Unreleased and New Card Discussion

[Mookie]

Wheeeee, more stuff.

• One With the Multiverse is a janky fusion of Omniscience and Future Sight. No idea if it's good (eight mana is a lot), but certainly looks fun.
• Su-Chi Cave Guard is interesting. is a lot of mana to get back when it dies, which probably has implications somewhere.
• Goblin Firebomb is an upgraded Universal Solvent. Probably still not worth running, but flash is interesting.
• Third Path Iconoclast is an upgraded Young Pyromancer. The tokens being artifacts also opens up some options.
• Fallaji Excavation looks amusing. I'd generally lean towards land-based ramp, but it could be good for green artifact decks.
• Mishra's Research Desk is interesting. Sort of a mix of Experimental Synthesizer and Think Twice.
• Disciples of Gix is Buried Alive for artifacts. Six mana is a bit expensive, but I can't think of many other mass tutor-to-graveyard effects.
• Forging the Anchor looks awesome for artifact-heavy decks. It competes with Thirst for Knowledge, but definitely worth consideration.
• Loran, Disciple of History gives me Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle vibes... but instead of recurring creatures, you instead recur artifacts. May be tricky to trigger repeatedly, but probably has some implications.
• Flow of Knowledge is an instant-speed Flow of Knowledge for monoblue decks. Seems good, even if you do get less card advantage.
• Painful Quandary reprint pleases me greatly (while also displeasing my playgroup )
• Demolition Field is an awesome upgrade over Field of Ruin. I've historically played less land hate than I probably should - going down a land sucks, as does ramping my opponents - but being land-neutral makes this look quite nice.
• Rootpath Purifier (from set boosters) is complete nonsense. I'm not convinced it's actually good, but fetching Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth + Cabal Coffers (or whatever) off Cultivate seems quite strong.

[darrenhabib]

Rootpath Purifier
Evolving Wilds → Blighted Woodland → Petrified Field + Thawing Glaciers.
Petrified Field gets Blighted Woodland (from graveyard) to get two more lands from your deck.
With Thawing Glaciers you can get any land you want every other turn.
You could look to get Vesuva to copy Blighted Woodland with the first Thawing Glaciers. Or you could copy (with Vesuva) the Thawing Glaciers with one of the Blighted Woodland searches.
That is 2 lands every other turn, so basically a land every turn.

I personally have never seen an Evolving Wilds looking so good.

[DirkGently]

@darrenhabib get Deserted Temple to get 2 lands per turn off glaciers. Then add Terrain Generator and you can still make normal land drops.

[Guardman]

If I'm playing Rootpath Purifier I'm doing fun stuff like Explosive Vegetation into Dark Depths and Thespian's Stage or just ramping into UrzaTron.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

I do not like Rootpath Purifier. I do not like it at all, not one bit. Makes nonbasics stronger, makes nonbasic hate asymmetric, neither of which I consider net positives.

Audacity, there's a fine card. Gonna play that somewhere eventually.

[EonAon]

I really like the design of fortified beachhead and hope it's a cycle.

I like it, but when I think soldier, I think w/r more than w/u. That said they could have made the ability 4 tap +1 rather than 5 tap +1 and not broken the card in standard. I might be misjudging this because of power stones though.

[Hermes_]

Rootpath Purifier with Blood Moon

One With the Multiverse looks like it could be useful in Jhoira of the Ghitu

[DirkGently]

I do not like Rootpath Purifier. I do not like it at all, not one bit. Makes nonbasics stronger, makes nonbasic hate asymmetric, neither of which I consider net positives.

Audacity, there's a fine card. Gonna play that somewhere eventually.

I don't think it's a big deal. It's a funky effect, but alone it does nothing, and if your "combo" is playing it into Kodama's Reach or whatever for 7 mana, you could have just played Hour of Promise instead and saved a lot of effort. I can't think of a lot of breakpoints where there wouldn't be an easier way to search for nonbasics as a standalone effect rather than trying to do a "combo" with this thing. It makes your basic ramp package that you were already playing more interesting, but that seems fair enough for a 4 mana card.

