I speculated that they would - it's the only way Vraska's Commander deck makes any sense why they wouldn't have revealed her dual land. They didn't tack it on at the end as a 'bonus' card because it was in the set itself, thus her deck can still be BG or WB.
I'm stoked for this. I read something recently about Blood Moon that made me wonder if it was coming back to Standard any time soon. This is basically that, without screwing up multi-coloured manabases (it just turns off their non-landish abilities)
I'm happy with this as a replacement for Blood Moon in Standard.
Speaking of "random", Wizards (well, MaRo, anyway) has been so adamant that "dice-rolling is not in black-border!", but how does anyone else choose a "random" creature if not by rolling a dice?
I always use a die for all random effects, so... yeah. While it doesn't appear on the cards, dice rolling is still part of the Standard environment - that's the same rationale as MaRo uses when he prints white cards that 'counter target spell targetting a permanent you control' - had a whole article where he was justifying it in a mock-courtroom setting. The same argument applies to dice rolling - we still do it in Standard, so why not allow them on the cards?
Die rolling is also the prefered method of determining who goes first in a match (although players at my LGS likes to use 'poker dice' where we roll 5 dice and evaluate it like a poker hand - usually looking for pairs)
Fair enough - the last time I was seriously into Standard was during EMN when none of the lands mentioned esxisted. It was all painlands and wilds. These lands where what turned Bant CoCo from a fringe strategy to a consistant threat due to colour accessibility.
As for the comment directed at me about r/x (im on my phone and its hard to trim a long post chain so i didnt quote) While my last competitve deck was mono-red (Vampire Madness mainly) I typically play two colour decks - and usually not red. Actually im ususally in GW, GU or WB. I guess I do like WR now and then.
I come from an era where two colour decks were at risk of colour screw unless you were mainly green, and three colour decks were a huge risk.
It greatly bothers me that three colour decks can hit their manabase consistently and play all the besr cards for their colour - three colour decks should be a risk outside of sets like Karns or Alara where this is the set's focus. Again - unless you are heavy green, since that's part of what green should be bringing to the table.
A playable card, will certainly help get the NayaDino deck in the right direction. Think it could shine after rotanion, when energy and fatal push are out.
One can hope... But likely the first set after the core will introduce similarly metaearping stuff. Ive been bitten by the 'oh this set looks neat - just gotta ride it out until rotation...' Bug far too many times.
The changes to other parts of the meta do swing into each other like this. I mean, if you want back Rampant Growth we'd need efficient unfettered Land Destruction. Who is in on that?
I am - bring on the land destruction and efficient mill decks. Also - get rid of cards like Evolving Wilds that make it too easy for non green-centric decks to access all colours (im extremely annoind it is being reprinted this set - i was hoping to see it rotate out) Three colour goodstuff is in my opinion one of the main things killing the game right now. Colour strengths and weaknesses mean less when you can cherrypick.
I just want a set where they don't have to hold back for once...like Kaladesh block.
I 100% disagree. After playing magic for 15 years and seeing what power creep does to the game I would love a couple of kamigawa level blocks. Kaladesh was a mistake. Gideon ally of zendikar was a mistake. Emrakul was a mistake. Collected company was a mistake. Fetchlands with fual lands was a mistake. Siege rhino was a mistake.
These cards that demand an immediate answer or else sorten games and increase variance. It sells product in the short term because of the dragonball z effect, but the quality of gameplay diminishes in favor of swingy games the devolve into topdecks. I'm more eexcited about the direction magic is going now than I have been since lorwyn.
And I 100% agree with Kinto. They know that with Dominaria bringing back older playets (myself since Mirage... Whatever year that was) they need to tone down the shinanigans that keep us snubbing the game. Kaladesh had potential but Energy turned out to be toi gimicky. I really wish still we had the 18 month rotation so it would go at the start of Dominariq but no such luck.
How does this work with boardwipes? If there are three other creatures on the battlefield with Elenda (as a 1/1 still), does she produce one token or four tokens after a Wrath of God?
