Magic the Gathering Arena

[Gyor]

Just saying @those who want to play Vampire Tribal:

There are enough Vampires in Historic now that Sorin Imperious Bloodlord is brutal commander in Brawl.
Every T3 is him + Epicure of Blood or another fat vampire.

After the FR set & Innistrad sets there is about to be a whole lot more Vampires.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww shit son, one of the Kaldheim alternate arts is done by Ian Miller. Always love his art. Been a billion fucking years since he did MTG art last, probably around the time they stopped letting cool artists do stuff* and wanted things to look more uniform god damn it.

*Yes there's still good modern MTG art but they've still been homogenizing it.

Edit: Guess I'll throw the regular card art in too just for comparison's sake.

 

[Ranselknulf]

Well that got out of hand fast.

5 turns without a removal card vs this thing with hydras growth

The creature was 150/150 with lifelink before I killed it with a death touch creature.

I think the guys plan was to take the 150 life and just whittle me down. Managed to get him to quit in 3 turns though and he still had 124 life left.

Guess he didn't want to watch me beat on him for like 10 turns until he finally died.

 

[[UCHIHA]XxDarkSasuke420xX]

Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww shit son, one of the Kaldheim alternate arts is done by Ian Miller. Always love his art. Been a billion fucking years since he did MTG art last, probably around the time they stopped letting cool artists do stuff* and wanted things to look more uniform god damn it.

if they made all the art like this I'd actually play the game
fuck their new art direction it sucks

 

[Thac0]

They spoiled so much at once lol. Impossible to link it all here.
I guess there really was a full sheet linked and they told everyone to dump all their reveals as fast as possible now.

Some Standouts:

Stompy got a lot stronger. And I like that this is pulling Stompy in a more midrangey rampy direction with giving you a stronger wolfwillow grove on death.

The obligatory trans planeswalker on the Viking set to virtue signal that WOTC does not endorce Racism has a trash card. This actually looks really bad, the best thing is probably using him as All that Glitters bait, as a 3 mana dude that produces 1 enchantment token per turn, with an optional nuke on some turns. So many conditions on all abilites tho.

Tibalt is Loki! I highly expected this to happen, and the execution looks good. Early game Tibalt is a sidegraded Brain Maggot and late game Tibalt is good for grindy games. Probably too slow for current Rakdos Midrange but enough juice to pull the deckl in a different direction or be sideboarded.

A very unassuming card, but with this all tribal decks have maindeckable on brand artifact and enchantment hate. Will be boarded out often, but if Green has tribal decks I expect this to see play.

 

[Thac0]

Also on the art side this is absolutely sick. Photographs of real world sculptures are back on the menu now.

Also Vorinclex alt art slaps.

Also I am not gonna cluster the thread even more with all of the Snow Lands spoiled, but hot damn some of them look pretty. Idk what they did to their art department but it was the right decision.

 

[Ranselknulf]

The obligatory trans planeswalker on the Viking set to virtue signal that WOTC does not endorce Racism has a trash card. This actually looks really bad, the best thing is probably using him as All that Glitters bait, as a 3 mana dude that produces 1 enchantment token per turn, with an optional nuke on some turns. So many conditions on all abilites tho.

It doesn't look that good I suppose, but if the shards trigger the "when an enchantment enters the battlefield do X, Y, or Z" type effects, this could be a killshot card. Ie.. if X = 10, then it means 10 enchantments enter the battlefield all at once if I'm reading this correctly.

I've seen people do some interesting things with enchantment spam / bounce decks.

 

[Thac0]

The obligatory trans planeswalker on the Viking set to virtue signal that WOTC does not endorce Racism has a trash card. This actually looks really bad, the best thing is probably using him as All that Glitters bait, as a 3 mana dude that produces 1 enchantment token per turn, with an optional nuke on some turns. So many conditions on all abilites tho.

It doesn't look that good I suppose, but if the shards trigger the "when an enchantment enters the battlefield do X, Y, or Z" type effects, this could be a killshot card. Ie.. if X = 10, then it means 10 enchantments enter the battlefield all at once if I'm reading this correctly.

I've seen people do some interesting things with enchantment spam / bounce decks.

Maybe, but I have played a lot with Enchantment type decks and the ETBs for it just aren't very good at the moment. The options are +1/+1 and draw a card. make a 2/2 with flying and draw a land in Standard. Historic has mostly card draw aswell. You would be better off running any other Xmana win spell like the Finales in Historic or any other normal win spell in standard. There is an argument to be made for a card that comes down on curve and does anything and that can still be a win condition, but this can't even be a win condition on its own, much less do anything good on curve. What is the best possible scenario for this? Play it with opt together on turn 4 and nuke an enemy tapped creature?

I assume this was another Teferi in testing. And they didn't want to make a second completely broken 3 mana Azorius Planeswalker that slows the game to a crawl in such a short time, so they made him shit.
The first ability is the weirdest thing, unless you built your entire deck around it you almost never want to attack after using it, making it +1: do nothing. And if you built your deck around it you are building around bounce creatures and echantments at once? These two archetypes are actively conflicting each other lol. The creatures are usually the part you do not want to flicker because they have constellation.

