MTG Salvation

While I agree that the price of this product is on the absurd end, there was an article on MTGGoldfish about how the set is for everyone, regardless of whether you buy a box or not, that raises some good points.
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/double-masters-is-for-you-whether-you-buy-a-box-or-not

I wonder if we will see a new cycle of the main 5 gods at Mythic and then a devotion-based Nyxborn demigod champion at uncommon. The Dreakhahck key art leads me to think so

It does not work quite like that. The Gather example is correct because you must first assign up to lethal damage to the blocking creature (2) before any damage from trample can be assigned to the defending player (3). Once the damage is being dealt then it gets increased by two. In your example the 2/2 would first have to assign 2 damage to the defending 1/3. Once damage has been assigned, Torban increases that damage dealt by 2, making your 2/2 deal 4 damage. I believe there was a question like this in the rules forum when Torban was revealed or shortly there after.

Quote from 5colors »

Quote from Lectrys »

(Disclaimer: I'm Chinese-Canadian.)

Interesting angle on the ethnicity Oko is closest to facially: East Asiatic (more Chinese or Japanese). I can even imagine him coming from an ancient China/Japan-influenced society that values harmony over individuality. They've pulled off the Yosei angle well enough, IMO.

...Darn, here was me guessing that Oko was from Eldraine, and now I'm probably wrong.

The interview suggests hes not from Eldraine.

I don't think he's black. He not looking for power or acting out self interest, his main goals seems very Xenagos to "liberate" and "reveal" the truth of tyrants and overall help people.

EDIT: He could also be three color to help with the walkers in standard, makes him harder to play and thus is one less walker to worry about in most decks. They said this why they did Tamiyo three colors during SoI since Jace, Kiora and Dovin where all in back to back sets.

I find him to be very similar to Vraska backstory wise (at least given what we have been given). He was tortured and this torture caused him to spark and wants to get back at those who tortured him. He's going about it by using his shapeshifting abilities to cause distress, his pranks are on the cruel side (impersonating a mother's child so she think's he's home safe from a conflict, ruining a wedding day, upstaging someone out of spite). To me these seem more like black-aligned versions of pranks instead of the more chaotic versions you see in red. I'm hoping for a three color walker (if so, then very likely Sultai as we have a Temur one already) but very likely two.

Quote from Ryperior74 »

Quote from TearingEons »

First, he's hot, like hotter than Yawgmoth hot. I would never cheat on Yawgmoth, but...
Second, it's a surprise that he's of regular height and fairly humanoid. When they said fae walker, I half expected a tiny figure, but he could always shapeshift from one size to the next.
Third, I think he's going to be our first Sultai walker. The colors depicted on his art show this and his personality I can see as more of a Sultai bent due to the selfishness in there than Temur.
All in all, I like him and cannot wait to see what his card does and how he plays into the larger story.

Your making the same mistake with Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas your judging by the art and colors in it

We thought this was grixis but dimir was all

How is making a guess based on artwork a mistake? Yes, there are cases where an additional color is used to help highlight the art (see Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas), however more often than not wizards deliberately puts color into planeswalker art based on the walker's color identity. It's how people guessed Ajani would be GW in Journey to Nyx (due to the green on his outfit) even though he had never had green in his color identity before. Further more, this is speculation, which is primarily make guesses based on information given. We've been given art and a little information on Oko's personality. From these, people are guessing at the Oko's color identity.

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Third, I think he's going to be our first Sultai walker. The colors depicted on his art show this and his personality I can see as more of a Sultai bent due to the selfishness in there than Temur.

But green-blue-red are Temur colors... Maybe we see different colors in that art.

I think his irreverence to authority is a strong red streak as well. He doesn't seem intentionally cruel, just self-important like Niv-Mizzet. Having a black color alignment in a Faerie planeswlker certainly would be nice for the Lorwyn-Fae connection, but the character as presented screams red unsteadiness and impulsiveness from the strong emotional bend on the trust issues to the running from consequences.

I feel Sultai as well. To me, the third vine from his hand looks purple in color, as opposed to red. Purple has be been used to show black-aligned magic. Reading the article about Oko shows that he really could be either Sultai or Temur. with that said, since three color walkers tend to be avoided, Oko will likely end up as Simic. We know Rowan will red, Will likely will be blue. They could make Oko green (even though it would not really fit) as it would prevent doubling up on a walker's color, or Golgari (same idea).

Quote from Carthage »

I do welcome the ability to answer other permanent types in the colors that can't, that's an outdated color pie ideal that makes the game worse.

I just wish they would add it for red, the color they seem to hate the most.

haphazard bombardment remains one of the worst designs they've ever printed, they went out of their way to NOT give red a flavorful way to destroy enchantments.

They did give it to red first, through last year's Enchanter's Bane

Quote from leslak »

Quote from BB84Prez »

This may have been answered, but is MTGsalvation going to be doing spoiler season for ELD? People are still active here, yet all the articles on the main page say the site is taken over by another company. Is it business as usual for us? MTGnexus is essentially the same just not as active right now.

MTGsalvation is safe for now. Mods have alread started MTGnexus tho, but MTGsalvation is not gonna go down for now, covering eldraine release most probably.

