I highly doubt that he will have morph, morph has been specifically stated to be a non-affiliated mechanic, so I don't think they would put it on one of the Khans.
Green and Redseem to haveplenty of ways to fulfill (Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker) the ferocious threshold without having to commit creatures to the battlefield.
This card has nothing to do with ferocious, so I don't know why are you are saying this.
Mostly because of the first and third mode of the spell requiring a 4 or more power creature on the field and how conditional that seems.
This charm will do some good work in the right deck even though Simic Charm seems better suited to mid-range.
The first and third modes don't require a 4+ power creature, sure the first one benefits from that, but it only requires you to have a creature with power higher than the toughness of the one you want to kill, or even one less, and the third doesn't have anything to do with your creatures. It just prevents your opponent's smaller creatures from blocking.
I am seriously not disappointed with this one, I hope they keep up the quality of the charms. Sultai and Mardu have been great so far. Sultai Charm is powerful, although more conditional, and I think in light of that this one is probably a little better, or at least more widely useful. The three modes, as previously stated, are individually very useful, and pretty powerful, especially the instant discard.
I know it has already been stated, but Army of the Damned is an awful comparison to this. The invariable 8 mana cost and sorcery speed are incredible faults. Empty the Pits is more expensive mana-wise to get the same number of tokens, but you shouldn't need 13 to win the game, and Empty the Pits wasn't designed to be payed for with entirely mana, it has delve for a very good reason. The instant speed makes it much harder for opponents to respond to it, as most sweepers are sorcery speed, and the much more flexible costing makes it in fact easier to cast in earlier turns. It is a much much better card than Army of the Damned.
This ain't mine..at all. Comes from Gathering Magic and makes time travel sound pretty decent.
"I've been thinking about time travel's role in Khans. Ugin's Nexus sparked my curiosity, since many speculate that Ugin will play a role in Sarkhan's time travelling. A line from our recent Uncharted Realms stood out in my mind: "They (dragons) spawned from mighty elemental storms..." Mostly because of Dragonstorm. Reading posts from NGA and MTGS flavor/storyline forums, I see plenty of arguments against time travel. Or, time travel as we know it: going back and altering the past or simply pulling the dragons forward through time into Tarkir's present. My first thought was that the Nexus would be the portal into Tarkir's past. Having taken a closer look at Ugin's Nexus, it almost resembles a dragon's skeleton threaded with ether.
Ugin is believed to by connected to the Jeskai, whose primary color is blue. Blue does have time-based magic. Most of blue's time travel magic would require a being of silver, so Sarkhan wouldn't be able to simply go back in time via a Blue spell. Illusion is also a core characteristic of Blue. Taking everything I have presented thus far, we venture into the realms of baseless speculation. I speculate that Ugin's Nexus refers to an area of Ugin's brain that contains the dragon's memories of Tarkir's past. Within the mindscape, which would resemble Tarkir as Ugin remembers it, is the knowledge of how to cast the "mighty elemental storms" that created Tarkir's dragons. The past, reconstructed in Ugin's Nexus, is an illusion of Tarkir's past. Illusion in the sense that certain aspects of the past unimportant to our spell McGuffin are either slightly or drastically altered. Perhaps to make Ugin a preferable master. Sarkhan, emerging from Ugin's Nexus and Tarkir's "past", would then return to the Tarkir of the present to gather whatever is needed to cast the elemental storms that spawned the dragons."
Credits to Kargan Warlord.
This actually has some very good ideas, particularly the ones about time travel, I was wondering how they would reconcile colorless time travel with blue time travel, and I think the idea that it could be an illusion is a very creative solution to that. However, in that case, I don't see too much need to include colorless magic in the storyline, something that has been heavily suggested to appear, and unless the dragonstorms are somehow a solution to the Eldrazi, they are not necessarily relevant to the long term storyline of MTG. Part of the reason Ugin's presence is important, along with Sarkhan and Sorin, is his history of dealing with the Eldrazi, as well as actually having the power to do it. He could in theory instruct someone on these colorless magics, but to master them the way Ugin has would take too long to be workable in the storyline.
The way I see it, Ugin's Nexus might have some remaining power to transport Sarkhan, and perhaps Sorin, back in time with the instructional help of Ugin's spirit. Once back, Sarkhan will save Ugin from being killed bodily by Bolas. From there, I don't really have any good guesses as to what Louie has in store, other than the likely restoration of dragons to Tarkir, and the return of Ugin and Sarkhan to the altered present.
Out of the 229 spells in KTK, 56 are multicolored, KTK has a wedge theme, but it doesn't look like it's not exactly alara reborn.
FRF is going to be drafted last in KTK, KTK, FRF, when you get into FRF you're probably locked in at least 2 if not 3 colors, so whatever you see needs to play well with those, the best chance for it to work within those constraints is for FRF to be either:
Monocolor (3 out of 5 cards match a wedge)
With a hint of enemy dual (2 out of 5 enemy dual match a wedge)
With a hint of colorless (5 out of 5, whohoo!)
