Finally we earn a reprieve from the complicated wiles of Ravnica Block Sealed Deck, to take a look at this weekend’s chilly festivities… the pre-release of the Coldsnap set and an interesting turn to follow in the Pro Tour: Kobe qualifier season, as we leave the complicated tumult of drafting with the full-blown Ravnica block for less temperate climes. Considering the fact that Ravnica-Guildpact-Dissension is an awesome draft format, and “those in the know” at Wizards suspect we’ll like this draft format even more, we’ll start taking a look at the “known” Coldsnap information released from official Wizards of the Coast sources and trying to figure out how the different pieces of this set snap together in order to figure out what is going to be important for Limited play at the pre-release, where you’ll get five Coldsnap boosters and however many additional basic (non-Snow Covered) lands to build your deck.
That we’ll be seeing Snow-Covered Lands in the mix once again, and that this time they’ll actually be important for once instead of something of an incidental as they were with Ice Age Limited, suggests one very simple thing: there will be “basic” lands in the boosters, and their intention is for people to get enough of them to play with at least a few in Limited. Early discussion has compared their importance to that of the artifact lands from Mirrodin, suggesting they will be there to be played with, and thus the people at Wizards of the Coast may have perhaps done something more than “just” put them on the commons sheet. A long long time ago, I can still remember when booster packs used to come with basic lands in them. (Yes, now that you mention it, I do feel old. Thanks for pointing it out; I am indeed something of a dinosaur.) Every pack had at least one, and as of the Un-sets there was exactly one per booster pack as a “bonus,” picking up one pretty land guaranteed for each booster pack bought. If the Snow Lands are that important, I would not be terribly surprised to see them pulled off the collation from the rest of the pack and set so as to include exactly one of the five basic snow-covered lands in each pack, guaranteeing exactly five snow lands no matter what in your “Sealed Deck.”
Or they could just be treated like normal commons, figuring that enough of them will come up if there are five common snow lands and eleven commons per booster pack such that five packs will have basically five snow lands, but you may get three or you may get seven… who knows? Considering that people complained early on about getting “stupid lands in the common slot” when they first saw the Ravnica-block Karoos, then quit complaining when they realized how awesome they could be in both Limited and Constructed, and considering that the artifact lands were good enough to get banned in Standard, these silly lands seem as if they might finally be the kind of cards you’re glad to get in your Limited pool, and something you’ll miss if your pack doesn’t have one.
So, starting with the different themes we’re seeing blocked together, let’s have a look at the key themes of Coldsnap – as shown by the preview cards and the Official Coldsnap FAQ:
There’s No Business Like Snow Business…
Boreal Druid
G
Snow Creature
Elf Druid
1/1
Tap: Add 1 to your mana pool.
Rimebound Dead
B
Snow Creature
Skeleton
1/1
{S}: Regenerate Rimebound Dead. ({S} can be paid with one mana from a snow permanent.)
Balduvian Frostwaker
2U
Creature
Human Wizard
1/1
U, Tap: Target snow land becomes a 2/2 blue Elemental creature with flying. It’s still a land.
Cover of Winter
2W
Snow Enchantment
Cumulative upkeep {S}. ({S} can be paid with one mana from a snow permanent.)
If a creature would deal combat damage to you and/or one or more creatures you control, prevent X of that damage, where X is the number of age counters on Cover of Winter.
{S}: Put an age counter on Cover of Winter.
Gelid Shackles
W
Snow Enchantment — Aura
Enchant creature. Enchanted creature can’t block and its activated abilities can’t be played. {S}: Enchanted creature gains defender until end of turn. ({S} can be paid with one mana from a snow permanent.)
Rimefeather Owl
5UU
Snow Creature — Bird
*/*
Flying
Rimefeather Owl’s power and toughness are each equal to the number of snow permanents in play. 1{S}: Put an ice counter on target permanent. Permanents with ice counters on them are snow.
Rimehorn Aurochs
4G
Snow Creature — Aurochs
3/3
Trample
Whenever Rimehorn Aurochs attacks, it gets +1/+0 until end of turn for each other attacking Aurochs. 2{S}: Target creature blocks target creature this turn if able. ({S} can be paid with one mana from a snow permanent.)
