MTGNexus

Wheee, MH2 spoilers.

• Dakkon, Shadow Slayer looks sweet. Mills yourself, exiles stuff, reanimates artifacts (and creatures).... very interesting in including him in my Sharuum deck.
• Timeless Dragon is a fantastic callback to Eternal Dragon. I don't think the card itself is that impressive, but I do like the design. Not bad value either.
• Grief is an interesting Unmask variant. There aren't many hand-attack cards that see play in the format, but being flickerable is certainly relevant.
• Profane Tutor looks like it may function as a fairer, budget Demonic Tutor replacement. Being free on the turn you go off (or being hit by cascade shenanigans) is definitely relevant though.
• Unmarked Grave is similar, as a fairer Entomb. Worse for reanimating Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur and other legendary fatties, but still good.
• Thrasta, Tempest's Roar is the mono-green storm payoff I never knew I wanted.
• Flametongue Yearling is an adorable Flametongue Kavu variant. Probably too cute, but it does scale.
• Yusri, Fortune's Flame looks extremely strong. On average, it draws 2.5 cards at the cost of 5 life on attack, which is... extremely powerful. If you win all 5 flips, you probably just win the game. Throw in Krark's Thumb and things look even more degenerate.
• Cabal Coffers reprint is very, very, very overdue. I'll complain about its rarity upgrade (from uncommon → mythic), but I can't exactly say it's wrong. Unfortunately, will still need a few more reprints before the price becomes reasonable.

Timeless Dragon is a cute homage to Eternal Dragon, I'll gladly play him alongside his older brother in my pile o' dragons for Ur-Dragon. I'm just a bit bummed that the old frame version doesn't have any reminder text, I'm not too familiar with embalm/eternalize and would have liked to keep its reminder text. I hope we will at least get the corresponding token so that I only have to remember that it's an activated ability at sorcery speed.

Yusri, Fortune's Flame looks fun, just give him lifelink and try the five flips every turn.

It's too bad that the new Dakkon, Shadow Slayer can't be played as commander.

Ah, Yusri, the latest in WotC's series of "what if we took a silly casual strat, and made it so you have to kill their commander every turn or you lose the game?" commanders. Great.

Also I kinda hate the design. As I'm reading it, at first I'm thinking "oh interesting, what's going to be the push/pull on wanting to pick a high vs a low number?" and then it's like "oh...yeah nobody is ever going to pick a number other than 5...so I guess it's not actually interesting at all...just 2.5 phyrexian arenas in the command zone...with upside..."

I swear, wotc cannot design a UR commander that isn't cancer.

DirkGently wrote: ↑

3 years ago

Ah, Yusri, the latest in WotC's series of "what if we took a silly casual strat, and made it so you have to kill their commander every turn or you lose the game?" commanders. Great.

This was my first thought, and pretty much rings similarly to Okaun, Eye of Chaos and Zndrsplt, Eye of Wisdom. Those two were awful to play against for a minute there, thankfully you don't see too many of them in the wild.

Can the RC put a quota on how many legends per year say "whenever you... Draw a card" in their text? Maybe two?

BeneTleilax wrote: ↑

3 years ago

Can the RC put a quota on how many legends per year say "whenever you... Draw a card" in their text? Maybe two?

Nope. I'm hoping for a Kavu legend.

2gr

4/4

Whenever a green Kavu enters the battlefield under your control, draw a card. Whenever a red Kavu enters the battlefield under your control, it deals damage equal to its power to any target.

Timeless Dragon - A cool enough spinoff that may be better than the original if I actually ever build Kaalia ZS. Cheaper all around costs, and my idea of ZS was a bit different than other cycling builds.
Grief - ETB discard is always welcome. Probably picking up a couple copies.
Profane Tutor - More tutoring! Makes it interesting, delaying it.
Unmarked Grave - Redundancy for grave decks! Use this to get basics set up, use Entomb for bomb plays.
Thrasta, Tempest's Roar - I figure the earliest playing of ... Thrasta would be Lotus Cobra first, followed by Nature's Lore and other 2 cost spells, and Wood Elves etc, and fetchlands. CBA to figure out the actual earliest turn, but you could power out Dino Dance Roar-volution here pretty early. Triple Hit kill from CMDR damage of course. Timmy smash, with background effectiveness too. Though the generic part of the cost paired with the per spell discount will likely annoy me something fierce. (...Had to fight some dirty nicknaming)
Cabal Coffers - About bloody sodding time it got reprinted. Need at least one or two foils of it, as well as more reprints in future. EDIT: Also, that ext. art though Cabal Coffers|65359

The new art is pretty great.

