Mana Crypt - I've got a judge one in my Captain Sisay EDH deck but I've never been a big fan of the art or if having the DCI logo on the art (although I know I could solve that part by switching to The Eternal Masters version). The new masterpiece one looks fantastic though.
Unless you are going all in on a vehicle strategy with cards like Depala and Start your Engines I feel like 4-8 vehicles is the sweet spot for an aggro deck. Any more an the risk of being flooded with Vehicles you can't crew becomes too large.
Of the currently revealed vehicles the standout is Smuggler's Copter cheap evasive easy to crew and provides card selection. 4 Copter feels like the core of any vehicle using deck, Fleetwheel Cruiser with it's 1 time ability to crew itself is a good 2nd option and Skysovereign makes a potential good top of the curve singleton.
It feels like there are a few distinct responses to the concept of masterpieces -
Casual/Mainly Standard player - "It doesn't really effect me but it'd be great to open one and I'm happy if they drive buying and keep the other things I want affordable." Overall positive.
Bling Loving/Mainly EDH/Cube/Legacy/Vintage player - "Woohoo! New Bling! Hope I can open, trade for or afford to buy it." Very Positive.
Player Seller (wants to play magic and still come out ahead on cash) - "This sucks. It'll be amazing if I open any but in general it is just going to hurt my ability to buy product or draft for value by driving down the values of the rares and Mythics." Overall Negative.
Limited Purist (limited is my god) - "This sucks. It is conceivable at some point that a limited event I participate in or care about will become warped by the opening of a masterpiece." Very Negative.
The negative feelings seem to come only from those last 2 small groups inside the magic player base which are I feel over represented online. The concerns of those 2 groups are valid and understandable if that's what you value about magic. All other negativity though seems to stem out of a "want to be a blinger but can't afford it" or a "love being negative about anything and everything" frame of mind and should be ignored.
Some people have mentioned this as a negative for the pure collector (must have everything) but they are very rare and already realize that the path they've chosen is crazily expensive and difficult.
Some very solid commons, great for limited with a small chance of standard play even.
Attune with AEther is especially impressive, as long as you can make good use out of energy it fixes your colors, insures land drops, filters out a land from your deck and provides a sorcery in your graveyard for Delirium etc.
People keep comparing the expeditions to the normal versions and complaining about how the addition of things like Scalding Tarn in expeditions didn't impact on the cost of normal scalding tarns. But expeditions and now masterpieces only tangentially relate to that market, they are premium exclusive items (similar to judge foils and Comic Con alternate planeswalkers) and that is a different market (dominated heavily by pimp deck loving EDH, vintage and legacy players). In that market I feel like there has been a real impact, prices of foils which received expedition treatments haven't been increasing at the rates they previously were and I feel like more have entered the market as people make decisions over their preferred versions and sell the other ones.
This thing is amazing, even ignoring standard and modern it's also a good sideboard option or Enlightened Tutor silver bullet for legacy. Gaining a lot of life of and tapping dredge creatures and Empty the Warrens creatures etc is strong enough but also dealing with the threat of hasty reanimation (particularly Legendary reanimation with Emrakul etc.) and slowing down hasty threats like Reality Crusher in Eldrazi stompy is pretty huge.
I actually really like this concept and the ability to get more unique bling for EDH. The only thing that I worry about with these is the concept of having them all the time from now on.
Having a lands set in a lands block makes perfect sense and now this artifact set in a artifact block works well too. But stretching for a theme ruins it (just like it did with From the Vaults which were once a unique and interesting money grab but degraded to being a blatant money grab with a flimsy theme).
Kaladesh is the set that has made me the most excited in a long time.
The unique Indian - steampunk flavor mix with dwarves, elves and vedalken in the mix makes for a great feel.
The mechanics - Fabricate is nice and simple giving good extra options to creatures, Energy is an interesting new system which thanks to the decision to make most energy cards able to both produce and use energy managed to avoid being too parasitic and Ships/Crew are interesting for boosting smaller creatures or groups of creatures and for making creature decks more resilient to sorcery speed removal/ wrath effects.
The power level - we aren't even halfway and there are already a significant amount of high potential standard cards, the enemy fast lands, the planeswalkers (particularly God Chandra), the Gearhulks (aka new Titans), Demon of Dark Schemes (aka new Massacre Wurm). There are even a bunch of good Uncommons like Aerial Responder, Voltaic Brawler, Filigree Familiar, Unlicensed Disintergration, Aether Hub, Ceremonious Rejection, Essence Extraction etc.
The only issue is that there is barely anything with plegacy or modern playability. But that's not unusual and we still have plenty to go.
Outside of multiplay where it can work as group hug or alliance forming this card is just bad.
