Unreleased and New Card Discussion

[PrimevalCommander]

The Face of Boe actually looks pretty interesting. Suspend cards are typically very under-rate due to having to wait multiple turns to get them. Being able to bypass the waiting means getting the powerful effect for the reduced cost. Not sure if 15-ish cards are worth building a deck around, but definitely potential to get powerful effects for much reduced mana cost.

Sol Ring #2
better mox
black lotus
ancestral recall-at-home
Wheel of Fortune
straight-up-balance
cheap bribery
big elephant
Deep-Sea Kraken
Ith, High Arcanist
Reality Strobe
Riftwing Cloudskate
Inspiring Refrain
Rousing Refrain
Shivan Meteor

[Dunadain]

We did.

I suspect it's because the actor has a tendency to expose himself to people and putting his likeness on a Magic card isn't a good look.

That's fair, I watched Doctor who so long ago that I forgot about that.

[yeti1069]

@yeti1069, you take that back RIGHT NOW! Wilfred is a treasure.

It is really weird that Captain Jack Harkness didn't get a card, but I can't really complain, because I at least we didn't get 5 versions of each character (besides the Doctor himself, which doesn't really count, each doctor is basically a new character).

I've only ever watched one episode of Dr. Who, didn't like it, and never went back, so I don't have any feelings about any of the characters. An old dude in a jacket and beanie feels VERY out of place in a Magic deck to me.

[GuJiaXian]

The Master, Multiplied is an interesting design. I'm sure there's a way to break him.

[Dunadain]

I've only ever watched one episode of Dr. Who, didn't like it, and never went back, so I don't have any feelings about any of the characters. An old dude in a jacket and beanie feels VERY out of place in a Magic deck to me.

I mean, this whole set is very out of place in mtg.

[Lifeless]

I feel like these UB decks have finally broken me. It's not just that I don't care about Dr Who, somehow I also don't care about the cards. My brain has rejected them as Magic cards like they're some non-canon event. Thanks to the relentless release schedule I will forget they ever exited in a month.

I'm happy as long as fans of the IP are happy.

If I was to take them seriously as MtG cards for a moment I will say that if their objective was to make them flavorful without adding anything excessively powerful to the format they are a success.

[yeti1069]

I've only ever watched one episode of Dr. Who, didn't like it, and never went back, so I don't have any feelings about any of the characters. An old dude in a jacket and beanie feels VERY out of place in a Magic deck to me.

I mean, this whole set is very out of place in mtg.

I largely agree, though there are some that stand out less than others.

[Dunadain]

As someone that considered themselves a doctor who fan (albeit only a casual one, I quit watching once I had finished all the ones that were free on Amazon prime back in the day). I also don't really care for them. They are flavorful, and fitting, but they don't really feel like magic cards.

I thought I was a hypocrite, enjoying D&D, and, to a lesser extent, LOTR products, while complaining about all the ub products from IPs that I wasn't a fan of. But now that their is a ub product from an IP I enjoy that I still don't like, I feel justified in complaining even more than I already do XD.

I'm just glad that the power level is toned down.

[Rumpy5897]

The thing that annoys me about the set is that there are a ton of new Spark Doubles, and I know for a fact that had Gimbal, Gremlin Prodigy not perished early in the brewing process I'd be grumbling and looking for cuts right now. While not necessarily the most pushed cards in history, they are redundancy creep for a relatively scarce effect and as such are likely to be quite in demand.

For a while, I was also surprised by Gallifrey Stands and the Doctors' colour identities. Given how many of these copiers we're getting, I'm starting to think it's feasible to pull that off in a deck without needing to resort to changelings or expand the colour identity via an off-flavour commander.

[folding_music]

mmm I thought D&D and 40k slid right in nicely into M:TG and all the other universes beyond have been brutal and jarring. this one's the hardest spoiler to read though, both cos of the clashing material and because of the massive focus on token generation of all types. this is gonna be so painful to keep track of

[Hermes_]

The Face of Boe actually looks pretty interesting. Suspend cards are typically very under-rate due to having to wait multiple turns to get them. Being able to bypass the waiting means getting the powerful effect for the reduced cost. Not sure if 15-ish cards are worth building a deck around, but definitely potential to get powerful effects for much reduced mana cost.

