Has anyone played this? Why?
How was it?
e: also, I looked for similar cards and am similarly curious about Thicket Elemental
e2: just realized you can splash white for this in a lab man deck
Card/Deck Single Card Spotlight
- Thread starter Dom Harvey
- Start date
Has anyone played this? Why?
How was it?
e: also, I looked for similar cards and am similarly curious about Thicket Elemental
e2: just realized you can splash white for this in a lab man deck
Going deep...
Ok, Riptide Shapeshifter is too cool. Like probably too high of a cmc to be good outside of a low power cube, but that's pretty sweet. Tutor + cheat into play card.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
You kittens thought anything about this bad boy?
Damn I hope the database was updated.
It was surprisingly relevant in my prerelease deck (I had 2). Guy is a good blocker, and there's nice graveyard synergy to be had. The reach is a really nice bonus on this, that didn't even have to be there, but makes the card much better in limited games!
I'd actually been thinking the same thing since seeing that card spoiled - it's like the second coming of Penumbra Spider, except slightly better on the front side, and lots of potential on the backside. I know they're not really competing for the same slot, but I'd probably run this guy ahead of Vorapede in a Birthing Pod deck.
Dom Harvey
Contributor
maybe more for the lower-power (
You kittens thought anything about this bad boy?
Damn I hope the database was updated.
I'll have you know I'm a fully grown cat in a superposition of dead and alive!
One of greens big problems in cube are how a lot of it's card advantage comes from generating creatures that are only threatening if you're winning / don't fight well with anything in the mid game. Seedlord fights a lot better than yet another free two power guy In green cube decks. Plus the token interacts in a fun way with our love of graveyards.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Oh English, you're so endearing //
But your pronunciation got me swearing //
Why lookalikes can't be soundalikes too //
But lookunlikes can, I've got no cue
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
It's static, otherwise it would have said:
Put a green Elemental creature token onto the battlefield. It has "This creature's power and toughness are each equal to the number of creature cards in your graveyard."
Hey maybe I can help here!
Lower power may not be quite a rhymey sound
But generally Lauer Power usually is!
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Chris Taylor
Contributor
The world would be a far bleaker place if nobody ever masturbated
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
What surprised me at the prerelease is how well a large number of uncommons from Oath played. They're fun, feel powerful but not broken, and lead to interesting sequences. I hope this trend continues! I'm also a fan of the "one cycle of powerful, fun uncommons that serve as kinda a guide to the available archetypes" thing they started in Magic Origins. I hope they keep doing that, because it led to some very interesting cards so far that serve as very nice role players without the need to be the either fancy, contrived nonsense or powerhouse, limited bomb cards you see in the rare slot half of the time.
Still the act may not exactly be laudable
Do you feel this way about all art? All the purposes of art I can think of apply just as much to poetry: expression, capturing beauty, evoking emotions or thoughts, making comment on something. Why is it that poetry is such a fluffy, inaccessible, unappreciated art form? I'm curious about this, because I have liked a few poems, but find most of it completely uninteresting. And yet I love language!
It seems to me that everybody loves movies and likes music, a lot of people like to read, a lot of people like visual arts (but less than books), and hardly anybody cares about poetry. Maybe it's about entertainment?
You just got me wondering, that's all.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
I don't read much poetry, but I do enjoy more lighthearted poems, especially if they can still make a point. Wisława Szymborska's poems especially are wonderful tiny stories.
It can't take a joke,
find a star, make a bridge.
It knows nothing about weaving, mining, farming,
building ships, or baking cakes.
In our planning for tomorrow,
it has the final word,
which is always beside the point.
It can't even get the things done
that are part of its trade:
dig a grave,
make a coffin,
clean up after itself.
Preoccupied with killing,
it does the job awkwardly,
without system or skill.
As though each of us were its first kill.
Oh, it has its triumphs,
but look at its countless defeats,
missed blows,
and repeat attempts!
Sometimes it isn't strong enough
to swat a fly from the air.
Many are the caterpillars
that have outcrawled it.
All those bulbs, pods,
tentacles, fins, tracheae,
nuptial plumage, and winter fur
show that it has fallen behind
with its halfhearted work.
Ill will won't help
and even our lending a hand with wars and coups d'etat
is so far not enough.
Hearts beat inside eggs.
Babies' skeletons grow.
Seeds, hard at work, sprout their first tiny pair of leaves
and sometimes even tall trees fall away.
Whoever claims that it's omnipotent
is himself living proof
that it's not.
There's no life
that couldn't be immortal
if only for a moment.
Death
always arrives by that very moment too late.
In vain it tugs at the knob
of the invisible door.
As far as you've come
can't be undone.
find a star, make a bridge.
It knows nothing about weaving, mining, farming,
building ships, or baking cakes.
In our planning for tomorrow,
it has the final word,
which is always beside the point.
It can't even get the things done
that are part of its trade:
dig a grave,
make a coffin,
clean up after itself.
Preoccupied with killing,
it does the job awkwardly,
without system or skill.
As though each of us were its first kill.
Oh, it has its triumphs,
but look at its countless defeats,
missed blows,
and repeat attempts!
Sometimes it isn't strong enough
to swat a fly from the air.
Many are the caterpillars
that have outcrawled it.
All those bulbs, pods,
tentacles, fins, tracheae,
nuptial plumage, and winter fur
show that it has fallen behind
with its halfhearted work.
Ill will won't help
and even our lending a hand with wars and coups d'etat
is so far not enough.
Hearts beat inside eggs.
Babies' skeletons grow.
Seeds, hard at work, sprout their first tiny pair of leaves
and sometimes even tall trees fall away.
