View attachment 7725
Hostile Negotiation 3B
Instant
Exile the top three cards of your library in a pile face down, then exile the top three cards of your library in another pile face down. Look at the cards and turn a pile of your choice face up. Target opponent chooses a pile. Put that pile into your hand and the other pile into your graveyard. You lose 3 life.
Okay so it's instant speed Ambitions Cost, but with a game.
Notes:
-Locking in the size of each pile, and the contents of each pile I think is a huge benifit over fact or fiction.
-Half hidden info is much cooler than all face up (or all face down, though I don't think that's been done?)
-This puts the mind games front and center, which I think is a great place for this style of card. (What do you do when one pile is just 3 lands? What about 2 lands and an impactful spell vs 2 marginal spells and a land? vs 3 marginal spells?)
Now I just need to see weather my format wants bulk draw spells like this in the first place, and weather we can afford to be losing 3 life.
My problem with giving this card a home is that we just got Shadow Prophecy and while that only gives you two cards and never sees all six it's also a mana and a life cheaper (and hitting two basic land types is easy enough for me to just be like, "it's cheaper, screw it")Now I just need to see weather my format wants bulk draw spells like this in the first place, and weather we can afford to be losing 3 life.
How does she see the game so differently?You know what could be really cool?
A format where "Hostile Negotiations" is part of determining your opening hand.
This reminds me of Venerated Loxodon, but different. And COMMON, jeez!
What am I missing? It's a 4/4 for or and tap an artifact or creature, or and tap two artifacts or creatures. Doesn't seem particularly exiting?
Its intended purpose is powerstone-washing, I assume. But it can also do a halfassed convoke impression! I do agree that when we literally just had Argivian Phalanx I don't really see anything to write home about in terms of power level at common, or really power level at all.
I don't know how convincing I find his statement to be. Making an artifact without the artifact-frame also feels anti-retro to me, and I'm not really given the impression this was a decision weighted by any meaningful amount of research. Was there some outrage over the Bolas's Citadel I missed out on? And just from a gameplay perspective, I think it's a very poor idea to make two artifact-centric commanders, and then include a significant number of colored artifacts and then obscuring that they are artifacts. I'm aware that old-border fans are disproportionally resistant to change, but colored artifacts are already a deviation from older designs, I don't think we can treat the old border as completely immutable. If we ever get old-border sagas, I don't want them to strap on the straightjacket and find a way to force it into the old border.According to MaRo,
Evidently, they didn't use the Bolas' Citadel tech in these decks to feel more retro. Personally, I like the retro artifact frame with a colored text box for colored artifacts, but I think this decision is also understandable.
If we ever get old-border sagas, I don't want them to strap on the straightjacket and find a way to force it into the old border.
The last one is the most exciting. I underestimate the power of ven lox to this day, and this doesn't add counters, but you can tap like, clues.What am I missing? It's a 4/4 for or and tap an artifact or creature, or and tap two artifacts or creatures. Doesn't seem particularly exiting?