More wedge? (1 out of 5 matches)
Shards? (requires splashing)
Ally dual? (1 out of 5 matches)
This makes me think that FRF will have very little multicolor if at all. Maybe with the colorless theme going on we'll see two-brid ( ) make a comeback.
The idea of the color/colorless hybrid ( ) is an interesting one, i'm not entirely sure how well it fits flavor-wise, but I like it, and it does indeed incorporate colorless in a way that may be easier to balance and still give colored flavor to if that's their goal. If they are instead planning on making a fresh take on colorless, giving it its own flavor and mechanics outside of artifact colorlessness, I'm curious as to where they will take that design space, how much it will have to do with morph, and what they're going to do in terms of mechanics. Ugin is clearly going to have something to do with the time travel aspect, and being colorless himself, I would wonder if they're going to incorporate that, but blue has the time travel space accounted for already. Give us something fun MaRo! You can do it!
An UWR 3/4 flier... Cool card, but does this mean no Lightning Angel reprint?
Lightning angel was not a possibility. There are no angels in tarkir.
Also, one of the developers specifically said they didnt like wedge cards like that.
On top of these things, lightning magic has been specifically stated to be a Mardu skill, not Jeskai.
Personally, I like her, and considering the description we were given of her personality-wise, it seems perfect. She was described as a a leader who leads from the front line, which is exactly what this card says. A lot of people are judging it as an aggro card, which it may be outside of standard, particularly Pod (where it'll be incredible), but I see it as an early defensive card to hold the fort while you build your army. Fits Abzan and the description of Anafenza perfectly.
Granted, it does seem to have been created with not only Sultai/standard in mind, but eternal formats as well. I feel like a card doesn't end up being this good in eternal formats by accident.
What exactly did you not understand about "The dragons are extinct, KILLED BY THE KHANS," one of the very first sentences said at the SDCC panel, repeated about hundred times around here?
That could be just a myth, this happened long ago, so they do not know what happened. In Zendikar Ula, Cosi and Emeria were Merfolk gods. The population did not know about the Eldrazi. They could not say it in the SDCC panel that they were killed by Eldrazi anyway This is just wild speculation, so might not be correct.
Wizards doesn't flat out lie to us, they withhold information. It has been stated as fact that the dragons on Tarkir were hunted to extinction by the clans, so no it is not possible that your theory is correct. The eldrazi could appear on Tarkir, yes, however as someone further up the thread pointed out, with Ugin's presence and the knowledge that the block is largely focused on him, it is unlikely that they would go out of their way to bring in another entity like the Eldrazi, it would be total overkill, and kind of hard to justify. The storyline is clearly related to the Eldrazi, but in the sense that this block is part of the overarching plot involving the return of Ugin to fight the Eldrazi. It is doubtful that the Eldrazi will return before Return to Zendikar.
Looking at this I want to believe that we'll get some sort of Ugin restored pw in Fate Reforged and then Bolas and a pw to be named later will show up in the third set. Additionally I wonder if the third set will adjust the off centered wedges (With the enemy color focus instead of ally) in Khans due to all of the timeline altering.
If I remember correctly, MaRo stated on Blogatog that specifically KTK was a wedge set, and not the whole block. doesn't necessarily mean the other sets aren't going to wedge themed, but it suggests it. Also I believe, although I'm too lazy to back it up with links right now, that the wedges were adjusted to the current color focus in order to make design more interesting or slightly easier to do in a more cohesive way, which would imply that they're not inclined to readjust the wedges.
Yeah I don't believe that Reforge will be a wedge set but maybe the 2 big sets of the block will be so that when Khans rotates we still have a wedge "block" according to the new 2 set block structure. Also the reason I brought up the wedge realignment idea was due to this response on Maro's tumblr to a question regarding why the wedges were centered around the ally color. If you ask me his response hints at a pretty significant reason.
I talk about it some in my preview articles but the major reason has to do with things you don’t know about yet.
Ah thank you for pointing that out. I hadn't seen that one. Interesting to know. I hope that's the case, I've been waiting for a wedge block for a long time. The logic having to do with correlation to the new 2 set per block paradigm would make sense. In any case I really want Ugin back and lots of good wedgey stuff, both of which don't seem out of the question.
Looking at this I want to believe that we'll get some sort of Ugin restored pw in Fate Reforged and then Bolas and a pw to be named later will show up in the third set. Additionally I wonder if the third set will adjust the off centered wedges (With the enemy color focus instead of ally) in Khans due to all of the timeline altering.
