M15 Set Review: Answers

Hello and welcome back to The General Zone's review of Magic 2015. If you missed any of our ongoing coverage of the set, you can find the previous installments of the review here: Threats pt. 1, Threats pt. 2, Legends.

In today's segment we will be reviewing the answer cards from the set.

What is an answer? An answer is something that you use to stop your opponent from winning the game. Sometimes that means dealing with Creatures, countering spells, discarding cards, and many other things. If your opponent wants to do 'it', you should have an answer for 'it'. Counterspells, removal, land destruction, and graveyard hate, are all easy examples of answers, but they can take on many other forms. An explanation of what you are trying to answer with a given card is just as important as how it is going to accomplish that.

To kick things off, we have a real doozy. How this is not a rare, I don't really understand. This card has way more salt than your average sliver. This is the first time I have ever looked at a gimmicky tribal strategy like slivers and thought, I really want to play this. Constricting Sliver could be the card that gets me to build a tribal deck.

Most of the time you can just kill the important sliver and that will dramatically weaken the sliver player's board. Ex: Muscle Sliver, Winged Sliver, or Root Sliver. You cannot apply that same tactic here. If, by way of this card's ability, some slivers exile your Creatures, you have to get them back one at a time...regardless of whether you deal with the Constricting Sliver! What?! Tell me that isn't annoying. I am absolutely certain that thousands of players will fall into this trap on prerelease weekend. That seems a little over-powered to me. Part of me is hoping that I am just reading it wrong. Slivers are bad...I can keep wearing my tin foil hat forever...


I am extremely excited for this card. Setting aside its incredibly arbitrary flavor and subtype, this combination of abilities is seductively powerful. Modern has been crying for this type of effect since the format's inception. Torpor Orb sees consistent sideboard play against decks like Twin and Pod. Torpor Orb is horrible! It is extremely narrow and has no alternative uses. This is a Flying attacker! It has Flash! This makes Torpor Orb look very under-powered.

Woweeezowee. So here we get to see what a rare version of Aetherize looks like. I am not sure anyone really wanted this to become a reality, but it is quite impressive. This card is right up my alley because it forces your opponent into making difficult decisions that have no right answers. It is most likely that they will bottom less relevant Creatures and leave their best threats on top, but they can't ever truly be sure that they wouldn't have drawn something better. Even if they get to keep their threat safely on top of their library, they still have to waste precious time and draw steps to get it back.

Make no mistake, this card is very powerful and will be difficult to play around. Make sure you know who in your playgroup has copies of this and remember to pick up a few for yourself.




I can't explain to you why the new choice of arbitrarily comical subtype is frog. I can tell you though, that this card is quite strong. It compares easily with Sudden Spoiling, although it is slightly worse. One part Fog, one part Plague Wind, this card is all value. The tricky bit is going to be setting it up to create favorable blocks, but that really shouldn't require too much work. This is where Sudden Spoiling shined though, because it featured Split Second.






Speaking of Plague Wind. I see this as a completely fair update for modern Magic. Planeswalkers are out of control. There are too many of them and they take up too much of the spotlight in top decks. I think that this card would even be safe to print at 5BB.

I get the flavor. Wherever Garruk goes, he wrecks shop. He is climbing in your window, snatching your people up. I have a fundamental problem with this though. He is out to hunt down all the planeswalkers in the multiverse, except you? Wasn't the whole advertising campaign for the set centered around him hunting down the player? But now, you can summon him as an ally and control him. Also you can apparently tell him where to walk. This card doesn't so much represent a spell as it does Garruk  just walking around and messing stuff up...'sorcery'. That's right, you're a wizard, Harry.

Yes!!! Finally we get a truly expanded version of Uktabi Orangutans! I love the elegance of this design. It has become somewhat common to print 2/1s for 1 mana in modern Magic. Which is fine, they are rarely good anyway. The awesome twist for me is that now we have a precedent to combine a 2/1 body and a cmc 2 spell into one card. No drawbacks, no weird casting costs, no silly subtypes! Perfect. I have been wanting this for a long time and I am glad to see that it finally made it to print. This will be a shoe-in to Commander decks and cubes everywhere.



