Can’t argue with DirkGently when he says they are universally useful. However, the cards are so scarce that it’s a moot question. They probably would not receive enough purchase demand to even blip their price. If no one in edh tries to buy them, value is not increased.
I've updated the original post with the line "if they were legal and anyone could afford them." This thread is not to discuss the price of these cards, only their levels of playability in the eyes of the EDH community.
All price and rarity aside, they're strong effects for VERY cheap, and they're super abusable. It's a no brainer.
Really not overpowered at all. It's not easy to keep your life above 40 for a whole turn cycle with a 6 mana creature win condition on the field. There's more hoops than you'd think involved in making that work. Compared to Coalition Victory, which should win you the game on resolution, they're not in the same league.
Can’t argue with DirkGently when he says they are universally useful. However, the cards are so scarce that it’s a moot question. They probably would not receive enough purchase demand to even blip their price. If no one in edh tries to buy them, value is not increased.
This. If I don't stand a snowball's chance in hell of affording them, why would I bother looking? As it is, even Ancestral Vision is more than I'd like to pay for a card, so these wouldn't even be on my radar.
"She had never known what the Raven Man was, or why he was so determined to interfere in her life. He could be anything from a powerful Planeswalker to an elder dragon in human form."
Justthis one mention but as soon as I read it my heart sank. I really hope its nothing and both of you are right but it just sickens me as to why even put that line in there, why wotc. And they are so on the Bolas train right now. I mean I thought Bolas was going after Ravnica and wouldnt even be barely mentioned in this set/story but an afterthought but there he is in a story spotlight.
Hopefully just unnecessary panic on my part. I want Lim Dul
I'd be very surprised if it weren't Lim-Dul. I reread that story in order to bring myself up to speed with your line of thought. I don't think it plays out anyway. As steammage says it doesn't work logistically, and what I think you saw at the confrontation on Amonkhet was more of an authorial characterization than anything else; Lili is very insecure. She feels a tremendous amount of guilt for the fate of Josu, doubt as to who the Raven Man is, and a load of fear for being too close to Bolas. These seem to gnaw away at her and despite having a thorny exterior, she struggles with all of those things. While it wasn't explicit or perfectly written, I think that's what the author was trying to portray, not any particular indication of the identity of the Raven Man. The author sort of did the same for each of them - identifying all of their weaknesses and having Bolas unravel them one by one for his own pleasure.
I guess it's quite often people forget its on the field and that it applies to other creatures. It's good value meat. And it plays really nicely with Pathbreaker Ibex, making sure the goat counts. That being said, I'm not averse to switching it out, I just don't have any preferential cards to swap it out for.
I've thought a little more about this in the last few days. Simply as a thought experiment to mull over what I think would make a good replacement for Wolfir Silverheart. Here's what I've got: Tilling Treefolk - it's not a shoe in, but it is a maybe. Deadwood Treefolk - it's no Eternal Witness, but it's good when the board is wiped. Architect of the Untamed - The tokens are big, but the energy required to make them is a lot. Bane of Progress - It gets big and alters the board state drastically. I'm hesitant though, simply because some of the artifacts and enchantments I run are really clutch. Champion of Lambholt - She'll get big quick here. And she provides her own win con. I think I could see this being viable, despite it not doing much else other than turning sideways. The one thing it does though, it does really well.
I had considered Lotus Cobra here too, but I feel like this deck doesn't always need big mana at sorcery speed, a lot of the time I'm holding it up for later use, which makes this a vanilla snake. Selvala, Heart of the Wilds - obviously she's stupidly good. I'd love a copy. But she's also crazy expensive. So probably not. Regal Behemoth - Big beater that draws extra cards and gives extra mana. Plus, he has trample. It's a possiblity.
These are as much for my consideration and future rumination as anything else, but if you do have an opinion, feel free to fire it away.
Solid second chapter. The end felt a bit rushed/fast (as was the case with the first story), but I guess that's how it's going to be with the time and space restrictions placed on the author. I don't really mind as long as the rest is alright.
Also, I've already posted this in the Rumor Mill, but one more time for this thread:
I've been wondering about the Opt art since the Spanish promos were spoiled. Could it be that Teferi's planeswalker version is actually going to be "old him"? Maybe he'll have to choose (or rather, opt) whether he wants to stay eternally young or get his spark back, but age?
Why would you choose NOT to look like Eddie Murphy?
Seriously though, this sounds feasible. It'll be interesting to hear how Jhoira makes it happen. She's rad.
I liked the story too, although I thought the Josu confrontation, at least physically, was anticlimactic. Still, the story seems to be really promoting some character development for Lili beyond snooty black mana hoe. It's giving her some dimension, and I like that. I hope they can do the same for Cardboard Cutout He-Man.
I am tempted to play as it would finally give me an excuse to build Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons and Samut, Voice of Dissent and put my two otherwise useless boxes of Amonkhet to good use, but it seems like if this is designed to be played for prizes, there is gonna be a whooooole lot of The Scarab God / Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh control decks that make the game generally miserable.
