I love it: 3cc or cheaper playable legends with good abilities are few and far between, the last legend of this calibre(despite champions being a legend heavy set) was lin sivvi way back when. He couldn't be this cheap and be any bigger(especially with bushido) without being totally broken.
the instant only clause is fair enough(after all who'd be stupid enough to believe wizards would make anything near a functional reprint of yawgmoths will(arguably the best card ever)) after all there is a heap of good instants even in mono black type 2 to use with it; terror, echoing decay, rend flesh, dark banishing, the new 2cc legend killer, the new 2cc reanimator, devour in shadow, etc. and that's just in black.
As for the idea that Toshi isnt a samurai i'll quote directly from the blurb on the first page of "Outlaw: Champions of Kamigawa" where is says: "Scott McGough begins an epic story of a ronin and a princess and the strange alliance they must make to discover the truth behind the kami's war." For those people who don't know a RONIN is a type of samurai. Toshi in the book uses samurai weapons and at one point flys on a samurai's moth why the heck wouldn't he be a samurai.
Personally i think the best use for toshi is in a red/black deck with lots of red burn for the simple reason you can kill a creature with a instant burn spell then flash it back with toshi's ability to do extra damage to your opponents head something like: turn 1, mountain, go turn 2, swamp, chrome mox a echoing decay, toshi, go turn 3, mountain, magma jet a creature, scry, toshi recur magma jet the player, scry, toshi beats, go. 1 creature dead, 4 damage to the head and massive card quality because of the scry 4 all on turn 3(turn 4 without the mox). It's quick its good and its massive card advantage if used correctly.
Okay so most people(including me) hate raffinity, but a couple of points,
first the only time raffinity players lack originallity is if they're using the r/b/u vial affinity version which is so often netdecked at the moment. affinity can actually be quiet creative, there's the less popular control affinity with broodstar or quomolox kill, white affinity using second sunrise and leonin elder and even bauble affinity using artificers intuition and a recuring myr servitor engine. These versions aren't as viable as the standard raffinity but it's still not fair to lump all affinity players into the one basket.
secondly whats with this 4th turn is too late stuff, raffinity will only ever win on 3rd turn if the raffinity player is A. goldfish testing B. playing against a total newbie or C. playing against someone with no early game(disruption or creatures) which is pretty much point B anyway. 4th turn is fine it just has to have some early game backup after all march of the machines is standard blue anti affinity tech and it works great but you'd be an idiot to play it without the annuls or the relic barriers. same goes for all solutions for affinity no 1 card can kill the deck you need the early game disruption followed by the midgame mass hatred card, like green use oxidize and shaman the maybe molder slug, red use hearth kami and electrostatic bolt then maybe furnace dragon etc.
thirdly affinity players stop whining about how wizards are making anti affinity hosers everytime a deck becomes to powerful in recent history wizards make hosers against it, think psychatog with goblin piledriver and withered wretch, think goblins with silver knight. and that's just a few examples, there are heaps more so stop complaining about it wizards always have and always will create deck hosers so stop acting surprised and hurt when your current favorite is the target.
i'm not sure how good they'll be in constructed yet but the ninja's are definitely shaping up to be a nice casual or maybe block deck. they even have a wonderful curve with mistblade shinobi(ninjitsu U), ninja of the deep hours(ninjitsu 1U), throught slitter(ninjitsu 2B) and now higure, the still wind(ninjitsu 2UU).
i don't think that Higure is anywhere near as insane as lin sivvi was but in a ninja deck it would really shine allowing ninjas already on the board to get multiple hits in as well as tutoring up whatever ninja you might need at the time. I think any ninja deck would almost have to be U/B so as to get the most out of the ninjas using cheap evasion creatures like nezumi cuthroat and soratami cloudskater to get the early ninjas through and then following up with Higure to make sure they keep getting through with maybe some disruption or tempo spells throw in IE. distress, rend flesh/spirit, hinder, thoughbind, consuming vortex etc. And that's only if your trying to make a block deck.
if you expand to type 2 you gain alot of better cards including my personal favorite ORNITHOPTER, imagine this: turn 1- land, ornithopter, turn 2 land, attack with ornithopter, ninjitsu out ninja of the deep hours to draw a card, ornithopter again, turn 3- attack with ornithopter(and ninja if it won't die), ninjitsu out throught slitter to kill a ravager(or whatever), ornithopter again. I'm not saying its a great deck concept but i definitely think its worth trying out especially if we get any more good ninjas.