Rimescale Dragon
5RR
Snow Creature — Dragon
5/5
Flying
2{S}: Tap target creature and put an ice counter on it. ({S} can be paid with one mana from a snow permanent.) Creatures with ice counters on them don’t untap during their controllers’ untap steps.
Scrying Sheets
Snow Land
Tap: Add 1 to your mana pool.
1{S}, Tap: Look at the top card of your library. If that card is snow, you may reveal it and put it into your hand. ({S} can be paid with one mana from a snow permanent.)
Stalking Yeti
2RR
Snow Creature — Yeti
3/3
When Stalking Yeti comes into play, if it’s in play, it deals damage equal to its power to target creature an opponent controls and that creature deals damage equal to its power to Stalking Yeti. 2{S}: Return Stalking Yeti to its owner’s hand. Play this ability only any time you could play a sorcery. ({S} can be paid with one mana from a snow permanent.)
Zombie Musher
3B
Snow Creature — Zombie
2/3
Snow landwalk
{S}: Regenerate Zombie Musher. ({S} can be paid with one mana from a snow permanent.)
Heidar, Rimewind Master
4U
Legendary Creature — Human Wizard
3/3
2, Tap: Return target permanent to its owners’ hand. Use this ability only if you control four or more snow permanents.
Snow mana and snow permanents seem to be a definite theme, pushed far more aggressively than was seen in Ice Age… where sometimes it would be good for a discount on a card, such as the benefit of getting to use Withering Wisps instead of Pestilence, one colorless mana off the cost for the restriction of only being able to spend Black mana from snow-covered Swamps to use it. Here we see an excellent benefit for having extra snow permanents lying around, as they enable cool tricks, power up interesting effects and even form their own kind of “hybrid” colorless mana, as seen with the {S} symbol above: a snowflake symbol that is effectively one mana of any color that has been generated by a snow-covered source.
If “artifact” could be said to be the theme of Mirrodin Block, “snow” seems to be as much of a theme but without the necessity of breaking past the usual five-color arrangement like Mirrodin did. Cards are better when you have snow mana lying around, like the cheap regenerator and the powerful flying Rares (the Dragon and the Owl). Quite a few of them are really powerful, I’m sure, and there will likely be enough of a quantity of snow mana going around that people will be giving serious consideration to playing any and every snow-covered land they get, just to make sure they get their beloved {S} even if they do happen to get color-screwed that little bit more. Manabases with one of each snow-covered basic land in addition to the lands needed to actually cast the color of the spell in question frankly wouldn’t surprise me one bit, and one of the key first steps at the Prerelease this weekend will be realizing that you should be playing every snow land in your five packs pretty much without any doubt or hesitation.
Perhaps you noticed that there is a creature named ‘Something Aurochs‘ … and if you did you get a cookie, because the Aurochs theme is going to be one of the more interesting and amusing themes to see play. We’ll get to that after we look at some more parts of the Snow versus Non-Snow dichotomy, and see what other incidentally snowy creatures we know about and what other cards are around that seem to care about blizzard conditions.
Thermal Flux
U
Instant
Choose one – Target nonsnow permanent becomes snow until end of turn; or target snow permanent isn’t snow until end of turn. Draw a card at the beginning of the next turn’s upkeep.
Adarkar Valkyrie
4WW
Snow Creature — Angel
4/5
Flying
Vigilance
Tap: When target creature other than Adarkar Valkyrie is put into a graveyard this turn, return that card to play under your control.
Blizzard Specter
2UB
Snow Creature — Specter
2/3
Flying
Whenever Blizzard Specter deals combat damage to a player, choose one – That player returns a permanent he or she controls to its owner’s hand; or that player discards a card.
Dark Depths
Legendary Snow Land
Dark Depths comes into play with ten ice counters on it. 3: Remove an ice counter from Dark Depths. When Dark Depths has no ice counters on it, sacrifice it. If you do, put an indestructible legendary 20/20 black Avatar creature token with flying named Marit Lage into play.
