Unreleased and New Card Discussion

[TheGildedGoose]

one smol berb

*honking intensifies*

[Hermes_]

[materpillar]

Gut reaction, I don't dislike these as much as I was expecting. I think I just dislike UB when it isn't some flavor of sword and board fantasy.

[tstorm823]

Good: genuine flavor wins
Bad: ???
Ugly: experience counters.... easily acquired experience counters...

[MAGUSZANIN]

Allies are getting a serious booster shot with this set. That 5 Mana Aang alone gives them 2-3 enters triggers the turn it comes down, followed by another 1-2 on the following turn if it survives.

Then the Katara that doubles Ally Triggers as an ally herself, and just expanding their roster of medium bodies will have an impact.

[Mookie]

Initial thoughts:

• I'm fine with Avatar as a franchise, but the tonal clash with MTG is pretty severe. The cards themselves seem fine, but I have mixed feelings about including them from an aesthetic perspective.
• Not a fan of how much rules text is hidden behind the bending abilities. Somewhat manageable with reminder text, but I'm sure that a bunch of them will be missing it (to say nothing of any textless versions).
• Experience counters are.... a thing. Historically, it has been possible to remove them directly, but you can usually interact with them via removing the commander. Monocolored experience legends that can be run in the 99 are... interesting. There currently aren't any sources of experience counters I can run in Mizzix other than proliferate, and that has the notable downside of needing the first Mizzix trigger before it does anything, so I feel sort of obligated to consider any new options. Mizzix scales.... quite degenerately with extra experience.
• Lessons coming back are fine. Probably not relevant for Commander due to the lack of sideboards, but there may be some synergies.
• Allies returning are... eh? Not really my thing.

[CommanderMaster999]

Despite mostly boos and hisses at UB stuff in here of MTGnexus I will talk cards

Now we know each and every bending ability

Water: so it's really just convoke and improvise as one for activated abilties, so if we go back to Yue, the Moon Spirit …. That creates Omniscience for Noncreature stuff for simply having Jeskai Ascendancy in play with her and 5 other creatures

Earth: oh so it just makes a manland with X +1/+1 counters….and impossible to remove since they come back tapped if removed any sort of way, so mechanic is just busted/broken with fetchlands and landfall cards

Fire: so we add r equal to the fire number when we attack with creatures with it so mana will empty at end of combat so instant/flash/activated abilities, so Yurlok of Scorch Thrash will make firebenders cry (firebenders are thankful mana burn is gone besides yurlok)

Air: so we can exile anything we have/their stuff then the owner can cast it again for 2, so this will be beautiful with "Void" plus "Revolt" and anything with a cast trigger

Now let's get to individual cards

Appa, Steadfast Guardian: okay that's actually a obnoxiously good board wipe protection card, (you can give abba himself indestructible after he enters to keep him in play) then everything just cost 2 to bring back you could just tap and float mana from a Selvala, Heart of the Wilds like mana dork/rock/land effect you can get nearly everything back very fast.

Southern Air Temple: …. Aaaaaaaaand Go-Shintai of Life's Origin and friends is gonna spike from $3 to $30…. brand new shrines are coming in the set. This one puts +1/+1 counters on everybody equal to shrines then every shrine that enters does just one for everyone

Aang, Airbending Master: oh Aang got lessons from the frogs in Bloomburrow he gets experience counters, then makes a ambush a tokens equal to the number

Katara, Waterbending Master: oh boy this katana will make Alela, Cunning Conqueror , smile big

Fire Lord Ozai (jumpstart): surprised that doesn't say activate only once each turn since it's outright Nashi, Moon Sage's Scion but you have to pay the mana instead of life

Fated Firepower: … does this outright infinite with Toralf, God of Fury // Toralf's Hammer effects?

Redirect Lightning: OKAY DON'T YOU DARE DENY THIS! YOU KNOW THIS WILL BE FOREVER STAPLE IN RED CEDH! (This is a budget as we get for Deflecting Swat a single red and 5 life is nothing)

The Cabbage Merchant (jumpstart): yea we know we would have just rioted if he wasn't in the set and he's like the best food support I've ever seen! Anyway what ways can we think of to do in magic that will cause him to scream…MY CABBAGES!!! (one example eldrazi's annihilating his cabbages)

Fire Lord Zuko: oh we get mardu cast or enter from exile matters that's actually kind of cool

Katara, Water Tribe's Hope[card]: Azorius [card]Mirror Entity! But no changeling addition though

Toph, the First Metalbender: Another one! First time was Ashaya, Soul of the Wild this time it's artifacts, and like last time this means you can yell "IN YOUR FACE Cyclonic Rift! AND OTHER NONLAND TARGETING EFFECTS!"

