With the prerelease of Planar Chaos tomorrow, figuring out what is going to be what with Time Spiral — Planar Chaos Limited is something everyone is already chomping at the bit to do. Time Spiral was an enormous puzzle, an enigma of unknown quantities prior to its release… and following hot on its heels is an enigma wrapped around a riddle stuffed inside a booster pack, because Time Spiral showed that there were no sacred cows and anything could happen… and what happens when you crank that up a notch? Chaos!
Planar Chaos, to be more exact. This is the big “What if?” expansion, following along the themes of Time Spiral and throwing things off entirely with its own new tricks… and with questions like “What if Black was the color of Wrath of God?” and “What if Akroma was Red?” wrapping your head around the near infinite possibilities is astounding.
Pretend for a second that every decision that has ever been made, however inconsequential, can be made in an infinite array of possibilities. Some may be incredibly similar — deciding to have Corn Flakes for breakfast won’t impact reality much differently than deciding on Frosted Flakes, after all — but others diverge into very big reality-shifts. Imagine for a second that Bill Gates was in a car accident at the age of ten and died terribly. Do you think you’d still be using a computer that ran Windows, or would it be safe to say this article would probably be typed on a Mac? In these infinite realities, diverging infinitely as far as the metaphorical eye can see to the horizon, you have one core reality as far as you can perceive — your home timeline — and it’s razor-thin, twisting treacherously as one critical event after another thrashes the timeline back and forth through a labyrinth of potentialities. The fabric of reality nearby looks very similar, and just where one reality blurs at the edges of the next, there’s your bowl of Frosted Flakes. Out on the horizon, as far from “home” as you can conceptually be, are the realities where Planet Earth never formed at all, a cold and alien landscape that looks nothing like the reality you call your own.
You are in a maze of dark and twisty passages, all alike. Every decision about every Magic card that has ever been made is now called into doubt — in a world where the very fabric of time and reality shifts underfoot, taking the next step forward may very well take you to a place that is definitely not Kansas anymore.
Oh… and mind the Grue.
Using only officially released sources, we’re going to take a look at what we can figure out about Planar Chaos mixing with Time Spiral Limited play, and draw a few conclusions about it all that hopefully will be based enough in actual reality to be useful. If you want to look at Planar Chaos in its entirety, well, they have the complete spoiler on MTGSalvation, and that should be good enough for everyone’s desires if it’s even close to accurate. Ferreting out the nuggets of information released in magazines, as promo cards, and even in the Judges’ FAQ, we have the following known cards to work with:
White:
Benalish Commander
3W
Creature – Human Soldier Lord
Benalish Commander’s power and toughness are each equal to the number of Soldiers you control.
Suspend X – XWW. X can’t be 0.
Whenever a time counter is removed from Benalish Commander while it’s removed from the game, put a 1/1 white Soldier creature token into play. */*.
This is a tricky Rare that works with a Tribal theme, but brings his own tribe along to the party. Think of it as two spells: a situational X/X creature that probably is going to basically stink when it’s in play, and a Suspend-based Decree of Justice (cycled, obviously). A 1/1 each turn can be solid, but not something I go chasing after this guy first; his best application is probably to Suspend for one or maybe two turns, making him a 2/2 with a free 1/1 or a 3/3 with two free 1/1s… neither great nor terrible, worth including if you have him in your Sealed Deck but not exactly the highest pick in Draft. A Tribal theme doesn’t really fit with the rest of the Time Spiral Limited block so far, and so this will often just have an Outpost attached to it instead of also being an undercosted fattie.
By itself it doesn’t even imply a cycle, it could just be a quirky rare, so we don’t even get a hint about the set’s super-structure yet… but those who have a trained eye for these things probably get really suspicious that there’s four more where this came from.
Crovax, Ascendant Hero
4WW
Legendary creature-Human Lord
Other white creatures get +1/+1
Nonwhite creatures get -1/-1
Pay 2 life: Return Crovax, Ascendant Hero to it’s owner’s hand. 4/4.
Crovax was destined for an angel’s curse, but one warped timeline saw the noble redeemed.
Again we get another odd, quirky rare… but this time it’s like a Celestial Crusader, and the “tribe” theme is “the tribe of white creatures”. Add onto that a 4/4 Blinking Spirit that can completely nullify Empty the Warrens and some of the best creatures in each of the other four colors, like Trespasser il-Vec and Crookclaw Transmuter, and you have a pretty powerful rare… but the question is, on top of Time Spiral’s heavily aggressive tempo-based format, is a six-drop really going to have a high impact? The answer for Crovax is “maybe”, because he has a very powerful (if subtle) effect on the board from the moment he enters play, without even needing to be able to attack first. That helps, a lot.
Dawn Charm
1W
Instant
Choose one – Prevent all combat damage that would be dealt this turn; or regenerate target creature; or counter target spell that targets you.