Frostweb Spider
2G
Snow Creature — Spider
1/3
Frostweb Spider can block as though it had flying
Whenever Frostweb Spider blocks a creature with flying, put a +1/+1 counter on Frostweb Spider at end of combat.
Goblin Furrier
1R
Creature – Goblin Warrior
2/2
Prevent all damage that Goblin Furrier would deal to snow creatures.
Phyrexian Soulgorger
3
Snow Artifact Creature — Construct
8/8
Cumulative upkeep – Sacrifice a creature. (At the beginning of your upkeep, put an age counter on this permanent, then sacrifice it unless you pay its upkeep cost for each age counter on it.)
Ronom Hulk
4G
Creature — Beast
5/6
Protection from snow
Cumulative upkeep: 1 (At the beginning of your upkeep, put an age counter on this permanent, then sacrifice it unless you pay its upkeep cost for each age counter on it.)
Ohran Viper
1GG
Snow Creature — Snake
1/3
Whenever Ohran Viper deals combat damage to a creature, destroy that creature at end of combat. Whenever Ohran Viper deals damage to a player, you may draw a card.
We’re seeing “snow” now as an aspect of the card being applied to more than just basic lands, so we now have snow-covered Ophidians, and snow-covered ridiculously powerful Angels, and so on. The quality of being covered with snow is thus incidentally applied to cards that are clearly good without the quality of snow being applied, thus helping to advance the theme of “snow matters” and getting plenty of snow-covered permanents into play… and potentially making the tension between snow-covered and snow-hosing cards more dramatic and more relevant. Instead of laughing at it and ignoring it, now we have to pay attention… and in Limited, which is basically what we care about here, there are some really solid snow cards going around, and some powerful cards like the 5/6 protection from Snow creature to “punish” the use of these high-quality, very solid cards. The first instinct of just cramming in as much Snow as possible and assuming that everything will go to plan will be a solid one, but not necessarily correct, because if that is what everyone is doing then it is quite possible that you will fall vulnerable to an opponent with a few strong cards that prey upon snow-coveredness. A 5/6 for five with a cumulative upkeep only has to hit four times before you die, and if none of your creatures can block it because they are all snow creatures you may just have a nightmare situation on your hands.
Without seeing the full picture, and especially without knowing the commonalities of most of these cards, it’s hard to say how it will play out… but the portion of the picture we are seeing so far suggests that there will be a definite risk versus reward situation for all of these snow cards, with excellent cards that “just happen” to be snow cards, solid cards that are only really good if you meet certain thresholds of snowy-ness, and definitely solid cards that can incidentally capitalize on an opponent with too much snow going on.
The Mechanics
Icefall
2RR
Sorcery
Destroy target artifact or land. Recover: RR. (When a creature is put into your graveyard from play, you may pay RR. If you do, return this card from your graveyard to your hand. Otherwise, remove this card from the game.)
Garza’s Assassin
BBB
Creature — Human Assassin
2/2
Sacrifice Garza’s Assassin: Destroy target nonblack creature. Recover: Pay half your life, rounded up.
Resize
1G
Instant
Target creature gets +3/+3 until end of turn. Recover: 1G.
Three cards is not a lot to “get” the mechanic with, but so far we have been told that Garza’s Assassin is the “unusual” one of the bunch, as the only creature to have Recover and as the only non-mana Recover cost. The inspiration for these are based off of a small but recurring theme in Ice Age Block, with such notable Constructed-quality cards as Death Spark (at the time), Krovikan Horror (for those of us who played with Survival of the Fittest before they printed Squee, this guy was “the man”), and… Whiteout? Now, most people wouldn’t see Whiteout and think “Man, this is a high-quality card…” but Pro Tour Historian (and generally crotchety old man of Magic) Brian David-Marshall swears by the fact that having a card that could come back to your hand was pretty ludicrous in an environment that could easily be dominated by Stormbind decks. Sure, all it really does is let you swap a snow-covered land in play to discard to Stormbind, but if that is all you’re asking it to do, where’s the harm?