If I remember correctly, MaRo stated on Blogatog that specifically KTK was a wedge set, and not the whole block. doesn't necessarily mean the other sets aren't going to wedge themed, but it suggests it. Also I believe, although I'm too lazy to back it up with links right now, that the wedges were adjusted to the current color focus in order to make design more interesting or slightly easier to do in a more cohesive way, which would imply that they're not inclined to readjust the wedges.
If I had to guess, the logical conclusion to be taken away from the information we have so far is that this block will involve Sarkhan going back in time, and changing the past to bring about the return of dragons on Tarkir, probably also Ugin. It is possible that Ugin's spirit is still around, just not his body, that he speaks to Sarkhan and instructs/assists him in the ways of time travel in set #2, with set #3 being the ultimate restoration of the dragons of Tarkir (hint, the name "Dragons of Tarkir"), including Ugin himself, to the ultimate end of fighting Bolas/the Eldrazi.
I don't think they would do something where a plane would miss 2 colors of mana. They already did that. The factions/whatever aligned with each wedge would choose to be that way for other reasons.
Alara but different alone would not work and is lazy from a creative standpoint.
While I do think that they will eventually do a wedge block, and I'm quite excited for that day, unfortunately it's probably going to get a lot of flak, especially on forums, unless they do it extraordinarily well. I feel like if they do separate factions in any way people will rag on it for being too similar to Alara. The flavor i think will be difficult but is doable, and when they do it it'll be very interesting. However, it has the potential to go both ways, it could be an incredible block, or it could be disastrous.
so the white one is clearly achilles. that could be good, but there's a hell of lot of cards that deal one damage. if it ever sees play it would be very easy to get around
The first and third modes don't require a 4+ power creature, sure the first one benefits from that, but it only requires you to have a creature with power higher than the toughness of the one you want to kill, or even one less, and the third doesn't have anything to do with your creatures. It just prevents your opponent's smaller creatures from blocking.
This actually has some very good ideas, particularly the ones about time travel, I was wondering how they would reconcile colorless time travel with blue time travel, and I think the idea that it could be an illusion is a very creative solution to that. However, in that case, I don't see too much need to include colorless magic in the storyline, something that has been heavily suggested to appear, and unless the dragonstorms are somehow a solution to the Eldrazi, they are not necessarily relevant to the long term storyline of MTG. Part of the reason Ugin's presence is important, along with Sarkhan and Sorin, is his history of dealing with the Eldrazi, as well as actually having the power to do it. He could in theory instruct someone on these colorless magics, but to master them the way Ugin has would take too long to be workable in the storyline.
The way I see it, Ugin's Nexus might have some remaining power to transport Sarkhan, and perhaps Sorin, back in time with the instructional help of Ugin's spirit. Once back, Sarkhan will save Ugin from being killed bodily by Bolas. From there, I don't really have any good guesses as to what Louie has in store, other than the likely restoration of dragons to Tarkir, and the return of Ugin and Sarkhan to the altered present.
The idea of the color/colorless hybrid (
On top of these things, lightning magic has been specifically stated to be a Mardu skill, not Jeskai.
Granted, it does seem to have been created with not only Sultai/standard in mind, but eternal formats as well. I feel like a card doesn't end up being this good in eternal formats by accident.
Wizards doesn't flat out lie to us, they withhold information. It has been stated as fact that the dragons on Tarkir were hunted to extinction by the clans, so no it is not possible that your theory is correct. The eldrazi could appear on Tarkir, yes, however as someone further up the thread pointed out, with Ugin's presence and the knowledge that the block is largely focused on him, it is unlikely that they would go out of their way to bring in another entity like the Eldrazi, it would be total overkill, and kind of hard to justify. The storyline is clearly related to the Eldrazi, but in the sense that this block is part of the overarching plot involving the return of Ugin to fight the Eldrazi. It is doubtful that the Eldrazi will return before Return to Zendikar.
Ah thank you for pointing that out. I hadn't seen that one. Interesting to know. I hope that's the case, I've been waiting for a wedge block for a long time. The logic having to do with correlation to the new 2 set per block paradigm would make sense. In any case I really want Ugin back and lots of good wedgey stuff, both of which don't seem out of the question.
If I remember correctly, MaRo stated on Blogatog that specifically KTK was a wedge set, and not the whole block. doesn't necessarily mean the other sets aren't going to wedge themed, but it suggests it. Also I believe, although I'm too lazy to back it up with links right now, that the wedges were adjusted to the current color focus in order to make design more interesting or slightly easier to do in a more cohesive way, which would imply that they're not inclined to readjust the wedges.
While I do think that they will eventually do a wedge block, and I'm quite excited for that day, unfortunately it's probably going to get a lot of flak, especially on forums, unless they do it extraordinarily well. I feel like if they do separate factions in any way people will rag on it for being too similar to Alara. The flavor i think will be difficult but is doable, and when they do it it'll be very interesting. However, it has the potential to go both ways, it could be an incredible block, or it could be disastrous.