MTGNexus

lyonhaert wrote: ↑

4 years ago

umtiger wrote: ↑

4 years ago

lyonhaert wrote: ↑

4 years ago

So Castle Garenbrig is okay (basically +1 g)

Not if you have Mana Reflection!

Anything that makes mana is better with Mana Reflection.

Just replying to your Mirari's Wake vs Mana Reflection reply, haha.

All these new lands are going to get played. I think the white one makes tokens. So my ranking: Black > Green > Blue> White > Red

I'm including the black one in my type 4 stack.

I'd still be ranking Red > White. With a lot of red decks, that's doubling your power.

Land cycle looks sweet. They all look like easy includes in monocolor decks, and likely includes in two color decks as well. Beyond that, depends on what your manabase looks like - one land of a basic land type is trivial for green decks and decks with fetch/shock manabases, but can be more difficult for others. If you expect the lands to enter tapped, the cost of running them goes up significantly.

The lands all remind me of the Alliances cycle of lands - Kjeldoran Outpost and Soldevi Excavations in particular, although the newer cards do look much better due to not needing the land sacrifice.

As for the individual cards...
Castle Ardenvale is a bit expensive. I'm not sure if I like it more than Westvale Abbey. Lower opportunity cost means it is probably better, but I suppose it depends how much you care about Ormendahl.
Castle Vantress is a reasonable lategame mana sink. Definitely want to throw it in Thada.
Castle Locthwain is repeatable card advantage on a land, which is always worth consideration. That can be a hefty life loss, but if you only expect to activate it when you're out of cards (ex: in a Malfegor deck), it's pretty trivial to pay.
Castle Embereth is, to me, the least impressive of the bunch, but pump for a go-wide deck is good. I could see it in Krenko, Mob Boss and similar decks.
Castle Garenbrig is Temple of the False God-ish. Only provides mana for creature spells, but free ramp is free ramp. Limiting it to only creatures and abilities of creatures does limit it though.

As for other cards...
Realm-Cloaked Giant looks fine. Easy include in giant tribal decks. I don't think the giant beater makes it worth playing over other wraths-with-upside, but it's not a bad option to have.
Acclaimed Contender is good if you expect to trigger it consistently, but obviously limited to tribal decks.
Escape to the Wilds looks quite good. I'm usually not a big fan of the impulsive draw spells, but five cards for five mana is a really good deal, and the extra land drop makes it more likely for you to play all of them.

I like the castle cycle a lot. Castle Ardenvale is pretty clearly the bottom of the pile (also a flavor miss, should have made food tokens). I've tried Vitu-Ghazi, the City-Tree before and it's always felt much too slow for me. Adding colored mana production to it doesn't seem like enough upside and the creature type on the token isn't significantly more relevant, so this one might be a miss for me.

Castle Vantress and Castle Lochtwain both feel like they'll go into most decks in the colors. Being able to turn them on with shocks and duals means the odds of coming in untapped are pretty low for most of my decks and I'm always happy to fit card selection/advantage into the manabase.

Castle Embereth and Castle Garenbrig are both deck dependent, but powerful. Garenbrig being limited to creature spells/abilities isn't a huge ask in green decks, but it does make it a little more awkward in some lists lighter on creatures or in multicolor lists playing many small creatures. Embereth is going to be at its best in aggressive lists, particularly swarmy lists, and borderline useless in a number of archetypes. Where it's good it's going to be very good. That can represent a significant amount of damage with close to zero opportunity cost, which I like a lot. I also appreciate that it can be activated in the declare blockers step, so you can still take advantage of effects that rely on you having small creatures.

I'll admit that I'm much higher on Embereth than a lot of people seem to be, which is mostly a function of my deck preferences. I'm a big fan of aggressive red strategies in EDH and that's a little unusual.

I'm trying to decide if I should put Castle Lochtwain in Edgar Markov, Castle Garenbrig in Captain Sisay, and/or Castle Vantress in Niv-Mizzet, Parun. There's no downside of running these lands in mono colored decks, but in decks that are multiple colors, the chances that it enters the battlefield tapped seems to be about as big of a downside as the upside these cards give.