Sol Ring #2
better mox
black lotus
ancestral recall-at-home
Wheel of Fortune
straight-up-balance
cheap bribery
big elephant
Deep-Sea Kraken
Ith, High Arcanist
Reality Strobe
Riftwing Cloudskate
Inspiring Refrain
Rousing Refrain
Shivan Meteor

I'll more than likely pick up the suspend deck and try it out then take what will work best in Jhoria

however, one other character we didn't get is Stormageddon,Dark lord of all

SPOILER

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[Cyberium]

I like the art and i think all of them are now spoiled which means no card for my boy

Wait, you mean there's no Family of Blood and Fury of the Time Lord? O_O

[Dunharrow]

The Master, Multiplied is an interesting design. I'm sure there's a way to break him.

Seems fun to make a kiki deck with this general. Splinter twin on a praetor maybe? Lots of cool things.
As far as breaking things go I would look at what Sundial of the Infinite might enable.

[Hawk]

The Master, Multiplied is an interesting design. I'm sure there's a way to break him.

Seems fun to make a kiki deck with this general. Splinter twin on a praetor maybe? Lots of cool things.
As far as breaking things go I would look at what Sundial of the Infinite might enable.

I am curious what breaks with him, yeah. Clearly level 0 is just keeping all your myriad/encore tokens around which is a fine plan, especially since The Master's myriad tokens also have myriad. Also means you just get a free doubling of your creatures with something like a Flameshadow Conjuring in play. I saw a post that you can divide by zero the game (I think) by making tokens of Bronze Bombshell and then Harmless Offering them to your opponent. But that feels like a lot of work for a draw. There has to be some of other nonsense.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

The Master, Gallifrey's End may just be the Rakdos general I've been seeking. I like the flavor and I've had an aristocrats itch to scratch for a while now.

[Dunadain]

I really like the cybermen's schtick of turning creatures into robots. Very flavorful. I just hope this mechanic eventually makes it's way to other sets, rather than being locked in a ub product we'll never return to.

[Mookie]

I really like the cybermen's schtick of turning creatures into robots. Very flavorful. I just hope this mechanic eventually makes it's way to other sets, rather than being locked in a ub product we'll never return to.

Mechanically, it's pretty close to Ixidron / Reality Shift, so I wouldn't be surprised to see it if/when morph returns. I don't necessarily expect 'morph = 3 mana 2/2' to return in Standard, but 'face down cards do stuff' is a rich-enough design space for me to expect it to be used again eventually.

I'll call out Traverse Eternity as a generally-better One with the Machine, which I'm already a big fan of for artifact-based decks. My cube has a heavy historic theme, so I may need to get a copy of Banish to Another Universe.

[NZB2323]

I have a really hard time caring about this set. I've never watched Dr. Who, there's so many cards spoiled each day, and they're not fantasy. Lord of the Rings makes sense for a UB set. I would be into a Warcraft UB set. This, not so much.

[Hermes_]

so, I guess whoever chose the artwork for the cards, heard the nickname because now

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[DirkGently]

Me, the Immortal is a new Skullbriar, the Walking Grave. As someone with a LOT of Skullbriar, the Walking Grave experience, i think Me is quite a bit worse, 5 mana is so much more than 2 and haste is huge on a voltron commander.

Losing black is also big, no Entomb/Unmarked Grave for Scavenged Brawler/Daring Fiendbonder, so even though she has more colors, her color identity is worse overall. Actually, scratch that, black is bad for voltron strategies, right @DirkGently? (I kid, I kid)

Having some built-in ability counters is nice, but they are aren't very good abilities. Vigilance is pretty good, menace is just okay, and first strike is mostly useless.

Having said that, the built in recursion, the vigilance, and the ability to grow even when she isn't dealing damage makes her more resilient. So she'll probably still be fun to brew/pilot.

Edit: looking over available ability counters, you do get Spectacular Showdown which is pretty sweet. Doesn't change my analysis, but it is cool.