… Finally we see the actual Fog of the format, and it also has an incidental Counterspell (though admittedly one that probably doesn’t come up too often in Limited play) and the ability to save a creature in combat or from most removal spells. This is a downright sexy card for Limited play, being a trick of the appropriate size that you need right now, saving one key creature or perhaps everyone (and you) the next time some five-year-old gleefully says “Tromp the Domains!”
As an Uncommon, this hints that it is probably part of an entire cycle of similar Charms, because the only time we’ve seen fewer than five Charms at once was when Funeral Charm was Timeshifted in Time Spiral. Seeing them cost two mana is a little weird, because previously all the Charms were one-mana cards with suitably sized effects, but two mana is a very good cost for them… one-mana charms were frequently playable in Limited, and one would assume you’d get twice the power for twice the price while still having a reasonably affordable cost of “just” 1C.
Retether
3W
Sorcery
Return each Aura card from your graveyard to play. Only creatures can be enchanted this way. (Aura cards that can’t enchant a creature in play remain in your graveyard.)
The rifts reach into infinite time streams, bringing the divergent products of alternate pasts into the present.
This is a janky garbage rare as far as Limited is concerned, it’s not likely to see play unless you have a lot of enchant creature cards, and if you’re doing that, you’re losing in Limited, especially if you are also using support cards like this one. Ignore it and move on… like you can do with most of the rares in any given expansion.
Voidstone Gargoyle
3WW
Creature — Gargoyle
Flying
As Voidstone Gargoyle comes into play, name a nonland card.
The named card can’t be played.
Activated abilities of permanents with that name can’t be played.
Activated abilities of cards with that name that aren’t in play can’t be played.
3/3.
Another Rare. This tells us little if anything about the set, other than that there are apparently plenty of Rares that do interesting things, like re-hash Meddling Mage and Pithing Needle in one card, stapled to an industry-standard 3/3 flier for five.
Whitemane Lion
1W
Creature — Cat
Flash (You may play this spell any time you could play an instant.)
When Whitemane Lion comes into play, return a creature you control to its owner’s hand.
2/2.
Saltfield nomads call a sudden storm a “whitemane.”
This comes with an additional piece of information, being that there are apparently a lot of cards similar to this one in White, across the different rarities and at different costs. This guy is basically amazing — he’s the half of a Peel from Reality that saved one of your creatures at a key moment, only instead of bouncing an opposing creature you get to leave a 2/2 in play. Treat it and its brethren like a spell when you calculate your creature to spell ratio, because having two of these in a deck with eleven creatures probably doesn’t work so well… but definitely keep an eye out for them, because rescuing your own creatures at instant speed, with a benefit built in, is pretty amazing.
Given the knowledge that Fading is back… I mean Vanishing is here… these go even further up if the Fading guys are any good, because Fading men are usually very undercosted and advance the idea of being aggressive very nicely. That this is also a Common means that you have to respect this as a potential combat trick, for both sides of it, the insta-Bear and saving a creature that is otherwise trading.
Calciderm
2WW
Creature — Beast
Vanishing 4 (This creature comes into play with four time counters on it. At the beginning of your upkeep, remove a time counter from it. When you remove the last, sacrifice it.)
Calciderm can’t be the target of spells or abilities.
5/5.
Speak of the Devil! Blastoderm is a pretty good Fading creature, and it’s probably even better when it’s not a Green creature (and thus it being a 5/5 is actually important to the color in question). ‘Derm also happens to be a White card, and thus work nicely with the Whitemane cats, meaning it’s even more ridiculous than it was before. Doing some quick math using the numbers we’re aware of, we’ve been told each pack comes with three Timeshifted commons and either an Uncommon or Rare Timeshifted card, in a 3:1 proportion. With 4 Commons, 3 Uncommons and two Rares in each color, for a total of 45 cards, we see that Calciderm is one of 15 Timeshifted Uncommons that can appear in a pack, and you’ll need to open 20 packs to get 15 Uncommons… making Calciderm a one-in-twenty-packs card, less rare than your average Rare but still not something you’ll be seeing a lot… unlike Blastoderm, which had the obnoxious habit of being a common back in the day.
Riffing with the numbers distribution some more, we have ten rares and one rare per four packs, so each Rare is a one-in-forty-packs card, or twice as rare as your Timeshifted Uncommons… but still, not so rare that you can’t reasonably pull a Damnation out of a box, which is likely most people’s goal at this weekend’s Prerelease. Commons come three to a pack, and there are 25 of them, so they have a commonality of one per eight-and-one-thirds packs… let’s move over to the non-Timeshifted commonalities, to continue comparing.
It is also known that of the remaining eleven non-Timeshifted cards, we have one Rare and two Uncommons, leaving us with eight commons per pack. With a total of 40 commons, 40 Uncommons and 40 Rares, we see an individual common in 8 / 4 packs, or at a one in five packs ratio, so 1-2 copies per draft table of TTP Draft, or ~5 copies per PPP draft table (… and you know you want to try it!). This means the regular commons are significantly more common than the shifted commons, and thus more reliable… though it’ll be weird having draft packs with more than three different commonalities, and not even in the same way as we had in Time Spiral.