As far as nonbasic hate being asymmetric, you can just play pure basics and have it be asymmetric if that's the sort of thing you want to do. I don't think it'd be a very smart idea to play Ruination in heavy-nonbasic deck, on the assumption that (1) you'll draw this card and (2) it won't get killed in response and ruin your life. It does make nonbasic hate less effective against it, but that seems like a very minor advantage. Personally I rarely see nonbasic hate played, and also Ruination should never be played by anyone anyway.

This seems more like a cute meme card than anything else to me. It's not bad, but I don't think it's remotely problematic.

[PrimevalCommander]

Rootpath Purifier initially made my heart race, but after a few minutes my feelings faded to something similar to Dirk regarding usefulness. It doesn't search any lands on it's own, so it only does something when you ramp AFTER playing this 4 drop, meaning I'm holding ramp in hand until after it's peak effectiveness, or I'm waiting to draw ramp later on, or playing cards that can hold the activation for a later turn.

Cards that make this look good: Fertilid, Rampant Rejuvenator, Viridian Emissary, Dawntreader Elk and other cards that delay their ramp and make it easier to sequence into non-basic lands. But still, we want most of these online before we hit 5 mana.

Cards that make this look meh: Sylvan Scrying, Realms Uncharted, Ulvenwald Hydra, Kura, the Boundless Sky. I'm using all of these in various places to search non-basics and am happy with their performance. I may try this out, but being an enabler that requires other cards to function makes it a bit slower than I would like. With the Kamigawa spell lands and MDFC lands, Kura, the Boundless Sky has been a good card for me lately.

Edit: If I wanted Gaea's Cradle + Deserted Temple, in a land-based token deck, I think this would be a good card there. Where you are ramping consistently throughout the game and have a few spicy lands that you really want to find, but don't necessarily want them in the graveyard or in your hand.

[Crazy Monkey]

The interaction that comes to mind with Rootpath Purifier is Earthcraft. Untapping busted big mana lands (Gaea's Cradle) wasn't previously possible.

[materpillar]

The interaction that comes to mind with Rootpath Purifier is Earthcraft. Untapping busted big mana lands (Gaea's Cradle) wasn't previously possible.

Earthcraft was already busted enough. Making it more busted isn't that impressive. If you really needed to untap Gaea's Cradle there was always plenty of ways like Cloud of Faeries and Frantic Search

[TheGildedGoose]

It's less than 5 years before Rootpath Purifier is on a legendary creature and I am here for it.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

Oh wow, Awaken the Woods is one hell of way to double your mana. I can't wait to see that token!

[Venedrex]

Awaken the Woods. You know what I wonder. *Everyone groans audibly* Could we just replace search your library for a basic land card... then shuffle with: "Create a (tapped) Forest/Swamp/Whatever land token?" I feel like my (and my opponent's) biggest annoyance when I played my now dismantled Tatyova, Benthic Druid was the fact that I had to search and shuffle my library like fifty times while playing because of all the ramp spells. This way, sure you lose out on the deck thinning, but you save so much time. You could even tack on, scry 1 or something to help compensate for not taking a land out of your deck. Am I crazy?

Cramped Growth
Sorcery (U)
Create a tapped Plains, Island, Swamp, Mountain, or Forest Land token.
Scry 1.

[PrimevalCommander]

Tocasia's Welcome and Loran of the Third Path are great white cards that I will need.

Awaken the Woods looks really good. I'm surprised this didn't get the treatment like the populate X spell did. Making that many Llanowar Elves that trigger LANDFALL can turn this into a huge play for landfall decks. Being scalable is also really great. For some reason this card seems much more fun than other super-ramp cards, who's names escape me, that search for tons of lands. These triggering both creature and land ETB's at the same time while advancing board presence and mana advantage looks like a lot of upside.

One With the Multiverse I don't think I like as much as plain Future Sight. Puts a big target on you without the ceiling of true Omniscience. Though being card advantage + free spells is good, I'm just less excited for the mana investment than the other enchantment options.

Flow of Knowledge looks pretty tempting becuase I like Flow of Ideas in Talrand. Making it Instant should still net me 4-6 cards for 5 mana. Even draw 5 discard 2 is well worth the investment compared to Jace's Ingenuity and Opportunity

[BeneTleilax]

It's less than 5 years before Rootpath Purifier is on a legendary creature and I am here for it.

