FYI, a few mistakes from the old spoiler that got carried over to the patch:
Ego Erasure says it loses all abilities, but in truth it makes creatures lose creature types.
Eyes of the Wisent is supposed to trigger on blue spells, not any spell.
That and the many wonderful changelings available. There's Crib-Swap, Mirror Entity, Ego Erasure, Shapesharer and the changeling bear. Note tat none of those listed cost too much to cast. Could make a pretty powerful casual deck on a budget, or maybe even competitive if you have cash to spare.
Edit: Oh oh, there's also contributions from the other tribes, such as the Spellstutter Faerie, the tree harbinger fetches changeling stuff, oh the possibilities.
Granted, it's a blue ability on a red creature, but why not a different approach when designing a card?
First, I want a Dragon. It's kinda cold outdoors now, I'll give it the snow supertype since it adapted to life outside. Since it's a snow creature, why not give it a snowy ability, Freezing. Now I want it to freeze stuff instead of turning things hotter. So instead of R: ~ gets +1/+0, it uses snow mana to freeze people.
Do I have to turn it blue? Nope. It could jolly well still be loving the good warmth of the mountains. Same thing with the idea of a snow-covered mountain. Mountains are still mountains, only with a crown of snow now. They dont have to generate blue mana since it's snowy. Dragons are still pretty much red, only some learnt how to breathe ice.
Thus flavour-wise, I seriously dont find any fault with a red dragon breathing ice.
Hmmm. What's wrong with an dragon that uses ice as it's ability instead of fire?
Your typical dragon would harness the power of fire to power-up his attack, and why not a dragon living in the snow harnessing the power of the ice (hence the snow mana) to do freezing attacks?
I would think of it as ice cousin of fire breathing. Most dragons do have fire-breathing abilities, Rimescale's ability is a twist to your normal "breathe attack". Makes perfect sense this way.
Now boomerang is interesting, but Last Gasp doesn't kill any of the following.
4 Grave-Shell Scarab
2 Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni
2 Kodama of the North Tree
3 Kokusho, the Evening Star
Neither do rends. It works on the scarab, but ink eyes just regenerates off it and Kokusho just shrugs it off. Whereas with Last Gasps, you can either
1) kill off birds and stop their mana fixing and acceleration. This is where you win the game when you counter their reaches/elders and screw up their mana.
2) Fetch for gasp no.2 and kill off ink-eyes and kokusho or anything within the 6 toughness range. Yes, it kills off just 1-2 of 'em, but it should be enough to buy you that 1 turn for the kill.
Of course, control and denial is the game you play. Boomerangs are short term answers towards problematic permanents like the man-land and enchantments and artifacts. Bboomerang also bounce your ninjas back so they can hop off thopters for the final points of damage.
And, Skullsnatchers rapes your opponent's graveyard while Okiba-Gang rapes your opponent's hand. Deadly if you managed to find space for Higure to make them unblockable.
Last gasp will work very well as your creature kill. It does kill alot of critters out there right now. Remands are also good tempo/semi-hard counters that can buy you very important time. You can't go wrong with running Dimir Infiltrators. They fetch your counterspells and jitte too.
Yes, I echo the thoughts about jitte on ninjas. They don't kinda mix.
Skullsnatchers, graverobbers and gleancrawler take stuff out of the graveyard while your mortivore needs them to stay in. Anti-tech?
Infiltrators are godsend from RAV to the deck. They tutor, unblockable, and being 3 toughness helps alot.
Manriki-Gusari is anti-jitte/sunforger tech and pumps Higure/Ink Eyes out of Char range and most other stuff out of Last Gasp/Helix's range.
Remands are terrific, at times serving as a time walk and can be tutored for as a failsafe just before you push in the final points of damage.
Last Gasp is an excellent creature kill. Sufficient to kill most critters.
The presense of Walker of Secret Ways in the side is questionable, but she helps out against Faith's Fetters and stuff like that.
Currently I have played this deck to varying success against various decks.
BG control is tough because of all the creature hate and Weenie's speed is a problem, but they are still winnable matches. Subdual, saprolings and ghostly prison is a pain in the neck, but boomerang and Higure saves the day. UB Mill/control is also tough in it's creature control but counterspells will shine here. I walked over WG aggro and UB aggro. Against green, do not let elders/reach resolve and kill birds on sight. Their loss in tempo is your gain and most of the time they'll get hosed real bad.
Skullsnatchers works wonders against reanimator and Greater Good.
I've done enough testing of my own, and although it does not look like it, this deck can hold it's place amongst the tier one decks and come out alive. I'm posting it here and let you guys try it out and hopefully I can get a greater range of results.