Two Uncommons per pack and 40 Uncommons altogether means we have a commonality of one copy of each individual Uncommon per 20 packs, just like the Timeshifted uncommons, and for the Rares we have 40 Rares and one Rare per pack means the individual Rares are a 1-per-40-packs adventure, same as the Timeshifted rares. (Opening a Dragon is a five-per-40 adventure, so one in eight, and at the prerelease you get to open three packs so it’s a three-in-eight chance of opening an Invasion-style Dragon Legend. Be prepared to face off against 6/6 fliers tomorrow!)
Timeshifting makes everything weird, but at least there won’t be hordes of time-shifted Blastoderms beating you down. Just a few of them, and they may be Rescued multiple times and basically last forever, which means that one Blastoderm is going to be significantly more obnoxious than it used to be.
Sinew Sliver
1W
Creature — Sliver
All Slivers get +1/+1.
1/1.
While the tendons of the creature stretched, Hanna noticed with horror an identical movement of flesh on the others. Ignoring what she had wanted to say, she warned Sisay to keep the ship at a safe distance.
In one of every 20 packs, you will open a White Muscle Sliver. White’s Slivers are already reasonably strong, passing around the crossbows, flanking the opposition and hanging out in the Castle, plus occasionally just getting Flying and all that jazz. Muscle Sliver is clearly still really, really solid, and in its new color it works quite nicely still… this will help a lot for Sealed Deck, but likely will not impact draft, not even at triple-Planar Chaos drafts as have been known to happen at prereleases. You don’t build your deck around Rares, and the Uncommons are all basically R2’s, still too rare to try and plan on having appear at a table at all much less in such a fashion where you actually get to be the one who drafts it.
Still, it’s pretty awesome to see… even if it doesn’t really tell us much of anything about the set.
Blue:
Aeon Chronicler
3UU
Creature — Avatar
Aeon Chronicler’s power and toughness are each equal to the number of cards in your hand.
Suspend X — X3U. X can’t be 0.
Whenever a time counter is removed from Aeon Chronicler while it’s removed from the game, draw a card.
This, next to the Outpost-man, is what “proves” there will be a Rare cycle of Suspend creatures that generate an effect every time a Suspend counter ticks down off it… and this one is slow and expensive to use for card-drawing, or at least for getting more than just the one card. For just the one card, though, it’s reasonably priced, and might just be Dragon-sized, because you have an affordable Maro in a color that can actually fuel the “hand size = power” thang. (Well, before they printed Concentrate as a Green card, that is.)
Aeon Chronicler, either just hard-cast or with a suspend of one, can be rather large and in charge, so even if it’s “just” used as a Nantuko Shaman for one more mana, the body you get is considerably larger than a 3/2. Considering that it’s five mana either way it’s not really creating tension, like the Shaman, just rewarding you with a card if you don’t need to block this turn. Still… very bomb-like, much more so than Outpost-man, and suspending this for two or three cards in the late game after an attrition war is definitely going to be back-breaking… and he plays very well indeed with his friend Fathom Seer, as if you needed any more reasons to put Fathom Seer on your team.
Body Double
4U
Creature — Shapeshifter
As Body Double comes into play, you may choose a creature card in a graveyard. If you do, Body Double comes into play as a copy of that card.
0/0.
Where the dead outnumber the living, mimics scavenged faces from the fallen.
Cloning dead creatures is interesting, but usually the creatures that are dead when you have five mana all cost less than five mana themselves, unless you’re ramming expensive morphs into your opponent’s creatures in hopes of being able to cast Body Double for Akroma, Angel of Fury. This is a creature that gets better as the game goes longer, in a format that is trying to focus on the “here and now” more often than not… so it’s going to make the cut, especially in Sealed, but it’s not its Morph-friendly buddy Vesuvan Shapeshifter, which was a verifiable bomb. This guy’s just sort of okay, and he’ll be a three-mana dork on turn five about as often as he’ll be something impressive like a resurrected Durkwood Baloth. Don’t be afraid of him, either if he’s in your card pool or your opponent’s deck, he’s merely a good man, not a super-bomb.
Chronozoa
3U
Creature — Illusion
Flying
Vanishing 3 (This permanent comes into play with three time counters on it. At the beginning of your upkeep, remove a time counter from it. When the last is removed, sacrifice it.)
When Chronozoa is put into a graveyard from play, if it had no time counters on it, put two tokens into play that are copies of it.
3/3.
This one is a weird one… but it starts with being a 3/3 flier for 4, which means it starts with me liking it. He also makes me want to play Clockspinning, since you can double-Spin it down to zero counters the turn after you cast it, and the fact that it keeps making more and more copies of itself is pretty impressive. This clearly gets past the fact that Fading… I’m sorry, I mean Vanishing… can crap out on you, and that bodes well in my mind for the rest of the creatures in this set, they won’t all just be big, dumb dorks (though some of them are inevitably going to be both big and dumb, like Blastoderm II: Electric Boogaloo) but there will be other finesse-points making the aggressively-bent Vanishing / Fading mechanic mesh well with the already-aggressive Time Spiral cards.