One of the cooler and strangely undertalked cards we've got so far is "In the Web of War" a 3RR enchantment which gives any creature you play haste and +2/+0 till the end of the turn. It may be a bit expensive at 5cc but i think any enchantment which gives a strong one sided effect has to be able to be used if not broken in some sort of deck, this to me feels very much like "Fires of Yavimaya" which was a very strong card and created its own architype.
There are a couple of cards that to me just scream that they should be used with this card, one is "Seething Song" an ok red accelerator which is already used in some big red style decks as a method of getting out furnace dragon quicker, in this case it allows In the web of war to be cast on turn 3(turn 2 with a mox) making it much more useful.
The second card is the main reason i want to make a web of war deck and it is "Cosmic Larva" it's big it's fat it tramples and it cost only 1RR, everyone i know when they first saw cosmic larva droolled over its potential if it only had haste, after all with haste its a 7/6 trampling surprise which you can keep around a couple of turns if you wanted to making it a couple of hundred times better than ball lightning or blistering firecat. In this case combine cosmic larva and in the web of war and you have a 9/6 trampler with haste and in a red deck with any direct damage a 9/6 hasty trampler kills the opponent in 2 turns.
heres a quick deck idea using it:
WOW.dec vs1.0
creatures
4x Cosmic Larva 1RR
4x Vulshok War Boar 2RR
4x Arc-Slogger 3RR
4x Furnace Dragon 6RRR
other
4x In the web of war 3RR
4x Seething song 2R
4x Pyroclasm 1R
4x Shrapnel Blast 1R
4x Pyrite Spellbomb 1
4x Chrome Mox 0
land
4x darksteel citadel
4x great furnace
16x mountain
And thats just of the top of my head and only in mono-red. Discuss freely.
i love this card, great early game drop in any blue deck makes blue bombs like meloku and kiega better against removal as well as saving any blinkmoth nexus or stalking stones which are animated. Another major bonus of kira, great glass spinner is that she makes blues sideboard utility cards like temporal adept and jushi apprentice much more playable and much less fragile. all around a great card.
I personally think that we don't have the full wording on the card, it has to be converted cost of X or less to be even vaguely playable. currently its a move expensive version of spellblast(which was bad) with a next to useless alternate cost ability and its a rare in a cycle of which the other one(blazing shoal in red) is actually friggin excellent, wizards generally try to make cycles at least close to equal in power.
the instant only clause is fair enough(after all who'd be stupid enough to believe wizards would make anything near a functional reprint of yawgmoths will(arguably the best card ever)) after all there is a heap of good instants even in mono black type 2 to use with it; terror, echoing decay, rend flesh, dark banishing, the new 2cc legend killer, the new 2cc reanimator, devour in shadow, etc. and that's just in black.
As for the idea that Toshi isnt a samurai i'll quote directly from the blurb on the first page of "Outlaw: Champions of Kamigawa" where is says: "Scott McGough begins an epic story of a ronin and a princess and the strange alliance they must make to discover the truth behind the kami's war." For those people who don't know a RONIN is a type of samurai. Toshi in the book uses samurai weapons and at one point flys on a samurai's moth why the heck wouldn't he be a samurai.
