Hmm. He's a really cool card to build a deck around, but he's very untourney worthy. A lot of people have mentioned that he's hard to play, but that's not the big killer here; the problem is that he's a very, very slow combo.
I mean, okay, you play him. The turn after you play him, you can go fetch your first enchantment - and it'll likely be a protection of some kind for him. The turn after that, you can start fetching out other pieces. But as has been pointed out, there aren't a whole lot of killer combos to grab with this. Megrim/Underworld Dreams? Again, super slow. Pillory? Also slow. Both of these strategies like to take the long kind of play, which will likely mean that you won't be playing this guy early at all; at best, he'll come out in the midgame or late game, and by then he's a really poor finisher.
Don't get me wrong - I really like him, and I really think that he has a creative, interesting ability that interacts well with other sets and the colors he is. The big problem is that the ability is one of those that is either not that great except casually or extraordinarily broken; that's the nature of tutoring and free stuff.
Somehow, there's gotta be a way to make him infinitely attack.
The only regret I've seen any WotC folks say is that they kind of regretted that she could be reanimated so easily. However, most of the decks she's been in have not been reanimator decks. I kind of think WotC really likes her; she's an awesome timmy card, a great white card, and this huge beatstick. They like her like they like the pitfighters - sometimes, it's just nice to smash face with an awesome fatty.
This is a really interesting spell, and the Johnny in me really likes it. It has two abilities that have traditionally been abusable; the countering of all other spells, and the generation of a lot of tokens. One can do some very weird things with effects that trigger on creatures CiP with this, for example. All the replicate/forecast abilities all work happily, as was noted. Creature abilities and recursion work wonderfully with this; note how well this works with many Orzhov strategies that focus on creature-based control. Look how well it works with Enduring Ideal, both as a great way to protect the ideal and as a card in that deck.
Looking at it directly, it goes against a lot of control strategies of UW, but it opens up all sorts of weird combo effects. I honestly feel like this could be this set's version of Mirari; untap with it and win. There are just too many bizarre interactions with abilities and other cards for it not to be something possibly wrecking. The big disadvantage is that Gruul type decks with fatties du jour may roll over this, but I suspect that a creature-based control or combo deck could be fine with that.
Sadly, any 'target attacking creature' removal spell is subpar at best. This is the best version in a long, long time, but it won't help WW. It will help combo and control, however.
The senator...yikes. Nice!
The giant Simic spell of doom is not at all that interesting to me. It's very disappointing. I had such high hopes for Simic; having weird-ass creatures that get weird-ass creature abilities and then having their marquee spell be so much worse than any of the rare creature guildmana cards like gleancrawler? Bummer, that. Yeah, one could draw a ton of cards, possibly - but if you're spending 7 mana, you shouldn't have to have a very conditional symmetric effect.
What a great example of hellbent. What other archetype would want to exhaust their card supply by turn 4. Imagine this after playing the 5/3 beater of death on T3 - the pressure your opponent is under is huge. Basically, if they don't take care of all your threats, they lose, plain and simple.
The toughness is annoying, but it's not horrible - and the 4cc makes up for that quite a bit in tempo.When you can hit for 6 and then pump to hit for 8 - or take out almost any blocking creature in the format without losing your guy - it's a good investment.
Well, that's a really weak ruling. "move" and "place" do not seem to be normally synonyms, but they apparently are in MtG. Sigh. This guy is going to be a wrecking ball in limited.
In constructed, not so much; since when did constructed ever care about small combat trickiness?
Doubling season should not work with this guy, since counters are not created ; they are moved.
I'm still not hugely impressed with him compared to Azorius, but he's not too bad. I'm hoping that UG has some interesting auras in this set; it would seem to make sense, but it might be too much to hope.
Qasur, yeah, I stand corrected. At least according to the Kamigawa FAQ, if you copy a flip card you can flip in the future if the conditions are met; that doesn't tell me if you gain the activated ability what that does, however. One possible scenario is that if you gain the ability and would then 'flip', you will now gain the flipped activated abilities if the card has any. Another, more simple answer is that flipping a card without a flip side does nothing special. I'll dig through the archives and see if there is any listing of this.
Ah, here's the relevant text: Q: What happens when a Quicksilver Elemental gains all activated abilities of a Flip creature, and then meets the flip criteria? Does it flip itself to no effect? –Roy A: You'll have a flipped Quicksilver Elemental that has all the same characteristics. Being flipped doesn't matter unless there's a set of flip characteristics to apply.
So the answer is that nothing happens if Kraj copies Jushi and would flip.
Oh man, the experiment is going to have some interesting interactions. My problem is, though, the Kamigawa flip cards will have odd issues. For instance, if Jushi Apprentice has a +1/+1 counter on it, and I have the experiment in play, and eight cards in hand, and use Kraj's 2U, T: Draw a card ability (which checks for then flips if you have 9 or more cards in hand), will Kraj flip? What happens if he does? Or does it not apply?
Flipping is not an activated ability. It is a triggered ability. Kraj won't copy it.
Folks saying that Radkos is a great Suicide Black card do not understand what suicide black ever did. Radkos is almost the opposite of suiblack - it's a huge-costed creature with an odd symmetry that has great abilities if you can use it right.
The ooze is funny, especially with how graft works. Meloku seems like the most abusable immediately given the color combo (as was stated earlier) but there's gotta be some way to give him essentially a candelabra of Tawnos/infinite combo that involves some weird untapping/tapping when X happens. Perhaps a combo involving giving him the ability to create creatures and the ability to untap whenever a creature comes into play? Something weird, I'm sure.
Neither are at all constructed-viable, but both are neat in janky things to make my Johnny happy.
