Bring to Light doesn't say "as long as it is exiled" so I'm assuming you have to play it right now. Too bad, sitting on a counterspell would have been fun.
Sets Battle for Zendikar Spoilers
- Thread starter Eric Chan
- Start date
Unless specified that the effect doesn't last forever, it does. You can save the card. Which is sweet.
Kiora is such a letdown. Her +1 seems UG but the second ability looks UB/GB and the last looks GR. I feel like all three of our walkers so far were really lazily designed and totally phoned in. I get it, they're scared or losing players with the new standard rotation structure. Doesn't mean they have to push all of the new walkers into generic goodstuff. :/ Is this the future? Untap, draw, dump tokens, huge starting loyalty, ultimates that are devastating but boring? Jeez. Colour me unimpressed.
I'm pretty sure unless it says otherwise that you have to cast the tutored spell as part of resolution of the original spell. See Spelltwine vs Spelljack.
Oh I see. That seems right.
FlowerSunRain
Contributor
Its slightly on the weak side, I think. I'm playing Kudzu and its decent, but adding a color mana on a card that benefits form the cumulative effect of dropping lands is a pretty big downer.. I like how he's a phantom creature, but doesn't have the unintuitive interaction with toughness raising effects. After 2 lands he's a 4/4, which is the going rate for 3 mana beat sticks these days, so he's not awful. That's just one fetch or two regular drops. Uneven "protection" is a little offputting, he can survive all kinds of burn, but dies to every doomblade variant ever. On the plus side that means he survives wildfire, devastating dreams, blasphemous act, etc. I think he has a place on some lists, not as a core card, but an interesting push option. It doesn't hurt that 3 cc is the slot in the curve where you can afford to be most creative: its low enough you can have a bunch of them, but high enough you don't need to load it with redundancy.Now we're talking!
Stronk enough?
I'm definitely getting this card, first card in the set (other then the obligatory lands) that I'm really interested in.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
I will say, in the many times I've seen people try to custom out the manland cycle, the UG one always stumbled people. Best thing I ever came up with was a thieving magpie, which doesn't make a bunch of sense anyways. I'm apprehensive about the UR one as well, but hopefully they've got a better feel on what that color combination should be doing than I did a few years ago when I tried.
New Ob Nix has 5 loyalty, nice. I'm reasonably happy with the abilities. People were saying he'd have 4-5 starting loyalty, which to my ears always sounds like 3, but this is nice.
I don't even like steppe lynx anymore, and sythe lepord is much worse.
Undergrowth Champion is...odd? Is he even good?
I'm reasonably excited because more counter stuff, but given how lukewarm I was on vinelasher kudzu, this card will likely end up the same way. DAMN YOU GREEN 3 DROPS!
Also:
I don't think we've had this effect before have we
New Ob Nix has 5 loyalty, nice. I'm reasonably happy with the abilities. People were saying he'd have 4-5 starting loyalty, which to my ears always sounds like 3, but this is nice.
I don't even like steppe lynx anymore, and sythe lepord is much worse.
Undergrowth Champion is...odd? Is he even good?
I'm reasonably excited because more counter stuff, but given how lukewarm I was on vinelasher kudzu, this card will likely end up the same way. DAMN YOU GREEN 3 DROPS!
Also:
I don't think we've had this effect before have we
HOP ON THE
H Y P E T R A I N B O Y Z
H Y P E T R A I N B O Y Z
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Something tells me that's less effective than Argent Plea 
I didn't realize you can use it that way, neat!
Dom Harvey
Contributor
nah, you want Living End. Bring into Light is exciting because it doesn't place cascade restrictions on your deck, so you can play set-up cards.
Undergrowth Champion mainly excites me for being an Elemental tbh
Undergrowth Champion mainly excites me for being an Elemental tbh
So if you're using Bring to Light to cast Living End in cube, why not just cast Living Death instead?
Dom Harvey
Contributor
it's for Modern, you're not casting Restore Balance in Cube either
Oooooh, you know that one Living Twin deck LSV played that one time...
Why not just go 5c so you can run all the combos?
Why not just go 5c so you can run all the combos?
It's mostly that by the time you can activate the manland at
, it'll usually be the midgame or lategame, and chances are that the board will be stalled enough that evasion would be more useful than a protective ability like hexproof. For a straight ground-pounder with a four-mana activation, I was hoping for four power, a la Raging Ravine.Maybe this is still good enough, but I think it lands closer to Lavaclaw Reaches than to Stirring Wildwood. As ahadabans points out, that might still be cubeable!
Oooooh, you know that one Living Twin deck LSV played that one time...
Why not just go 5c so you can run all the combos?
because you will fold to Thoughtseize
very excited to play new Ob Nix, just what i've been looking for. he's basically Vraska but not gold i think
Chris Taylor
Contributor
: Counter a wasteland brah
Restore Balance is a stretch but Bring to Light + Ancestral Vision seems totally legit to me.
Or not.
Or not.
The UG manland is probably going to be not-so-good, except being exceptional in control mirrors (as in pretty creatureless control decks, which don't appear all that often in cube)
Chris Taylor
Contributor
His + also does something so you aren't really afraid to run him out on an empty board and gain nothing (my main problem with vraska). The accuracy of the Reddit spoiler person was pretty close!
I like a lot of these card so far, but I don't really like this Kiora at all. Her + and - are really marginal IMO. She'll be fine/great in standard decks but I'll stick with the version that protects herself-
alone doesn't really function without as far as the self-mill deck goes in my list. As far as the manland goes it's kinda hard not to compare it to treetop village and be disappointed, but hexproof is often undervalued.Yes. But it's also because they want a certain number of 'building block' planeswalkers in rotation so the first set of each 2-set block will probably have a lot of generic stuff, since those sets will trigger rotation from now on.
Check out who standard loses when BFZ hits:
With the exception of jace and mono-white ajani, all of them saw some level of standard play ranging from single-most-important-card-for-a-year in Elspeth to the 'barely there' of Liliana and the 'replaced by an enchantment' of Chandra. Having three kinda generic walkers fill their shoes fill the shoes of six well-played walkers isn't so bad.
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
Not even. Ingenuity is an investment of 1 card for 3, while bring to light/visions is an investment of 2 cards for 3 and requires tapping out on your main phase...
The new manland is great:
Lets rumble.
I also like the new kiora in a hypothetical high power cube running bouncelands. You could run her alongside OG garruk, voyaging satyr, and frantic search as part of a sweet UG ramp package.
Is that how you count cards? I mean word up on it being a sorcery but the first card is replacing itself, yeah?
Yeah that sounds super-sweet, I just hate bouncelands.