Best case normal scenario you get 2 evenly powered creatures and give one to your opponent and one to yourself. In this scenario you've still lost because you spent 4 mana for this effect and outside of haste or some sort of end of turn/opponents upkeep effect your opponent will get the advantage from the creature (attacking etc.) 1st.
To actually break this card you need to either be able to reclaim your creature (homeward path, threaten effects, bounce etc.) or to be able to take advantage of your creature in a big way immediately (some sort of combo engine where any of your creatures work find maybe?) and where your opponent won't. It doesn't even work as a donate effect because your opponent doesn't have to take anything.
Running this in a Captain Sisay EDH deck is pretty good. You can search for it, bolt a creature/walker and then upgrade 3 power worth of creatures into 6 power that bolts a creature/walker every time you attack. I'm definitely planning to hunt down a foil copy for my Sisay deck but ...
Actually using Sisay as part of the crew though is pretty stupid even if it is nice for flavor reasons, any other creature/combination of creatures is better than skipping a Sisay activation to crew a ship, Sisay's searching ability is almost always going to be stronger and unless I'm missing something the ship damage doesn't count as commander damage.
Fantastic card. It's pure value, a 2/2 for 3 which gains you a couple of life is already solid and when you add the death draw a card trigger, being an artifact creature for Delerium etc. and fitting perfectly into an Emerge curve you get something that's sure to see a bunch of play.
I wasn't including the Origins creature flip walkers. Planes walkers in the new standard -
Arlinn, Chandra (6mana version), Gideon (4mana version), Jace (5mana version), Kiora (probably don't want to use), Nahiri, Narset, Nissa (1GG version), Ob Nixilis, Sarkhan, Sorin, Liliana (new possibly don't want to use) and Tamiyo.
That's 13 and even if you discount Liliana and Kiora because they want creatures that's still 11.
And of course you would run 2 copies of many walkers, why is that even questionable? Running 3+ is where things become problematic, running 2 copies is almost always the correct play. At 2 you have a good chance of seeing the walker you want and not hitting any dupes. Even if you do hit a dupe it just means that you get a 2nd use of a walker ability and for some walkers like Sarkhan that can be a good thing (make 2 Dragon Tokens).
Again I don't think that it's going to be a top tier must play/must beat deck in standard. But it does have a power level worth testing and could definitely win FNMs or get a surprise top8 in the right meta. At the very least it shouldn't be written off based on poor maths.
This deck isn't feasible in a competitive environment in legacy or modern because it's simply too slow, and in standard because there are not enough walkers... remember that you can't go adding your walkers as 4ofs because if you manage to hit 2 of the same subtype, one of them is hitting the graveyard.
and the walkers, albeit being really powerful cards, mostly don't exacly synergize with each other.
I agree with the legacy and modern part but you are misjudging standard. As long as you run 4+ colors (Very doable especially with Oath of Nissa to fix) there are plenty of walkers in standard. Even ignoring Kiora and the new Liliana who both need a creature deck for maximum value there are still more than 10 options which you could run 2 copies of each if you really wanted to.
It's also not a particular disadvantage to hit a 2nd copy of a walker, as long as you use all your current walker abilities before casting deploy the gatewatch you can simply replace the old copy with a new one and get a 2nd ability, it's not as good as an entirely new walker but it's still strong.
Walkers also don't particularly need to synergize with each other, superfriends has been a deck concept for ages now and simply getting to use multiple walker abilities each turn is plenty powerful.
I'm not saying it's going to be the next top standard deck or anything but the power and numbers are not the issue.
I'm pretty confidant in my Japanese (uni major and I now live/work/magic in Japan) and I can confirm that the translation is return all lands from your graveyard to the battlefield.
Pretty stoked about this card, Pyromancer's goggles decks just got a lot better in standard discard all the lands you want for cards early game and then turn them into ramp. And that's one of the most simplistic uses.
Of the currently revealed vehicles the standout is Smuggler's Copter cheap evasive easy to crew and provides card selection. 4 Copter feels like the core of any vehicle using deck, Fleetwheel Cruiser with it's 1 time ability to crew itself is a good 2nd option and Skysovereign makes a potential good top of the curve singleton.
Casual/Mainly Standard player - "It doesn't really effect me but it'd be great to open one and I'm happy if they drive buying and keep the other things I want affordable." Overall positive.
Bling Loving/Mainly EDH/Cube/Legacy/Vintage player - "Woohoo! New Bling! Hope I can open, trade for or afford to buy it." Very Positive.
Player Seller (wants to play magic and still come out ahead on cash) - "This sucks. It'll be amazing if I open any but in general it is just going to hurt my ability to buy product or draft for value by driving down the values of the rares and Mythics." Overall Negative.