Whenever I play this card, I am going to sing "Notorious", except change the words to Perilous. That only seems fair.

This is a viable alternative to All is Dust for decks that require a colorless board sweeper. Unfortunately, the decks that usually want this effect use Oblivion Stone because they want to recur it with Glissa the Traitor or Academy Ruins. Perilous Vault does not have this same potential, but I still think it will see some isolated play in certain decks.

That's all for today. Remember to like, comment, subscribe, and do all of the socials! We will return on Tuesday for the thrilling conclusion of our Magic 2015 set review!
-GG

M15 Set Review: The Legends

Heya Zoners!

Welcome back to TGZ Spoiler week (and a half). Today's the typical day Grandpa takes off in our little two-cents on the set review, and Landdrops steps in to talk Legends.

Here's a few quick links to what we've gone over so far, in case you missed it:

M15 Threats, Part I
M15 Threats, Part II

We'll start with a sarcastic Kudos to Wizards. Now that they've changed the card border, there's no excuse- Just print entire sets of planeswalkers. We officially won't be able to tell the difference, and it's all the more clearer with this new border that they really want to.

For those newer to the game, my first look at Anorexic Avacyn drew an aesthetic comparison to Jaya Ballard, Task Mage, which rumor has it, was supposed to be R&D's first hack at designing p-dubs.

As far as design goes, AA and Jaya couldn't be more different. Mostly, this is color pie nonsense, and not being a fan of original Avacyn, my unconscious dislike for it is unfairly projected in here as well. But I'll try to be nice.

The rules change on Legendary Creatures and Clone Effects made old Avacyn pretty annoying to play against in my metagame, being that anyone playing Avacyn, Angel of Hope, and anyone with a Clone basically made their board state inpenetrable short of a handful of tuck and exile effects.

I imagine this, along with the key word changes to indestructible, are a few of the compelling reasons R&D might have had to make a new card for her. This one is obviously more fair, which if you subscribe to my pal Grandpa Growth's Rosetta Stone, means it's a significant power-down from her first moments of fresh air out of the Helvault.

Still, I think she's totally playable. As a guy who favors 6-cost or less creatures with relevant static and cheap activated abilities, there's room for design and abuse. An evasive, two-way attacker that can shape the battlescape and protect herself on the cheap is still useful. Couple that with a big 5WW cost emergency button, and you've got a Commander that has the potential to shut down most mono-colored and non-artifact-based two color decks as well.

From Avacyn, however, the rest of these Legends seem pretty bad as Commanders.

Take Jalira. Like surgeons, the designers on this card nipped and tucked until they were sure a Master Polymorphist couldn't do anything that was "unfair," which makes her look more like a novice than anything else, and R&D like chumps once again.

Personally, I see no problem with a Master Polymorphist possessing any or all of the following qualities:

1. Being able to turn one's self into something else.
2. Having the ability to do this with as little resources as possible.
3. Being able to turn any creature into any other creature, regardless of sub- or super-type.
4. Having the skills necessary to do this as quick as possible.

When we examine this card, the designers only got one of these right. But ask yourself- would it be busted if Jalira could turn herself into something? Would it be "un-fun" if she could Polymorph into Kozilek?

I don't think giving a Master Polymorphist these kinds of powers would make her worse- especially if you held all her other qualities constant. And even if Jalira was 2U, it would compare with something like Proteus Staff, which as far as I know, isn't a heinous imposition on any metagame anywhere.

Based on what we have, which does not include information from the Future-Future-League, like R&D does, I find this card pretty disappointing overall. If anything, a card should at least be able to validate its own flavor text, and when it doesn't, I'm a little peeved.

In case you haven't gotten the vibe from our first couple of cards, I'm not particularly enthralled with our newest additions to the Commander pool.

That said, Kurkesh is a card that possesses more of the qualities I'd like to see, even if I'm not thrilled about it.