[looking around a fellow Masques fan to high-five after seeing Rishadan Dockhand]

[disappointed]

Why run Yusri, Fortune's Flame as the commander when you can run him in the 98 of Krark, the Thumbless and Sakashima of a Thousand Faces?

I wonder if they really mean it when they say MH2 will be print to demand

Hermes_ wrote: ↑

3 years ago

I wonder if they really mean it when they say MH2 will be print to demand

They meant it for MH1

(all my $6 copies of Waterlogged Grove can attest)

DirkGently wrote: ↑

3 years ago

Ah, Yusri, the latest in WotC's series of "what if we took a silly casual strat, and made it so you have to kill their commander every turn or you lose the game?" commanders. Great.

Also I kinda hate the design. As I'm reading it, at first I'm thinking "oh interesting, what's going to be the push/pull on wanting to pick a high vs a low number?" and then it's like "oh...yeah nobody is ever going to pick a number other than 5...so I guess it's not actually interesting at all...just 2.5 phyrexian arenas in the command zone...with upside..."

I swear, wotc cannot design a UR commander that isn't cancer.

I think this is alarmaist, and, honestly reminds me of the furor over over Jeweled Lotus. I'll actually wait for the sky to fall before yelling "The sky is falling". The reprint of Cabal Coffers is far, far more dangerous to our format than this silly thing.

RadiantSophia wrote: ↑

3 years ago

I think this is alarmaist, and, honestly reminds me of the furor over over Jeweled Lotus. I'll actually wait for the sky to fall before yelling "The sky is falling". The reprint of Cabal Coffers is far, far more dangerous to our format than this silly thing.

To be fair Coffers is saved from being truly, horrendously busted by the fact that it doesn't produce mana without other lands in play. Without 3+ swamps in play it won't even net positive mana for you.

I don't think Dirk is saying the sky is falling either, I think it's more just that it's another slightly busted, one route to build, storm-esque Izzet commander. Instead of spellslinger storm this is coin flip storm. It's more that its just not that interesting moreso than it being busted. Like you know the deck is gonna be full of additional combat phases and wasy to abuse the flip mechanic so that they can just end the game in one turn. It's not the first time this has been printed and it won't be the last, nor is it going to break the format; it's just that these commanders are flashes in the pan. Okaun, Eye of Chaos and Zndrsplt, Eye of Wisdom were exactly the same; when they dropped I must have faced them like every 4th game with Frenetic Efreet and Laboratory Maniac in tow. Nowadays you just don't see them because it's a one-trick pony.

Putting Coffer at mythic, putting enemy fetch lands in Secret Lair, WotC knows the secondary market and create cards accordingly.

RadiantSophia wrote: ↑

3 years ago

I think this is alarmaist, and, honestly reminds me of the furor over over Jeweled Lotus. I'll actually wait for the sky to fall before yelling "The sky is falling". The reprint of Cabal Coffers is far, far more dangerous to our format than this silly thing.

By no stretch of the imagination do I think it's going to ruin the format.

That doesn't mean I don't hate it, and that I won't groan when I see it at the table.

I am so pleased that Dakkon, Shadow Slayer is once again bearing the hyper colorful art of Richard Kane Ferguson. I don't exactly like his style, but I think it's great that he's on Dakkon's card art once again.

toctheyounger wrote: ↑

3 years ago

I don't think Dirk is saying the sky is falling either, I think it's more just that it's another slightly busted, one route to build, storm-esque Izzet commander. Instead of spellslinger storm this is coin flip storm. It's more that its just not that interesting moreso than it being busted. Like you know the deck is gonna be full of additional combat phases and wasy to abuse the flip mechanic so that they can just end the game in one turn. It's not the first time this has been printed and it won't be the last, nor is it going to break the format; it's just that these commanders are flashes in the pan. Okaun, Eye of Chaos and Zndrsplt, Eye of Wisdom were exactly the same; when they dropped I must have faced them like every 4th game with Frenetic Efreet and Laboratory Maniac in tow. Nowadays you just don't see them because it's a one-trick pony.