Due to the timing - I think 1. She is already in the gy and thus cant get counters put on her to increase her power. Otherwise she would always produce a minimum of two tokens when she herself dies (if im remembering the wording right - its hard to go check mid-post from my phone)
Pretty "meh" overall. If it had been "Whenever you opponent gains Energy or uses Energy..." or it had cost just BW, then I may have given her a sideways glance.
Still no Energy hosers though.
We won't see a card that specifically mentions Energy in a set without Energy. The best you can hope for is something that generically references counters on players.
I love the story flavour behind this. Casting it to affect yourself to hide a late-game threat in your hand to prevent a forced discard is huge - and it's kind of reminiscent of "I have secrets I don't want powerful telepaths to know about."
No, but targeting an OPPONENT with it, then bouncing or blinking it, is pretty mean if it can be repeated. You can mill them out and give them little time to use each set of cards in their new hands that keep getting cycled through.
Leaves 3 permanents on the battlefield, could be important for Ascend. Merfolks also get at least a couple of lords (+1/+1 type, Kopala and Kumena), so this could see a bit of standard play.
Oh wow - and here I was looking for ways to abuse Ascend and I completely missed that. at 4 CMC this already puts you to 7. People were already talking about abusing Cartouches and Legion's Landing so it's very likely to Ascend on Turn 4 now. I'd say that's a viable clock.
Too bad that the only Ascend card that really calls to me is Vona's Hunger
that's right it' saids "owner" so temporary give a creature you control you basicly draw cards that's impossible to discard and cast at legit times.
It's also a great way to deal with Hijack, Hostage Taker and other effects. I can't think of any other times where we cared about the owner of a card (other than things like 'gain control of a permanent you own' I think has happened a few times)
I don't understand why people think that standard legal "tournament" sets should ONLY contain cards meant for standard/limited. If that's the case, perhaps you should be complaining what a complete dumpster fire standard has been the last few years.
The same people complaining about EDH focused cards in Standard sets are ALSO complaining about the dumpster fire that Standard has been. It's part of the same problem (but not the only part of it)
I actually don't think Kumena is too bad for Standard - so it is a 'good' card that is designed for both EDH and Standard. My commment was directing at Ulrich being a bad card that only existed because they 'had to' cater to the EDH players regardless of 'fit' in the set.
But for the most part - 'fixing' Standard needs to be their top priority - everything else needs to take a back seat until then. There's a whole separate print release that they can use to offer stuff for Commander players.
Anyway some of these cards look quite interesting. I do like the potential for that one drop pirate. I just wonder how many other red pirates you need to make sure it comes out turn one. I wonder if he could fit into my RDW deck.
Should be able to figure that out with the same bicubic probability math used to figure out how many lands you need in order to ensure no missed drops for (x) turns.
Probability of 1/4 Daring Buckaneers and at least 1/X Pirates (including the other 3 buckaneers)
EDIT: The word I was looking for is Hypergeometric - not bicubic.
Population of 30 with 10 pirates in the deck (not including the 1 Buckaneer already in your hand - but it does include the other 3 buckaneers) a sample size of 6 (which is not including the 1 Buckaneer we are assuming we already have) you get a probability of 69% you will draw a 2nd pirate. With 15 other pirates in the deck the probability is ~84%.
Given the probability of drawing 1 out of 4 pirates (or any card) in a 60 card deck on the first turn is only 40% - it's really hard to form an entire first-turn strategy out of this alone - you'd be looking at other first turn plays as well to round it out, and pirates has a couple good options already - Rigging Runner, for example, which can come down on turn one.. or come down on turn 2 behind the buckanner as a 2/2 first striker.
I'm happy with this as a replacement for Blood Moon in Standard.
I always use a die for all random effects, so... yeah. While it doesn't appear on the cards, dice rolling is still part of the Standard environment - that's the same rationale as MaRo uses when he prints white cards that 'counter target spell targetting a permanent you control' - had a whole article where he was justifying it in a mock-courtroom setting. The same argument applies to dice rolling - we still do it in Standard, so why not allow them on the cards?
Die rolling is also the prefered method of determining who goes first in a match (although players at my LGS likes to use 'poker dice' where we roll 5 dice and evaluate it like a poker hand - usually looking for pairs)
As for the comment directed at me about r/x (im on my phone and its hard to trim a long post chain so i didnt quote) While my last competitve deck was mono-red (Vampire Madness mainly) I typically play two colour decks - and usually not red. Actually im ususally in GW, GU or WB. I guess I do like WR now and then.