Whoever claims that it's omnipotent
is himself living proof
that it's not.
There's no life
that couldn't be immortal
if only for a moment.
Death
always arrives by that very moment too late.
In vain it tugs at the knob
of the invisible door.
As far as you've come
can't be undone.
To be a boxer, or not to be there
at all. O Muse, where are our teeming crowds?
Twelve people in the room, eight seats to spare
it's time to start this cultural affair.
Half came inside because it started raining,
the rest are relatives. O Muse.
The women here would love to rant and rave,
but that's for boxing. Here they must behave.
Dante's Infemo is ringside nowadays.
Likewise his Paradise. O Muse.
Oh, not to be a boxer but a poet,
one sentenced to hard shelleying for life,
for lack of muscles forced to show the world
the sonnet that may make the high-school reading lists
with luck. O Muse,
O bobtailed angel, Pegasus.
In the first row, a sweet old man's soft snore:
he dreams his wife's alive again. What's more,
she's making him that tart she used to bake.
Aflame, but carefully-don't burn his cake!
we start to read. O Muse.
at all. O Muse, where are our teeming crowds?
Twelve people in the room, eight seats to spare
it's time to start this cultural affair.
Half came inside because it started raining,
the rest are relatives. O Muse.
The women here would love to rant and rave,
but that's for boxing. Here they must behave.
Dante's Infemo is ringside nowadays.
Likewise his Paradise. O Muse.
Oh, not to be a boxer but a poet,
one sentenced to hard shelleying for life,
for lack of muscles forced to show the world
the sonnet that may make the high-school reading lists
with luck. O Muse,
O bobtailed angel, Pegasus.
In the first row, a sweet old man's soft snore:
he dreams his wife's alive again. What's more,
she's making him that tart she used to bake.
Aflame, but carefully-don't burn his cake!
we start to read. O Muse.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
True story
CML
Contributor
Felis catus is your taxonomic nomenclature,
An endothermic quadruped, carnivorous by nature;
Your visual, olfactory, and auditory senses
Contribute to your hunting skills and natural defenses.
I find myself intrigued by your subvocal oscillations,
A singular development of cat communications
That obviates your basic hedonistic predilection
For a rhythmic stroking of your fur to demonstrate affection.
A tail is quite essential for your acrobatic talents;
You would not be so agile if you lacked its counterbalance.
And when not being utilized to aid in locomotion,
It often serves to illustrate the state of your emotion.
O Spot, the complex levels of behavior you display
Connote a fairly well-developed cognitive array.
And though you are not sentient, Spot, and do not comprehend,
I nonetheless consider you a true and valued friend.
An endothermic quadruped, carnivorous by nature;
Your visual, olfactory, and auditory senses
Contribute to your hunting skills and natural defenses.
I find myself intrigued by your subvocal oscillations,
A singular development of cat communications
That obviates your basic hedonistic predilection
For a rhythmic stroking of your fur to demonstrate affection.
A tail is quite essential for your acrobatic talents;
You would not be so agile if you lacked its counterbalance.
And when not being utilized to aid in locomotion,
It often serves to illustrate the state of your emotion.
O Spot, the complex levels of behavior you display
Connote a fairly well-developed cognitive array.
And though you are not sentient, Spot, and do not comprehend,
I nonetheless consider you a true and valued friend.
I've always thought memorizing at least one poem and a song was just good habit for entertaining friends. My faves are Coleridge's Kubla Khan, a Li Po poem and this CVO Bartlett piece my grandfather loved reciting. I have all three memorized, and a couple others too, and tbh knowing a poem is a very very cool thing.
Li Po
All the birds have flown up and gone
A lonely cloud floats leisurely by
We sit together, the mountain and I
until only the mountain remains.
Bartlett
Once, in a moment of great generosity
God has shown to me a leopard running free.
How then, could he expect of me—born without his tolerance—
calmly to see those women, those bloody awful women,
dressed up in leopard skins and sitting down to tea?
I think there's something really special about poetry, and I think it's kind of a shame people tend not to look for it much outside of academics.
(CML - you reminded my of Eliot's Naming of Cats, another fave)
Ugh fuck it one more:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/178296
Li Po
All the birds have flown up and gone
A lonely cloud floats leisurely by
We sit together, the mountain and I
until only the mountain remains.
Bartlett
Once, in a moment of great generosity
God has shown to me a leopard running free.
How then, could he expect of me—born without his tolerance—
calmly to see those women, those bloody awful women,
dressed up in leopard skins and sitting down to tea?
I think there's something really special about poetry, and I think it's kind of a shame people tend not to look for it much outside of academics.
(CML - you reminded my of Eliot's Naming of Cats, another fave)
Ugh fuck it one more:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/178296
A E Housman
When I was one-and-twenty
I heard a wise man say,
“Give crowns and pounds and guineas
But not your heart away;
Give pearls away and rubies
But keep your fancy free.”
But I was one-and-twenty,
No use to talk to me.
When I was one-and-twenty
I heard him say again,
“The heart out of the bosom
Was never given in vain;
’Tis paid with sighs a plenty
And sold for endless rue.”
And I am two-and-twenty,
And oh, ’tis true, ’tis true.
When I was one-and-twenty
I heard a wise man say,
“Give crowns and pounds and guineas
But not your heart away;
Give pearls away and rubies
But keep your fancy free.”
But I was one-and-twenty,
No use to talk to me.
When I was one-and-twenty
I heard him say again,
“The heart out of the bosom
Was never given in vain;
’Tis paid with sighs a plenty
And sold for endless rue.”
And I am two-and-twenty,
And oh, ’tis true, ’tis true.