MTG Salvation

I am sad that Betty White passed away and wish that she would have at least made it to her 100th birthday celebration.


P.S. Yes, I specifically logged into my MTGS account after two years of being away to see if a thread honoring Betty White would also mention Galspanic. Their profile says they haven't posted since 2019, and I got to admit, I kind of got questions for them if they show up.

Quote from NerdSoda »

Quote from Randuir »

Quote from Decadent_Creed »

I like these lands. It seems like they should be in pretty much every EDH deck that shares the color.

Maybe not in 4-5 colour manabases as those are often light on basics (and their bonus isn't good enough IMHO to be worth coming into play tapped), but I'd definitely run these in all mono, two and three color decks if they aren't too expensive.

Don't forget that fetchable dual lands will also meet the criteria.

Yeah, nothing in the text specifies that the Island must be a "Basic Island." It's worded that way because whenever shocklands are legal, Wizards likes to throw them some kind of cool interaction that's all upsides, except fetchlands. They tried that only once in Standard and everyone agreed never again.

Quote from Ryperior74 »

Should have just gotten the look at top five regardless without the need of another knight

And why legendary artifact part there’s only 5 in the limited

This card also reads so hard that they did not want it to becomes a commander staple outside its own tribe.

Quote from ReAnimator »

Good thing they just banned Looting to give it another go with legs attached (obviously not as powerful, but still looks really good).

I laughed at this harder than I should have.

Cool... is it going to see play in Standard this go around?

Quote from Singe »

The Esper Legend would work with Ornithopter and Cloudstone Curio. You generate as many tokens you want.

Cloudstone Curio specifies that it does not work with artifacts entering the battlefield. I've learned that the hard way when I found out in real time that Cloudstone nombos with Solemn Simulacrum.

These look interesting. The one that interests me the most is Korvold because he's the most flexible draw engine and is a decent enough a sac outlet.

Syr Gwyn, other than bringing me one step closer to believing the Kenriths are indeed like-but-legally-distinct-from-the Lannisters (you know which two), seems fine. I need to see how equipments and the knight tribe are balanced in this standard, because she can't be evaluated in a vacuum with how she works.

Alela concerns me. Not because she's bad, but because Esper Hero is a grindfest, and now they got another token generator for their midrange strategies. I'd have to see the cards that are going to probably get added into the deck, but she doesn't look as good as Hero of Prescient One... yet. Also, it's neat that they've added Warlock as a creature type. D&D references are fun.

One thing to note about the Eldrazi is that they’ve been marketing failures in each iteration they’ve existed. They essentially ruined Zendikar 1 drafting (which is a pretty big deal because drafting moves a lot more packs than just straight selling alone); Emrakul one also got booted from commander because the only card that format needs less is Griselbrand. Eldrazi 2 overran every format except Standard, then Emrakul managed claim Standard to by being the cherry on top of the mistake now called Kaladesh block. The end result is one point on another in the past decade(ish) there has been a problem in every format that could be tied back to Eldrazi cards.

Like, maybe we see Emrakul again one day because the story demands it, but through and through, the Eldrazi tribe as a whole has nothing but bad publicity behind them because they were a problem in of themselves or helped push an existing problem over the top. And this is coming from a guy who’s favorite tribe is the Eldrazi.

Seems good.

Looting will go great with Bond of Revival strategies.

Boosting a creature with First Strike and Trample is... helpful. That seems useful for strategies that want to make chumping to save planeswalkers a lot harder. Golos, Tireless Pilgrim Field of the Dead decks come to mind. The good thing is that it is also a plus.

The ultimate... is a neat ultimate. Good luck getting it off.

What I'm more interested in is that it's a blue mana rock.

Yeah, Narset, Parter of Veils is going to be huge thorn for this card, but Narset also hasn't stopped Hydroid Krasis. Honestly, I'll have to see what Planeswalker removal looks like post rotation because playing around Narset may not be that big of a setback if players figure out how to navigate her and Wizards gives us decent tools to do so.

Food Tokens from a sister Thread:

A Food Token is an artifact with 2, T, sacrifice this token: gain 3 life.

Did... did Wizards of the Coast just consciously give Eggs strategy players... an actual egg?

That said, it's nice to know what a Food Token does. The cards themselves seem fine. Golden Goose is a much worse Birds of Paradise, but depending on how Food Tokens pan out, it will be functional for the Format since Llanowar Elves is rotating.

Quote from NotScottMescudi »

Feels weird that they made him produce food instead of treasure tokens. He's a shapeshifter and an evil dude right? I thought evil dudes liked treasure, and it would work with the artifact swap part too. Here's to hoping food is like clue tokens, because I sure love card draw. Maybe it's an artifact token with an etb and no other effects?

The Fey are tricksters and do whatever they want. If he's templated after Dungeons and Dragons' Fey, he'll probably be more of a malicious prankster than just straight up evil. It'll also give him room to have more anti-hero moments if Wizards doesn't want to make him a villain through and through.

As far as I can tell, there's nothing too significant that we know of yet to pick up. Mono-Red, while still good, has never been expensive. What to keep an eye in red is definitely the Chandras that are in standard because Tribal Chandra is a deck that does win games. Tribal Goblins also feel like a deck that could just randomly get great post rotation even with Goblin Chainwhirler rotating out. The biggest issue is that we don't know what Throne of Eldraine is going to give red specifically (the best we have right now is that that the new Rowan Kenrith planeswalker is probably just red), or what other things other strategies are getting. Right now, it's just speculation, but the two big questions to ask when speculating are 1) what strategies do I know will survive rotation, and 2) what cards in Red either deal with those strategies or are just good enough on their own to ignore them.

The best red cards right now that aren't rotating are Chandra, Awakened Inferno, Experimental Frenzy, Tibalt, Rakish Instigator, Chandra, Acolyte of Flame, Runaway Steam-Kin, Legion Warboss, Light Up the Stage, Chandra, Fire Artisan, and Fry are seeing regular play. I'm not sure if any these would really spike, spike, but this is at least a starting list of things to watch.

I'm curious if a new Will Kenrith will show up as well.

This card raises no alarm bells because paying life instead of mana has a long track record of stabilizing formats and keeping them healthy for a long time to come.

After all, who doesn't think that T1 Mana Crypt, Dark Ritual, this card, Doomsday, some black cantrip card that functions as Gitaxian Probe, Cruel Bargain, Sacrifice the K'rrik, Mikaeus, the Unhallowed, Viscera Seer, and Walking Ballista to KO a game isn't healthy for a format. I don't have time to play a four hour game of Magic, the Gathering. Magic that goes on that long isn't healthy, and I need to go grocery shopping.

(Also, I didn't create this Doomsday pile; it's from Reddit).