I don’t remember what the “spell” portion of Whiteout does, and I bet you BDM doesn’t either… but it’s been proven in the past that anything that allows you to reuse spells is good, and anything that can possibly return cards from the graveyard to your hand is also good. That we see an entire mechanic based on the interesting and fun tensions that were had back when we were playing with Death Sparks and Krovikan Horrors and trying to take maximum advantage of these by re-using them over and over and over again can’t be bad, especially since they’ve tried their hardest to work off some of the nervous twitches that some players had playing against those particular cards by making it a one-time-only trick. That there won’t be any second opportunities to recover a lost asset if the first one is missed will I’m sure help many old-timers like us sleep well at night, because we remember the dark old days of nervously staring down Ironclaw Orcs on the other side as we thumbed our pump knights and hoped that the one Red untapped wasn’t a Death Spark about to happen.
Ripple
Surging Dementia
1B
Sorcery
Ripple 4. (When you play this spell, you may reveal the top four cards of your library. You may play any revealed cards with the same name as this spell without paying their mana costs. Put the rest on the bottom of your library.) Target player discards a card.
Thrumming Stone
5
Legendary Artifact
Spells you control have Ripple 4. (Whenever you play a spell, you may reveal the top four cards of your library. You may play any revealed cards with the same name as the spell without paying their mana costs. Put the rest on the bottom of your library.)
Just when you thought it might be safe to put your Divining Tops away, we have a new mechanic that likes it when you know what the top cards of your deck are… a lot. The one Ripple spell we see isn’t very impressive, but the word “ripple” comes up six times on the Orb of Insight so presumably there are four more cards where this one came from… and if we want to take safe bets, we can bet on one for each color plus the artifact that passes Ripple around like it’s nobody’s business. The good news is, for sixty card decks this is a small mechanic that may not have very much of an effect, because you only get four copies out of sixty cards and so your chances of getting a free spell out of it are rather low.
For Limited, however, we’re starting with 40 instead of 60, so the smaller decks means that the Ripple number represents a much more significant portion of the remaining cards. And we’re opening five booster packs for our Sealed Deck… so you could technically have five copies of a Ripple spell, or six or seven or more if you want to get both greedy and improbable and start including foil copies. For Draft play, there will be schools of thought that start by taking one specific Ripple spell over any other card in the format every time they see it, and just hope that by the end of the draft they may be lucky enough to pull off the impossible chain of Ripple-through-your-deck: pull off five or six of that one spell in one shot, draining every single copy out of your deck, because Ripple: 4 will reveal a new spell, which will then Ripple again, and so on and so forth.
Unofficial sources suggest that the Red ripple spell is a burn spell, and that may not surprise anyone. The idea of maybe paying two for a two-damage burn spell, and having it flip over three or four more two-damage burn spells, well… to call it pleasing is something of an understatement.
Bull Aurochs
1G
Creature — Aurochs
2/1
Trample
Whenever Bull Aurochs attacks, it gets +1/+0 until end of turn for each other attacking Aurochs.
Rimehorn Aurochs
4G
Snow Creature — Aurochs
3/3
Trample
Whenever Rimehorn Aurochs attacks, it gets +1/+0 until end of turn for each other attacking Aurochs. 2{S}: Target creature blocks target creature this turn if able. ({S} can be paid with one mana from a snow permanent.)
Okay, okay, so this one isn’t a mechanic… so sue me.
Ice Age limited saw the use of the “Aurochs” card from time to time, and it was laughable. They were expensive, didn’t do much, and weren’t very likely to ever gang up on anyone. Here we have two… one of which is a two-power two-drop, and the other of which is a baseline acceptable creature with a Provoke-like ability that can clear the way for an attacking force or pick off solitary creatures one at a time if the opportunity presents itself. There may even be more than just the two… but again we see the issue of having many things like each other, wanting many copies of an individual Ripple spell and wanting to have an infinite supply of two-drop trampling Aurochs so that you can attack with four Aurochs on turn 5 for five damage each. We have the potential to actually see the creature type Aurochs affect the Limited environment, which is a pretty amazing (and ridiculous) thing. But hey, you have to love it when the game takes something so inconsequential (but so memorable) and drags it back to the forefront ten years later… and argues that it could be good!