For starters, the Onakke Ancient is a 4/3 for 2RR. So even if the rules text is no bueno, we still have a Legend with the ability to hack and slash our way to 21.

Looking at this rules text, we've got a pretty weird one, which is particularly refreshing for me, as it gives us Commander players excuse to do some research, even if it's a dead end.

I haven't done any for a potential Kurkesh deck, but having a cheap trigger for the activation of artifact abilities seems good.

Yet perhaps the most exciting part of this card to me is his creature type. Ogre Spirit. Awkward, unique, and from a place we haven't been yet- Shandalar. All of these add up to an overall okay design, even if it's not something that jumps out at me as "good" or "playable."

Last time on Zendikar, Ob Nixilis was a lowly, spark-less Legendary creature trying to make his way through a world of Hedrons, Kor, and Eldrazi in an attempt to be a planeswalker again.

Thanks to Brad Muir, it looks like our boy O.B. Nix is looking more like his old self. Just look at Karl Kopinski's artwork. This is some seriously scary-looking art.

Looking past flying and trample, it's pretty clear this version of O.B. is intended for us EDH players. Punishing players for library searching is something that is severely lacking in Commander outside of Psychogenic Probe, and I like that Ob Nixilis is a potential piece of removal that also forces removal because he gets bigger if you don't.

All that said, I still feel he's overcosted. It's clear this card wouldn't be fair at 3BB without an additional cost, but it still feels like a shaky investment, even when I have an intangible emotional investment in the Demon ex-Planeswalker as a character.

Why do all of our new characters have to have unbelievable fantasy names in this set?

I know I've been complaining a lot, but Yisan is a dumb name. So is Kurkesh, and so is Jalira, but Yisan is the straw. They all look and sound terrible, but Yisan is just- I don't know. They don't feel like names. It just looks like someone pulled out scrabble letters and strung a few together until it sounded like a car accident.

The actual design of this card isn't horrible, but surely underpowered. While I don't get how a Bard is also a Rogue that can summon creatures, like Kurkesh, I'm more intrigued than completely put off by the design.

Unlike Aether Vial, the Yes Man (this is his nickname, because I don't want to say his name. I know it's terrible, but this is improv) doesn't have access to all colors, so he's really on the bad of the eight ball when thinking of ways to double up his verse counters. I imagine he'll be part of a gimmicky squad or the General for some fun toolbox decks, but not much more than that, which is disappointing. I like to see bad cards become better, and I like to hold out for the hope that they can. But this is just not gonna work.

Our last creature is perhaps the most boring thing Wizards could've come up with. An Indestructible Sliver granting other Slivers Indestructible. I'd vomit if it didn't already look like I did.
Just look. ----------------------------------------------------->

Now I'm not a "Sliver Hater." They are a very powerful tribe in Magic, and I think it's possibly one of the most unique-to-Magic tribes in the card game, as they have an expansive presence throughout its history.

Mostly, I'm just bored with the way Wizards is attempting to revive the tribe and make it exciting. This is one of the easiest decks to put together across every format the game has to offer, and that's just horrible for a person like me who plays Commander, and values the artistic process of building a deck.

Since their revival in last year's Core Set, it seems that my distaste is only going to grow as they continue to give Slivers every ability imaginable, and I get it, but I'm not okay with it. I wish they had their own specific abilities, not just sharing common static, activated, and triggered abilities within themselves. It's not uncommon knowledge that Harmonic Sliver and Necrotic are two of the most popular, and it's not just because they are great at policing the board. They are representative and reminiscent of specific cards in the game, and their power is checked.

Sliver Hivelord basically gives this deck a cheaper Darksteel Forge, which is a very "win-more" card, I think, as far as the Sliver deck goes. While it's true most of these decks are aggressive, losing Slivers isn't really a problem because they have access to Living Death and Patriarch's Bidding.

Mostly, I think this was designed for some of the reasons I mentioned above, but also to help beat into the ground all these new rules changes they made about indestructible. Being a Core Set, it offers old players getting back into Magic and new players the chance to understand the game, and so here's the obligatory "garbage pop" card they make for these players, who, I'd guess, probably won't even like it.

