Sets Amonkhet (AKH) Spoilers

Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
Also I think the best analogue for Insult is Cleaver Riot, a pretty solid overrun variant from random limited formats past.
insultinjury.jpg

It was pretty good, and while it didn't have the overwhelming effect on limited that overrun had, this is nearly half as much.
It's powerful, and I might try it (But I have a huge big red weakness)
 
sigh

sigh

Insult // Injury is definitely a strong card. There is at least one potential way in standard to put up like 19 or more damage by turn 3 with it.

Liliana, Death's Majesty seems pretty perfect for what my format wants, and I think will take the place of both Ob Nixilis, Reignited and Whip of Erebos, which is sweet for multiple reasons, not the least of which is having a free slot to fiddle around with. The token Spamming is a little annoying, but I don't have overly many token-generating PW's, and it's a pretty unique effect for black, so I'm down.

...Now what to put into the free slot....
 
Fulcrum

Fulcrum

From what we've seen so far I've liked Liliana, Death's Majesty, Channeler Initiate, Soul-Scar Mage, Combat Celebrant, Mouth // Feed and Crocodile of the Crossing. I like Cast Out for the peasant list I'm working on too. I hope that we get some good embalm creatures. the ones we've seen are neat but very ho-hum. I hate working on cubes during spoiler season because there's so many things that could change from day to day.

I like the new Liliana as support for solar flare type decks. It has some synergies with graveyard themes with the +1 and making one token for 5 mana doesn't seem too obnoxious. Obviously it can spiral out of control but I'm hopeful.

Crocodile of the Crossing is another card that I like as support for a "Fires" type G/R midrange deck. The haste is nice and at worst it has the same stats as Vengevine. It seems really neat with things like Gravecrawler and Bloodghast. You could even throw the counter on a Wall of Blossoms or grow a Strangleroot Geist.

Combat Celebrant seems like a neat card with a unique but powerful effect. I like that it adds redundancy to Kiki-Twin combo family as well as being pretty fragile. The card feels good with Lightning Mauler and causes Surrak, the Hunt Caller to trigger which I like.

Mouth // Feed is a really wonky card that feels like Call of the Herd and Harmonize were mashed together but I really like it. My only concern is, how often are there going to be board states where you want the extra token from Call of the Herd and how often will you have Feed in the graveyard after a boardwipe wishing you could make another token or just draw 3 cards. I have high hopes for this one but some concerns too. more stuff to cast out of the graveyard is always welcome.

Soul-Scar Mage is neat since it's an aggressive one drop with prowess so it helps those decks out. The wither text that it has is going to satisfy my obsession with Puncture Blast so I won't have to jam that into my higher power list. I'm curious how this works with Volta Charge. I'm pretty sure it would put 4 counters on a creature once that's all said and done.

Cast Out seems like a neat card for the peasant list I'm working on. The effect is good and it marries the cycling and enchantments matters themes. I hope the trials and cartouches end up being good enough to play. I really like Trial of Knowledge as kind of a peasant Attunement that married Compulsive Research. You probably won't get to pick it back up but triggering enchantment stuff is nice.

For standard, it's nice that they reprinted an answer for Scrapheap Scrounger in Magma Spray. Scarab Feast seems like it can do neat stuff with shutting down delirium even though that deck is down right now.

EDIT: Insert rant about using Naga over Snakes again.

sigh said:
Liliana, Death's Majesty seems pretty perfect for what my format wants, and I think will take the place of both Ob Nixilis, Reignited and Whip of Erebos, which is sweet for multiple reasons, not the least of which is having a free slot to fiddle around with.

...Now what to put into the free slot....
Click to expand...

 
Laz

Laz

Developer
Heh. Curses are back. Card is very meh, but it will be interesting to see what they do with the card type this time.
cruelreality.jpg


Interestingly, Aura Cartouche is a subtype in the same set. Seems Wizards is being way more free with the subtyping of non-creatures these days.
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
I like Cruel Reality, maybe curses will be a playable theme. This seems like an awesome fetch target for Bitterheart Witch, for example. Obviously lower power, but if there are enough powerful target, the Witch looks legit.

