MTG Salvation

I feel like Bishop's Soldier may turn out to be an all star in limited because its a 2/2 bear that can deliver a 4 point life swing every time it connects, but like everything it really depends on how the meta plays and how often players can find a way to give it evasion. Creatures with lifelink are almost always really good in limited environments so long as they are cheap to cast and have a power greater than one.

Quote from Raptorchan »

Trespassing Souleater + Axis. Pay all but 2 life, change life totals, pay 2 life, swing for 2. GG.

There's no need to pay 2 life again after the switch as long as you wait until Aixis of Mortality's trigger is on the stack before going down to two life.

Another "target player loses the game" card for Selenia, Dark Angel EDH decks to play around with, so long that deck can also find a Phyrexian Unlife or Platinum Angel to keep them from losing while they are at 0 life with the upkeep trigger on the stack. Angel's Grace works as well.

It might even be worth calling around to local thrift stores like Goodwill and Salvation Army since they also occasionally get collections donated to them. At my local Goodwill I saw that they had plastic bags behind the counter full of a random assortment of cards, each one easily had 200 to 300 cards in them and they were marked at $3.99. I got one on a whim and ended up with a lightly played Karn Liberated, an Eidolon of the great Revel, Darksteel Forge, Unwinding Clock, and a number of $1 uncommons like Wall of Omens and Genesis Chamber.

I am almost tempted to go back and see if they have any more packs left behind the counter.

Quote from KingChewie »

I would play it in EDH with a deck full of Circle of flame, Raking canopy, Lightmine field and the like.

Might as well throw in Powerstone Minefield & Master Warcraft, then add Humility and Aurification. If you're in black throw in No Mercy & Death Pits of Rath. Blue can add Dissipation Field, Polymorphist's Jest, perhaps even Mirrorweave and Dovescape.

Then if you are in the mood for some coin flipping fun, you could always try Impulsive Maneuvers and Krark's Thumb.

It goes really well in RG ramp, if there is such an archetype after rotation. Unless thier opponent's creatures have evasion this will mean that oppoent will lose a creature on their combat phase, a RG deck will almost certainly have bigger creatures on the battlefield and therefore will rarely trade when blocking.

I like Mind Syphon and it feels fairly balanced in that it is essentially scalable draw that gets better the more opponents you have. I don't see the mill aspect of the card being a win condition in most games since it's far too slow for that, but it is flavorfully great. I don't really have much else to say, it's pretty perfect as it is.

Static Bargain 2RB
Sorcery
Add R or B to your mana pool. Until the beginning of another player's upkeep you cannot win the game, your opponents cannot lose the game and their life totals cannot change.
Storm (When you cast this spell, copy of it for each other spell that was cast before it this turn)

(I tried to balance this, but it's probably still broken. I was wondering how a ritual spell with storm could be worded so that it wouldn't allow a player to combo out with it. I made it look at "another player's upkeep" to prevent extra turn shenanigans)

Quote from FirstSwordOfBant »

Quote from DarklingScribe »

[...] and the flavor text of Opt actually says that there is a pirate captain named Storm in Ixalan.

[...]

Perhaps a more likely scenario is that they'll print a legendary creature called "Captain Storm" that has a something like a 1RU,t: ability that copies target spell x number of times, where x is equal to the number of spells cast this turn.

Besides the already stated fact that we won't see storm back in standard anytime soon, the creature you are speculating about is already known: Captain Lannery Storm

Thanks for posting this, I've been following the spoilers off and on for the past few weeks and this one slipped past me.

In a block that is all about hints and making players find geocaches for spoilers, I was wondering if the cards spoiled for Ixalan might be hinting at the return of the storm mechanic in Rivals of Ixalan. Specifically I feel that Primal Amulet looks like a storm enabler and the flavor text of Opt actually says that there is a pirate captain named Storm in Ixalan.

I fully admit that this isn't really much to go on which is why I'm posting this in baseless speculation. The argument against these "hints" is easy to make. I could have just as easily said during Erdrich Moon spoilers that Harness the Storm hinted at the mechanic's return, but that amounted to nothing more than a tease.

Perhaps a more likely scenario is that they'll print a legendary creature called "Captain Storm" that has a something like a 1RU,t: ability that copies target spell x number of times, where x is equal to the number of spells cast this turn.

However if Storm does return, I do think that it most likely will be in used on cards like Reaping the Graves, Wing Shards and Temporal Fissure. In that the cards with Storm cannot be used to win the game on the spot, but instead are support cards (Though I'd giggle like a maniac if Brain Freeze comes back).

I can't find anything in the article about the platforms Arena will be available on besides PCs.

Quote from 5colors »

Quote from theMarc »

Except WotC is not the ones in charge of Commander rules or its banlist. It's a third party group of fans, because EDH is a player-created format. So WotC adding legendary status to planeswalkers will do jack all to EDH deck construction rules if the Commander rules committee doesn't want it to.