Personally i think the best use for toshi is in a red/black deck with lots of red burn for the simple reason you can kill a creature with a instant burn spell then flash it back with toshi's ability to do extra damage to your opponents head something like: turn 1, mountain, go turn 2, swamp, chrome mox a echoing decay, toshi, go turn 3, mountain, magma jet a creature, scry, toshi recur magma jet the player, scry, toshi beats, go. 1 creature dead, 4 damage to the head and massive card quality because of the scry 4 all on turn 3(turn 4 without the mox). It's quick its good and its massive card advantage if used correctly.
first the only time raffinity players lack originallity is if they're using the r/b/u vial affinity version which is so often netdecked at the moment. affinity can actually be quiet creative, there's the less popular control affinity with broodstar or quomolox kill, white affinity using second sunrise and leonin elder and even bauble affinity using artificers intuition and a recuring myr servitor engine. These versions aren't as viable as the standard raffinity but it's still not fair to lump all affinity players into the one basket.
secondly whats with this 4th turn is too late stuff, raffinity will only ever win on 3rd turn if the raffinity player is A. goldfish testing B. playing against a total newbie or C. playing against someone with no early game(disruption or creatures) which is pretty much point B anyway. 4th turn is fine it just has to have some early game backup after all march of the machines is standard blue anti affinity tech and it works great but you'd be an idiot to play it without the annuls or the relic barriers. same goes for all solutions for affinity no 1 card can kill the deck you need the early game disruption followed by the midgame mass hatred card, like green use oxidize and shaman the maybe molder slug, red use hearth kami and electrostatic bolt then maybe furnace dragon etc.
thirdly affinity players stop whining about how wizards are making anti affinity hosers everytime a deck becomes to powerful in recent history wizards make hosers against it, think psychatog with goblin piledriver and withered wretch, think goblins with silver knight. and that's just a few examples, there are heaps more so stop complaining about it wizards always have and always will create deck hosers so stop acting surprised and hurt when your current favorite is the target.
i don't think that Higure is anywhere near as insane as lin sivvi was but in a ninja deck it would really shine allowing ninjas already on the board to get multiple hits in as well as tutoring up whatever ninja you might need at the time. I think any ninja deck would almost have to be U/B so as to get the most out of the ninjas using cheap evasion creatures like nezumi cuthroat and soratami cloudskater to get the early ninjas through and then following up with Higure to make sure they keep getting through with maybe some disruption or tempo spells throw in IE. distress, rend flesh/spirit, hinder, thoughbind, consuming vortex etc. And that's only if your trying to make a block deck.
if you expand to type 2 you gain alot of better cards including my personal favorite ORNITHOPTER, imagine this: turn 1- land, ornithopter, turn 2 land, attack with ornithopter, ninjitsu out ninja of the deep hours to draw a card, ornithopter again, turn 3- attack with ornithopter(and ninja if it won't die), ninjitsu out throught slitter to kill a ravager(or whatever), ornithopter again. I'm not saying its a great deck concept but i definitely think its worth trying out especially if we get any more good ninjas.
There are a couple of cards that to me just scream that they should be used with this card, one is "Seething Song" an ok red accelerator which is already used in some big red style decks as a method of getting out furnace dragon quicker, in this case it allows In the web of war to be cast on turn 3(turn 2 with a mox) making it much more useful.
The second card is the main reason i want to make a web of war deck and it is "Cosmic Larva" it's big it's fat it tramples and it cost only 1RR, everyone i know when they first saw cosmic larva droolled over its potential if it only had haste, after all with haste its a 7/6 trampling surprise which you can keep around a couple of turns if you wanted to making it a couple of hundred times better than ball lightning or blistering firecat. In this case combine cosmic larva and in the web of war and you have a 9/6 trampler with haste and in a red deck with any direct damage a 9/6 hasty trampler kills the opponent in 2 turns.
heres a quick deck idea using it:
WOW.dec vs1.0
creatures
4x Cosmic Larva 1RR
4x Vulshok War Boar 2RR
4x Arc-Slogger 3RR
4x Furnace Dragon 6RRR
other
4x In the web of war 3RR
4x Seething song 2R
4x Pyroclasm 1R
4x Shrapnel Blast 1R
4x Pyrite Spellbomb 1
4x Chrome Mox 0
land
4x darksteel citadel
4x great furnace
16x mountain
And thats just of the top of my head and only in mono-red. Discuss freely.