636271473935658967.jpg


(translated from Spanish, hence the weird font)

This is a cute mini-game. Looks like a pretty fun alt-win!
 
Laz

Laz

Developer
Finally a win-con for the absolute grindiest of UW control decks, though it seems that Gideon is now capable of stopping the sun from rising, so maybe not.
 
S

Salmo2

There are a lot of decks that will punish you for paying 7 mana for 7 life faster than you would recover to win with the second casting.
 
FlowerSunRain

FlowerSunRain

Contributor
So far this set hasn't produced anything of interest to me (I guess glorybringer can fill the "I'm just throwing random crap into the red high end and hope someone gives a shit" slot). My glimmer of hope is that their will be an amazing camel, but the first attempt is a hard miss. Unrelated, when are we going to get a damn giraffe?
 
ahadabans

ahadabans

I think embalm could really be a thing here. Look at how nicely you can tie it to Orzhov. Black has a lot of recursive creatures, symmetrical discard, etc. Black likes zombies. Embalm is all about those things. Yet, the zombie tokens are white so they would work in a WW style deck too with crusade effects. So you can (and would want) them in both more straight white decks and in WB builds too. For those that push black devotion, that's another angle. Mono black has stronger devotion, but you lose the synergy with embalm. It's about as elegant as I've seen that guild come together. Flying tokens was never a strong identity for the combination and only really was a thing because lingering souls is so dumb.
 
sigh

sigh

I love embalm. Waiting to see if there are any that I really like for my format. The angel is cool, but my white top end is basically all fliers. It does seems really good in orzhov to add a recursive reach element to white, but I think its going to be a UW-centric mechanic. That's also pretty neat, IMO. Unique angle for UW.

I could see replacing like, Linvala, the Preserver with the Angel of Sanctions so far. But probably nah.
 
S

Salmo2

There's a lot of value in the consistency of this angel vs Linvala, I find that sometimes I'm stretching to meet both conditions on Linvala.
 
S

Salmo2

sigh said:
Not every format needs better
Click to expand...

True, I just don't think this is actually good. I get that lowering power is appealing but I think cards like Elvish Piper and Quicksilver Amulet are low power and still better if this is the effect you want. Dodging sorcery speed removal carries a lot of weight, having your eldrazi or whatever not die to Chainer's Edict (if the 3/3 doesnt live through the many things that can kill it both in and out of combat) or wrath is a real concern.

And @anotak, I would say instant speed for G is generally a lot better than being forced to do it during combat. Having control of your cheat carries a lot of weight, especially at instant speed.
 
psly4mne

psly4mne

Angel of Sanctions is the only card so far that I plan on trying. It looks like it packs a lot of value into a card.
 
Grillo_Parlante

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
Salmo2 said:
True, I just don't think this is actually good. I get that lowering power is appealing but I think cards like Elvish Piper and Quicksilver Amulet are low power and still better if this is the effect you want. Dodging sorcery speed removal carries a lot of weight, having your eldrazi or whatever not die to Chainer's Edict (if the 3/3 doesnt live through the many things that can kill it both in and out of combat) or wrath is a real concern.

And @anotak, I would say instant speed for G is generally a lot better than being forced to do it during combat. Having control of your cheat carries a lot of weight, especially at instant speed.
Click to expand...


Its an unfortunate card, with a lot of unfun liability attached. If you're in a very low powered format, this might be reasonable to encourage an aura theme that melds with something green is thematically about, but other than that, I would be very wary.

I hate cards like these that are tantalizing for Johnny/Timmy players, tricking them to play into easy blowout potential, all in the name of pursuing perceived fun that never actually occurs. ugh.
 
Laz

Laz

Developer
Oh my. The Break Asunder I always thought that I wanted:
dissentersdeliverance.jpg


While I have panned Relic of Progenitus despite the 'but it draws a card!' defense in the past, I think that is because it is a little too heavy handed as a hate-card. Generally destroying one artifact doesn't hose whole strategies in the way that nuking the graveyard does.
That said, something about this just feels a little off for me though. I can't put my finger on what it is, but it has something to do with the fact that this is the card you really want to see when there is nothing else interesting in the pack, but taking it over an actually powerful card is not going to feel great. I am probably overthinking it though.
 
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