I don't really see it as a coin-flip deck - though I'm sure people will build it that way even though there's little good synergy outside of Krark's Thumb. O&Z do pay you off for playing a bunch of other coin flips, whereas Yusri doesn't at all, outside of the 2-level synergy of having thumb already in the deck I suppose. The reason I hate Yusri is that it's just hideously above-rate draw - a 3-drop should not be drawing 2-3 cards per turn...while still getting to attack, even. I mean it's even a reasonable rate without the coin flip at all, lol. He's pretty insane no matter what you want to build with him.

I don't think one legendary creature is ever really going to do TOO much harm to the format, but every year it seems like there's a higher and higher percentage of groaners. I have to keep adjusting my bar for what an obnoxious commander looks like because they keep upping the ante.

EDIT: also, idk what moron at R&D thinks it's "fun" to flip 5 freaking coins every time he attacks.

Moonlighter wrote: ↑

3 years ago

I am so pleased that Dakkon, Shadow Slayer is once again bearing the hyper colorful art of Richard Kane Ferguson. I don't exactly like his style, but I think it's great that he's on Dakkon's card art once again.

I have a Dakkon Blackblade old border themed deck with a lot of RKF art and I'm just ecstatic that they made a card just for me.

DirkGently wrote: ↑

3 years ago

EDIT: also, idk what moron at R&D thinks it's "fun" to flip 5 freaking coins every time he attacks.

Since the order doesn't matter for Yusri, you can just immediately roll 5 dice, calling even or odd.

Yeah when I'm flipping coins in wincons I just roll a dice, always looking for evens. As a 40K player I've gotten good good at rolling D6's fast, even one by one, so it probably takes less time than the actual coin flip would.

Dragonlover

Moonlighter wrote: ↑

3 years ago

I am so pleased that Dakkon, Shadow Slayer is once again bearing the hyper colorful art of Richard Kane Ferguson. I don't exactly like his style, but I think it's great that he's on Dakkon's card art once again.

Yeah, new RKF art on a new version of one of his signature cards is very much a win.

Yeah, I really fail to see the furor over Yusri, Fortune's Flame. Like... it has to attack, which opens it up to a million ways of removal. You're usually taking more damage than you draw cards. Just as often as you'll hit "jackpot", you'll take 10 damage for no benefit. A 3 mana commander that drew 2 cards when it attacked would be pretty roundly panned, imo, and this is barely better than that on average with a significant downside. I'm sure some people will enjoy it, but it's not going to be very strong imo, nor is it going to be "kill on sight" or groanworthy.

Wallycaine wrote: ↑

3 years ago

A 3 mana commander that drew 2 cards when it attacked would be pretty roundly panned, imo, and this is barely better than that on average with a significant downside.

I dunno, tymna is pretty popular. Part of that is being a partnerand she does have some sequences where she lets you draw right when she comes down but most of her sequences read draw two pay two if you have dudes to attack with.

I think you're underselling how powerful draw two cards on attack is.. if it just did that it would be one of the best commanders in the game.

Yusri is no Korvold or Chulane; having to attack is pretty limiting. I'd say it's somewhere above Aurelia and way below Zur as far as attack triggers go. Costing 3 is irritating, but it's boltable. I imagine it's only gonna take a few games of "Pick 5 flips → Draw 1, take 8" before the this flash leaves the pan and the gen pop abandons it like Z & O before. I think only true chaos maniacs are going to stick to Yusri long-term. IME most spikes prefer greater general consistency than Yusri provides, despite Yusri statisitically balancing out over time.

It's also waaaaaaaaaaay weaker than tymna because it doesn't come with a Thrasios sidekick stapled to it.

Edit: Yusri also has the Breena issue of becoming way weaker the longer the game goes. Eventually, you just can't use Yusri for fear of killing oneself (barring lifelink stuff) on attack. Most generals in cedh (just for example) do not suffer from this narrowing window of utility. So I think it'll be fair enough compared to the current class of worst offenders.