7 year 10 mo super-lurker here, (54 posts, most of which was within the last month or so) ready to follow whatever incarnation MTGSalvation becomes! I love the spoiler layout of MTGSalvation and its community discussions, even though I rarely took part in the discussions myself.
Thank you to the creators/owners/mods/community for making MTGSalvation an enjoyable spoiler/idea hub for us lurkers!
I like how they're exploring territories for adding more draw power in white. First with Happily Ever After, which forced everyone to draw a card, and now a power 4 or greater clause on a wrath variant.
Also, interesting design choices to urge players to be more aggressive in WU with this creature. T3feri will play alongside this and not like playing against this.
Lastly, callback to original Theros Prognostic Sphinx, now with flair.
Spawns archetype named "Heliod Henge"
Unfortunately you would have to sac it at the beginning of the next person's end step. It doesn't say "at the beginning of your end step".
Perhaps flavor-wise a sorcery isn't strong enough to keep open the gates of the underworld. So they need a 2-mana enchantment to hold the mouth of Hell open instead.
Also, mechanically, a sorcery doesn't affect cards put into your graveyard after the sorcery resolves. So you can play this on your precombat main phase and Escape a hasty creature (which red is prone to having), attack, and during your second main phase Escape the same creature(s) that died. Or if you could figure out a loop of sorts you can recur something like Woestrider over and over if you had infinite mana and...infinite cards in your graveyard.
Honestly I like this template better because you don't have to keep track of which cards "now have Escape" at the time the spell resolved because they always all have Escape until the enchantment leaves the battlefield.
Now we just need a card that says "If you would exile cards in your graveyard to escape, instead exile that many cards minus one".
The Great Henge makes many more enablers for this card, and the Henge plays nicely with this creature's trample.
The problem with it is that the three-cost spot on the curve already has Lovestruck Beast and Gruul Spellbreaker.
Otherwise it's a decent beat down Gruul card.
Well, it does say petty theft. So she feels bad and gives it back to its owner!
Also, with Adventure in this set, I understand they needed the opponents-only clause. Otherwise you could bounce your own creatures and Adventure them again. Without the opponents-only clause, Realm-Cloaked Giant and Brazen Borrower would probably be really good friends.
Bouncing lands for 1U a la Boomerang and Eye of Nowhere is horribly unbalanced. And then you get a 3/1 evasive beater after stopping your opponent's T2 tempo? Unless black got Sinkhole again, I can't imagine they'd allow a 2 mana land bounce in standard any time soon.
I'm not sure how you define "abuse", but to me this shows a pig that was skewered, cooked, and produced a Food token. Happens in real life, too. In my opinion, Bake Into a Pie seems more an abusive, darker depiction than we have with Giant's Skewer.
About this card though, I think the flavor is off. This is more like a giant's toothpick, assuming that's a normal-sized boar in combination with the tiny casting cost and tiny stats. When I think of a giant-sized weapon, I think of Colossus Hammer.
That wording reflects Arcane spells from Kamigawa, "Whenever you cast an Arcane spell"...but then you'd need clarification that you don't copy a creature spell that has an Adventure.
It probably could have been worded to reflect Edgewall Innkeeper, "Whenever you cast an instant or sorcery spell that has an Adventure, copy that spell..." but then instants and sorceries don't really "have adventures".
Their template is probably the cleanest iteration. "Whenever you cast an Adventure instant or sorcery spell..."
I was gonna say this. Wrath that turns (slowly) into a beatstick. Bounce your wrath from the battlefield and cast it again. Return your wrath from the graveyard with creature recursion spells - which recursion spells would likely also have other good targets after you destroyed all non-Giant creatures. It's slow, but completely value.
In standard, this could possibly be a finisher in a control deck alongside blue and/or black. Or in a Selesnya or Naya giant/ramp deck. T1 Llanowar Elves, T2 adventure with Beanstalk Giant, etc.
Copy your opponent's Batterskull in modern.
I think the lack of the clause "you control" is amazing here.
EDIT: Also can predict using this against opposing Theros gods might make this card pretty saucy.
If you're gathering this idea from the art, Christian art and art portraying royalty have many parallels with each other. Gold and white coloration, halos around heads, grandeur and wealth, all very similar to each other.