Sets (AFR) Adventures in the Forgotten Realms Previews- Dripping with Flavor, and Excess Words!

I would not hesitate to put them both in the same cube. I am just wondering if it is too cute to facilitate them ending up in the same deck.

Between baubles and ETB creatures that don't mind being turned into artifacts and sacrificed I reckon the synergies will pop up naturally.
 

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
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Is this too cute? Build your own pod, kinda. A more apt comparison is perhaps enigmatic incarnation but for artifacts.
It's pretty cute. I don't really run an artifact-heavy environment, but I would see this as more of an incidental synergy than something you build around. Liquimetal is there as a mana rock / Shatter enabler, and Oswald is there for some artipod shenanigans, and if the two come together, uh, maybe then you'd just rather sacrifice your Ichor Wellspring anyways, but sometimes you can sacrifice something else!

So, yeah, if both of these can work independently in your artifacty environment, the interaction may happen sometimes, but I wouldn't plan my weekend around it.
 
Liquimetal Torque is great in that it can replace any other 2-mana ramp and get a bunch of extra synergies on top. I wouldn't build around it or anything, just replace Mind Stone or whatever other card you run in its slot.
 
Would translating "tonijn pikant" as "spicy meatball" be appropriate? Because if so, yeah, it sure is. One of the better ones in the set, too.

grimwanderer.png

How hard is it going to be to get this dude to work? It obviously gets a lot better with your cube's instant-speed removal, but my question is how good it has to be in order to be worth it. My gut reaction is that it's not quite worth it, but I want it to work in the same way I really wanted Bayou Groff to work. Anyone disagree?

Also, between edgelord and Ebondeath, are there hints of a B/x flash archetype or am I just making things up?? I'd love to see B/R move into that space.
 
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Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
I like Grim Wanderer quite a lot, probably too much in an Eldrazi Domain context. I feel like this is more flexible than Bayou Groff, which needed explicit food. I've usually not found Morbid to be that difficult of a thing to get online, and suspect this card will be fun to set up.
 
Would translating "tonijn pikant" as "spicy meatball" be appropriate? Because if so, yeah, this is a very cool card. One of the better ones in the set, too.

View attachment 4646

How hard is it going to be to get this dude to work? It obviously gets a lot better with your cube's instant-speed removal, but my question is how good it has to be in order to be worth it. My gut reaction is that it's not quite worth it, but I want it to work in the same way I really wanted Bayou Groff to work. Anyone disagree?

Also, between edgelord and Ebondeath, are there hints of a B/x flash archetype or am I just making things up?? I'd love to see B/R move into that space.
i am probably not gonna bother with Ebondeath (4 mana for 2 toughness?!?) but Grim Wanderer has me excited. i have a lot of 1 mana kill spells in BR that can activate his tragic backstory.
also… an edgelord loner PC spoof is pure :pogchimp:
 
Would translating "tonijn pikant" as "spicy meatball" be appropriate? Because if so, yeah, this is a very cool card. One of the better ones in the set, too.

View attachment 4646

How hard is it going to be to get this dude to work? It obviously gets a lot better with your cube's instant-speed removal, but my question is how good it has to be in order to be worth it. My gut reaction is that it's not quite worth it, but I want it to work in the same way I really wanted Bayou Groff to work. Anyone disagree?

Also, between edgelord and Ebondeath, are there hints of a B/x flash archetype or am I just making things up?? I'd love to see B/R move into that space.
This is a lot easier to cast than it looks, if your cube is at all focused on creature combat and/or your opponents ever run removal. Like Jason says, it's just a morbid trigger.

because, like Ebondeath, your opponent's removal can trigger this. Literally any creature combat with death. Any sacrifice trigger, not just your sac triggers. I'm not sure why there's a focus when evaluating these two on how much it'll cost to both cast removal and trigger their abilities, because I feel like that will be a minority case compared to blocking an opponents creature for a trade and then flashing a 2 mana 5/3 in on their end step, or "overreaching" with an attack only to enable an above curve beater.
 
Red gets the least amount of flash as it's #1 in haste
Oh, yeah, absolutely, but I was thinking more along the lines of Black brings the creatures and Red brings the bolts, sort of the way that Draw/Go U/x decks get very different things from their two colors.

Thanks for the second through fifth opinions! I'm definitely going to test this guy, maybe alongside Bone Picker. Hmm...
 
This is a lot easier to cast than it looks, if your cube is at all focused on creature combat and/or your opponents ever run removal. Like Jason says, it's just a morbid trigger.

because, like Ebondeath, your opponent's removal can trigger this. Literally any creature combat with death. Any sacrifice trigger, not just your sac triggers. I'm not sure why there's a focus when evaluating these two on how much it'll cost to both cast removal and trigger their abilities, because I feel like that will be a minority case compared to blocking an opponents creature for a trade and then flashing a 2 mana 5/3 in on their end step, or "overreaching" with an attack only to enable an above curve beater.
this is very true. i’m still cagey on Ebondeath because 4 mana is a lot, but he might be worth testing as a mana sink for midrangey decks. just… ugh, 2 toughness on a 4 mana creature is ROUGH, you open yourself up to HUGE tempo loss if you’re not careful. and exile removal hurts even worse.
 
this is very true. i’m still cagey on Ebondeath because 4 mana is a lot, but he might be worth testing as a mana sink for midrangey decks. just… ugh, 2 toughness on a 4 mana creature is ROUGH, you open yourself up to HUGE tempo loss if you’re not careful. and exile removal hurts even worse.
If a 4 mana creature opens up to big tempo loss in general, it's probably not for the cube (exiling hurts it no worse than any other 4 mana creature without an etb). It's still a 5 power flier that probably wins in 2 swings in the average deck it's put in.

