While I think 4 works perfectly fine for 60 card decks I am surprised we don't see more cards that allow more or less copies in a deck. Just some random creature that allows for 8 copies rather than 4 or any number you would like.
It's a little odd that this isn't an archer, as her weapon seems to be a bow, and that it has Reach without being an archer, like most elves with reach usually have. I guess the only reason she isn't an Elf Warrior Archer is you can't fit all three of those in when Legendary is in front of everything else and Warrior is a little more relevant right now.
This certainly won't be playable now without a lot more elves, but this can definitely see play in EDH and maybe as a one of in Modern sideboards for elves.
But isn't that the key think about all Chandra's Galerion
Well that's true.
To be the fair though they broke the cycle with Chandra, Pyromaster but it looks like that was short-lived.
They did. Altough they turned her into a Control Planeswalker. Because in all honesty, that could have been a bunch of abilities on any U Planeswalker. In fact it's UR if we look deep into those abilities. This is neither here not there but I can see only mediocre Chandra's. Which is why am/was such a fan of Koth of the Hammer. That guy is Red.
In my opinion still a better direction than "Burn this, burn that, burn everything"
Absolutely, granted they shown us they can do the job with Koth of the Hammer but needed 4 tries with Chandra, which are 5 now.
That's what happens when Chandra's theme song is "Ring of Fire" and her core abilities are just straight burning things. We don't know much of Koth's themes outside of his one card, but he seems more like a geomancer than anything else what with his mountain manipulation.
I do like Nissa, but her flipping on seven lands is sure a pain. Their is little land ramp right now, Explosive Vegetation is pretty much it, so she will pretty much always be flipping by turn seven, and she doesn't exactly feel like a turn seven walker. If she put the land into play or flipped on 5 or 6 lands she would certainly be much better. When she flips she is pretty damn good. +1 Coiling Oracle is great, although the token being legendary from her -2 feels odd, but we don't know her story as of yet. A 5/5 on turn seven feels much better than a 4/4, or maybe if the token had some sort of ability like trample.
Jace pre-flipped is pretty great, the walker side feels a little weak. His +1 is much weaker than Architect of Thought's unless you are up against control and their one big creature, sans anything with hexproof. His -3 I feel should either be "until the beginning of your next turn" (or something like that) or cost -2 in its current form, although I guess if you do it right you can always catch your opponent off guard with a flashbacked board wipe if you flip him the turn you need him. Overall he is fine, but certainly not great.
You can't say that because scry wasn't evergreen between 8th Edition and New Phyrexia it couldn't have been in the set. Wizards could have put any Modern-legal card from that time period into the set. There reason for not including Serum Visions was not that it would have been a bad card for the set or didn't need a reprint, but just because scry wasn't in the set. If scry was about to become evergreen, this shouldn't have been a problem and they could have just put in 1 scry card.
I think it's not a matter of Scry about to become evergreen, it's that I think they wanted Scry to start being evergreen at Origins, not at MM2, so it would have been a problem to put a single Scry card into MM2 if there wasn't a Scry theme in the set.
I don't think a single scry card was going to be all that difficult when there was only two Exalted cards in MM2. It wouldn't have been difficult for them to have added something like Condescend, Viscera Seer, or Foresee. It is especially not hard when it seems like you only needed to have two instances of a keyword to be "in the set".
I'm ok reprinting cards back into standard but modern masters seems wrong to me. Is Modern Masters something they will do every year or two or is it a temporary thing? I think it will eventually collapse modern prices, it may take another 2 or 3 MM sets. With standard rotation being sped up there's no reason a lot of cards from the past couldn't be reprinted back into standard. I like modern event decks better but they don't make wizards as much money as modern masters does.
If these two sets have shown us anything is that they do crash the prices, for most of the cards, but anything that you need 4 of will start going back up. Some cards in MM2 are starting to see growth again, or at least stabilization, and the set hasn't even been out a month.
Not to mention I don't think we have to worry about a really Modern crash any time soon if the Modern Master sets will be like MM2 and don't reprint all that much.
So landwalk is gone. Will we never see the super-pushed plainswalker that would make Great Wall not the worst card in the game? :-(
That saddens me the most, not the Great Wall part, that we never got a new Plainswalking creature since Lorwyn. (Didn't know one was printed in Lorwyn, thought the last one was from Odyssey still.)
As noted, keywording mill effects as Mill will never happen. Sadly, the best option is probably Bury, but they won't pull the trigger on that because of the confusion it would cause us old-timers.
Edit: The tough part of keywording mill, by the way, is all the variations on targeting, which is why Bury works as a keyword action.
Bury a card.
Each player Buries two cards.
Target player Buries three cards.
They certainly won't keyword mill to be just "mill", but I am sure they can come up with some word where cards can go from "target player puts the top X cards from his or her library into his or her graveyard" to "target player <keyword> X". That saves a lot more room on cards.