I'm sure reveals will be covered here. If no one else starts the standard Name and Number crunch for Throne (or Commander 2019 for that matter) on here I will take it on. Monitoring the same thread on two sites isn't that difficult.

But will it be better than the WAR book?

I agree with the High Fantasy/Arthurian inspired plane, likely drawing heavily on the Fae for inspiration. Will be interesting to see who’s home plane this is (new or not) and to see what new walker(s) we get

Well, we've seen all 4 decks now and I think I can safely say no, these are NOT at all a bust. Are there things I'd like to see improved with these? Assuredly as well as a few things I don't understand. Big one is the lack of Smoldering Marsh in the Madness deck when all the others got a BFZ land. But I think they've addressed pretty much every criticism I saw from last year.

1. The decks didn't feel like the themes promised.
That's definitely not the case this time. The decks all feel like they leaned heavily into their themes. Each of the decks has about 20+ cards actually devoted to the theme. And not tangentially like last year's but directly referencing or interacting with what the average player thinks of when they think of the theme. The Morph deck especially looks alot like what you'd expect to see in a Morph deck. In fact, minus some of the much older cards I see a lot of overlap between the morph decks for Animar on EDHrec and the Morph Precon.

2. Low value.
There were more reprints in these than last years and the reprints actually look interesting. In multiple cases there are things here I don't have in my collection and I've got a pretty nice one at this point. People need to examine the reprints that were in the original decks at the time the decks were released, not now after EDH has exploded the way it has. As another post noted, stuff like Aura Shards were 2ish dollar cards at that time. Again, as the Command Zone noted you're generally getting 70+ bucks just in reprints. Nevermind that K'rrick, Son of Yawgmoth is a 30 dollar card right now by itself. Volrath, Shapestealer is 15, Elsha of the Infinite is 20. Now, those will inevitably drop when this gets out there but these precons also always rise back up in price after about a year.

3. Power of the Decks.
Precons have never been especially powerful. We won't know how these do until we get the chance to play with them but some of the new cards alone look powerful and interesting and I think, not only will these be fun to play against each other, but it might be more feasible to sneak wins in and have game at medium power level tables than people think. Nevermind that as enfranchised players, we should be doing a better job of scaling our decks to the power level to allow a newer player to have a good time anyway. I've seen lots of spurious claims here about new players getting steamrolled against actually tuned decks but this seems to me to be an example of experienced players needing to learn to be better stewards of the game than a problem with the decks Wizards puts out.

4. Interesting commanders to build around and cards for old characters.
We got Volrath, Gerard, Marisi, Chainer, Tangarth, a reference to Yawgmoth and Greven. In addition to a new Morph commander, a new Populate/token Commander, a legendary wall commander, a monk that screams "break me," and has fantastic art, an absurd madness enabler.

Now, I'm still not sure this is a product for me personally, but it's also the first year in a long time I'm not sure I want just one of these which is what I usually do (just buy one) and have no idea if I'll actually get the decks or just buy singles. The fact it's making someone like me who was probably going to just ignore this when he heard the themes rethink that stance says something positive about the product to me at least.

I'm gonna get booed and naysayed but I stand by the fact that while this could certainly be better, I do not think it is, in any way, shape or form, a bust.

What’s with people wanting expensive reprints in precons? I buy these to get new cards and ready-to-play decks in case I have new players to teach. So far the decks have served such purposes.

Seriously, there are times I don't know what would happen if Magic players were given nothing to whine about. Magic is releasing ludicrous amount of products in a year. Don't like these? Wait a few months and see what the Brawl decks look like and if there's anything you want out of those. At this point, when there's a product I don't really want I'm almost grateful because it means it's one less thing I have to worry about where my Magic budget is concerned.


The level of entitlement from some folks is outrageous.

Quote from Erza,Tower HUnter »

I had the quest to "Play 20 Black spells". So I put in 20 Swamp and all the 1 cmc black creatures and cards like Disfigure, Bone Splinters etc I could find. NO RARES. No dual lands. I start and I ***** you not:

1st matchup: Temur Elementals
2nd Matchup: RDW
3rd Match: Espers.
Last match (needed 1 more black spell): RDW

Seems legit..lol

So you built a deck that was not designed to win and are complaining because the game didn't match you up against the NO other players who were trying to play a game with sub-precon level decks?

The game can only match up people who are actively looking for a game. It can't create opponents playing badly built common only decks for you.

Quote from redcar »

Sadly, it seems Phyrexians on Ixalan isn't currently a thing: https://twitter.com/alisonthewizard/status/1134491192668766210

This doesn't mean the dream of Mecha-T-Rexes terrorizing the Ixalan countryside is dead though, just that they won't have infect

Well this is just bad naming. Ichor is almost always used to refer to Phyrexian Oil in Magic and thst flavor text sounds ominous. Is ichor even used irl to refer to regualr oil?

Quote from Ebline »

Alas, poor Ixalan.

Wait a second... does it mean what i think it does mean? Phyrexia on ixalan?

Alas, poor Ixalan.

Quote from Mix Master Mikaeus »

Quote from The Fluff »

The card makes me remember this song..

Go The Distance

I guess Gids finally found where he belongs.

We got them all now. This was a fun crunch and I hope everyone enjoys this set as much as I will! As a commander player, I am looking forward to using this set with domanaria! The cards look so awesome!