This card is plain weird but at least fun to theorycraft with.

 

[Ranselknulf]

The obligatory trans planeswalker on the Viking set to virtue signal that WOTC does not endorce Racism has a trash card. This actually looks really bad, the best thing is probably using him as All that Glitters bait, as a 3 mana dude that produces 1 enchantment token per turn, with an optional nuke on some turns. So many conditions on all abilites tho.

It doesn't look that good I suppose, but if the shards trigger the "when an enchantment enters the battlefield do X, Y, or Z" type effects, this could be a killshot card. Ie.. if X = 10, then it means 10 enchantments enter the battlefield all at once if I'm reading this correctly.

I've seen people do some interesting things with enchantment spam / bounce decks.

Maybe, but I have played a lot with Enchantment type decks and the ETBs for it just aren't very good at the moment. The options are +1/+1 and draw a card. make a 2/2 with flying and draw a land in Standard. Historic has mostly card draw aswell. You would be better off running any other Xmana win spell like the Finales in Historic or any other normal win spell in standard. There is an argument to be made for a card that comes down on curve and does anything and that can still be a win condition, but this can't even be a win condition on its own, much less do anything good on curve. What is the best possible scenario for this? Play it with opt together on turn 4 and nuke an enemy tapped creature?

I assume this was another Teferi in testing. And they didn't want to make a second completely broken 3 mana Azorius Planeswalker that slows the game to a crawl in such a short time, so they made him shit.
The first ability is the weirdest thing, unless you built your entire deck around it you almost never want to attack after using it, making it +1: do nothing. And if you built your deck around it you are building around bounce creatures and echantments at once? These two archetypes are actively conflicting each other lol. The creatures are usually the part you do not want to flicker because they have constellation.

This card is plain weird but at least fun to theorycraft with.

Agreed, it was just the first thing that came to mind. I like to seed my deck with 1 or 2 "retard" cards like this that make people scratch their head.

Dance of Manse should be the staple kill shot card for any enchantment deck imo.

One retard maneuver I like to do is play a kenrith and then use his haste / trample ability. People don't normally expect it because you're playing a white / blue deck, and all of a sudden a red ability is getting used. If you have enough land you can do it all on the same turn and really piss people off. Drop a ton of creatures, haste them all and boom. I've done this with that black return creatures to the battlefield "land" card before. The zendikar one, can't think of its name off the top of my head but you know the one I'm talking about.

 

[Thac0]

Agreed, it was just the first thing that came to mind. I like to seed my deck with 1 or 2 "retard" cards like this that make people scratch their head.

Dance of Manse should be the staple kill shot card for any enchantment deck imo.

One retard maneuver I like to do is play a kenrith and then use his haste / trample ability. People don't normally expect it because you're playing a white / blue deck, and all of a sudden a red ability is getting used. If you have enough land you can do it all on the same turn and really piss people off. Drop a ton of creatures, haste them all and boom. I've done this with that black return creatures to the battlefield "land" card before. The zendikar one, can't think of its name off the top of my head but you know the one I'm talking about.

Honestly I do not know how the fuck you are winning games, let alone climbing so high in rank. 250 card wombo piles, devoid of all meta, filled with retard cards, powerfull one offs, off colour lands and other strange bullshit galore. Either the surprise factor is much stronger than I ever thought it to be or you outsmart your enemies like Habbibal outsmarted Rome.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Ranselknulf]

Agreed, it was just the first thing that came to mind. I like to seed my deck with 1 or 2 "retard" cards like this that make people scratch their head.

Dance of Manse should be the staple kill shot card for any enchantment deck imo.

One retard maneuver I like to do is play a kenrith and then use his haste / trample ability. People don't normally expect it because you're playing a white / blue deck, and all of a sudden a red ability is getting used. If you have enough land you can do it all on the same turn and really piss people off. Drop a ton of creatures, haste them all and boom. I've done this with that black return creatures to the battlefield "land" card before. The zendikar one, can't think of its name off the top of my head but you know the one I'm talking about.

Honestly I do not know how the fuck you are winning games, let alone climbing so high in rank. 250 card wombo piles, devoid of all meta, filled with retard cards, powerfull one offs, off colour lands and other strange bullshit galore. Either the surprise factor is much stronger than I ever thought it to be or you outsmart your enemies like Habbibal outsmarted Rome.

Skyclave Relic kicker is really helpful for fixing fucked up land situations.

There are other artifacts that tap to add one color of any type also. Just use it strategically and don't let them know you have a particular color until the time is right.

Basically disguise your deck as one of the cookie cutter models, then drop something that makes them go WHAT THE FUCK!

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

that tibalt sounds like my kind of jank. I wonder... how the hell are you to play it as commander?

