All of these modes are way below rate, and the most common modes (3 mana over 2 turns for a 2/2 with surveil 1 or a 3 mana over 2 turns for draw 1 surveil 1) are neither modes I'd ever want to have. Sure, you get to bin a non-creature and hope to hit something you can turn face up with the cloak, but that's basically draw a card with extra steps (and you miss al etb's). The goad mode just seems so situational too. I think this is an easy pass.
Incredibly efficient beater (elf/bird into this into attack for 4 is a pretty strong open), but I find most simic decks I and my players draft aren't beatdown.
Still, a lot of Gxx decks would love this. Will probably test....
In that scenario, you can actually swing for 8, by bringing the mana dork along for the ride and making it a 4/4 as well. It's not even that far into Magical Christmasland, since you just need this guy and any dork.
Lol I knew it was 8, the point I was making (in my head) was how powerful it was to be attacking for 8 on turn 3, and my brain just typed 4. Good times.
Incredibly efficient beater (elf/bird into this into attack for 8 is a pretty strong open), but I find most simic decks I and my players draft aren't beatdown.
Still, a lot of Gxx decks would love this. Will probably test....
Think this is great in cards that support the monolith combo (as this card at least does something else on its own) and in cubes with a heavy artifact theme, but I dunno if it's worth it in a normal cube, even one that supports an artifact deck.
I think it's basically a nonbo with equipment as it only impacts jitte and the swords. In my cube all it interacts with in an even semi-meaningful way is walking ballista, golos (barely), retrofitter foundry, grim monolith (again basically barely) and Hedron archive (guess what, barely). So I'd be running this essentially for the clue payoff, which is nice, but I don't think that's enough on its own to warrant a spot, even if you occasionally get to spike an academy foundry hand.
I don't run Oko because I think it's unfun in an uninteresting way, so I'm still running UG Nissa (who I think is underrated). This might be testable over that....
I'm torn on this. The damage ceiling is a lot lower than hellrider, but it's obviously substantially better in a clogged board and it replaces itself unless your opponent kills it before your next turn.
Of course, if you get 2 attacks in with hellrider they are probably dead anyway. And I really don't wanna cut Hazoret or Kia and Piran. So many choices!
This is interesting. I think I would slot it as a mono-R card rather than a guild card, and while red 3's are stacked, this is powerful in aggro decks in a different way.
I don't love that it's pretty bad on curve though. Think I will test, but not expect that it will stay in.
I agree. Sure, casting experiment one on t1 on the play felt great, but I generally found that evolve stuff was way more awkward to draw out of sequence than other early creatures and even when you did curve you'd often get hands with a lot of 2/2's and the like and you still would only get 1 counter (or none, if it was a 2/2 creature with evolve).
I think this card is a good design, but I suspect it will not be strong enough to crack into powerful lists. It's WAY worse than tracker IMO, and I agree I'd rather have the map token guy that's always a 3/4 and always gets you at least 1 map token.
I think its peak is top 5-6 depending on the guild. Once you go beyond fetch / dual / shock / triome, anything goes really. Being fetchable really helps mitigiate the ETB tapped clause. I can see this being an attractive holdover for color combinations that either don't have a great manland and / or don't have a Horizon Canopy (hopefully MH3 fixes that this year). I'm thinking about testing a handful of these at 540. Extra duals are always good for color fixing / domain support, and this adds card filtering / graveyard fuel to boot.
Yeah I'm counting the Triomes in my count of cycles even though it's not a guild cycle just because it's also a cycle of 10 for counting land additions in cube. Since I'm only running 4 lands per guild + the triomes, though, there's no way this gets in for me at least.
Surveil 1, while an upgrade over scry, is not enough of an upgrade to play lands that have to CIPT. These are not THAT much better than the temples as the number of times you actually get a benefit from being able to bin the top card of your library blind is very small, and the number of times you'll be able to set up the top of your library then play one of these is also tiny.
Edit - I missed that these were fetchable. These are substantially better than the temples, but still don't crack the top 6 of land cycles imo
With the triomes very clearly sitting in the top 4 of land cycles with the fetches, duals, and shocks, 2 full cycles of creature lands, and various ETB untapped options now, I don't even know how many cycles of lands I'd need to be running to consider these. 8?
That being said, these are nice lands to see and are probably great for slower environments and, yes, are strictly better than that temples. I just don't think they're getting in on power level in a normal cube.
One of the best white one-drops ever made. I don't think this is a card I need a redundant effect for (I tend to like limiting functional copies to cards that are needed to make an archetype work - like ravages and Armageddon, wildfire and....whatever the other one was back when I ran the wildfire package, or all the various reanimation spells), but on power level you can certainly justify running 2.
Whoa. Amazing card. Might be the one that makes me finally cut Shriekmaw.
hmm, idk about that Red, my knee jerk reaction, says thats the wrong cut...
I think Shriekmaw is really starting to show its age. Sorcery speed terror is just bad nowadays, and the non-black, non-artifact restriction comes up a lot in my experience. I think it's probably a reasonable cut.
Attacking with 3 creatures is actually a pretty steep ask IMO, and I don't love 6-drops that need other cards to be good. Seems like an easy pass to me.
Lol I knew it was 8, the point I was making (in my head) was how powerful it was to be attacking for 8 on turn 3, and my brain just typed 4. Good times.
Still, a lot of Gxx decks would love this. Will probably test....
I think it's basically a nonbo with equipment as it only impacts jitte and the swords. In my cube all it interacts with in an even semi-meaningful way is walking ballista, golos (barely), retrofitter foundry, grim monolith (again basically barely) and Hedron archive (guess what, barely). So I'd be running this essentially for the clue payoff, which is nice, but I don't think that's enough on its own to warrant a spot, even if you occasionally get to spike an academy foundry hand.
Of course, if you get 2 attacks in with hellrider they are probably dead anyway. And I really don't wanna cut Hazoret or Kia and Piran. So many choices!
I don't love that it's pretty bad on curve though. Think I will test, but not expect that it will stay in.
I agree. Sure, casting experiment one on t1 on the play felt great, but I generally found that evolve stuff was way more awkward to draw out of sequence than other early creatures and even when you did curve you'd often get hands with a lot of 2/2's and the like and you still would only get 1 counter (or none, if it was a 2/2 creature with evolve).
I think this card is a good design, but I suspect it will not be strong enough to crack into powerful lists. It's WAY worse than tracker IMO, and I agree I'd rather have the map token guy that's always a 3/4 and always gets you at least 1 map token.
Yeah I'm counting the Triomes in my count of cycles even though it's not a guild cycle just because it's also a cycle of 10 for counting land additions in cube. Since I'm only running 4 lands per guild + the triomes, though, there's no way this gets in for me at least.
Agree. I don't think I want to take up a guild slot with "mana leak with an occasional upside."
Edit - I missed that these were fetchable. These are substantially better than the temples, but still don't crack the top 6 of land cycles imo
With the triomes very clearly sitting in the top 4 of land cycles with the fetches, duals, and shocks, 2 full cycles of creature lands, and various ETB untapped options now, I don't even know how many cycles of lands I'd need to be running to consider these. 8?
That being said, these are nice lands to see and are probably great for slower environments and, yes, are strictly better than that temples. I just don't think they're getting in on power level in a normal cube.
I think Shriekmaw is really starting to show its age. Sorcery speed terror is just bad nowadays, and the non-black, non-artifact restriction comes up a lot in my experience. I think it's probably a reasonable cut.