I'll go over it in my GBU review, but I think they're roughly equivalent? Skullbriar is more of a glass cannon build, completely focused on building him up as quickly as possible. Haste and low cost are huge adds for an aggro build. Me is probably a more broad control build, blue gives you better options to stall out the game rather than pressing aggro, you don't need to press offense to get counters, you've got built-in vigilance, recursion is easy plus you can enable discard stuff for extra value.

I was thinking about this earlier - Black is a strong support color generally, since it's really good at a few things other colors aren't (primarily tutors, some kinds of draw, and it's decent at creature removal and lifegain). None of that is specific to voltron, but it does mean a good voltron commander that happens to be black will get good mileage from the CI. And as a standalone color for a voltron deck I think black is quite bad though, and it's less common for good voltron-candidate commanders to include black.

Skullbriar is kind of a weird case ofc. Entombing a scavenged brawler is usually a pretty weak synergy, even if it's great in skullbriar it doesn't indicate much about black voltron broadly. Though I do think you're underestimating the ability to get a double strike counter. Blue doesn't have black's tutor suite, but there are still quite a few good tutors that can hit sorceries. For the sort of deck that I'd want to build with Me (and I might), that could be a major part of the plan imo.

[DirkGently]

The Face of Boe actually looks pretty interesting. Suspend cards are typically very under-rate due to having to wait multiple turns to get them. Being able to bypass the waiting means getting the powerful effect for the reduced cost. Not sure if 15-ish cards are worth building a deck around, but definitely potential to get powerful effects for much reduced mana cost.

Sol Ring #2
better mox
black lotus
ancestral recall-at-home
Wheel of Fortune
straight-up-balance
cheap bribery
big elephant
Deep-Sea Kraken
Ith, High Arcanist
Reality Strobe
Riftwing Cloudskate
Inspiring Refrain
Rousing Refrain
Shivan Meteor

I'm pretty sure it's crap. Sol ring #2 sounds great except you can't cast it until after you've already cast a 4-drop and tapped it. If you're going to tap a 4-mana card plus pay a mana, you may as well just play Worn Powerstone and cast it off Arixmethes, Slumbering Isle or something. And almost all of those, when you put them in the content of "what if they just cost 2 more"? would be unexciting.

Basically the only thing I think it actually strong is Restore Balance since that effect is otherwise quite hard to get.

[yeti1069]

As someone that considered themselves a doctor who fan (albeit only a casual one, I quit watching once I had finished all the ones that were free on Amazon prime back in the day). I also don't really care for them. They are flavorful, and fitting, but they don't really feel like magic cards.

I thought I was a hypocrite, enjoying D&D, and, to a lesser extent, LOTR products, while complaining about all the ub products from IPs that I wasn't a fan of. But now that their is a ub product from an IP I enjoy that I still don't like, I feel justified in complaining even more than I already do XD.

I'm just glad that the power level is toned down.

I've felt this way about basically all of the UB stuff aside from LotR, which I've really enjoyed. Part of that, is the flavor of LotR so clearly underpins parts of MtG's, that it feels like a natural connection. Ditto for the D&D crossover (which I was surprised took so long to happen).
Godzilla felt right at home in Ikoria.

I grew up loving Transformers, but felt they were out of place, and I've hardly spared them a second glance, except when I've been forced to due to sitting across from a deck running them.
TWD felt out of place, flavor-wise, and irritated me to no end that WotC was releasing mechanically unique cards in a product that I'm never going to buy.
Street Fighter was in the same boat, as was Stranger Things. TWD and SF also felt off flavor-wise, while Stranger Things just felt kind of flavorless.

Warhammer I didn't care about at all, and have only looked at the cards at all due to sitting across from them, and finally buying a few singles. Flavor-wise, it feels slightly off the mark, but only on certain cards, though the naming and creature typing is very out of place.

Dr. Who, I didn't care about before, and still don't. Much of the flavor feels out of place.

[Hermes_]

it begins again soon

[Serenade]

Now this is one I have no clue about whatsoever.

[DirkGently]

The main thing I remember about Fallout is jumping off Tenpenny Tower in Fallout 3 with the gun that shoots multiple mini-nukes, then firing it into the ground just before I landed, thus propelling myself so high that I bounced off the skybox.

I doubt they'll have a card for that event though.