And Windreaver is better than morphling for the creature pump part. In order to get above 5 power with morphling you're looking at a huge investment (10 to make it a 6/1, 4 to make it a 0/7, 6 to make it a 6/1) whereas with the windreaver its effectively a 6/6 for WWWUU.
This is totally not how morphling works. Morphling doesn't forget that it is a -1/7. The best morphling can ever be is a 5/1.
The vessel would be really lame to go with hellbent. What, you're going to spend 3 mana a turn to scepter your own hand and then another 1 mana per spell to play that hand? I think most hellbent decks would much rather just spend the 4 mana/card to just play the card each turn. Spending 4 mana to enable hellbent kind of goes against the BR speed aspects.
It is, however, a really awesome version of scepter. Most people discard lands against scepter; this makes that strategy pretty painful, giving people a land for one mana against you. Plus, they will soon be able to play the spells you can play, since they're stealing your land. Or you put valuable spells under it, and it hits like a decent coersion. They said that they wanted to enable more hand disruption; sounds like this is a step in that direction.
Forecast is...odd. It's more diverse than Graft appears to be, which is nice. The first guy we've seen it on is a nice little guy - a 4/3 for 5 that also allows card drawing if you don't need to commit another creature to the board. Not as good as windreaver, admittedly, but still decent and a beating and a half in limited.
Again, I'm talking about the mechanic. I don't just play control decks. I like designing decks, or thinking about design of decks. To me, something that makes creatures big at sorcery speed isn't that interesting. Big fatties can be really cool, but if that's all a mechanic does it's not that interesting to me.
But hey, instead of asking me what I like, just make gross assumptions! That's the internet way!
I wish he had a bit more globally applicable abilities, but the enchantment alteration on a stick makes me kinda happy. And maybe he'll make graft a bit more playable (though Golgari's seems like a better fit for that).
Still am in lurve with Azorius. That's like the bar now.
I mean, okay, you play him. The turn after you play him, you can go fetch your first enchantment - and it'll likely be a protection of some kind for him. The turn after that, you can start fetching out other pieces. But as has been pointed out, there aren't a whole lot of killer combos to grab with this. Megrim/Underworld Dreams? Again, super slow. Pillory? Also slow. Both of these strategies like to take the long kind of play, which will likely mean that you won't be playing this guy early at all; at best, he'll come out in the midgame or late game, and by then he's a really poor finisher.
Don't get me wrong - I really like him, and I really think that he has a creative, interesting ability that interacts well with other sets and the colors he is. The big problem is that the ability is one of those that is either not that great except casually or extraordinarily broken; that's the nature of tutoring and free stuff.
Somehow, there's gotta be a way to make him infinitely attack.
Looking at it directly, it goes against a lot of control strategies of UW, but it opens up all sorts of weird combo effects. I honestly feel like this could be this set's version of Mirari; untap with it and win. There are just too many bizarre interactions with abilities and other cards for it not to be something possibly wrecking. The big disadvantage is that Gruul type decks with fatties du jour may roll over this, but I suspect that a creature-based control or combo deck could be fine with that.
The senator...yikes. Nice!
The giant Simic spell of doom is not at all that interesting to me. It's very disappointing. I had such high hopes for Simic; having weird-ass creatures that get weird-ass creature abilities and then having their marquee spell be so much worse than any of the rare creature guildmana cards like gleancrawler? Bummer, that. Yeah, one could draw a ton of cards, possibly - but if you're spending 7 mana, you shouldn't have to have a very conditional symmetric effect.
But ooh, it's great in multiplayer! Whatever.
The toughness is annoying, but it's not horrible - and the 4cc makes up for that quite a bit in tempo.When you can hit for 6 and then pump to hit for 8 - or take out almost any blocking creature in the format without losing your guy - it's a good investment.
In constructed, not so much; since when did constructed ever care about small combat trickiness?
I'm still not hugely impressed with him compared to Azorius, but he's not too bad. I'm hoping that UG has some interesting auras in this set; it would seem to make sense, but it might be too much to hope.
Ah, here's the relevant text:
Q: What happens when a Quicksilver Elemental gains all activated abilities of a Flip creature, and then meets the flip criteria? Does it flip itself to no effect? –Roy
A: You'll have a flipped Quicksilver Elemental that has all the same characteristics. Being flipped doesn't matter unless there's a set of flip characteristics to apply.
So the answer is that nothing happens if Kraj copies Jushi and would flip.
Flipping is not an activated ability. It is a triggered ability. Kraj won't copy it.
The ooze is funny, especially with how graft works. Meloku seems like the most abusable immediately given the color combo (as was stated earlier) but there's gotta be some way to give him essentially a candelabra of Tawnos/infinite combo that involves some weird untapping/tapping when X happens. Perhaps a combo involving giving him the ability to create creatures and the ability to untap whenever a creature comes into play? Something weird, I'm sure.
Neither are at all constructed-viable, but both are neat in janky things to make my Johnny happy.
This is totally not how morphling works. Morphling doesn't forget that it is a -1/7. The best morphling can ever be is a 5/1.
It is, however, a really awesome version of scepter. Most people discard lands against scepter; this makes that strategy pretty painful, giving people a land for one mana against you. Plus, they will soon be able to play the spells you can play, since they're stealing your land. Or you put valuable spells under it, and it hits like a decent coersion. They said that they wanted to enable more hand disruption; sounds like this is a step in that direction.
Forecast is...odd. It's more diverse than Graft appears to be, which is nice. The first guy we've seen it on is a nice little guy - a 4/3 for 5 that also allows card drawing if you don't need to commit another creature to the board. Not as good as windreaver, admittedly, but still decent and a beating and a half in limited.
But hey, instead of asking me what I like, just make gross assumptions! That's the internet way!
Still am in lurve with Azorius. That's like the bar now.