These types of maybe good/maybe bad cards are my favorite finance spec targets. If you buy in at a $1 or so, you don't really lose much, but if the card takes off the price will spike HARD.
Boreal elemental not being a Snow Creature really hurts.
I had the same feeling.
Why couldn't it be a freaking Bird Elemental? What is with WotC and Birds? I get literally one playable UW bird like every 5 sets. Hnnnnnnng. (Thank you for Empyrean Eagle, love you WotC).
Also, does the new art on Master Splicer not look like a compleated dude from Thraben? Will Innistrad be boned by both Eldrazi AND New Phyrexia? Stay tuned.
I mean, it's fine. They're giving all the tribes a solid push here at the end with Vampires, Spirits, Dinos, etc. Icon of Ancestry is going to make pretty much all those tribes viable, but I don't see how this card is especially great as compared to say, Adeliz, the Cinder Wind.
EDIT: I should clarify. If there is a Wizard deck, this will be in it because it's the most efficient at what it does, but I don't think it's particularly amazing or exciting.
Unless they changed the rules specifically for this card, no, a second Bag will not be able to get the cards back. It's like how a second Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver could not get creatures an earlier Ashiok exiled.
Seems to me the most likely place this shows up is affinity. Some lists already play Experimental Frenzy in the board and this seems like it would be better. Can't play a land but can exile the land off the top if you needed.
@italofoca I think I'm mostly on board with what you're saying. Like I mentioned before, "mostly solved" is sort of a weird term to use right now insofar as this is the most volatile Standard environment I can remember since I started playing. That being said, there are still a few known quantities, and the Bant decks are still primarily Nissa decks. This format is crazy with regards to flex slots, with people going back and forth on individual card choices almost constantly. Can I imagine a decklist showing up with a singleton Mu in the main or board? Absolutely. Would I bet on it? Nope.
You're totally right, people don't always (a/k/a never) accurately predict the meta, which is how major price spikes happen in Standard. My musings are simply that. But we still have some information we can be pretty sure about, and I think that helps us make informed decisions about what we play in the early days of the format. Heck, that's why mono-red tends to do well early--people are dicking about with new cards to see whether or not they're good. Still doesn't mean we shouldn't think about it.
I guess if I had to boil down my point it would be that I don't see why you shouldn't be able to make an educated guess about something even if you ultimately turn out to be incorrect. Frankly, I like it when people tell me I'm wrong and give me reasons. If someone's argument is persuasive enough, I might change my mind. That's how I grow as a player.
TL;DR: Mu is most certainly NOT trash; regardless, I don't foresee her seeing much if any play in this current Standard format; talking about new cards' utility in new formats is fun and is, I think, productive; and, this game is awesome and we all have our love of it in common. Good talk.
She reminds me of Erza Scarlet in Fairy Tail with her "Heaven's Wheel" armor. I'm pretty excited about this. Pretty sure this will be non-bird #5 in Kangee, the others being Soraya, the Falconer, Sun Titan, Emeria Angel, and Pride of the Clouds.
That’s not exactly the case here, not in the slightest, really. There are people here from all walks of MtG life, be it casuals, EDH buffs, modern players, standard die-hards, and just general enthusiasts that see these cards however they deem fit. Not one person said “OMG, THIS WILL BREAK STANDARD” so, to me, that doesn’t warrant a “WTf, you guys suck at evaluating cards, it’s unplayable trash”.
IMHO, at no point should the words “unplayable” pop up during spoiler season, unless the card is mechanically broken. You make yourself look like quite a fool when, in fact, all cards get played to some degree. Nobody is hurt by somebody saying “cards good, could be played with X,Y,Z, I’ll play it”, etc. However, by throwing the “trash” label into cards, people will become defensive, and rightfully so. You don’t know any better than I do whether the card is good or bad, so why even say something baseless like that? It halts all relevant discussion and turns into the BS that was flagged with red text. For what? A tire pump? A feeling of superiority? “Good” is a pretty subjective term, bad/garbage/unplayable really aren’t.
As for your meta example, they are constantly evolving. Besides that, a very small sliver of the MtG populace actually compete at high levels and “net deck” their strategies. For Joe Blow, this could very well be the card to make his deck win at his LGS. Or maybe it makes its way into a sideboard somewhere.
I get it, people only want to play with the most proven strategies, but those aren’t the only strategies. We’ve seen it countless times, where a jank homebrew succeeds at dethroning the “known” meta.
TL;DR: I just don’t see the point in negative comments during spoiler season. If the cards not for you, great, move along. No reason to try and “flex” your MtG acumen in an online forum. Because really, nobody values your opinion more than you will, and that goes for everybody. But saying “Hey, I’ll play this card” does nothing more than make it known that it will, in fact, be played.