Our last card is also tragically bad, possibly worse, and I'm genuinely disappointed about this.

Back in Innistrad, we heard the story and seen the $70 version of Liliana super-charged with the veil, and watched our formerly Green Hunter Garruk get infected with the Veil's curse.

Now that it's here, I'm angry about it. Not only does it make zero sense flavor-wise, but it's inclusion in this set is baffling.

I know Core Sets represent all the cards from pre-existing planes, but this was an integral part of a set- Why was it not included then, if the card was obviously already designed?

Furthermore, how is this a curse? Planeswalkers getting to activate their abilities again seem like a privilege to me. The only thing that's a curse is if you don't have planeswalkers.

And on top of all of this, why is it so expensive to play and cast? How does that make sense at all? In a world where we're talking about Rings of Brighthearth doing better work to copy a P-dubs abilities, or Proliferate cards being able to add the counters you need, I don't believe I need more evidence to demonstrate how sad and pathetic The Chain Veil really is. Truly a "Win-More" card, when you consider no player in any format is going to let you have more than one P-Dub out, unless they are already going to lose anyway.

Well, that wraps 'er up for today. Godspeed at your prereleases. Make good choices.
-UL

M15 Set Review: Threats Part Two

Hello and welcome back to The General Zone's set review for Magic M15. I am your guide, Grandpa Growth, and today we are getting back on the horse to finish up our look at the threat cards.

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.

Many cards have referenced Shandalar. There was even an old point and click style Magic game that took place on Shandalar. It is safe to say I have received enough disparate information about this place that I don't really know what it looks like. Is there ever going to be a block set there? Probably. Do I have any idea what this place looks like? No. There has been no presentation of a consistent thematic or flavor identity, just bits and pieces. This card makes me think that it is a place I am not excited to go. Mostly because it is horribly weak, not so much because of the lightning and such. Starfall just got printed in Journey into Nyx and EVERYONE hated it. It was nigh unplayable in draft. Why would anyone want a walking Starfall factory?

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

M15 Set Review: Threats Part One

Hello and welcome to The General Zone's set review for Magic 2015. I am Grandpa Growth and I will be taking you through the set, giving you my thoughts on the cards with a focus on Commander. If you have read any of our previous set reviews, you will know that we do things a little bit differently. Here are the rules:

1. I will not be reviewing every card. I will not discuss any reprints. Nor will I discuss any cards that I don't feel are relevant to Commander. It is safe to say that if it is bad, even by 'playable in Commander' standards, then you won't find it here.
2. The set review articles will be broken into different parts based on the roles that these cards play in a game: threats, answers, utility, and mana. Because of the unusual length of this article, the threats review will be broken into two parts. We will get to everything later in the week, so if you don't see a card here, check back for the subsequent parts. 
3. The new Legendary Creatures get their own review article, written by Uncle Landdrops. Which will be going up later on. Since these cards are so central to the Commander format, we want to give them their own article.

I am extremely excited for M15. The set appears to be juiced far beyond the power level of a typical core set. There are many interesting cycles and cool new design elements that give the set a very unique feel. There were also some controversial decisions made by R&D, so we have plenty to talk about. 

Today we are discussing threats. A threat is something that you use to win the game. This doesn't just mean attacking with Creatures. Planeswalkers and some other card types can very easily be threats. A good threat will kill your opponent quickly and generate value on the way. The best threats do those things, but also protect themselves. Let's dive right in and see what M15 has to offer.

I always feel a little bit strange when we see a planeswalker receive multiple different cards in the same year. Most people think that a new printing of a planeswalker is showing us where that character is at in their life right now. The strange thing is that, the timeline of Magic is not necessarily linear...and that can make things a bit confusing.

By conventional standards, this doesn't meet the requirements to be a 'good' planeswalker. It doesn't generate any permanent value with its +1 ability. It doesn't have an ability that interacts with the opponent's board. It can't really protect itself. It requires other permanents to be effective at all. The ultimate is far away and doesn't immediately win the game.