Aurochs. What next, “Pyknite Matters”?
Cumulative Upkeep
Phobian Phantasm
1BB
Creature — Illusion
3/3
Flying
Fear
Cumulative upkeep: B (At the beginning of your upkeep, put an age counter on this permanent, then sacrifice it unless you pay its upkeep cost for each age counter on it.)
Braid of Fire
1R
Enchantment
Cumulative upkeep: Add R to your mana pool.
Herald of Leshrac
6B
Creature — Avatar
2/4
Flying
Cumulative upkeep: Gain control of a land you don’t control.
Herald of Leshrac gets +1/+1 for each land you control but don’t own. When Herald of Leshrac leaves play, each player gains control of each land he or she owns that you control.
Hibernation’s End
4G
Enchantment
Cumulative upkeep: 1
Whenever you pay Hibernation’s End’s cumulative upkeep, you may search your library for a creature card with converted mana cost equal to the number of age counters on Hibernation’s End and put it into play. If you do, shuffle your library.
Jötun Grunt
1W
Creature – Giant Soldier
4/4
Cumulative upkeep: Put two cards in a single graveyard on the bottom of their owner’s library.
Karplusan Minotaur
2RR
Creature – Minotaur Warrior
3/3
Cumulative upkeep: Flip a coin.
Whenever you win a coin flip, Karplusan Minotaur deals 1 damage to target creature or player. Whenever you lose a coin flip, Karplusan Minotaur deals 1 damage to target creature or player of an opponent’s choice.
Magmatic Core
2RR
Enchantment
Cumulative upkeep: 1. At the end of your turn, Magmatic Core deals X damage divided as you choose among any number of target creatures, where X is the number of age counters on it.
Sheltering Ancient
1G
Creature — Treefolk
5/5
Trample
Cumulative upkeep: Put a +1/+1 counter on a creature an opponent controls.
Survivor of the Unseen
2U
Creature – Human Wizard
2/1
Cumulative upkeep: 2. Tap: Draw two cards, then put a card from your hand on top of your library.
Wall of Shards
1W
Snow Creature — Wall
1/8
Defender
Flying
Cumulative upkeep: An opponent gains 1 life.
Vexing Sphinx
1UU
Creature — Sphinx
4/4
Flying
Cumulative Upkeep: Discard a card. Whenever Vexing Sphinx is put into a graveyard from play, draw a card for each age counter on it.
Phyrexian Etchings
BBB
Enchantment
Cumulative Upkeep: B. At the end of your turn, draw a card for each age counter on Phyrexian Etchings. When Phyrexian Etchings is put into a graveyard from play, you lose 2 life for each age counter on Phyrexian Etchings.
This is where you realize this is not your grandpappy’s Cumulative Upkeep, which basically always looked the same… some kind of mana, letting you pay less for some card or another but generally not looking really worth your while. Beyond just using cumulative upkeep to do interesting things, like we saw with a fair chunk of Weatherlight cards at the end of Mirage Block, now we see non-mana cumulative upkeep costs… and “costs” that don’t seem like costs at all in some cases, as they are intended to be things that you profit from. A two-mana enchantment that grows to give you more and more and more Red mana during your upkeep is a fascinating take on the cumulative upkeep mechanic, as is a variety of very undercosted creatures that do things like give opposing creatures +1/+1 or give them life in ever-increasing quantities for the “right” to have a huge flying Wall in play.
Looking at a certain card that costs BBB, and its startling similarity to Necropotence (except for the mana upkeep cost, anyway), one can realize that they are trying to recover old territory in a new way, and even a Necropotence that has been neutered with a garden spade is still pretty, well, potent. Cumulative Upkeep: Flip a coin still has to be the absolute weirdest upkeep cost I can think of, but that may just be because I’ve been raised to think that coinflips are lame.
Martyrs
Martyr of Ashes
R
Creature – Human Shaman.
1/1
2, Reveal X red cards from your hand, Sacrifice Martyr of Ashes: Martyr of Ashes deals X damage to each creature without flying.