The part of my quote you mentioned was a direct response to a previous poster saying that determining a card's playability in the current meta is futile. My only point is that it's not. Also, I'm not trying to "flex MtG acumen"--a lot of the previous posts have been about whether or not this card will see play in Standard specifically. As I reiterated SEVERAL times in all of my posts, I LOVE that this is a card and will play it so hard in my UW Birds EDH deck. Never once have I said the card is trash or bad in and of itself. I actually think the card is quite good "in a vacuum" to use the popular term. But we don't play in a vacuum, and when a particular format's metagame is either solved or at least understood, I think it's only natural to try and work out for oneself whether a card will be good or bad in that metagame.
And no, I don't know any better than anyone else with similar experience whether the card will be good or bad IN THIS SPECIFIC STANDARD FORMAT (trying to make everyone understand where I'm coming from here); we have opinions based on the information we have at hand, and that doesn't mean we can't come to different conclusions. I just personally don't think the card will do anything in Standard right now. People may disagree, but no one is necessarily being "negative."
All that being said, I'm pretty sure a lot of your post is responding to another poster who used a bit more aggressive language when discussing the card. All I'm saying is that based on the information I have right now and my experience playing, Mu's not great in Standard at the moment. If someone decides to be defensive about that, there's really nothing I can do. I'm not here to start a shouting match about new cards, because that's not productive, but respectfully debating whether or not they'll be good in Standard is something I enjoy, not to mention that it makes me a better player. I don't think there's anything wrong about taking that position.
There is always cards that slips everyone's radars and cards that people hype that don't see any play. It's always like this because cards can only be evaluated in a vacuum but whether or not they see play depends on what will be released in the future and how the environment shapes up. It even depends on out-of-the-game factors like how much people are spending in the game.
You can't use playability to measure quality because playability depends on many factors other then quality. Your claim that this card does not see any play in any of the current meta decks is futile for many, many reasons: (i) the current meta is not solved; (ii) this card is not part of this format; (iii) no one can predict how the meta shifts with a new set with any degree of certainty, this is hard fact of reality; (iv) even if you could, M20 is not fully spoiled; (v) there are local variation of meta, even in high level competition, and you can't possibly account for all this.
It's not people that are bad at evaluating cards, it's just that they don't use your evaluation criteria because it is useless.
Saying evaluating a card in the context of the existing meta is useless when we have 2/3rds of the next set doesn't make any sense to me. As volatile as this format has been, it's still mostly "solved" insofar as the pillars of the format have been pretty much established. This Standard format is about Teferi, Time Raveler decks, Nissa, Who Shakes the World decks, and the various forms of aggro. To a lesser extent we have Arclight Phoenix decks. I guess Nexus of Fate is still around somewhere.
We've seen a huge chunk of M20 already, and nothing looks like it will result in format upheaval like the release of WAR. Again, I can't speak to future formats with additional sets, but as far as evaluation goes RIGHT NOW, this card just isn't as good as Teferi or Narset, and thus I think it will see little to no immediate play. This is not to say the card is a bad card by any measure, it's just not well-supported currently. I would never argue that quality equates to playability. Tons of great cards see no play (look at Tezzeret, Artifice Master). Also, I've played many "bad" cards because they were well-positioned at a specific point in time (there was a time where I wrecked people with sideboard Woodlot Crawlers, for example). But saying no one can predict how a new set will impact the current metagame is untrue. If a new card competes with existing cards that are more generically powerful, something else has to happen to make the new card viable. I don't see anything in the current spoilers that would indicate Mu slots well into any existing deck, nor do I see any indication that she would be the basis of some new archetype.
However, by several posters' logic, there's no point in evaluating cards AT ALL before a set releases. If that were the case, what? Everyone just puts random good stuff in their decks with literally no consideration to the existing metagame? I'm pretty sure that's not how it works. Whether I'm right or wrong remains to be seen, but saying the exercise of trying to predict a new card's viability is fruitless is a disservice to MtG players. To a great extent, it's the entire reason there's a spoiler season.
This is fine in Standard, although I'm not sure it will see play until Teferi, Hero of Dominaria rotates out. The fact is, we have enough card advantage in the Teferis and Narset that we don't need another tool like this right now. However, when the need for additional card advantage comes around, this card is wonderful. You can make it an instant with little Teferi if you really want to, and I have cast plenty of Dig Through Times for 4 mana, sometimes even in my main phase (!).
Actually the last thing I'd see her in is aggro. She buys you time when she hits the field, makes big birds when you need them and has a gamewinning ult if you let her stick for 3 turns. At 3cmc, this screams slow blue midrange or control.
To everyone who says she's not competitive, how many 3cmc walkers have ever been printed who can close to win the game with their ult AND get to activate it relatively early? Liliana, the Last Hope comes close, but Mu is better at it.
