Yet another tool to keep Control under Aggro's filthy heel. Unlike Flashback, Retrace doesn't remove the card from its owner's graveyard. Basically, once you play a Retrace card you turn all your extra lands into additional copies of the damn thing.
Raven's Crime by itself is annoying almost beyond measure in the late-game. If they make the mistake of printing either Force Spike or a burn spell with Retrace, they'll basically kill Control as we know it.
Control is all about withstanding the early game onslaught and attaining a position of incremental resource advantage. Given the god-awful quality of draw spells in Standard, resource advantage is incredibly dependent on your opponents screwing themselves by randomly drawing lands late. While
I'll be the first one to agree this is horribly unfun to lose randomly by luck, and Retrace is a neat idea to avoid mana-flood, it needs to be compensated with a batch of powerful control effects that you can actually maindeck: counters that remove cards from the game, efficient card draw, etc.
As for Extended, I can't even start to think on just how broken this is if printed on the wrong card (and a few of the spoiled ones are borderline already). Life From the Loam basically turns into the best conditional draw/tutor spell ever... on green! Tarmogoyf gets bigger at no strategic cost (never a good thing), and graveyard hate becomes prevailing in every sideboard and most maindecks...
Way to go, WoTC... I'll give you one point for effort, though: you ARE making this game goddamn easy for Eugene D. Noob who just bought a precon - sorry - Intro Pack... Just try not to bury Control deeper than it already is in the process, thank you.
For me, it's no longer a matter of quitting Magic or not; it's a matter of whether it is worthwhile to spend a ridiculous amount of money to play a game I no longer like, when I could be buying a 120 GB PS3 with a ton of games...
I'll leave you to do the math.
Retrace looks good. I will grant you that. But the thing is, like you said, unless they do something stupid and print something along the lines of a burn spell, then it probably won't be broken in standard. If they print a cheap disruption spell or a cheap bounce spell, I would be willing to argue that that would help control. Aggro won't be running a bunch of excess lands that they can just discard to play an old spell unless the spell is just that damn good. Sure, it gives aggro some reach late game by allowing them to turn that one land they might have drawn into a spell, but usually control, by that point, can deal with it. While this doesn't offer card advantage to control, it offers them card quality, which can be just as good.
As far as extended goes, yeah, retrace might do some terrifying things with Life from the Loam.
As for the making things easier for new players, I would disagree. Just because aggro can be more mindless at times than control doesn't mean that it is easier. Also, I have a feeling the intro packs are still going to suck. I sincerely doubt that I will be able to go out and buy and intropack and a hand full of boosters and have a tournament quality deck ready.
Magic swings on a pendulum. Sometimes aggro is dominant, sometimes control is dominant. Sometimes they screw up and combo rules everything. Aggro is king now, but just a year ago in RAV/TSP standard, I recall Dralnu D'Lourve and UB Teachings being the decks to beat at the time. If you don't like the aggroness of the set, don't buy it. Go buy a PS3. I know that if I ever manage to go cold turkey with this damn addiction to cardboard and I get big people money, I am going to get one.
Restriction Mox 0
Artifact T: Add U to your mana pool.
You cannot use colored mana to pay colorless mana costs.
Creature Mox 0
Artifact T: Add U to your mana pool. Spend this mana only on blue creature spells and/or activated abilities of blue creatures.
Hybrid Mox 0
Artifact T: Add 1 mana of any color to your mana pool. Spend this mana only on hybrid mana costs.
Depleted Mox 0
Artifact ,T: Add 3 to your mana pool.
For the most part, I like these. The Restriction Mox might be a little much in terms of being bad, but the others seem perfectly reasonable to play. The Hybrid Mox would be strong, but not broken I don't think.
I could see them printing something like the Creature Mox as a cycle, doing something like Green for creatures, red for sorceries, blue for instants, white for enchantments/artifacts, black for...something...
I highly doubt Mutavault will be reprinted, because of the changeling ability. Unless they plan on making changeling an evergreen keyword, I highly doubt we will see it. Other than that, I could see all of those. My one hesitation about the command cycle is that when they reprint only part of a cycle, usually they will reprint 3/5 instead of 4/5, as evidenced with the beacons in 10th.
Edit:I guess I need to read Mutavault a little closer. I guess they could, but I sort of doubt it because of the lack of tribalness of the coresets. It just wouldn't quite fit.
Next year, I believe. They changed the rotation so that extended rotates every year. The fetchlands will rotate out when the block after Shards of Alara rotates in.
I'm sure they will revisit it sometime. Even after Eventide, they will likely have some more innovations to do with it. I doubt we will see it terribly often though, much less every set.