Dismal Failure
2UU
Instant
Counter target spell. That spell’s controller discards a card.
“Two wizards could trade spells all day and never crown a victor. The real battle is not one of power but of will. If your confidence breaks, so too shall you.”
—Venser
Counterspells are notoriously bad in Limited, but card-advantage counterspells are a very different matter entirely. Anything that can get you a two-for-one is solid in Limited play, and this will likely remain true even though it seems very similar to cards like Cancel that have already proven themselves to be marginal in Limited with Time Spiral. Let’s just say I’m optimistic, but could totally understand if this just happened to, y’know, suck.
Magus of the Bazaar
1U
Creature – Human Wizard
T: Draw two cards, then discard three cards.
0/1.
“Some trade in goods, some in secrets. My soul has walked the futures, and I offer the rare coin of possibility.”
Another Rare that, while good, doesn’t really form an opinion for us. This is probably about as good as Merfolk Looter, which was really good in Limited, even if it can’t be anywhere near as good as its parent card, Bazaar of Baghdad, is in its parent format, Vintage. It’s a high-power creature, even if it is card disadvantage, because churning through lands to find spells is worth discarding an extra card or two in there somewhere. It does tell us however that there is going to be another interesting Rare cycle of Magi, and if they’re all as good as this one we’ll be quite happy with them… as you’ll see when we get down to the Green cards, which is also an Arabian Nights land that draws cards, and is even more bomb-like than Magus of the Bazaar is.
Timebender
U
Creature – Human Wizard
Morph U
When Timebender is turned face up, choose one – Remove two time counters from target permanent or suspended card; or put two time counters on target permanent or suspended card that has a time counter on it.
1/1.
This is a very, very powerful Morph, cleverly disguised as a potentially useless creature. Morphing for just one mana means you can attack, trade with a blocker, and flip for the effect on the way to the graveyard, and still cast another Morph that turn… and the effect is a powerful one, being basically a removal spell for most Vanishing creatures, potentially counteracting any usefulness of a Suspended card, or upping the ante by improving one of your own Suspend or Vanishing cards by a full two turns. Imagine this as your turn-three Morph following a turn-two Suspend of Errant Ephemeron, pretty nasty right? This little Wizard that could is probably going to be sorely overlooked initially, after all he’s like Clockspinning and Clockspinning’s no good at all, right? He’s actually absurdly powerful for a Morph creature, and should be treated accordingly.
Wistful Thinking
2U
Sorcery
Target player draws two cards, then discards four cards.
“To probe the wonders of the multiverse, to gaze upon worlds unspoiled by blade or spell…it’s enough to make one weep for the possibilities denied.”
The problem with discard is that it can go dead as the game goes on, so this has the extra bonus of being discard you’d sometimes want to use on yourself if you’ve got a few too many Lands in hand. Discard doesn’t always make the cut in Limited, especially when it’s hard to use like this one and can potentially backfire… like this one. You basically have to wait until the opponent has just two cards left in hand, if you want to nab them, because if you cast this while they have three cards it’s all but certain that the last card left is going to be really, really good… but it’s still a solid spell, and card advantage is card advantage. That this happens to also mill the opponent for two might come up sometimes, like if you’re drafting the U/W Screeching Sliver — Watcher Sliver style deck (it does happen sometimes…), but much more relevant by far is that you can prevent this from going dead later by filtering your own lands into actual spells, if admittedly at a horribly disadvantageous cost (four cards and a spell cast in order to keep two cards you draw… I didn’t say it was pretty).
Piracy Charm
U
Instant
Choose one — Target creature gains islandwalk until end of turn; or target creature gets +2/-1 until end of turn; or target player discards a card.
Funeral Charm is really good in Limited play, because it’s pinpoint removal for early creatures (or most utility creatures) at an affordable cost, with a back-up use if it’s not immediately relevant. Just like Funeral Charm, which we know from recent play in Time Spiral limited, this is really, really good… but even better, because it’s in a color that usually doesn’t have a lot of removal, and certainly not cheap, efficient removal like this.
Serra Sphinx
3UU
Creature — Sphinx
Flying, vigilance.
4/4.
Sphinxes drink from the mystic meres of Serra’s realm, where their keen eyes watch reflections of what is and what is yet to come.
Yawn. Serra Angel. Limited powerhouse, awesome flier. And it’s even a good color this time… though that’s hard to really say now that no one really knows what any color is capable of, and so can’t really say if White is just a bunch of dorks with Flanking still or not.
Black:
Circle of Affliction
1B
Enchantment
As Circle of Affliction comes into play, choose a color.
Whenever a source of the chosen color deals damage to you, you may pay 1. If you do, target player loses 1 life and you gain 1 life.