That's an interesting question. The mono-black side is the primary face of the card which is a card's ultimate card type/color/etc in all instances except in play, buuuuuuuut commander coloration works for activated abilities too doesn't it? Not sure if that would mean it includes Tibalt or not. If he's stuck being a mono-black card as a commander then that's trash, but if you can get Rakdos out of it then it might be neat. I guess especially for commander, since you aren't normally allowed walkers as your commander in non-brawl.

 

[Jason Liang]

So evidently they made a ruling that you can Cascade into Tibalt. Tibalt is 2 cmc for Cascading. Whee.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

So evidently they made a ruling that you can Cascade into Tibalt. Tibalt is 2 cmc for Cascading. Whee.

what if you blink him? Or resurrect through graveyard? would you be able to bring back tibalt side for free this way?
Basically can lurrus bring back tibalt for 2 mana? Can lazav turn into tibalt?

That sounds wrong, I thought they made it clear that for anything that impacts a card in your hand/deck/graveyard/exile/etc it's only based on the front face of it. I guess technically Cascade is only particular as far as nonland permanents is concerned, but it still doesn't feel right you can bring him out at 2cmc. I guess there might be weird rules lawering going on where Tibalt and Valki count as the same card (Technically true I think, since they're basically like splitcards) so since they're both nonland permanents it counts as one card at the 2cmc due to the specific rules of the new flipcards where the front face is the "Main face". I dunno, feels wrong but there must be some fuckery if it's the case.

Speaking of feeling wrong, I just realized that I never managed to pull a single Mazemind Tome from M21 and never pulled a single Crawling Barrens from Zendikar and I'm still two simulacrums down. Was thinking about playing mono red ramp/Ugin but not too sure about blowing that many wildcards, even though I should get the damn tomes since they're so useful.

 

[Ranselknulf]

So evidently they made a ruling that you can Cascade into Tibalt. Tibalt is 2 cmc for Cascading. Whee.

what if you blink him? Or resurrect through graveyard? would you be able to bring back tibalt side for free this way?
Basically can lurrus bring back tibalt for 2 mana? Can lazav turn into tibalt?

That sounds wrong, I thought they made it clear that for anything that impacts a card in your hand/deck/graveyard/exile/etc it's only based on the front face of it. I guess technically Cascade is only particular as far as nonland permanents is concerned, but it still doesn't feel right you can bring him out at 2cmc. I guess there might be weird rules lawering going on where Tibalt and Valki count as the same card (Technically true I think, since they're basically like splitcards) so since they're both nonland permanents it counts as one card at the 2cmc due to the specific rules of the new flipcards where the front face is the "Main face". I dunno, feels wrong but there must be some fuckery if it's the case.

Speaking of feeling wrong, I just realized that I never managed to pull a single Mazemind Tome from M21 and never pulled a single Crawling Barrens from Zendikar and I'm still two simulacrums down. Was thinking about playing mono red ramp/Ugin but not too sure about blowing that many wildcards, even though I should get the damn tomes since they're so useful.

Holy fuck, that cascade mechanic looks broken.

Don't these people play test new sets before they are released.


As for the crawling barrens, I think its worth it to buy at least a couple with wild cards.

Crawling barrens works in just about any deck and is a useful place to dump all your mana if you don't have any current moves in your hand.

 

[Jason Liang]

Holy fuck, that cascade mechanic looks broken.

Don't these people play test new sets before they are released.


As for the crawling barrens, I think its worth it to buy at least a couple with wild cards.

Crawling barrens works in just about any deck and is a useful place to dump all your mana if you don't have any current moves in your hand.

Cascade is an old mechanic. I don't think they've added any Cascade cards to Historic Arena yet.

 

[Ranselknulf]

Holy fuck, that cascade mechanic looks broken.

Don't these people play test new sets before they are released.


As for the crawling barrens, I think its worth it to buy at least a couple with wild cards.

Crawling barrens works in just about any deck and is a useful place to dump all your mana if you don't have any current moves in your hand.

Cascade is an old mechanic. I don't think they've added any Cascade cards to Historic Arena yet.

Crazy, I haven't played mtg throughout most of its existence, just for a short while when I was a kid and now when mtga came out.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Ranselknulf]

blue gets access to perfect removal now?

in other news my plan of stealing enemy shit is comming together

Is this gonna be a historic set?

This looks tempting and I might give it a shot if it is.

 

[Thac0]

in other news my plan of stealing enemy shit is comming together

The art explaining how Tibalt became Loki and got his super duper sword is some saturday morning cartoon shit lol.

Is this gonna be a historic set?

It's a normal standard set. So it will be Historic playable day 1.

 

[Ranselknulf]

in other news my plan of stealing enemy shit is comming together

The art explaining how Tibalt became Loki and got his super duper sword is some saturday morning cartoon shit lol.

Is this gonna be a historic set?

It's a normal standard set. So it will be Historic playable day 1.

With something like this, I might have to make that prowess / bounce spam deck I played against once or twice.