I like the variants. All useful in the right place, and I'll be stoked to grab Garenbrig for Nissa, Vantress for....something, and Embereth for general use (I don't really have a red creature based build atm). Lochtwain seems a little rough for a single card draw, although I'm sure Greven, Predator Captain probably likes it.

Actually, Vantress seems like it could be useful in a lot of places. It's expensive and blue heavy, but draw fixing is really valuable. I think the only variant that really dips out is Ardenvale. It's a bit of a weak effect, I'd be disappointed to see it staring at me from a booster.

half of fae of wishes is useless well actually the whole card is useless

ilovesaprolings wrote: ↑

4 years ago

Yeah, you know what i said about the new land cycle being staples? It's still true, just don't look at the white one...

The W one is the best of the bunch lolwut? It's no Kjeldoran Outpost now, but it doesn't cost a land either. I look forward to making dudes EoT for a long time to come.

toctheyounger wrote: ↑

4 years ago

Lochtwain seems a little rough for a single card draw, although I'm sure Greven, Predator Captain probably likes it.

Nah, Greven can draw cards and lose life much more efficiently. Although I can shoot the suggestion to our developing thread for confirmation.

3drinks wrote: ↑

4 years ago

toctheyounger wrote: ↑

4 years ago

Lochtwain seems a little rough for a single card draw, although I'm sure Greven, Predator Captain probably likes it.

Nah, Greven can draw cards and lose life much more efficiently. Although I can shoot the suggestion to our developing thread for confirmation.

Oh I'm sure he can. That was really the only relevant use I could see for it outside of some sort of hellbent weirdness. It just doesn't seem a fantastic deal to me.

I think all of the castles are fairly decent. The blue and red ones look the best to me but the opportunity cost of running them is very low. There are a few things that they can compete with such as Coffers, Emeria, Valakut, and some of the effects that double mana production of basics (which often tend to be black effects for swamps or artifacts for mono color).

I definitely want to get my hands on to test them but I think the current cost to get ahold of the castles are also very reasonable.

Well, Fabled Passage is pretty damn nice. Definitely going to want at least a couple of copies for Bruna and Nissa respectively.

Sheesh, 2 rainbow fetches in one year. It's like they're trying to make manabases even more homogeneous.

This one might actually miss the mark for optimized 2-color manabases though, I think the downside is real enough. Still, having the shuffle/grave tech/etc angle is probably enough to justify it in many decks. I'll probably be putting one in Phelddagrif for loam tech.

Slowly we inch closer to the fetch-pocalypse, a theoretical point where all manabases are nothing but fetches.

It's.. in between a budget fetch and a real fetch. It absolutely will miss for most 2-color decks with optimized landbases. A little more acceptable in green decks with enough land ramp.

It's no real fetch. But yeah, for those that can't afford genuine fetches it's decent. Definitely not for those who can afford to optimize though.

I'm mixed on Fabled Passage. I like running basic heavy and a pain free way to fix that's sometimes untapped and supports that is appealing. I also don't like running off-color fetches just for fixing purposes, though I'll do it if I have other fetch interactions (e.g. Crucible of Worlds, Rings of Brighthearth, lots of topdeck manipulation, etc). I'm not big on the fact that this comes in tapped when I most want it untapped. My meta is slow enough that it probably won't matter all that often and I do like the upsides to it so it's still going to be under consideration for a lot of my lists.

As an aside, I appreciate that we're getting a bunch of extended art options but disappointed that it means taking off the flavor text.

toctheyounger wrote: ↑

4 years ago

It's no real fetch. But yeah, for those that can't afford genuine fetches it's decent. Definitely not for those who can afford to optimize though.

I think it's better than that - you still need to take into account all the side benefits of fetches:
-shuffling the deck
-ability can by copied
-cards can care about a land dying/sacrifice (titania, mazirek, new jund dragon)
-land can be recurred
-land can be exiled to delve
-land counts for things that might care about it being in the grave
-thins the deck, however minorly
-plays well against ruination or other nonbasic hate compared to a dual (or even compared to a regular fetch tbh, if you're usually fetching duals in a 3+ color deck).
-and hey, paying life can add up over a long game, especially if you're recurring your fetches, which this alleviates - if I'm recycling fetches, this is probably my top choice after turn 3.

If you get no value from those things then this isn't amazing, but there's a lot of decks that can get pretty big value from those things and make this great. And worst case, it's still a pretty ok land imo, unless you're playing in a very fast meta where the first few turns are paramount.