Having said all that, I am very interested in a planeswalker that plays well with other planeswalkers. Adding extra loyalty counters to Karn or Eslpeth Knight Errant can completely change the course of a game. Not a great planeswalker, not even a great iteration of Ajani, but it will generate some interest in Commander.


This effect is very powerful. Auratouched Mage sees some modest play in dedicated theme decks. The important thing to remember here is that those decks are very good. Zur the enchanter. Bruna, light of Alabaster. These are names that Commander players are familiar with. Is this card good enough to make it in those decks? I would guess no, simply because it is so expensive, but make no mistake. Tutoring, even with restrictions, is king in Commander.



This card seems powerful to me. I have played many games where things have come down to a top deck contest. Suddenly being able to take a few steps back from death's door will change the texture of a late game battle. The consideration that will govern this card's playability however, is not power but competition. And boy is there a  lot of it. At seven mana, you have a lot of options of very powerful effects. White is a very deep color. If this is the best seven drop you have, your deck is not very strong.

Also, I can conclusively demonstrate that if you burn a rose, that rose will not bloom again.



This is the first real hit of the set. This card is just insane. We discovered that Immortal Servitude basically always won the game when cast for any reasonable number. I fully expect this to be just as good. Only getting back small Creatures is surely a restriction, but you can build your deck with that consideration in mind. There are plenty of two drops that are both singularly powerful and worth recurring. Giving mono White decks access to this game-changing effect strengthens their position in the metagame. If you can find these for cheap, pick up a few. They will retain value.



Here we have our first look at the new mythic cycle of avatar Creatures. The spiritual successors of the Titan cycle from M11, these cards were meant to restrict the dominating power level of their predecessors by changing the free triggered abilities into activated abilities. They are also better 'ambassador cards' because they reference iconic Magic sets and locations, which helps build interest with newer players.

These cards are worse than the Titan cycle, that is for sure, but it doesn't change the fact that if you untap with them, you are most likely going to win. I think that these are a mechanical improvement because they don't give you anything for free and can be answered 1-for-1. That is a much safer design space in my mind. I predict they will not enjoy the dominance that the Titan's had in Standard. The removal is much better in the current environment and the ramp is worse.



I debated leaving this card out of the review. I have a very difficult time believing that this card will see any serious play in Commander. It is weak, slow, and vulnerable to exiling removal. It is a way for Blue to generate a token army, but that isn't much of a threat on its own. Blue doesn't have the support for weenie strategies that don't have tribal characteristics. Speaking of which, when was the last time you saw a merfolk deck in Commander, much less squids? Leave it at home boys and girls.



I don't typically pay much attention to the story that is presented within a Magic block. I don't read the books or the comics, although I do like to go back every once in a while and catch up on what I have missed. In the case of Dragon's Maze, I was real confused. I had no idea what was going on, truly. In fact, it wasn't until I saw this card that I really was able to look some things up and figure out what the heck the story was.

Mechanically, this is the worst Jace. That's pretty obvious. It has a strong ultimate that is achievable, but the rest of the card is pretty week. It has a high starting loyalty and a way to protect itself from opposing threats, but this card really just doesn't do anything relevant. Look at Jace TMS. That is a planeswalker. I have no idea what deck could make this card good.


I have an opinion about core sets: They are better when they include Birds of Paradise and Air Elemental. I am not going to bother explaining why. Rather, I am going to say that this set marks an exception.

I love David Sirlin. For those who don't know. He is an author, game designer, and former competitive gamer. Importantly, his writings helped to educate me about game design and theory. I am very excited that he got the opportunity to design a Magic card. It is my hope that through this contribution, he will show me something new that can change my perception of the game.

Mechanically, this is another in a long line of 'tricky' sphinxes that have made appearances in the Modern era of Magic and I tend not to play these cards because they are generally weak and gimmicky.  This has a power level on par with Sphinx Ambassador, but is substantially less expensive. That should indicate that it will see some play in Commander decks, particularly while the set is still new and in print.