Limited Purist (limited is my god) - "This sucks. It is conceivable at some point that a limited event I participate in or care about will become warped by the opening of a masterpiece." Very Negative.
The negative feelings seem to come only from those last 2 small groups inside the magic player base which are I feel over represented online. The concerns of those 2 groups are valid and understandable if that's what you value about magic. All other negativity though seems to stem out of a "want to be a blinger but can't afford it" or a "love being negative about anything and everything" frame of mind and should be ignored.
Some people have mentioned this as a negative for the pure collector (must have everything) but they are very rare and already realize that the path they've chosen is crazily expensive and difficult.
Attune with AEther is especially impressive, as long as you can make good use out of energy it fixes your colors, insures land drops, filters out a land from your deck and provides a sorcery in your graveyard for Delirium etc.
Having a lands set in a lands block makes perfect sense and now this artifact set in a artifact block works well too. But stretching for a theme ruins it (just like it did with From the Vaults which were once a unique and interesting money grab but degraded to being a blatant money grab with a flimsy theme).
The unique Indian - steampunk flavor mix with dwarves, elves and vedalken in the mix makes for a great feel.
The mechanics - Fabricate is nice and simple giving good extra options to creatures, Energy is an interesting new system which thanks to the decision to make most energy cards able to both produce and use energy managed to avoid being too parasitic and Ships/Crew are interesting for boosting smaller creatures or groups of creatures and for making creature decks more resilient to sorcery speed removal/ wrath effects.
The power level - we aren't even halfway and there are already a significant amount of high potential standard cards, the enemy fast lands, the planeswalkers (particularly God Chandra), the Gearhulks (aka new Titans), Demon of Dark Schemes (aka new Massacre Wurm). There are even a bunch of good Uncommons like Aerial Responder, Voltaic Brawler, Filigree Familiar, Unlicensed Disintergration, Aether Hub, Ceremonious Rejection, Essence Extraction etc.
The only issue is that there is barely anything with plegacy or modern playability. But that's not unusual and we still have plenty to go.
Best case normal scenario you get 2 evenly powered creatures and give one to your opponent and one to yourself. In this scenario you've still lost because you spent 4 mana for this effect and outside of haste or some sort of end of turn/opponents upkeep effect your opponent will get the advantage from the creature (attacking etc.) 1st.
To actually break this card you need to either be able to reclaim your creature (homeward path, threaten effects, bounce etc.) or to be able to take advantage of your creature in a big way immediately (some sort of combo engine where any of your creatures work find maybe?) and where your opponent won't. It doesn't even work as a donate effect because your opponent doesn't have to take anything.
Actually using Sisay as part of the crew though is pretty stupid even if it is nice for flavor reasons, any other creature/combination of creatures is better than skipping a Sisay activation to crew a ship, Sisay's searching ability is almost always going to be stronger and unless I'm missing something the ship damage doesn't count as commander damage.
Arlinn, Chandra (6mana version), Gideon (4mana version), Jace (5mana version), Kiora (probably don't want to use), Nahiri, Narset, Nissa (1GG version), Ob Nixilis, Sarkhan, Sorin, Liliana (new possibly don't want to use) and Tamiyo.
That's 13 and even if you discount Liliana and Kiora because they want creatures that's still 11.
And of course you would run 2 copies of many walkers, why is that even questionable? Running 3+ is where things become problematic, running 2 copies is almost always the correct play. At 2 you have a good chance of seeing the walker you want and not hitting any dupes. Even if you do hit a dupe it just means that you get a 2nd use of a walker ability and for some walkers like Sarkhan that can be a good thing (make 2 Dragon Tokens).
Again I don't think that it's going to be a top tier must play/must beat deck in standard. But it does have a power level worth testing and could definitely win FNMs or get a surprise top8 in the right meta. At the very least it shouldn't be written off based on poor maths.
I agree with the legacy and modern part but you are misjudging standard. As long as you run 4+ colors (Very doable especially with Oath of Nissa to fix) there are plenty of walkers in standard. Even ignoring Kiora and the new Liliana who both need a creature deck for maximum value there are still more than 10 options which you could run 2 copies of each if you really wanted to.
It's also not a particular disadvantage to hit a 2nd copy of a walker, as long as you use all your current walker abilities before casting deploy the gatewatch you can simply replace the old copy with a new one and get a 2nd ability, it's not as good as an entirely new walker but it's still strong.
Walkers also don't particularly need to synergize with each other, superfriends has been a deck concept for ages now and simply getting to use multiple walker abilities each turn is plenty powerful.
I'm not saying it's going to be the next top standard deck or anything but the power and numbers are not the issue.
Pretty stoked about this card, Pyromancer's goggles decks just got a lot better in standard discard all the lands you want for cards early game and then turn them into ramp. And that's one of the most simplistic uses.