DirkGently wrote: ↑

4 years ago

toctheyounger wrote: ↑

4 years ago

It's no real fetch. But yeah, for those that can't afford genuine fetches it's decent. Definitely not for those who can afford to optimize though.

I think it's better than that - you still need to take into account all the side benefits of fetches:
-shuffling the deck
-ability can by copied
-cards can care about a land dying/sacrifice (titania, mazirek, new jund dragon)
-land can be recurred
-land can be exiled to delve
-land counts for things that might care about it being in the grave
-thins the deck, however minorly
-plays well against ruination or other nonbasic hate compared to a dual (or even compared to a regular fetch tbh, if you're usually fetching duals in a 3+ color deck).
-and hey, paying life can add up over a long game, especially if you're recurring your fetches, which this alleviates - if I'm recycling fetches, this is probably my top choice after turn 3.

If you get no value from those things then this isn't amazing, but there's a lot of decks that can get pretty big value from those things and make this great. And worst case, it's still a pretty ok land imo, unless you're playing in a very fast meta where the first few turns are paramount.

Agreed. It's somewhere between the value from an Evolving Wilds and the value from a Prismatic Vista/other fetch (hopefully without the price tag of a fetch), and that's not to bag Wilds and Expanse either. In the right place they put in some good mileage. I think there's plenty of ways it can help, but obviously it's best where you can get multiple activations from it.

My Nissa build has plenty of land recursion, landfall, as well as wilds/expanse, so it'll fit like a glove, and there's no reason the land it fetches would ever enter tapped outside of turn 1/2. My Bruna build has less land recursion, (not none though), and has a couple landfall triggers which are super strong and worth leveraging Emeria Shepherd, Emeria, the Sky Ruin. Besides, there's the whole white 'can only ramp if an opponent has more lands' mechanism of Weathered Wayfarer/Land Tax that it will fit nicely around.

toctheyounger wrote: ↑

4 years ago

It's no real fetch. But yeah, for those that can't afford genuine fetches it's decent. Definitely not for those who can afford to optimize though.

I for one look forward to playing an eleven fetch base deck.

Kenrith's Transformation looks interesting. It's not Imprisoned in the Moon or Song of the Dryads, but a 3/3 with no abilities is still a significant downgrade for most commanders. The real appeal here is the cantrip, which makes this look pretty good.

Fabled Passage looks great. I'm running Evolving Wilds and Terramorphic Expanse in a bunch of decks (mostly ones with land synergies or recursion), so having a strictly better option is pretty attractive. I'm going to hope it ends up cheaper than Prismatic Vista....

Mad Ratter is intriguing - two tokens per turn is pretty strong, if you can enable it consistently. Same for Improbable Alliance.

Irencrag Pyromancer is repeatable burn / removal. I'm not sure what deck would want it, but a 3 mana Magmatic Force sounds worth building around.

The Great Henge looks extremely powerful, assuming you can get it out cheaply enough. Combined mana rock, draw engine, anthem, and lifegain - it does a lot of stuff.

Tenacious Knight, aka Syr Bob comes from a long and distinguished lineage of bad Bobs. The draw being symmetric is a bit of a downside, but there are a lot of ways to abuse it.

Lucky Clover is extremely powerful, but also super narrow. Makes me wonder if we'll have any legendary adventurers, or enough support for a deck.

Mookie wrote: ↑

4 years ago

Kenrith's Transformation looks interesting. It's not Imprisoned in the Moon or Song of the Dryads, but a 3/3 with no abilities is still a significant downgrade for most commanders. The real appeal here is the cantrip, which makes this look pretty good.

Cheaper and with a cantrip is a reasonable tradeoff. Although part of what makes Dryads good is that it can lock a commander to the board and make it unable to enter combat unfavourably to chump block and be recast.

I'm hoping for some more spicy legends too. I'm very much keen for something witch or warlock flavoured. That being said given the numbers MaRo had mentioned (I think it was 15 in the set) we might be out of luck for any more.

I like Passage for many of the same reasons I love Ash Barrens.

Idk what half those cards even do, they're not in the gallery.

These Bant-colored creature-changing auras are neat.

Okay how many weeks do you give this?