Again, it seems like this is one part of a cycle, like the Ripple mechanic cards… but unfortunately we can already guess that the word “Martyr” may not neatly link up to the number of Martyrs in the set. Fortunately, the Orb of Insight count comes up at 11, meaning this is the only of the Martyrs that uses the word “Martyr” three times and the other four are all “Martyr of Something — 2, Reveal X cards of this color from your hand, Sacrifice Martyr of Something: Do something.”
A one-mana creature that can Earthquake for a considerable amount by taking its own life and spending two mana may very well be insane. This card strikes me as a potential Constructed powerhouse; in Limited, he’s likely quite nuts as well… as one could expect from any mass sweeper effect, even before accounting for its low cost and the occasional ability to attack for one. Fortunately, these all require you to bank cards in your hand, and so they really only have a very small window of opportunity to prove useful as you play more and more spells out of your hand. But still… what do you really want out of a one-drop, on top of this kind of potential?
Double Pitch Cards
Commandeer
5UU
Instant
You may remove two Blue cards in your hand from the game rather than pay Commandeer’s mana cost. Gain control of target noncreature spell. You may choose new targets for it. (If that spell is an artifact or enchantment, the permanent comes into play under your control.)
Fury of the Horde
5RR
Sorcery
You may remove two Red cards in your hand from the game rather than pay Fury of the Horde’s mana cost. Untap all creatures that attacked this turn. After this main phase, there is an additional combat phase followed by an additional main phase.
Sunscour
5WW
Sorcery
You may remove two White cards in your hand from the game instead of paying Sunscour’s mana cost. Destroy all creatures.
Allosaurus Riders
5GG
Creature — Elf Warrior
1+*/1+*
You may remove two green cards in your hand from the game instead of paying Allosaurus Rider’ mana cost. Allosaurus Rider’ power and toughness are each equal to 1 plus the number of lands you control.
Here we have four cards of a cycle that we know to be rares thanks to the previews, so it’s likely the only card we don’t know is the one Black card rather than figuring there is more to this cycle. Costing seven “the hard way” these are going to be somewhat limited in effect in Sealed Deck or Draft play, though Allosaurus Riders and Sunscour are clearly worth it still when you have to pay full price for them. Commandeer is something of a sketchy card for Limited play, requiring two other cards of a single color (or seven mana untapped, a thought that would make most Limited analysts cringe), and even then it doesn’t affect the most common type of Limited problem, creatures entering play. Sure, it steals the spell for your own use and is very powerful… but that power is essentially going to be limited to Constructed.
The Relentless Assault variant is weak, just like every other Relentless Assault variant has been, and just like Relentless Assault basically was when it first came out regardless. It’s somewhat interesting, like how the Red Shoal was the one that had the most game-winning explosive potential begging to be used in the right (or as your opinion of the deck could go, the “wrong”) deck. A free attack phase can be a Time Walk to a Red mage, but in Limited the problem remains: two Red cards on top of what you’re trying to win the game with, or seven mana not doing anything else important. It’s actually worse than Relentless Assault for any purpose anyone’s going to actually put it to when playing fair, and the prerelease will unfortunately be an ultimately fair environment.
Slowtrips
We only know about one cantrip, and it’s at the same speed as cantrips used to be instead of how we tend to think of them nowadays. There are likely to be a few, however; the word “next” comes up eight times on the Orb of Insight, suggesting that there may be up to seven cards with the phrase “draw a card at the beginning of the next turn’s upkeep”. (One instance of the word “next” is already known to come on Vanish Into Memory, the “You Make The Card!” addition to Coldsnap.)
Balduvian Rage
{X}{R}
Instant
Target attacking creature gets +X/+0 until end of turn.
Draw a card at the beginning of the next turn’s upkeep.
Thermal Flux
U
Instant
Choose one – Target nonsnow permanent becomes snow until end of turn; or target snow permanent isn’t snow until end of turn. Draw a card at the beginning of the next turn’s upkeep.
Legends, Like It’s Kamigawa Or Something
Arcum Dagsson
3U
Legendary Creature – Human Artificer
2/2
Tap: Target artifact creature’s controller sacrifices it. That player may search his or her library for a noncreature artifact card, put it into play, then shuffle his or her library.