Sakashima the Imposter is a true powerhouse. It is incredibly underplayed in Commander due in large part to the fact that people think of it as being 'lame' or 'unoriginal' when utilized as a general. I don't necessarily agree or disagree with that stance, but I do believe that is a poor reason to refuse to play certain cards. This effect is powerful. It is easy to use. It scales with the game state. Don't be the last person to find out how strong this card is.





The Soul of Ravnica has my pick to the be strongest of the cycle, with the possible exception of Soul of Innistrad. It is unclear what impact any of these cards will have on Standard, but you can expect to see plenty of them in Commander, even if they aren't the most competitive cards. This is almost guaranteed to draw you several cards. I don't think you would put it in your deck if you couldn't draw three or more on the regular.

I want to point out a peculiarity of the new font that is used in the card titles. It is easy to see that the font in the text box is similar, but distinct from the one used in the title bar. In that font, certain letters look strange. The highly stylized K, R, Q, etc. are attractive to the eye, but they overlap on to the space of the next character. I have never before seen a type set that had this feature. Prior to digital printing it was impossible to achieve this effect consistently and it intrigues me that they chose to change the typeface that they used....but I digress.


This card just seems rude. And I like it. Despite the 'punisher' mechanic being an obvious drawback, all the options are still somewhat reasonable. It is unlikely that an opponent can win the game if they had to endure this for several turns in a row. At converted mana cost 4-6, that is what I am looking for. It take over the game given time and protection. At converted mana cost 6+ it needs to win much faster or have reliable protection in order to be realistic.




For whatever reason, Slivers are making a return in M15, but only as a token representation, not the full on theme. I don't know why and I am not going to speculate. I just want to say that Hellrider is one of the best finishers for an aggressive strategy ever printed. It provides a lot of hasty damage that is unblockable. This very much achieves the same goal. In a linear, aggressive, tribal strategy, this is as good or better than Hellrider. That makes this card very scary to me. I am glad this isn't common. It would imbalance Pauper.


The final card for today is Soul of Innistrad. Just like Grave Titan it has Deathtouch. Sweet. Unlike Grave Titan, is doesn't immediately create a huge amount of power spread across multiple bodies that spirals out of control very quickly.

This provides the inevitability of card advantage, just like all of its brothers, but recurring your most powerful threats is better than getting random cards or beast tokens. The activation cost on this is also pretty reasonable for its effect, which is always a must. Overall, this card is decent and will see some play, but is not impressive. Commander already has a half dozen cards at this price point which are better for this purpose. Speaking of price point, if you are new to the format and can't source cards like Ink-eyes or Geth, this could be a decent alternative.


That's all for today. As always leave your feedback in the comments. Let us know what you think of the review and what cards you are looking forward to. Next time, we will finish reviewing the threats and move on to the other parts of the review later in the week.

-GG

In General: Design by Request

Welcome to In General, the column where we discuss just about anything relating to the game of Magic. A couple of weeks ago I wrote about designing your own cards to fill specific holes in your Cube designs. The example I used in that article was a Black Disenchant. This was meant mostly as a challenge for players to think outside the box, consider design principles objectively, and take some initiative in crafting great experiences for your cube.

I want to make the point that I don't necessarily condone going off the rails and just making your own cards all willy-nilly. You might as well invent your own game at that rate. But at the same time, I think of all the great things that the community has contributed to the game: Invitational cards, You Make the Card promotions, the new outsider designs in M15. New formats like Cube, Winston draft, and Commander - some of my favorite things about Magic didn't come from Wizards at all. From that perspective, there is definitely room to create new experiences, especially in a format as unique and personal as Cube.

Since writing that previous article, The Disillusion Problem, I have been asked the same question many times in my personal life. My friends and readers all wanted to know some variation of the same thing: "What 'fake' cards do you think need to be a part of your Cube?"

That is a tough question to answer because in theory, all possibilities are correct, and those possibilities are infinite, it is just a question of finding the correct place to apply your design. Once you have looked thoroughly at your format and decided conclusively that something is missing, it should be obvious what effect you need to fill that hole.