A couple of things. First, lots of Walkers have had the "nerf a single creature until your next turn," some good, some bad. Whether the ability is good or not is mostly contextual. Right now, giving a single creature -2/-0 is just not that good. Someone mentioned Thief of Sanity earlier, and while that's a juicy target, guess what? Thief is seeing almost no play now, after months of being the boogeyman of the format. Why? Because the tempo loss from playing a 3CMC creature only to have it eat a Shock or get bounced by Teferi is backbreaking. Control decks are playing close to 0 counterspells because Teferi is that much of a thing.
Second, as good as her ultimate is, it's NOT actually game-ending the way Liliana, the Last Hope is. You'll still need to find an additional win condition, and unless you're mono-blue, only a few of your lands will draw cards. Besides, Liliana actually KILLED stuff with her plus, and could immediately use her minus if the situation called for it.
Again, I can imagine Mu is ok against the slowest of slow decks, but against those decks Teferi and Narset are usually going to be better. It will be interesting to see if people try her out in the early days of the format, but unless something that really enables her is spoiled she's not going to do much early on. I can't speak to future formats with cards I've not seen.
Saying that a card is bad is just as silly as saying a card is good at this point because we haven't seen it in play or in action yet. After that then arguments favouring either side are acceptable and more valid.
'buster
I don't disagree with this in principal, but it's also not absolute. We've been playing with a lot of these cards for a long time and understand how they interact. I would say--understanding there's more M20 to be spoiled that could change this--we can look at the meta and cards spoiled so far and can at least make an educated guess about a new card's power level.
Ok, so caveat, I play UW Birds in commander, so in reality I'm salivating over this card. But let's talk about Standard for a second.
Although I wouldn't be quite as definite, I think n00b king is mostly correct regarding Mu's playability in Standard. It's certainly not that she's bad, it's just that there are so many better things to do on turn 3. My guess would be that, if she shows up at all, she'll be in the sideboard of Mono-Blue Aggro, probably taking the Jace, Cunning Castaway slot. I could also imagine her as maybe a one-of in the UW Superfriends list. But I can't see her in any top tier decks, because Teferi, Time Raveler and Narset, Parter of Veils are just so much more powerful.
She takes two turns to make a 4/4 Bird, which is pretty strong, but when you remember the sheer number of Teferis running around, taking those turns only to have your opponent bounce the token, leaving a Teferi behind, is unfortunate. And this is nothing like suspend, because you can't attack and kill suspended cards. So, in the current meta, she either gives something -2 for a turn and dies, or gets to make a bird that then dies.
Again, I think the power level is there, and I could imagine decks popping up that support her, but as the meta sits at this very moment she's just not the best thing you could be doing.
Why couldn't it be a freaking Bird Elemental? What is with WotC and Birds? I get literally one playable UW bird like every 5 sets. Hnnnnnnng. (Thank you for Empyrean Eagle, love you WotC).
Also, does the new art on Master Splicer not look like a compleated dude from Thraben? Will Innistrad be boned by both Eldrazi AND New Phyrexia? Stay tuned.
EDIT: I should clarify. If there is a Wizard deck, this will be in it because it's the most efficient at what it does, but I don't think it's particularly amazing or exciting.
You're totally right, people don't always (a/k/a never) accurately predict the meta, which is how major price spikes happen in Standard. My musings are simply that. But we still have some information we can be pretty sure about, and I think that helps us make informed decisions about what we play in the early days of the format. Heck, that's why mono-red tends to do well early--people are dicking about with new cards to see whether or not they're good. Still doesn't mean we shouldn't think about it.
I guess if I had to boil down my point it would be that I don't see why you shouldn't be able to make an educated guess about something even if you ultimately turn out to be incorrect. Frankly, I like it when people tell me I'm wrong and give me reasons. If someone's argument is persuasive enough, I might change my mind. That's how I grow as a player.
TL;DR: Mu is most certainly NOT trash; regardless, I don't foresee her seeing much if any play in this current Standard format; talking about new cards' utility in new formats is fun and is, I think, productive; and, this game is awesome and we all have our love of it in common. Good talk.
The part of my quote you mentioned was a direct response to a previous poster saying that determining a card's playability in the current meta is futile. My only point is that it's not. Also, I'm not trying to "flex MtG acumen"--a lot of the previous posts have been about whether or not this card will see play in Standard specifically. As I reiterated SEVERAL times in all of my posts, I LOVE that this is a card and will play it so hard in my UW Birds EDH deck. Never once have I said the card is trash or bad in and of itself. I actually think the card is quite good "in a vacuum" to use the popular term. But we don't play in a vacuum, and when a particular format's metagame is either solved or at least understood, I think it's only natural to try and work out for oneself whether a card will be good or bad in that metagame.