I would love to put dragons to work with Bloodbond March.
You know, something like when 1 Kokusho is in the graveyard, you cast another, the first one comes back yada yada. Jugan also works, making one creature +10/+10 bigger.
Abit off-topic:
Notice how this interacts with Intuition. Sexay.
Higure's a powerhouse. Allowing your ninjas to go through and digs for reinforcements, he's the MVP of this deck. Basically wins by sending unblockables into the red zone. Warclubs works exceptionally well with ninjas and manriki-gusaris are there as anti-jitte tech.
So far this deck has a good chance against weenies and aggro and and picked up wins against various decent decks. Loses to control if not the deck did not start early.
A UB Control deck whose controls elements are all designed to answer the threats you create yourself, and thus can't deal with ones the opponent lays out. It's furking brilliant.
No, seriously, have at it. I guess you just have to learn some lessons on your own, the hardest possible way, over and over to someone's casual Myr deck.
re, Cornflake; I don't take it personally. It's just annoying to read ten pages of idiotic comments about how a 7/7 Trampler for two mana can't possibly be bad, when Wizards obviously did everything in it's power to make the card bad. Honestly, the card wouldn't be playable if it cost 1B and the Centaurs didn't have Pro-Black, but at least I could understand the temptation to try and use it then.
What's so idiotic about trying to break a card that's arguably bad. It still beats condemning a card and not taking another glance at it. I understand how you feel if this is the 2nd expansion, but hell this is just the first of three and there're still 2 more expansions to work on.
There's a combo just waiting to happen with Perilous Forays and Stone-Seeder Hierophant...
Woah. Unless I'm wrong, that basically means...
Sacrifice a creature: Search your library for a land with a basic land type and put it into play tapped.
Pay 1 and sacrifice 1 creature to start. In response, untap the first land with Hierophant. Find a land, untap Hierophant. Repeat. Seed the land anyone?
Ego Erasure says it loses all abilities, but in truth it makes creatures lose creature types.
Eyes of the Wisent is supposed to trigger on blue spells, not any spell.
Mirror Entity, Merrow Commerce. Combo or bombo?
Merrow Commerce
:1mana::symu: Tribal Enchantment - Merfolk
At the end of your turn, untap all Merfolk you control.
Gemhide Sliver turns them into birds. Sinew Sliver is their lord, and Sidewinder Sliver makes people think before blocking. Shadow Sliver makes them unblockable even.
While we're sticking to WUG, there's also Virulent Sliver and Opaline Sliver.
That and the many wonderful changelings available. There's Crib-Swap, Mirror Entity, Ego Erasure, Shapesharer and the changeling bear. Note tat none of those listed cost too much to cast. Could make a pretty powerful casual deck on a budget, or maybe even competitive if you have cash to spare.
Edit: Oh oh, there's also contributions from the other tribes, such as the Spellstutter Faerie, the tree harbinger fetches changeling stuff, oh the possibilities.
Edit2: This. Lovely.
First, I want a Dragon. It's kinda cold outdoors now, I'll give it the snow supertype since it adapted to life outside. Since it's a snow creature, why not give it a snowy ability, Freezing. Now I want it to freeze stuff instead of turning things hotter. So instead of R: ~ gets +1/+0, it uses snow mana to freeze people.
Do I have to turn it blue? Nope. It could jolly well still be loving the good warmth of the mountains. Same thing with the idea of a snow-covered mountain. Mountains are still mountains, only with a crown of snow now. They dont have to generate blue mana since it's snowy. Dragons are still pretty much red, only some learnt how to breathe ice.
Thus flavour-wise, I seriously dont find any fault with a red dragon breathing ice.
Your typical dragon would harness the power of fire to power-up his attack, and why not a dragon living in the snow harnessing the power of the ice (hence the snow mana) to do freezing attacks?
I would think of it as ice cousin of fire breathing. Most dragons do have fire-breathing abilities, Rimescale's ability is a twist to your normal "breathe attack". Makes perfect sense this way.
Hyppie also works, but that list works as far as any kind of matchup is concerned.
4 Grave-Shell Scarab
2 Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni
2 Kodama of the North Tree
3 Kokusho, the Evening Star
Neither do rends. It works on the scarab, but ink eyes just regenerates off it and Kokusho just shrugs it off. Whereas with Last Gasps, you can either
1) kill off birds and stop their mana fixing and acceleration. This is where you win the game when you counter their reaches/elders and screw up their mana.
2) Fetch for gasp no.2 and kill off ink-eyes and kokusho or anything within the 6 toughness range. Yes, it kills off just 1-2 of 'em, but it should be enough to buy you that 1 turn for the kill.