"Dementia" would be a good name.
While Dementia could possibly work it is probably best to have a verb as it would need to have a plural. Having something like "Target player Dementias 4." doesn't roll off the tongue well as Dementia, the word itself, doesn't pluralize all that well.
My vocabulary isn't the best so I definitely couldn't toss in an idea that would be any better than "mill".
Do we really need that space, though? There are a few rare cards that do a bunch of stuff in addition to milling that are sometimes a little pressed for space, but they still manage to print, say, Sidisi and Phenax, and most cards with milling effects have plenty of space to spare. I'm not so sure there's enough of a need to justify adding a new vocab word.
This is the same reason they changed "when <creature> goes to the graveyard from the battlefield" to "when <creature> dies". Now it wasn't a huge amount of space saved, but as most players basically said "When my creature dies <effect> happens" it anyways then why not just have it on the card? When explaining a mill effect most won't read Tome Scour word for word, unless the person hearing it is new to the game, but will instead normally say "I cast Tome Scour and mill you for 5".
It's really just another one of those things that are brought about by players, like how "dies" was created.
As noted, keywording mill effects as Mill will never happen. Sadly, the best option is probably Bury, but they won't pull the trigger on that because of the confusion it would cause us old-timers.
Edit: The tough part of keywording mill, by the way, is all the variations on targeting, which is why Bury works as a keyword action.
Bury a card.
Each player Buries two cards.
Target player Buries three cards.
They certainly won't keyword mill to be just "mill", I mean they could and I wouldn't mind, but I am sure they can come up with some word where cards can go from "target player puts the top X cards from his or her library into his or her graveyard" to "target player <keyword> X". That saves a lot more room on cards.
I still don't know how they haven't keyworded "milling" yet.
Maybe they think "milling" isn't intuitive-sounding enough for the effect? It just seems that way to us since we've heard of Millstone. Maybe if "Mind Grind" wasn't an actual card...
Keywording mill as "mill" is probably not the best, but I am amazed they still haven't come up with something yet.
Or Jace, Architect of Thought.
This certainly won't be playable now without a lot more elves, but this can definitely see play in EDH and maybe as a one of in Modern sideboards for elves.
That's what happens when Chandra's theme song is "Ring of Fire" and her core abilities are just straight burning things. We don't know much of Koth's themes outside of his one card, but he seems more like a geomancer than anything else what with his mountain manipulation.
Jace pre-flipped is pretty great, the walker side feels a little weak. His +1 is much weaker than Architect of Thought's unless you are up against control and their one big creature, sans anything with hexproof. His -3 I feel should either be "until the beginning of your next turn" (or something like that) or cost -2 in its current form, although I guess if you do it right you can always catch your opponent off guard with a flashbacked board wipe if you flip him the turn you need him. Overall he is fine, but certainly not great.
Which is odd as the first creature to have "troll-shroud"/hexproof was a human I believe.
I don't think a single scry card was going to be all that difficult when there was only two Exalted cards in MM2. It wouldn't have been difficult for them to have added something like Condescend, Viscera Seer, or Foresee. It is especially not hard when it seems like you only needed to have two instances of a keyword to be "in the set".
If these two sets have shown us anything is that they do crash the prices, for most of the cards, but anything that you need 4 of will start going back up. Some cards in MM2 are starting to see growth again, or at least stabilization, and the set hasn't even been out a month.
Not to mention I don't think we have to worry about a really Modern crash any time soon if the Modern Master sets will be like MM2 and don't reprint all that much.
That saddens me the most, not the Great Wall part, that we never got a new Plainswalking creature since Lorwyn. (Didn't know one was printed in Lorwyn, thought the last one was from Odyssey still.)
Doesn't look like it is Deceiver Exarch as Exarch only has one creature type and the one above looks like it has two.
While Dementia could possibly work it is probably best to have a verb as it would need to have a plural. Having something like "Target player Dementias 4." doesn't roll off the tongue well as Dementia, the word itself, doesn't pluralize all that well.
My vocabulary isn't the best so I definitely couldn't toss in an idea that would be any better than "mill".
This is the same reason they changed "when <creature> goes to the graveyard from the battlefield" to "when <creature> dies". Now it wasn't a huge amount of space saved, but as most players basically said "When my creature dies <effect> happens" it anyways then why not just have it on the card? When explaining a mill effect most won't read Tome Scour word for word, unless the person hearing it is new to the game, but will instead normally say "I cast Tome Scour and mill you for 5".
It's really just another one of those things that are brought about by players, like how "dies" was created.
They certainly won't keyword mill to be just "mill", I mean they could and I wouldn't mind, but I am sure they can come up with some word where cards can go from "target player puts the top X cards from his or her library into his or her graveyard" to "target player <keyword> X". That saves a lot more room on cards.
Keywording mill as "mill" is probably not the best, but I am amazed they still haven't come up with something yet.