Like Story Circle, this is never dead in that you can tune it to the right color, which is definitely a nod in its favor. It’s also a potential damage source, so while it only prevents one damage per source per se, it drains the opponent for one life each time as well. It’s solid for a more controlling deck, as it lets you turn spare mana back into life and discourages the opponent from racing if things are close to even, but it’ll never really bring you back into a game that you were losing because spending mana to gain life (and, incidentally, deal damage) still doesn’t affect the board position. You can get away with those shenanigans with Story Circle and the various Circles of Protection, because they prevent all the damage and thus negate an entire color worth of damage sources, creature-based or otherwise… this, well, doesn’t. Consider it a skill-tester, and if you’re playing it, you probably failed the test.
Cradle to Grave
1B
Instant
Destroy target nonblack creature that came into play this turn.
And here we have the most awkward Terror ever, one with a built-in time-disadvantaged targeting system. You can keep two mana up to kill the best creature that comes into play during a turn, so long as it isn’t Black, but you have to keep the mana up each turn you want that option and frankly you’re going to have to accept that this probably wants to kill the first reasonable creature it can target. Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse than Premature Burial, it did. Still, removal is removal, just remember that if your opponent is keeping up two mana, at least one Black, on your turn… you may want to play your second-best guy instead.
Magus of the Coffers
4U
Creature – Human Wizard
2, T: Add B to your mana pool for each Swamp you control.
4/4.
This is not the bomb we were thinking about when we said there was more to come from the cycle that brought you Merfolk Looter On Steroids… but it is a 4/4 for 5, so it’s already the industry-standard beefy guy, and this can provide the fourth Black mana for casting Pththisisisssiss-oh-screw-it-I-quit. If you happen to draft a mono-black deck he’s probably absolutely nuts, but then so are you in most cases… or if you’re not, I bet your deck is!
Mirri the Cursed
2BB
Legendary Creature – Vampire Cat
Flying, first strike, haste
Whenever Mirri the Cursed deals combat damage to a creature, put a +1/+1 counter on Mirri the Cursed.
3/2.
A hero fails, a martyr falls. Time twists and destinies interchange.
This is a sweet, sweet set of combat abilities attached to a four-mana flier, and should be respected accordingly. It’s awesome on the attack, it’s awesome on D, it’s just awesome, period. If only every Green card could be made better by making it a flying Vampire instead…
Vampiric Force
5BBB
Creature — Elemental Vampire
Flying.
At the beginning of each player’s upkeep, put a 1/1 black Bat token creature with Flying into play.
7/7.
… If only Planar Chaos worked that way. (If I’m not responding to emails, it’s probably because fellow wordsmith Jamie Wakefield just murdered me for dabbling in the dark side of the Force. But I bet you he’d play it if they printed it!)
Temporal Extortion
BBBB
Sorcery
When you play Temporal Extortion, any player may pay half his or her life, rounded up. If a player does, counter Temporal Extortion.
Take an extra turn after this one.
“The scythe of time or my blade at your throat—the choice is yours.”
—Holux, stronghold racketeer
Punisher-mechanic Time Walk, and impossible to cast? Sign me up! I’ll take TWO! *ahem*. Back here in reality, it’s impossible to cast and you offer the opponent whichever of two unpleasant options seems least likely to cost them the game, a turn or half their life. At four Black (read: impossible to cast) it’s downright the fairest Time Walk they’ve ever printed… which is bad for you, he who is trying to cast it and have it be good.
Damnation
2BB
Sorcery
Destroy all creatures. They can’t be regenerated.
Wrath. Yawn. At least your opponent probably doesn’t have one, because it’s a one in forty cards situation. But if they do, oh, if they do… it’s one hundred percent guaranteed to be a foil copy. What a jerk.
Dunerider Outlaw
BB
Creature – Human Rebel Rogue
Protection from Green
At end of turn, if Dunerider Outlaw dealt damage to an opponent this turn, put a +1/+1 counter on it.
1/1.
Tales of the outlaw’s cruelty and might grew more embellished with each crime.
Red:
Akroma, Angel of Fury
5RRR
Legendary Creature — Angel
Akroma, Angel of Fury can’t be countered.
Flying, trample, protection from white, protection from blue
R: Akroma gets +1/+0 until end of turn.
Morph 3RRR(You may play this face down as a 2/2 creature for 3. Turn it face up any time for its morph cost.)
6/6.
Akroma here gets to up the Big Dumb Dragon count, and once again shows that if it’s a Morph and they’re not Blue, KILL IT! NOW! This makes Dragon #6 of the “known” or at least “implied” Dragons, with the prerelease card being one of what is presumed to be a full cycle of enemy-colored Invasion-style Dragon Legends, and Akroma as Dragon #6 for the low, low cost of 3RRR. Hint: If you’ve drafted Akroma, the value of Radha goes way, way up. This Akroma has neither Haste nor First Strike, but it’s that doesn’t make it any easier to argue with her. (Well, and live.)
