun sidenote, I had this same idea for a mechanic a couple of years ago when
Archwing Dragon saw play in Standard 'Suicide' Red decks. It functioned much like a repeatable burn spell that almost always traded for a card AND some of your opponents life. The immunity to Sorcery removal was actually an important advantage for that deck.
There are two ways to think about this card. First, you get a repeatable source of tokens and damage as long as your opponent can't block favorably. This will add value to your position every turn and hopefully snowball into a win. On the other hand, this is a lot of mana to be spending every turn just to get a 2/1 and some damage. In Commander you are like going to be facing down a Titan or some kind of infinite combo starting as early as turn five. Mardu Strike Leader gives you a plan, but I am not sure that it matches up well against what the average Commander deck is trying to do.
I like the idea of this card, but that is about it. It calls back to
Death-Mask Duplicant from Mirrodin block, another card which was a little underwhelming. Delve certainly makes this attractive, because you are not likely to pay full price for it. An early threat with Flying or Double Strike can go a long way towards winning the game. The trouble is that you don't want to be exiling your own graveyard in Commander. There is just too much late-game value that you are giving up by doing so. I would rather just play a reanimate effect and get back my original threat that had all of those cool abilities anyway. After all, Soul Flayer and
Zombify require the same set up costs.
This card isn't broken by any stretch of the imagination, but I still like it. I don't think I would really hard cast it unless things weren't going so well for me in the game. I see this being used primarily for its Dash cost. When I have a good attack, I will likely be willing to pay an extra four mana to double up on one of my guys.
The trouble that I see with this, is that it has to attack in order to trigger the ability. It will be easy for the opponent to minimize the effectiveness of the card by using timely removal or just blocking. A 3/3 isn't very big in this format. There are going to be many scenarios where you will not be able to attack with this without losing it. I just don't think you will be able to eek enough value out to make this worthwhile unless you combine it with other cards like Brutal Hordechief.
Fate Reforged brings us yet another entry into the ongoing Phoenix saga. This one is quite good, if a bit unexciting. It has Flying, Haste, and it is very easy to get back out of the graveyard. If you follow up with a Creature after turn three in Commander, there is a very good chance that Creature has more than four power, so you should be able to reliably count on Flamewake Phoenix to damage your opponent several times each game. I think that this is a solid card, but like Mardu Strike Leader, this just isn't innately powerful enough to be good in Commander.
A cheaper, more focused
Insurrection. That is awesome. This is much more reasonable to cast and is most likely going to be just as good. If you are about to get destroyed by a ton of tokens, then you probably don't mind that you won't be stealing their big guys. Just take the weenie army and swing through.
My only gripe about this card is the presentation. I love the mechanics, but the wrapping paper is pretty silly. The name has nothing to do with the effect of the card. Neither the name nor the art make any references to the choice that the controller is making and what that looks like within the flavor of the game. Isn't the whole point of having art to show you what happens in the game world when you cast the card? This art looks like a removal spell, not a Threaten effect. This is why I think flavor is kind of silly. So much emphasis is placed on it, but it is rarely executed well.
Side note: I would like to see a Red or Green removal spell called devoured by babboons. That would be sweet.
Paying four for a 2/2 Double Strike isn't that great of a deal. You need to consistently get more value than that out of your cards if you want to win. Unfortunately, Manifest is not what I would call a consistent mechanic. Sometimes this card will lead to blowouts. Sometimes it will be very mediocre. Most of the time it is just going to eat a removal spell, but never actually pressure your opponent. We can do better.
I am not really into putting a bunch of counters on my Creatures. That is just too much physical effort. Why carry all that stuff around when you can just take infinite turns or cast an Eldrazi.
Now, drawing cards on the other hand, that is something I can get into. You play this and you can immediately get value out of it. In fact, if you draw a card off of this and then they kill it, that is a bargain that I will take every time. If you start drawing 2+ cards at a time off of this, I don't know how you can lose. This is a Hasty, must answer threat that will create huge value the longer the game goes on. I have concerns that the low toughness will make it hard to attack consistently with this, but even if it just sits on your side drawing cards, that is good enough.
Most of the time, I think that I would rather have one 10/10 than a 5/5 and a 6/6. I am not a big fan of Bolster as a mechanic. Diversifying your threats is always a great idea; you should protect yourself from spot removal anyway that you can. Bolster doesn't give you anything unless you already have a good place to put those counters though. At certain point, marginal counters will stop mattering. How big does your Creature need to be in order to become relevant? I would rather just have a 5/5 token, but then again, I wouldn't even play THAT card either.
Why does this have Reach instead of Trample?! It is an elephant, not a flak cannon.
Well, this is no Primeval Titan. I enjoy getting a little bit of value with my threats, but this just isn't doing it for me. I am not interested in the triggered ability and quite frankly, I don't want to spend this amount of mana for a mostly blank 4/5 and his dorky 2/2 friend. There are just more powerful things that you can be doing at six mana in Green decks.
I don't ask too much of my one drops, but honestly, I don't play too many one drops. This is consistently going to provide early damage if you have it in your opener, but this guy shines later in the game as well, which is the real test for whether or not a cheap Creature is going to make it in Commander. You can't afford to draw dead cards late, your top decks have to matter. You need to invest a lot of time and mana to make this relevant, but an 8/8 Trample, Lifelink will still win on an empty board.
Now this guy I can get into. Every turn it kicks off a 2/2. Some of those bears are going to better than others, which is pretty sweet. If somebody comes knocking with a sweeper, you can protect yourself by cashing in your face up duders for new 2/2's. Sweet deal.
An X/X for X with a little bit of upside is probably good enough for the current Standard, but I am going to stick to my guns here and say it again: If all your threat does is attack and block, it isn't good enough for Commander. I don't care how big it is or what you have to pay for it, but you need to be getting more value out of each one of your cards.
In order for me to want Wildcall in my deck, I would need plenty of ways to manipulate the top card of my library and a very high percentage of my deck would have to be Creatures. Those decks can be great in the format, but they are not the style of deck that I want to play. I don't like where Creature decks are positioned within the game right now. There are just more powerful things to be doing.
Fate Reforged is looking to be another winner. The set has cool new mechanics and the limited environment is going to be thought-provoking to say the least. Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments below. We love to hear your feedback about the cards, the review, and the blog. Check back on Thursday for the next installment of the set review where I will discuss the answer cards.
-GG