Why? The counterpoint to most of AmericanSpirit's concerns is that Rootpath Purifier can't be drawn consistently enough for people to build around the bullcrap it enables. Purifier in the command zone looks like a misery of one-sided land destruction and tutoring for incredibly uninteractive combos. What part of that are you looking forwards to?

[DirkGently]

Why? The counterpoint to most of AmericanSpirit's concerns is that Rootpath Purifier can't be drawn consistently enough for people to build around the bullcrap it enables. Purifier in the command zone looks like a misery of one-sided land destruction and tutoring for incredibly uninteractive combos. What part of that are you looking forwards to?

misery of one-sided land destruction? Okay, there's ruination, which is already perfectly playable in a mono-red all-basics deck with no downside. But besides that one card, which is already heavily (and rightly) socially pressured against, what other cards create one-sided land destruction? Not to mention, we're already assuming this card is in red despite the original being mono-green. Going blue for Back to Basics seems even less likely, and b2b is a lot less harsh than ruination.

What combos are you worried about? I'm not even sure tbh. There are synergies that generate a lot of mana, but there are commanders that generate more mana sooner imo. It could become annoying with gates, though maybe that'll get maze's end banned and I'm 100% here for that.

Again, there's already a lot of nonbasic land search that doesn't require a multi-card setup to work. I really just don't see this being a big deal.

If it does get created and has enough colors, I'm for sure rejiggering my Sorrow's Path deck. That deck doesn't really function without nonbasic tutoring in the CZ. RIP golos.

[PrimevalCommander]

What combos are you worried about?

I guess it depends on if it would get additional colors. Dark Depths, Cabal Coffers, Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle , Emeria, the Sky Ruin, Gaea's Cradle , and other powerful lands that created the entire sub-format of Golos decks that revolved around a certain land combo or synergy every game. Either way, not near as insufferable as Golos himself, or the flagship value vomiting commanders of the format.

[Dragoon]

What combos are you worried about?

I guess it depends on if it would get additional colors. Dark Depths, Cabal Coffers, Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle , Emeria, the Sky Ruin, Gaea's Cradle , and other powerful lands that created the entire sub-format of Golos decks that revolved around a certain land combo or synergy every game. Either way, not near as insufferable as Golos himself, or the flagship value vomiting commanders of the format.

Keep in mind that while your lands become basic, they won't gain a basic subtype, so I don't really see the problem with Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle or Emeria, the Sky Ruin. For Cabal Coffers, you could already fetch Cabal Coffers + Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth with Hour of Promise and the likes.

[TheGildedGoose]

What part of that are you looking forwards to?

Doing it.

[duducrash]

A 2CMC payoff for Veyran, Voice of Duality ? Count me in

[NZB2323]

Bladecoil Serpent can't be run in Neheb, the Worthy, right? 6 mana for a 5/4 that makes all your opponents discard 3 cards seems really strong.

As always, Grixis is better for a discard strategy than Rakdos. 🙁

[PrimevalCommander]

Bladecoil Serpent can't be run in Neheb, the Worthy, right? 6 mana for a 5/4 that makes all your opponents discard 3 cards seems really strong.

As always, Grixis is better for a discard strategy than Rakdos. 🙁

Cool card if it could be played in any of those three mono colored decks. But limiting to Grixis makes it less likely to double dip on the card draw or discard. Neat templating though, and I like the design a lot. They could make a new cycle using this type of template, but making them 2 colors would be easier to get more mileage out of the "kicker". Doesn't strike me as a Mythic rare though. Infinite mana outlet if you have colors.

[DirkGently]

@PrimevalCommander I think it's a "cycle" with Clay Champion (which is 2 colors incidentally, though much less interesting in commander).

There's been a lot of mythics that feel pretty underwhelming in this set so far. But that's fine by me.

[PrimevalCommander]

Cool, I like this design in 2 colors better than 3. But Clay Championlooks weak for a mythic rare again. If there are only these two, incorporating all 5 colors, I'm sad this one is so boring. Nice beater as a 8/8 for . Too bad the Selvala, Heart of the Wilds players can't play it.