Keldon Marauders
1R
Creature – Human Warrior
Vanishing 2 (This creature comes into play with two time counters on it. At the beginning of your upkeep, remove a time counter from it. When you remove the last, sacrifice it.)
When Keldon Marauders comes into play or leaves play, it deals 1 damage to target player.
3/3.
This creature isn’t very good, to tell the truth, but it does tell us something about the rest of the Vanishing creatures… some will be really good like Blast-o-ma-derm, and some will get to attack once and deal two incidental damage while they’re at it. 3/3 for 2, that gets to attack all of one time before it bites it of its own volition, is not the kind of card I like to play in my decks. Neither should you, for that matter, but at least it is informative.
Shivan Meteor
3RR
Sorcery
Shivan Meteor deals 13 damage to target creature.
Suspend 2 — 1RR
Thirteen is a very, very silly number, and this basically kills anything you point a “destroy target creature” spell at save for Phantom Wurm. Five mana for a creature-kill spell is solid, and in the storm-happy world of the emptied warrens adding a reasonable Suspend cost to a spell can’t really hurt… though I wouldn’t really expect it to be used very often. So we see an Uncommon that kills anything you point it at, save for one specific Green creature or any regenerator… nothing really interesting, I guess. But the number thirteen just has to make you wonder, why thirteen damage? Presumably they wanted an arbitrarily high number that let you point it at Stuffy Doll but not kill the opponent outright by doing so. Hopefully somewhere in the block there’s an explanation as to why thirteen damage but not fourteen was relevant, because right now it’s just a bizarre mystery.
Stingscourger
1R
Creature – Goblin Warrior
When Stingscourger comes into play, return target creature an opponent controls to its owner’s hand.
Echo 3R.
2/2.
GOBLIN O’ WAR! Talk about awesome! Staggered echo costs really aren’t a surprise anymore, we got a look at Timbermare and it was pretty much obvious this was going to happen when we saw actual mana echo costs instead of just “Echo” on all the Echo cards. However, looking at the card we see a really, really cheap creature drop, though admittedly not one that’s going to be exactly like the good old fashioned Man o’ War. We can clearly see some really, really heinous color bleeding if Red gets one of the best-remembered Limited cards of all time, and you know what? That’s okay. Maybe things might not make the most sense, but it’ll still be interesting and once we’ve gotten used to it things will seem perfectly normal in their messed-up little reality.
This is going to be a very, very strange format. This is a Common?
Torchling
3RR
Creature — Shapeshifter
R: Untap Torchling.
R: Target creature blocks Torchling this turn if able.
R: Change the target of target spell that targets only Torchling.
1: Torchling gets +1/-1 until end of turn.
1: Torchling gets -1/+1 until end of turn.
3/3.
There’s the obvious comparison to regular Morphling, being one of the best pure kill-card creatures of all time… and even having the good grace of being Blue while you’re at it. Torchling is a very different card, and might even be better in Limited than “just” a 5/X untargetable flier. (Stay with me here, please… I know, it’s a stretch.) Morphling flies over four times for the kill and plays defense while he’s at it… but Torchling plays the Provoke game to pick off opposing creatures, making it more or less impossible for the opponent to attack without committing everything to the board, because anything left back for their defense is just getting picked off by the Torchling. This means they have to attack either all or nothing, keeping back everything or throwing everything into the fray… and meanwhile, Torchling can force all of the opponent’s creatures to block it, pushing every other creature you have through unblocked. Morphling won in four turns by finesse… Torchling wins through brute force faster, and instead of “finesse” and untapping to pick off an attacker as well, Torchling completely re-writes the rules of how combat works.
The less fair the Morphling, the better. It may not be better than the original for Constructed play, but at least as far as Limited is concerned, Torchling is the best blunt instrument for the job in Limited I’ve seen since Masticore.
Dead / Gone
R / 2R
Instant
Dead deals 2 damage to target creature.
//
Return target creature you don’t control to its owner’s hand.
… And here is another interesting one, a Common split-card, and a Split card with both sides of the card castable with the same color of mana. That this even exists tells you that Planar Chaos is looking at old things in a very new way, with a credible copy of an actual Red card for the first half, and a Blue spell on the other side. This immediately implies a lot of things, which if you were watching the MTG Salvation Rumor boards was an amazing laugh to watch… the theory that sprouted immediately was that this was a cycle of mono-colored split cards with enemy color bleed-overs, theorizing at least ten cards and coming up with the structure (and thus theorized spells) for stuff like the White-only White/Red split card. The second option was subtler, with “Split cards” as a Red mechanic, and thus multiple Red split cards, presumably a vertical cycle up the rarity chain, maybe with multiples in the different commonalities… and who knows which one is right?