Of course, control and denial is the game you play. Boomerangs are short term answers towards problematic permanents like the man-land and enchantments and artifacts. Bboomerang also bounce your ninjas back so they can hop off thopters for the final points of damage.
And, Skullsnatchers rapes your opponent's graveyard while Okiba-Gang rapes your opponent's hand. Deadly if you managed to find space for Higure to make them unblockable.
Yes, I echo the thoughts about jitte on ninjas. They don't kinda mix.
Skullsnatchers, graverobbers and gleancrawler take stuff out of the graveyard while your mortivore needs them to stay in. Anti-tech?
4 Ornithopter
4 Dimir Infiltrator
4 Ninja of the Deep Hours
3 Higure, the Still Wind
2 Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni
1 Skullsnatcher
1 Mistblade Shinobi
1 Throat Slitter
1 Okiba-Gang Shinobi
Non-Creature Spells
2 Dimir Signet
2 Manriki-Gusari
3 Boomerang
3 Mana Leak
3 Last Gasp
2 Remand
3 Blackmail
7 Swamp
1 Shizo, Death's Storehouse
1 Minamo, School at Water's E
8 Island
4 Watery Grave
2 Skullsnatcher
1 Manriki-Gusari
1 Okiba-Gang Shinobi
1 Walker of Secret Ways
1 Mana Leak
2 Hideous Laughter
2 Throat Slitter
2 Rend Flesh
3 Cruel Edict
Infiltrators are godsend from RAV to the deck. They tutor, unblockable, and being 3 toughness helps alot.
Manriki-Gusari is anti-jitte/sunforger tech and pumps Higure/Ink Eyes out of Char range and most other stuff out of Last Gasp/Helix's range.
Remands are terrific, at times serving as a time walk and can be tutored for as a failsafe just before you push in the final points of damage.
Last Gasp is an excellent creature kill. Sufficient to kill most critters.
The presense of Walker of Secret Ways in the side is questionable, but she helps out against Faith's Fetters and stuff like that.
Currently I have played this deck to varying success against various decks.
BG control is tough because of all the creature hate and Weenie's speed is a problem, but they are still winnable matches. Subdual, saprolings and ghostly prison is a pain in the neck, but boomerang and Higure saves the day. UB Mill/control is also tough in it's creature control but counterspells will shine here. I walked over WG aggro and UB aggro. Against green, do not let elders/reach resolve and kill birds on sight. Their loss in tempo is your gain and most of the time they'll get hosed real bad.
Skullsnatchers works wonders against reanimator and Greater Good.
I've done enough testing of my own, and although it does not look like it, this deck can hold it's place amongst the tier one decks and come out alive. I'm posting it here and let you guys try it out and hopefully I can get a greater range of results.
You know, something like when 1 Kokusho is in the graveyard, you cast another, the first one comes back yada yada. Jugan also works, making one creature +10/+10 bigger.
Abit off-topic:
Notice how this interacts with Intuition. Sexay.
4 Ornithopter
4 Dimir Infiltrator
2 Dimir Guildmage
2 Keening Banshee
4 Ninja of the Deep Hours
3 Higure, the Still Wind
2 Mistblade Shinobi
2 Okiba-Gang Shinobi
1 Throat Slitter
1 Skullsnatcher
1 Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni
2 Dimir Signet
2 Manriki-Gusari
3 Boomerang
2 Mana Leak
2 Ronin Warclub
Land
6 Swamp
1 Shizo, Death's Storehouse
1 Minamo, School at Water's Edge
7 Island
4 Watery Grave
4 Underground River
2 Skullsnatcher
1 Mana Leak
4 Shadow of Doubt
2 Throat Slitter
2 Hideous Laughter
4 Cruel Edict
Higure's a powerhouse. Allowing your ninjas to go through and digs for reinforcements, he's the MVP of this deck. Basically wins by sending unblockables into the red zone. Warclubs works exceptionally well with ninjas and manriki-gusaris are there as anti-jitte tech.
So far this deck has a good chance against weenies and aggro and and picked up wins against various decent decks. Loses to control if not the deck did not start early.
C&C appreciated
Does that mean the troll comes down as a 20/20?
What's so idiotic about trying to break a card that's arguably bad. It still beats condemning a card and not taking another glance at it. I understand how you feel if this is the 2nd expansion, but hell this is just the first of three and there're still 2 more expansions to work on.
Woah. Unless I'm wrong, that basically means...
Sacrifice a creature: Search your library for a land with a basic land type and put it into play tapped.
Pay 1 and sacrifice 1 creature to start. In response, untap the first land with Hierophant. Find a land, untap Hierophant. Repeat.
Seed the land anyone?