^^^This. WOTC even gets input on their designs by the people who run EDH (who also WOTC their blessing to make the cycle of Commanders planeswalkers), so anything that would hugely impact the format gets run by them first.

Thanks for pointing this out, It was never clear to me on who actually was in charge of the rules for the format. I knew it was a player-created format, but had assumed WOTC took over the running of the rules and the format's banned list when they releases their first products dedicated to players that played commander.

Quote from GildanBladeborn »

I am continually baffled by all the people online mistakenly concluding that this rule change would even have any bearing on the rules of EDH, what is it you all (think) you see that leads you to that erroneous conclusion? Planeswalkers not being legendary wasn't why they couldn't be your commander before, it's because they weren't legendary creatures. They still aren't, and if such a rules change was in the works, it wouldn't (and this is the key here) require them to be legendary - this could only be a "first step" towards making them valid commanders if you are seriously suggesting WotC is later going to make all planeswalkers creatures as well. Which is utterly ridiculous.

I realized as I was typing this that there is an even stupider way this could be a "first step", because you could be suggesting there will be a future rules change to allow any legendary permanent to be your commander, which makes more sense (in that it could be at all related to this rules change, instead of utterly unrelated, it doesn't actually make any sense at all because that would be stupid), but I seriously doubt that was your reasoning.

I really just want to know why people keep thinking this.

I know a commander can only be a legendary creature and I wasn't implying that all Planeswalkers can now be commanders with this rules change. What I was saying is that if WOTC was planning in the future to change the rules of commander to allow all Planeswalkers to be commanders, then making Planeswalkers legendary would likely be one of the changes that they'd make.

The fact that WOTC has now issued errata that makes all planeswalkers legendary makes me feel that the likelihood has increased we'll see a future commander rules change which allows players to make their commander legendary planeswalkers as well as Legendary creatures (or possibly just expand it to legendary permanents, since I know that there are quite a few people who'd like to make an Elbrus, the Binding Blade deck).

Quote from silentstormraider »

Quote from Azuretide »

i really want wizards to rule on if all planeswalkers can be commanders. if so i can finally pilot my blink deck with venser.

Currently there is no need to make a ruling on it. As the current rules are pretty clear and state that only Legendary CREATURES can be Commanders. Well that are the five mono-coloured Planeswalker from Commander 2014.
This is why other Legendary permanents, such as Elbrus, the Binding Blade, can't be Commanders, unless your local group wants to make it a house rule.

I wouldn't be surprised if this planeswalker rules change is just WOTC taking the first step toward a future rules change in commander that broadens the definition of what a commander can be. I'm sure that they're going to roll out the idea slowly if they do plan to make this change and they probably have several employees theory building commander decks with planeswalkers as the commanders to try to find the truly broken planeswalker commanders so that if/when they roll out this rules change, they can roll it out with a banned list*.

*(If all planeswalkers were allowed to be commanders then I think they might end up banning Doubling Season. After that I think they'd ban a select few planswalkers from being a commander. I think Jace, the Mind Sculpter would never be allowed as a commander just because of its reputation. Sorin Markov might get nixed since Sorin's -3 and his mindslaver ultimate might just be too powerful to allow players to recast him over and over since black has amazing ramp in commander with Cabal Coffers and a ton of cheap, unconditional tutors. Then there are cards with "unfun" utltimates like Jace, Unraveler of Secrets and Narset Transcendent which also could get the ax. The only other planeswalker that looks like it could be broken to have in the command zone is Tezzeret the Seeker, but he is borderline and it really depends on how many potential combos his -x ability enables.)

I like that the abilities are very flavorful and the creature gives blue a good tempo play both as a blocker and as an attacker.

Is "slay" a new term you are trying to introduce to reduce the amount of space on the rules text of creatures? I feel the word slay could work well since it's meaning clearly conveys "a creature dealing lethal damage to another creature, but the past tense "slew" feels a little awkward here even though it is grammatically correct. However it's fine here as is because I can't think of a better way to phrase it that doesn't add a lot of extra text.


This next card is an attempt to find a way to make "legendary spells", powerful spells that have a downside that discourages players from playing with more than two copies in a deck. I recognize that the card may still be too powerful regardless, I'm more focused on seeing if this is a mechanic that could work.

Done in One W
Instant (R)
One of a Kind (this card cannot be cast if it shares a name with a card in your graveyard)
Exile target creature an opponent controls, that creature's controller may untap up to X number of permanents, where X is equal to that creature's converted mana cost.

I like the design of fleet swallower. It's Traumatize effect works really well on a 4/6 except this time it can kill a player outright through chump blockers because it mills half rounding up, instead of rounding down.

The part that I feel may be overpowered is that its ability allows its controller to target themselves, this might have huge reanimator potential for standard and works well with aftermath, embalm, eternalize as well as a number of other cards like Apocalypse Demon and Scrapheap Scrounger.