Again, though, we see a very, very clear sign that Austin Powers has shagged again and performed an American Pie to the classical color pie Mom and Pop told you about as they read you “Berenstein Bears and the Colors of Magic”…
Green:
Jedit Ojanen of Efrava
3GGG
Legendary Creature – Cat Warrior Lord
Forestwalk
Whenever Jedit Ojanen of Efrava attacks or blocks, put a 2/2 green Cat Warrior creature token with Forestwalk into play.
5/5.
The cat warriors recognized this Jedit’s face, but not his fierce loyalty to Efrava.
Another big dumb six-mana legendary creature, it’s like Onslaught all over again but with Invasion dragons to boot and stuck in a small set as well… it’s like every other booster pack has some Dragon or another in it, I swear, they must have gotten pretty desperate with names and put out stuff like “Talen Lee, Lord of the Gripe” for the seventeenth or eighteenth rare Legendary Dragon.
Did I mention you still have chances to open more than one Dragon per booster pack, just like in Time Spiral?
Magus of the Library
GG
Creature – Human Wizard
T: Add 1 to your mana pool.
T: Draw a card. Play this ability only if you have exactly seven cards in hand.
1/1.
The ancient books slowly crumbled, their secrets turning to dust. But their every word sings within the magus’s head.
Mire Boa
1G
Creature — Snake
Swampwalk
G: Regenerate Mire Boa.
2/1.
Mire slime courses through its veins in place of blood. No sooner does it bleed than it opens its mouth to replace the loss.
Common regenerator, landwalk ability… yep, River Boa is still retardedly good with a cosmetic face-lift. Worse yet, more players are likely to splash Black for removal spells than splash Blue for something out of Time Spiral, so the Swampwalk is likely even more relevant than Islandwalk was in its given format, even though Blue was insane in Mirage-block limited. Compare to the standard-issue Drudge Skeleton and be impressed… this is what real creatures look like.
Timbermare
3G
Creature — Elemental
Haste
Echo 5G (At the beginning of your upkeep, if this came under your control since the beginning of your last upkeep, sacrifice it unless you pay its echo cost.)
When Timbermare comes into play, tap all other creatures.
5/5.
Only nature wreaks such lovely havoc.
Strictly for Limited play, this is a Green Lava Axe. It will get through for five points, and sometimes all Green needs is a way to deal the last five points. It’s even an under-costed Green Lava Axe, at just four mana, so it can fit an aggressive curve very nicely… and sometimes you’ll even Echo it, to keep a 5/5 around for a second round of face-smashery. All this before even considering the sheer amazingness of R&D’s act, as a tribute to The Lovely Mare, which Jamie can tell you all about here.
Uktabi Drake
G
Creature — Drake
Flying, haste
Echo 1GG (At the beginning of your upkeep, if this came under your control since the beginning of your last upkeep, sacrifice it unless you pay its echo cost.)
2/1.
… Much like Timbermare, this is an evasive, hasted Green machine, this time giving you a two-power Green flier for just a single Green mana. Uktabi Drake, like some other cards I’ve seen, help push forward the “hyper-aggressive” role of Time Spiral limited, with excellent drops that help plug a very efficient mana curve of weenie beaters. Echo is not very well regarded by a lot of higher-level players, and the higher the Echo cost the worse they hate the card. Uktabi Drake, though, fits an aggressive curve and attacks immediately, letting you go two-drop, three-drop, three-drop plus Uktabi Drake and echo on turn 5, with mana left for another two-drop or perhaps removal spell. Anything that cranks the damage this quickly is worth respecting, and this cranks up damage with a hasted flier and fits in anywhere in a curve you want it to, plugging a hole wherever in the mana curve happens to suit your plan.
I don’t know how this is a Green card, but if this is wrong, I don’t want to be right anymore.
Utopia Vow
1G
Enchantment — Aura
Enchant creature
Enchanted creature can’t attack or block.
Enchanted creature has “T: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool.”
“I’ll guard this fruit and its seedling until the land is healed. My life now belongs to Dominaria.”
… Speaking of Green cards, here’s the Green Pacifism, showing how with a little bit of careful thought you can have effective Green removal. “Mind standing here and watching the Utopia Tree for a bit, Mr. Morph? You two have fun now, y’hear!”
Once again we reiterate: this is a very strange world, and don’t think your past experience is going to be worth a damn if you’re trying to figure out what each color can and cannot do. It’s also a common removal spell in a popular color that can deal with the over-abundance of Dragons, which is also a good thing.
Gaea’s Anthem
1GG
Enchantment
Creatures you control get +1/+1.
Glorious Anthem was really good in Limited, and now we’ve given it to the color of the Elves… whose bright idea was this, anyway? Well, who cares… it’s a Rare, so it’s no big deal, and it’s a Timeshifted one as well, so it’ll come up about as often as you get Damnated.
Groundbreaker
GGG
Creature — Elemental
Trample, haste
At end of turn, sacrifice Groundbreaker.
6/1.
The earth’s memory is long, its retribution brief.