What I just said requires one to think about a specific context. Which would inherently preclude me from thinking about any of these cards in a vacuum. All design is bad in a vacuum. Context provides the constraints that allow for the possibility of good design. Without that these are just some random cards that don't exist. Look at this meaningless collection of meaningless things!

I was always enamored with the card Fluctuator. Not because it was particularly good, but because it didn't do what I thought it should do. Mental Discipline was a Blue card in the same block and this always struck me as odd. Cycling is in every color. Why then, is the ability to cycle any card in your hand Blue? For mechanical reasons, I always thought this should be colorless. For flavor reasons, I thought it should be a machine, and thus an Artifact, instead of an Enchantment. The name I wanted to use however, was taken, so I had to simply reference it.


Duress has been printed a dozen or so times. There have been approximately a hundred variants of it. Why then, has there never been a spellshaper that produces the Duress effect? There are nearly a hundred spellshapers that create functional copies of all sorts of cards. I find it strange and dissatisfying that this isn't a real thing.

Also, Glengarry Glen Ross is a sweet movie.


I alluded to this design gap in my previous article. I see the formation of a super-cycle that gives each color access to its own version of this effect at the same converted mana cost, all at instant-speed. I don't see why not.


Brian David-Marshall once wrote an article that simultaneously lamented the fact that this card does not exist and predicted that it would never see print in the future. I can agree with his sentiments on both accounts. Many would find this card disturbing given the current direction that Wizards is taking Magic in. Remember though, in the early years of the game, there was no Negate, there was only Remove Soul. It was that way for many, many years. During those times it would have been equally sacrilegious to print Spell Pierce.


As you can see, many of these card ideas harken back to an earlier point in the game's history. It would be impossible to print this in modern Magic, but in the early days, things like this were quite common. It never sat right with me that only Blue and Red got elemental blasts. Particularly when Black and White are the colors where players would be most familiar with this archetypal hero/villain dichotomy.

It would be equally awkward to print 'WEB' and 'BEB', and then leave only Green out. It would be most awkward however, to give Green a card that counters spells and destroys permanents. Two things that, at the time, were completely outside of Green's color pie.

It is clear in modern design that this would be a Green card. Keep in mind though, that during the early years of the game Red blew up the lands, Red punished playing nonbasics, Red rewarded you for playing Creatures. It took years of design work to change peoples minds on this issue. When I first saw Silence in Mirrodin era standard, I was curious about what it would look like in other colors and, at that time, this iteration could very easily have been Red. Perhaps, a symmetrical effect like: This turn, players may not cast noncreature spells.'




There was a large theme in Magic for about the first five or so years that there were ways to change things about cards. Spells like Deathlace or Whim of Volrath were quite common. This is a new twist on an old idea. One that has fallen far out of favor in design because of its complexity and lack of intuitive conveyance. The current game though, would make this a very interesting card, given the new card types that have been created and the new interactions you can create with them.

Well there you go. I showed you some more fake cards. I think that is what you guys really wanted all along. There is no real way to establish that these are good or bad designs. Similarly I can't advocate including them in any design file because every format is different. Every designer has different goals. Every set has different needs. I cannot simply say, these should be in Cubes, because that statement is inherently flawed.

I hope you have been enjoying M15 spoilers. You can look forward to full coverage including set reviews and in-depth card analysis of all the Legendary Creatures in the set coming up in the next few weeks, so stay tuned to the blog.

-GG

Ill-Gotten Games: VMA Draft #1

Hey Zoners! Sorry to keep you guys hanging. Last week, I had some technical difficulties. The audio in my first VMA draft was all janky jank, so I obviously couldn't post that. Unfortunately, by the time I found this out it was too late to record another one and get it put up in time for Thursday's post. We are back this week though and we have plenty more video fun!

Watch in awe and dismay as I stumble my way through a Vintage Masters draft. Will I ever learn to draft this format? Probably not. BUT I am still going to play the bricks off of it.