I can't imagine a scenario in which these sort of decks won't prevade the format, if there are prizes involved. Once Scarab and Bolas rotate out, it will be other culprits.
I got good mileage out of this in my old Iname as One deck that revolved mostly around getting things from the graveyard back into you hand in the time where it had a pretty heavy dredge subtheme.
I've never played it myself, but its not unplayable. I can almost see a place for it in a low curve Edgar Markov build - if you want any reanimation it has to be dirt cheap and return stuff to your hand. With this you get your grip back and have the chance to turf to a madness trigger with something like Falkenrath Gorger. It's unlikely, but not unheard of.
I won't get involved with it personally. I see the value in it for Wizards, budding casual players and the EDH community. It encourages people to think about more than just the chase rares of standard, and think about wider synergies. It encourages players to think more about casual formats and is a good gateway drug to EDH, and gives EDH players a wider player base once people make the leap. I can't see it as anything more than a transition format, but it's a niche that got filled so that's nice.
As I said, I wont play - why bother with EDH-lite when you have all of MTG's catalog to draw from? But it'd be nice to see a few more players in my local area showing interest in casual singleton.
Exactly. Pacts did not come till after she began aging. The four demons are way post-Apocalypse.
Sure, but what I'm saying is that the likelihood they sprang into existence simply to form a pact with a random passing by planeswalker is very slim. Bolas was the arbiter of that pact, and he's ancient. So they've clearly been around the block a few times.
I think it is supposed to feel forced. Belzenlok leads the Cabal, he rules the Stronghold, he has the Blackblade, he killed an elder dragon, and so on.
This is what I'd thought, its made pretty implicit in the first story. There's a pretty clear Orwellian theme to the Cabal.
I also admit I find the Cabal a poor choice of villain.
At the end of Apocalypse, we had the crescendo of a 9,000 year conflict centered around one man (Yawgmoth) and his rise to God of Machine Hell. Every set with any semblance of continuity plot revolved around this.
The next set was meant to be a post-apocalyptic scale-back. After the drama and climax, we go to a backwater part of a post-disaster Dominaria, where a less-than-world-dominating villain (the Cabal) is trying to gather power, and a hero (Kamahl) rises.
Now, hundreds of years later, we return to a world filled with Legends from the big-picture story leading up to the Invasion, and the entire ENORMOUS plane of Dominaria is apparently conquered by...that same backwater Otarian Cabal? This would be like if the villains of Mad Max: Fury Road gained worldwide power versus local warlord status. I do not like it.
Belzenlok is a new villain, and having him take possession of THE Stronghold in THE Urborg where THE Yawgmoth's corpse lies, conquering THE Benalia and wielding THE Blackblade...come on now, lets not use the lore of our childhood to make yet another replaceable demon into the god of darkness.
He's not new. Lili is a pre-mending walker, remember. She made her pact a long long time ago. He's new to the stories, but just because you haven't seen him doesn't mean he hasn't been around. He's new to the story that WE'VE seen, but that's the thing about a good story - it doesn't give everything away at once.
Besides, I wouldn't be surprised whatsoever if the Cabal is nothing more than a front for Belzenlok, a way for him to gather sycophants and minions, use them for his bidding and to consolidate his power. Time will tell. Either way, clearly the cabal has changed a lot since we last saw it.
It'll be interesting to see how much of this they just retcon - considering the last Dominaria arc included time travel, there's every chance they can just write it all off that way - 'oh when the time rifts healed so did all the geographic damage'.
Honestly that would disappoint me big time. The "weird" landscapes were one of my absolute favourite things about Time Spiral. Taking something as world-defining as environments (that were prominently featured across multiple sets, even) and just saying "nope, this didn't happen" really goes against everything a "history"-themed set should do. I can see the forests recovering almost completely and the Phyrexian waste sinking into the swamps, but there absolutely should be some remnants of the more permanent structures. Eveeything else is just poor worldbuilding imo.
Edit: Well, I guess at the very least there's the Zhalfirin void...
I totally agree, it would be bad. It is possible that will happen, but I'm really hoping for better.
Still haven't come around to read the story, but looking through the art, the thing that bothers me most so far is that there seem to be no callbacks whatsoever to Time Spiral geography (no "obelisk mountains", no slag islands, no salt fields, even just remnants of them, really). Instead they brought in these Thran superstructures, which, as far as I know, wheren't a thing before. I really hope they reference the Time Spiral era in the environment somewhere in order to connect this new Dominaria to the one we saw during our previous visit.
It'll be interesting to see how much of this they just retcon - considering the last Dominaria arc included time travel, there's every chance they can just write it all off that way - 'oh when the time rifts healed so did all the geographic damage'.
The Thran superstructures are interesting. We've not seem much of them since the earliest days of Yawgmoths origin story, other than artifacts of an extinct race. Maybe they're not quite as dead as believed.
Fair enough! I guess it just comes across that way in a summary article because there are so many guilds to track through ~1-2 pages of information. I always thought the nephilim would play more of a part, too, considering how unique they are.