I come from an era where two colour decks were at risk of colour screw unless you were mainly green, and three colour decks were a huge risk.
It greatly bothers me that three colour decks can hit their manabase consistently and play all the besr cards for their colour - three colour decks should be a risk outside of sets like Karns or Alara where this is the set's focus. Again - unless you are heavy green, since that's part of what green should be bringing to the table.
When i saw this I immediately thogit of the UR unblockable pirate. Maybe some kind of aggro jeskai will emerge.
One can hope... But likely the first set after the core will introduce similarly metaearping stuff. Ive been bitten by the 'oh this set looks neat - just gotta ride it out until rotation...' Bug far too many times.
I am - bring on the land destruction and efficient mill decks. Also - get rid of cards like Evolving Wilds that make it too easy for non green-centric decks to access all colours (im extremely annoind it is being reprinted this set - i was hoping to see it rotate out) Three colour goodstuff is in my opinion one of the main things killing the game right now. Colour strengths and weaknesses mean less when you can cherrypick.
And I 100% agree with Kinto. They know that with Dominaria bringing back older playets (myself since Mirage... Whatever year that was) they need to tone down the shinanigans that keep us snubbing the game. Kaladesh had potential but Energy turned out to be toi gimicky. I really wish still we had the 18 month rotation so it would go at the start of Dominariq but no such luck.
Due to the timing - I think 1. She is already in the gy and thus cant get counters put on her to increase her power. Otherwise she would always produce a minimum of two tokens when she herself dies (if im remembering the wording right - its hard to go check mid-post from my phone)
Edit: 'another creature'
We won't see a card that specifically mentions Energy in a set without Energy. The best you can hope for is something that generically references counters on players.
Yeah. Also Plagiarize (A card I used to combine with Teferi's Puzzle Box and Psychatog in T2 back in the day... Cephalid Looter comes to mind as well... man I miss that deck!)
Oh wow - and here I was looking for ways to abuse Ascend and I completely missed that. at 4 CMC this already puts you to 7. People were already talking about abusing Cartouches and Legion's Landing so it's very likely to Ascend on Turn 4 now. I'd say that's a viable clock.
Too bad that the only Ascend card that really calls to me is Vona's Hunger
It's also a great way to deal with Hijack, Hostage Taker and other effects. I can't think of any other times where we cared about the owner of a card (other than things like 'gain control of a permanent you own' I think has happened a few times)
The same people complaining about EDH focused cards in Standard sets are ALSO complaining about the dumpster fire that Standard has been. It's part of the same problem (but not the only part of it)
I actually don't think Kumena is too bad for Standard - so it is a 'good' card that is designed for both EDH and Standard. My commment was directing at Ulrich being a bad card that only existed because they 'had to' cater to the EDH players regardless of 'fit' in the set.
But for the most part - 'fixing' Standard needs to be their top priority - everything else needs to take a back seat until then. There's a whole separate print release that they can use to offer stuff for Commander players.
Should be able to figure that out with the same bicubic probability math used to figure out how many lands you need in order to ensure no missed drops for (x) turns.
Probability of 1/4 Daring Buckaneers and at least 1/X Pirates (including the other 3 buckaneers)
EDIT: The word I was looking for is Hypergeometric - not bicubic.
Using this;
https://www.geneprof.org/GeneProf/tools/hypergeometric.jsp
Population of 30 with 10 pirates in the deck (not including the 1 Buckaneer already in your hand - but it does include the other 3 buckaneers) a sample size of 6 (which is not including the 1 Buckaneer we are assuming we already have) you get a probability of 69% you will draw a 2nd pirate. With 15 other pirates in the deck the probability is ~84%.
Given the probability of drawing 1 out of 4 pirates (or any card) in a 60 card deck on the first turn is only 40% - it's really hard to form an entire first-turn strategy out of this alone - you'd be looking at other first turn plays as well to round it out, and pirates has a couple good options already - Rigging Runner, for example, which can come down on turn one.. or come down on turn 2 behind the buckanner as a 2/2 first striker.