And no, I don't know any better than anyone else with similar experience whether the card will be good or bad IN THIS SPECIFIC STANDARD FORMAT (trying to make everyone understand where I'm coming from here); we have opinions based on the information we have at hand, and that doesn't mean we can't come to different conclusions. I just personally don't think the card will do anything in Standard right now. People may disagree, but no one is necessarily being "negative."
All that being said, I'm pretty sure a lot of your post is responding to another poster who used a bit more aggressive language when discussing the card. All I'm saying is that based on the information I have right now and my experience playing, Mu's not great in Standard at the moment. If someone decides to be defensive about that, there's really nothing I can do. I'm not here to start a shouting match about new cards, because that's not productive, but respectfully debating whether or not they'll be good in Standard is something I enjoy, not to mention that it makes me a better player. I don't think there's anything wrong about taking that position.
Saying evaluating a card in the context of the existing meta is useless when we have 2/3rds of the next set doesn't make any sense to me. As volatile as this format has been, it's still mostly "solved" insofar as the pillars of the format have been pretty much established. This Standard format is about Teferi, Time Raveler decks, Nissa, Who Shakes the World decks, and the various forms of aggro. To a lesser extent we have Arclight Phoenix decks. I guess Nexus of Fate is still around somewhere.
We've seen a huge chunk of M20 already, and nothing looks like it will result in format upheaval like the release of WAR. Again, I can't speak to future formats with additional sets, but as far as evaluation goes RIGHT NOW, this card just isn't as good as Teferi or Narset, and thus I think it will see little to no immediate play. This is not to say the card is a bad card by any measure, it's just not well-supported currently. I would never argue that quality equates to playability. Tons of great cards see no play (look at Tezzeret, Artifice Master). Also, I've played many "bad" cards because they were well-positioned at a specific point in time (there was a time where I wrecked people with sideboard Woodlot Crawlers, for example). But saying no one can predict how a new set will impact the current metagame is untrue. If a new card competes with existing cards that are more generically powerful, something else has to happen to make the new card viable. I don't see anything in the current spoilers that would indicate Mu slots well into any existing deck, nor do I see any indication that she would be the basis of some new archetype.
However, by several posters' logic, there's no point in evaluating cards AT ALL before a set releases. If that were the case, what? Everyone just puts random good stuff in their decks with literally no consideration to the existing metagame? I'm pretty sure that's not how it works. Whether I'm right or wrong remains to be seen, but saying the exercise of trying to predict a new card's viability is fruitless is a disservice to MtG players. To a great extent, it's the entire reason there's a spoiler season.
A couple of things. First, lots of Walkers have had the "nerf a single creature until your next turn," some good, some bad. Whether the ability is good or not is mostly contextual. Right now, giving a single creature -2/-0 is just not that good. Someone mentioned Thief of Sanity earlier, and while that's a juicy target, guess what? Thief is seeing almost no play now, after months of being the boogeyman of the format. Why? Because the tempo loss from playing a 3CMC creature only to have it eat a Shock or get bounced by Teferi is backbreaking. Control decks are playing close to 0 counterspells because Teferi is that much of a thing.
Second, as good as her ultimate is, it's NOT actually game-ending the way Liliana, the Last Hope is. You'll still need to find an additional win condition, and unless you're mono-blue, only a few of your lands will draw cards. Besides, Liliana actually KILLED stuff with her plus, and could immediately use her minus if the situation called for it.
Again, I can imagine Mu is ok against the slowest of slow decks, but against those decks Teferi and Narset are usually going to be better. It will be interesting to see if people try her out in the early days of the format, but unless something that really enables her is spoiled she's not going to do much early on. I can't speak to future formats with cards I've not seen.
I don't disagree with this in principal, but it's also not absolute. We've been playing with a lot of these cards for a long time and understand how they interact. I would say--understanding there's more M20 to be spoiled that could change this--we can look at the meta and cards spoiled so far and can at least make an educated guess about a new card's power level.
Although I wouldn't be quite as definite, I think n00b king is mostly correct regarding Mu's playability in Standard. It's certainly not that she's bad, it's just that there are so many better things to do on turn 3. My guess would be that, if she shows up at all, she'll be in the sideboard of Mono-Blue Aggro, probably taking the Jace, Cunning Castaway slot. I could also imagine her as maybe a one-of in the UW Superfriends list. But I can't see her in any top tier decks, because Teferi, Time Raveler and Narset, Parter of Veils are just so much more powerful.
She takes two turns to make a 4/4 Bird, which is pretty strong, but when you remember the sheer number of Teferis running around, taking those turns only to have your opponent bounce the token, leaving a Teferi behind, is unfortunate. And this is nothing like suspend, because you can't attack and kill suspended cards. So, in the current meta, she either gives something -2 for a turn and dies, or gets to make a bird that then dies.
Again, I think the power level is there, and I could imagine decks popping up that support her, but as the meta sits at this very moment she's just not the best thing you could be doing.