Thanks so much Jay. This is the last bit of lore I've really wanted to know for a while. Teferi being one of my favourite characters and wanting to know more about the Mending and 'modern Bolas', this was a great read, and well timed coming into Dominaria.
Great article. Long but not unnecessarily. I can pretty well agree with the conclusion too. My first thought was Leshrac, but not knowing a HUGE amount of older lore (I started playing at a young age), Leshrac seems unlikely. Lim-Dul fits the bill. It would be a great twist at some point too.
What are the odds the reveal happens in the upcoming Dominaria set next year? Fingers crossed.
All price and rarity aside, they're strong effects for VERY cheap, and they're super abusable. It's a no brainer.
This. If I don't stand a snowball's chance in hell of affording them, why would I bother looking? As it is, even Ancestral Vision is more than I'd like to pay for a card, so these wouldn't even be on my radar.
I'd be very surprised if it weren't Lim-Dul. I reread that story in order to bring myself up to speed with your line of thought. I don't think it plays out anyway. As steammage says it doesn't work logistically, and what I think you saw at the confrontation on Amonkhet was more of an authorial characterization than anything else; Lili is very insecure. She feels a tremendous amount of guilt for the fate of Josu, doubt as to who the Raven Man is, and a load of fear for being too close to Bolas. These seem to gnaw away at her and despite having a thorny exterior, she struggles with all of those things. While it wasn't explicit or perfectly written, I think that's what the author was trying to portray, not any particular indication of the identity of the Raven Man. The author sort of did the same for each of them - identifying all of their weaknesses and having Bolas unravel them one by one for his own pleasure.
I've thought a little more about this in the last few days. Simply as a thought experiment to mull over what I think would make a good replacement for Wolfir Silverheart. Here's what I've got:
Tilling Treefolk - it's not a shoe in, but it is a maybe.
Deadwood Treefolk - it's no Eternal Witness, but it's good when the board is wiped.
Architect of the Untamed - The tokens are big, but the energy required to make them is a lot.
Bane of Progress - It gets big and alters the board state drastically. I'm hesitant though, simply because some of the artifacts and enchantments I run are really clutch.
Champion of Lambholt - She'll get big quick here. And she provides her own win con. I think I could see this being viable, despite it not doing much else other than turning sideways. The one thing it does though, it does really well.
I had considered Lotus Cobra here too, but I feel like this deck doesn't always need big mana at sorcery speed, a lot of the time I'm holding it up for later use, which makes this a vanilla snake.
Selvala, Heart of the Wilds - obviously she's stupidly good. I'd love a copy. But she's also crazy expensive. So probably not.
Regal Behemoth - Big beater that draws extra cards and gives extra mana. Plus, he has trample. It's a possiblity.
These are as much for my consideration and future rumination as anything else, but if you do have an opinion, feel free to fire it away.
Why would you choose NOT to look like Eddie Murphy?
Seriously though, this sounds feasible. It'll be interesting to hear how Jhoira makes it happen. She's rad.
Care to elaborate? I'm still pretty on board with Lim-Dul, I haven't seen anything really ominous leaning me towards Bolas.
I can't imagine a scenario in which these sort of decks won't prevade the format, if there are prizes involved. Once Scarab and Bolas rotate out, it will be other culprits.
I've never played it myself, but its not unplayable. I can almost see a place for it in a low curve Edgar Markov build - if you want any reanimation it has to be dirt cheap and return stuff to your hand. With this you get your grip back and have the chance to turf to a madness trigger with something like Falkenrath Gorger. It's unlikely, but not unheard of.
As I said, I wont play - why bother with EDH-lite when you have all of MTG's catalog to draw from? But it'd be nice to see a few more players in my local area showing interest in casual singleton.
Sure, but what I'm saying is that the likelihood they sprang into existence simply to form a pact with a random passing by planeswalker is very slim. Bolas was the arbiter of that pact, and he's ancient. So they've clearly been around the block a few times.
This is what I'd thought, its made pretty implicit in the first story. There's a pretty clear Orwellian theme to the Cabal.
He's not new. Lili is a pre-mending walker, remember. She made her pact a long long time ago. He's new to the stories, but just because you haven't seen him doesn't mean he hasn't been around. He's new to the story that WE'VE seen, but that's the thing about a good story - it doesn't give everything away at once.
Besides, I wouldn't be surprised whatsoever if the Cabal is nothing more than a front for Belzenlok, a way for him to gather sycophants and minions, use them for his bidding and to consolidate his power. Time will tell. Either way, clearly the cabal has changed a lot since we last saw it.
I totally agree, it would be bad. It is possible that will happen, but I'm really hoping for better.
It'll be interesting to see how much of this they just retcon - considering the last Dominaria arc included time travel, there's every chance they can just write it all off that way - 'oh when the time rifts healed so did all the geographic damage'.
The Thran superstructures are interesting. We've not seem much of them since the earliest days of Yawgmoths origin story, other than artifacts of an extinct race. Maybe they're not quite as dead as believed.