[Wanli]

I played Ashaya for quite some time, but always felt the deck to be a little clunky. Maybe I'll give Toph a try? Will surely try my hand at a decklist...

[DirkGently]

Katara, waterbending master seems really pushed for a 2-drop. Seems really easy to stack up a couple counters doing things blue already wanted to do, and then she trivially refills your hand every turn.

Appa seems underwhelming for a mythic. We've already got much stronger board protection spells in white that don't cost 4. Even if you want to retrigger etbs there are much cheaper options. Though maybe fewer that hit noncreatures?

Oh yeah and keywording all the bending abilities is stupid and basically requires reminder text so it doesn't even save any space. Should have just said "firebending - when ~ attacks, add RRR until end of combat" or whatever.

[MAGUSZANIN]

Oh yeah and keywording all the bending abilities is stupid and basically requires reminder text so it doesn't even save any space. Should have just said "firebending - when ~ attacks, add RRR until end of combat" or whatever.

I think they don't want to use the Flavor Text style on something that will be printed on like 20% of the creatures in the set. I don't disagree that the Xbending abilities should not be abbreviated for the same reason most new keywords shouldn't be abbreviated, but as with most new keywords, that ship has sailed.

[folding_music]

i'm gonna let the people who watched this show have this one and collect EOE. I already forgot how all the -bend abilities work, I can't keep it in my head :3 at least with Final Fantasy I had good grounding on who most of the characters were and what should be considered big and important etc, i'm at zero here

[cheonice]

i'm gonna let the people who watched this show have this one and collect EOE. I already forgot how all the -bend abilities work, I can't keep it in my head :3 at least with Final Fantasy I had good grounding on who most of the characters were and what should be considered big and important etc, i'm at zero here

This. I watched a few episodes recently and yeah, I kinda get it, it's a probably well-written funny friendship story with high stakes. But I don't have any nostalgic feelings, so I don't really care for it. But I'm glad for all the people, who got that cozy feeling by looking at the cards.

Looking at the set, I'll probably get that Cabbage Guy for the memes, he seems quite good in Ms. Bumbleflower.

[CommanderMaster999]

Appa seems underwhelming for a mythic. We've already got much stronger board protection spells in white that don't cost 4. Even if you want to retrigger etbs there are much cheaper options. Though maybe fewer that hit noncreatures?

I'm sure you know but clearly you didn't mention a particularly thing about air bending and abba here in particular

It only cost 2 to cast a air bender thing so

1. Before abba exiles your stuff you could tap something that makes a truck load of mana to cast everything again right away

2. You can repeat cast triggers easily since it's only 2 to cast

• Hullbreaker Horror
• Aetherflux Reservoir
• Artisan of Kozilek
• Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
• Consuming Aberration
• Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
• Passionate Archaeologist
• Emrakul, the Promised End
• Silverback Elder
• Vega, the Watcher
• Aragorn, the Uniter
• Sowing Mycospawn
• Kellan, the Kid

Just some of many examples for redoing cast triggers.

[Dragonlover]

Yeah not a fan of the bending abilities having no commonality mechanically.

Dragonlover

[Lifeless]

Big yuck for all these keywords that don't even serve any functional purpose as keywords. I wish I had more hands so I could give these more thumbs down.

[Serenade]

Watermarks are too heavy/dark/bold these days. They are incredibly distracting. I thought I was being old-man-yells-at-cloud during Tarkir, but these ATLA ones are insane. (Compare to Scars block's Mirran/New Phyrexia ones or the original Ravnica ones.)

[5colorsrainbow]

While this is an UB I can't help but feel like this is a modern horizons/ time spiral set (good thing) where you have lessons, allies and shrines all together. Anyways as a big fan of the show this set looks pretty fun and cute.