Damn. And here I just spent time building a Lost Auramancers deck. Now I have to go and put all these new awesome cards in it.
Sun and Moon Wheel would be excellent for the deck. Now I don't have to worry about people destroying my enchantments. I will likely fit some of the others into it though somehow...
Its interesting. I like that it doesn't require combat damage to trigger, and that it doesn't have to all be at once. I could see a couple little casual decks popping up to abuse that at least somewhat. It would have been nice if the damage requirement was lower so that he could be blocked and still trigger without you having to put any extra effort into it, but its still a 6/6 trampler for 5 with an alright ability. Thats not too shabby in my book.
I wouldn't necessarily say that it is the opposite ability, just a mirrored ability. The Harpoonist is an opposite ability with the same trigger, but the Arsonist is just a shifted ability with shifted cost, and the Hollowsage is the opposite ability with the opposite cost. So, I would say that they are mirrored abilities rather than opposite ones. I like the idea of the daggerdare being shifted to grant +2/+2 to a blocker. For red to green, I don't know yet; I'd have to look some more.
I doubt Rhys will see a lot of tourney play. Sure, he's fun, and he's a decent late game card, but the fact that he has to tap to use his first ability severely limits his usefulness. 3 mana is a lot for a 1/1 token when it can only be made once per turn and not the first turn he comes down. He will be a good casual card, and I plan on using him in my elf deck since I can make a bunch of tokens, but all in all I think thats really all he'll be good for; casual decks that make a bunch of tokens.
Thats possible, but I think its more referring to the fact that the creature gets +3/-3 an loses all its creature types. I doubt it was some kind of "secret plant card."
This is an interesting idea that people rarely think about. I know that everytime I build a mono-colored deck, I go through and check the hybrid cards to see what would work. This time around, I think they might be encouraging it even more. The Demigod of Revenge costs 5 hybrid mana, making him unplayable outside of a deck that is heavy on black or red. Like, almost mono color heavy. The new elf thing is triple green/white, making it unlikely to come down early outside of those colors. The final clue that they might be pushing towards mono color with the hybrid was the "beseech the queen" card, costing either 2 colorless or B 3 times over. I mean, it can be hard to judge a set based solely off the mana costs of 15 cards, but I think that there is a possibility that mono color might be a pushed theme.
Retrace looks good. I will grant you that. But the thing is, like you said, unless they do something stupid and print something along the lines of a burn spell, then it probably won't be broken in standard. If they print a cheap disruption spell or a cheap bounce spell, I would be willing to argue that that would help control. Aggro won't be running a bunch of excess lands that they can just discard to play an old spell unless the spell is just that damn good. Sure, it gives aggro some reach late game by allowing them to turn that one land they might have drawn into a spell, but usually control, by that point, can deal with it. While this doesn't offer card advantage to control, it offers them card quality, which can be just as good.
As far as extended goes, yeah, retrace might do some terrifying things with Life from the Loam.
As for the making things easier for new players, I would disagree. Just because aggro can be more mindless at times than control doesn't mean that it is easier. Also, I have a feeling the intro packs are still going to suck. I sincerely doubt that I will be able to go out and buy and intropack and a hand full of boosters and have a tournament quality deck ready.
Magic swings on a pendulum. Sometimes aggro is dominant, sometimes control is dominant. Sometimes they screw up and combo rules everything. Aggro is king now, but just a year ago in RAV/TSP standard, I recall Dralnu D'Lourve and UB Teachings being the decks to beat at the time. If you don't like the aggroness of the set, don't buy it. Go buy a PS3. I know that if I ever manage to go cold turkey with this damn addiction to cardboard and I get big people money, I am going to get one.
For the most part, I like these. The Restriction Mox might be a little much in terms of being bad, but the others seem perfectly reasonable to play. The Hybrid Mox would be strong, but not broken I don't think.
I could see them printing something like the Creature Mox as a cycle, doing something like Green for creatures, red for sorceries, blue for instants, white for enchantments/artifacts, black for...something...
They don't. Its just an elaborate ruse to make people come to tournaments.
Edit:I guess I need to read Mutavault a little closer. I guess they could, but I sort of doubt it because of the lack of tribalness of the coresets. It just wouldn't quite fit.
Next year, I believe. They changed the rotation so that extended rotates every year. The fetchlands will rotate out when the block after Shards of Alara rotates in.
Sun and Moon Wheel would be excellent for the deck. Now I don't have to worry about people destroying my enchantments. I will likely fit some of the others into it though somehow...