… Remember that whole “be aggressive” thing I keep saying is what this block’s big schtick? A Green Ball Lightning fits that reasonably well, despite its hard-for-Limited mana cost. First pick it in draft, because it’ll be quite valuable regardless of whether you can get to triple Green with your draft deck… and again, somebody shagged the color pie.
Harmonize
2GG
Sorcery
Draw three cards.
… Qua?
Ophidian, I can kind of understand migrating from Blue to Green, Green always sort of hung out at the Wants-to-be-Cool-like-Blue table, so why not share the love with card-drawing Snakes? Okay. Green’s also had some pretty goofy, definitely situational card-drawing, like “Draw a card for each creature you control” or “Draw a card whenever a creature dies” or “Draw a card whenever you play a creature spell”. Sometimes, Green shares the cards drawn, and sometimes it costs eleventy billion mana (Biomantic Mastery, anyone?) or there’s a weird sub-clause to the contract that means you draw the cards when the Mets finally win the World Series again.
Pay four mana. Draw three cards. Must be nice. But at least they’re sharing Blue’s stupid-good cards with other colors now, so Blue doesn’t look as guilty when you ask it what has it got in its nasty little pocketses…
A Green card I actually want to first-pick in draft. O brave new world, that has such cards in it!
Hedge Troll
2G
Creature – Troll Cleric
Hedge Troll gets +1/+1 as long as you control a Plains.
W: Regenerate Hedge Troll.
2/2.
Well, if Green is the new Blue, then Green/White is the new Blue/White, and therefore the best color combination to draft. If, that is, White is still White, and not Green or something… oh, this is just getting too complicated, and that’s even before we consider the weird gender-identity-disorder stuff that may or may not be going on in a few isolated cases. Here we have a 3/3 for 3, provided the mana is right, and a regenerating 3/3 at that. Yeah, it’s good… and this world is still starting to make less and less sense as we see more and more if it, Planar Chaos has a way of just taking your expectations and shattering them.
Gold:
Intet, the Dreamer
3URG
Legendary Creature — Dragon
Flying
Whenever Intet, the Dreamer deals combat damage to a player, you may pay 2U. If you do, remove the top card of your library from the game face down. As long as Intet is in play, you may look at that card and play it without paying its mana cost.
6/6.
Oros, the Avenger
3WBR
Legendary Creature — Dragon
Flying
Whenever Oros, the Avenger deals combat damage to a player, you may pay 2W. If you do, Oros deals 3 damage to each nonwhite creature.
6/6.
Oh look, rare Dragons. The wimpy ability “just” draws a free card you can play for no cost, while the other just casts a White Strafe at everybody and might just Wrath your opponent’s board. Still, these new twists on the Invasion dragon legends are still going to beat you in the face with their 6/6 flying bodies, it’s still going to hurt, and even though there’s less mana-fixing you’re still basically going to play every Dragon you have every time. And one pack out of every eight has a Dragon, without even counting the non-Dragon “Dragons” like Akroma.
Of all the Limited aspects I did miss, Onslaught’s legendary Pit Fighters and Invasion’s Dragon Legends were not what I’d had in mind. But they are cool… and at least we’re talking about three-colored six-drops in a highly aggressive format.
Radha, Heir to Keld
RG
Legendary Creature – Elf Warrior
Whenever Radha, Heir to Keld attacks, you may add RR to your mana pool.
T: Add G to your mana pool.
2/2.
“Run home, cur. I’ve already taken your master’s head. Don’t make me thrash you with it.”
… and for the last one, we have your choice of mana-elf or attacking Bear, and sometimes just sometimes she does both. Radha is a card that fits two roles, and does both excellently. Considering again that there’s very little in the way of Green mana accelerants, having access to one that is both versatile and as strong as a horse is well worth the commitment to two colors, one of which is apparently the new Blue in a format where Blue-Red is the best color combination.
Aggression-based mana accelerants work with the whole beatdown format thang, and “attack, Sudden Shock” is a solid turn 3 play before you play your own three-drop. Considering how a lot of people are very bad when facing aggressive pressure, and have not yet flexed their aggressive muscles and learned to be the beatdown, I’m still a fan of anything that helps favor a beatdown environment, and I’m sure I’ll be getting passed copies of Radha by people who have no clue just how much potential is packed inside this little Bear.
…
We have more aggression, some more aggression, and some huge legendary Monsters alongside the piles and piles of color bleeding making life just that little bit stranger. The beatdown is evident in cards like Mire Boa, just pushing the aggressive envelope a little bit further every day, and entire mechanics of combat tricks like the White Flash-Gating crowd that once again reward you for being the attacking player instead of sitting around trying to control the game. Things may not make a lot of sense to me just yet, but at least I like what I see.
Oh… and Green was already the most-played color in the prior format’s Sealed Deck format, before adding packs in which Green seems to be pretty clearly the best color… after all, Green is Blue this time around. Expect to see a sea of Green at the prerelease and you shall not be disappointed.
Next week: Making sense out of the nonsense…
Sean McKeown
smckeown @ livejournal.com