I don't plan on running it because it's an overly sticky huge flying threat in my format.
 

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
Ehhhhh. I'm not super on board with some of these arguments. I mean, most removal is 1-2 mana and tempo loss is always a threat for higher CMC creatures. This thing slots into self-mill, it slots into aristocrats as a weird curve-topper, the recursion requirement is very easy to satisfy, other than the mana requirement. I don't think it's going to be among Magic's best ever cards, and it's certainly no Rankle, but it looks pretty playable to me.

That said it's also possible that I'm just being a dumdum with regards to this card.
 
Ehhhhh. I'm not super on board with some of these arguments. I mean, most removal is 1-2 mana and tempo loss is always a threat for higher CMC creatures. This thing slots into self-mill, it slots into aristocrats as a weird curve-topper, the recursion requirement is very easy to satisfy, other than the mana requirement. I don't think it's going to be among Magic's best ever cards, and it's certainly no Rankle, but it looks pretty playable to me.

That said it's also possible that I'm just being a dumdum with regards to this card.
i’m about 50/50 on testing it. i’d like to run a single 4 mana black creature, and this may perform nicely in that spot, i just dislike how many things blow it out. a lot of my 4+ drops are designed to naturally dodge removal via high toughness or some form of protection. i suppose being recastable is a form of protection. i just don’t have super high hopes.
EDIT: fwiw rankle was eventually pushed out of my list too, which bodes poorly for anything worse.
EDIT EDIT: i don’t think anyone’s being a dum dum. the card (ebondeath) is VERY heavily dependent on various dimensions of context to evaluate so people are going to have very different opinions even at similar power levels. there are probably a decent number of mid/high power environments where it will be good or even oppressive. i am seeing it right now as a late game card advantage engine that costs the caster tempo, and in that context it may well edge out one of my 3-cost creatures, or even Shriekmaw.
 
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Ebondeath is pretty easy to kill with spells, but your opponent is losing card advantage if they're not exiling. That recursion requirement is easier to meet than any Phoenix in history (new red skull head boi excepted maybe?)!

Black decks in my cube and many others here have a lot of incidental sacrifice outlets as well these days to help avoid the relatively few exile spells that are competitively priced. It's a 4-turn clock on its own otherwise, and the flash helps you spend mana on it a lot more flexibly to make up for its cost.

I'm confident it's going to be reasonably popular in the larger powermax cubes, and has good reason to be. Cards that are incidentally good in your graveyard go a long way, and this is nearly as strong from your yard as it is in your hand, and not just for a second life before it's exiled away. Timeless Dragon is a great card and a good comparison imo, and I think it's better than that in most scenarios.
 
Ebondeath is pretty easy to kill with spells, but your opponent is losing card advantage if they're not exiling. That recursion requirement is easier to meet than any Phoenix in history (new red skull head boi excepted maybe?)!

Black decks in my cube and many others here have a lot of incidental sacrifice outlets as well these days to help avoid the relatively few exile spells that are competitively priced. It's a 4-turn clock on its own otherwise, and the flash helps you spend mana on it a lot more flexibly to make up for its cost.

I'm confident it's going to be reasonably popular in the larger powermax cubes, and has good reason to be. Cards that are incidentally good in your graveyard go a long way, and this is nearly as strong from your yard as it is in your hand, and not just for a second life before it's exiled away. Timeless Dragon is a great card and a good comparison imo, and I think it's better than that in most scenarios.
if it had cycling, it would be WAY better than timeless dragon… as is, i think it’s somewhere between worse and equal depending on the format’s context.
 

Chris Taylor

Contributor
I dislike all the dice rolling that does something extra good on a 20. It's cool in D&D, but in Magic it feels like miracle all over again...
Honestly I've mostly seen these as fine. Some of them are a bit excessive:
Delina-Wild-Mage-AFR-672.jpg

Like yeah, that's what I need. the possibility of THREE heat shimmers on an otherwise middling body.

But like this guy?
Hoarding-Ogre-AFR-672.jpg

Oh wow! I crit and get 8 mana on turn 5
That's good, certainly, but nothing outside the acceptable perview of magic. There's ramp/ritual spells that exist and do the same thing more consistently.

Contact-Other-Plane-AFR-672.jpg

This thing is somewhere between inspiration and Precognitive Perception, which again, would be strong at 4 mana but won't break the game if it happened. (I actually like this card btw, solid design, though the consistency of Hieroglyphic Illumination may prove closer to your goals)

Djinni-Windseer-AFR-672.jpg

Hell, the most remarkable thing about this card is that phantom monster is common again in a "normal set" (Apparently it was common in iconic masters)

Edit: also I actually like they tilt slightly in favor of the player, since it's 1-9 not 1-10
 
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