Lessons- We aren't getting lean in the set so will be fun to see how they use lesson. Could be a nice set up for Strixhaven 2 next year too if it bring back learn.

Ally typal- I think its a nice way to show the Gaang and their allies uniting together.

Shrines- not a fan of a lot of the decks but very flavorful and it works with WOE and Duskmourns enchantment themes.

Bendings:

(Of note seeing it talked here Maro said they could bring any of the bendings back with a UW name so I think thats a factor in why they decided to not tie them together outside of flavor, so if brought back they can be flavored very differently. Particularly as a few like earth and water I def seeing becoming used again. )

Air- Love it, very in flavor to match airbending being defense and trained to be the least lethal of the bending arts and it has a feel of blowing a creature away or swooping in to save them. For colors WU seem clear as this is a kinda blink/flicker and/or phasing effects and are the two colors ties to air but not sure on any others. Maybe G with self bounce or targeting artifact/enchainments? In another set I could see black getting it (even a Korra set) but feels out of flavor here.

Water- The tapping does feel like the flow of water and I kinda like it works into water being both offense and defense. Again UW feel like the colors that would likely get this along with G as the colors that focused in convoke and improvise, but all colors can kinda get them even more so as this is tied to abilities so its more so on the abilities.

Earth- Finally a land to creature mechanic I like. Again very flavorful and captures the feel of the show imo. Any color can really do this but im guessing it will be focused in GR as the two main animating land colors.

Fire- Very flavorful that its the most combat focused and I like you don't keep the man so you have to be tactical with what you wanna do with it. We seen it so far in BR and G could get it too but too much of a stretch for W or U.

[DirkGently]

I guess no one else has mentioned this, but...do we think there's a chance that lessons reappearing will mean wotc may change the sideboard rule? Lessons always seemed like the safest version of sideboarding since they generally pretty weak on both halves.

[5colorsrainbow]

I guess no one else has mentioned this, but...do we think there's a chance that lessons reappearing will mean wotc may change the sideboard rule? Lessons always seemed like the safest version of sideboarding since they generally pretty weak on both halves.

Not sure, my gut feeling will be no they are still figuring out brackets and all that and learn has the "discard a card draw a card" built in so they might just leave at that for the moment and I feel like they are gonna be slow with any more major changes for a bit*

* With how close the choice for wizards to take over the format was to EOE coming out I'd be very shocked if the vehicle/spacecraft wasn't in the works before things got bad, particularly with the spacecraft commanders.

[Dragonlover]

With how close the choice for wizards to take over the format was to EOE coming out I'd be very shocked if the vehicle/spacecraft wasn't in the works before things got bad, particularly with the spacecraft commanders.

It was, Gavin confirmed it in the video he put out about the change, they'd already been talking to the RC about it. They were gonna drop it with Aetherdrift but decided not to rock the boat for a bit and hold off till EOE.

Dragonlover

[DirkGently]

Man the jumpstart cards look like garbage. Is Kotara the only chase card in there?

[Mookie]

Man the jumpstart cards look like garbage. Is Kotara the only chase card in there?

The Cabbage Merchant also looks alright, but yes, they look underwhelming. I assume these are just intro pack cards with different branding.

[MAGUSZANIN]

Aang, Airbending Master also looks good for Allies decks, just because there are so few ways to make ally tokens to consistently trigger their better abilities in large numbers.

[folding_music]

gawd I wanna talk about EOE cards and there is no way to on this forum
they are so good and so powerful
Exalted Sunborn is ridiculous, Susur Secundi is ridiculous, Elegy Acolyte is ridiculous, Pain for All is ridiculous and all the various uncommons with Wayfarer's Baubles stapled to them are such killer casual cards, the set is perfect without even caring about the story. also they added kicker 1U draw a card to Impulse for some reason. i think this set is way more powerful and more enjoyable than final fantasy and it's just that Vivi, Tifa and a few various birds weigh heavy

edit: plus you can open a red white shock land which isn't associated with the cops

[5colorsrainbow]

Man the jumpstart cards look like garbage. Is Kotara the only chase card in there?

The Cabbage Merchant also looks alright, but yes, they look underwhelming. I assume these are just intro pack cards with different branding.

I'd rather them be mostly low powered, whenever jumpstart or similar stuff has anything chase it always ends up over priced/hard to get.