Haakon, Stromgald Scourge
1BB
Legendary Creature – Zombie Knight
3/3
You may play Haakon, Stromgald Scourge from your graveyard, but not from anywhere else. As long as Haakon is in play, you may play Knight cards from your graveyard. When Haakon is put into a graveyard from play, you lose 2 life.
Zur the Enchanter
1WUB
Legendary Creature – Human Wizard
¼
Flying
Whenever Zur the Enchanter attacks, you may search your library for an enchantment card with converted mana cost 3 or less and put it into play. If you do, shuffle your library.
Lovisa Coldeyes
3RR
Legendary Creature — Human Lord
3/3
Barbarians, Warriors and Berserkers get +2/+2 and have haste.
Garga Zol, Plague Queen
4BRU
Legendary Creature — Vampire
5/5
Flying
Haste
Whenever a creature dealt damage by Garga Zol, Plague Queen this turn is put into a graveyard, put a +1/+1 counter on Garga Zol. Whenever Garga Zol deals combat damage to a player, draw a card.
Thrumming Stone
5
Legendary Artifact
Spells you control have Ripple 4. (Whenever you play a spell, you may reveal the top four cards of your library. You may play any revealed cards with the same name as the spell without paying their mana costs. Put the rest on the bottom of your library.)
Dark Depths
Legendary Snow Land
Dark Depths comes into play with ten ice counters on it. 3: Remove an ice counter from Dark Depths. When Dark Depths has no ice counters on it, sacrifice it. If you do, put an indestructible legendary 20/20 black Avatar creature token with flying named Marit Lage into play.
Heidar, Rimewind Master
4U
Legendary Creature — Human Wizard
3/3
2, Tap: Return target permanent to its owners’ hand. Use this ability only if you control four or more snow permanents.
Clearly we have some wacky cards here, and perhaps a few too many cards that do things like put permanents directly into play from your library. Sure, these cards are either enchantments that cost three or less mana or “noncreature artifacts,” but it looks suspiciously like a man capable of casting Tinker made it into the set. And I find it very deeply amusing that Zur the Enchanter can’t actually search out Zur’s Weirding, but it’s probably true that this is a Good Thing™, as otherwise he seems to be able to attack and shut the door on anyone seeing any new cards, then abuse the Weirding lock by finding four copies of Faith’s Fetters, negating four permanents in play and getting an “extra” eight nullified draws, all while flying over for one. I guess the Weirding was his masterwork, and he didn’t get around to it until after this set… who knows. We’re still getting all of this out of context, but so far we are seeing Ice Age Block’s tendency for weird three-color creatures and cards that are vanilla creatures but have explosive potential for who-knows-what… Lovisa Coldeyes is herself a quality Sea Snidd-type creature, the ever-lovable 3/3 non-flier for five, but add a few of the wrong kinds of friends and she’s Goblin Warchief on crack.
We also have the new biggest creature in the game. Anyone who opens Dark Depths is going to play it… just sayin’.
And now we have the dregs to look at, weird things that fill the rest of the set and have been found in the FAQ or the official previews, interesting or complicated enough to have to be described with a rules clarification… or tantalizing enough, as is the case of the new Pump Knights, to draw your eye at some powerful cards that populate this newly frozen world.
Balduvian Warlord
3R
Creature – Human Barbarian
3/2
Tap: Remove target blocking creature from combat. Creatures it blocked that no other creature blocked this combat become unblocked, then it blocks an attacking creature of your choice. Play this ability only during the declare blockers step.
(An obligatory ode to the worst Legend in Ice Age Block, General Jarkeld. The scary thing is not just that this creature is clearly better, because that just kind of happens as power creeps up over time. The scary thing is how natural and reasonable this feels as a mediocre ability that might just destroy creature combats from time to time, just like General Jarkeld, and this time it’s not on a wimpy legend with no real body to speak of.)
Brooding Saurian
2GG
Creature — Lizard
4/4
At the end of each turn, each player gains control of all nontoken permanents he or she owns.
(Look! A 4/4 for 4! How special. Thanks for choosing Troll Ascetic in last week’s You Decide, everybody!)
Counterbalance
UU
Enchantment
Whenever an opponent plays a spell, you may reveal the top card of your library. If you do, counter that spell if it has the same converted mana cost as the revealed card.
(A card you will not draft, or play in your Sealed Deck, and yet a card that may be ridiculous in Constructed just because Sensei’s Divining Top exists.)
Deepfire Elemental
4BR
Creature — Elemental
4/4
XX1: Destroy target artifact or creature with converted mana cost X.
Greater Stone Spirit
4RR
Creature – Elemental Spirit
4/4
Greater Stone Spirit can’t be blocked by creatures with flying
2R: Until end of turn, target creature gets +0/+2 and gains “R: This creature gets +1/+0 until end of turn.”
Jester’s Scepter
3
Artifact
When Jester’s Scepter comes into play, remove the top five cards of target player’s library from the game face down. You may look at those cards as long as they remain removed from the game. 2, Tap, Put a card removed from the game with Jester’s Scepter into its owner’s graveyard: Counter target spell if it has the same name as that card.
Juniper Order Ranger
3GW
Creature – Human Knight
2/4
Whenever another creature comes into play under your control, put a +1/+1 counter on that creature and a +1/+1 counter on Juniper Order Ranger.
(Graaaaaft! Oh wait, you mean we don’t get to play Dissension and Coldsnap in the same draft? D’oh.)
Lightning Serpent
XR
Creature – Elemental Serpent
2/1
Trample
Haste
Lightning Serpent comes into play with X +1/+0 counters on it.
At end of turn, sacrifice Lightning Serpent.
(A bad Fireball is still pretty good as far as Fireballs go.)
Lightning Storm
1RR
Instant
Lightning Storm deals X damage to target creature or player, where X is 3 plus the number of charge counters on it. Discard a land card: Put two charge counters on Lightning Storm. You may choose a new target for it. Any player may play this ability but only if Lightning Storm is on the stack.
(This hurts my brain. And here I thought I had an unnecessary propensity for verbosity… this card has way more confusing words strung together than your usual Magical Hack article. Charge counters on a card while it’s on the stack? Weird.)
Panglacial Wurm
5GG
Creature — Wurm
9/5
Trample
While you’re searching your library, you may play Panglacial Wurm from your library.
(It wouldn’t be Ice Age Block if there wasn’t a big fat Wurm somewhere in the seven to eight mana range. At least Becker is already happy, because he got his Snow Spider.)
Shape of the Wiitigo
3GGG
Enchantment — Aura
Enchant creature
When Shape of the Wiitigo comes into play, put six +1/+1 counters on enchanted creature. At the beginning of your upkeep, put a +1/+1 counter on enchanted creature if it attacked or blocked since your last upkeep. Otherwise, remove a +1/+1 counter from it.
Sound the Call
2G
Sorcery
Put a 1/1 Green Wolf creature token into play with “This creature gets +1/+1 for each card named Sound the Call in each graveyard.”
(Which call are we sounding? It’s certainly not the Call of the Herd… but still, another card that gets better as you draft seventeen or eighteen of them, and at the worst it’s a Grey Ogre.)
Tamanoa
RGW
Creature — Spirit
2/4
Whenever a noncreature source you control deals damage, you gain that much life.
Tresserhorn Skyknight
5BB
Creature – Zombie Knight
5/3
Flying
Prevent all damage that would be dealt to Tresserhorn Skyknight by creatures with first strike.
Vanish into Memory
2WU
Instant
Remove target creature from the game. You draw cards equal to that creature’s power. At the beginning of your next upkeep, return that card to play under its owner’s control. If you do, discard cards equal to its toughness.
Void Maw
4BB
Creature — Horror
4/5
Trample
If another creature would be put into a graveyard from play, remove it from the game instead. Put a card removed from the game with Void Maw into its owner’s graveyard: Void Maw gets +2/+2 until end of turn.
(Awesome fatty. This one is going to be a real monster to deal with.)
Woolly Razorback
2WW
Creature — Beast
7/7
Woolly Razorback comes into play with three ice counters on it. As long as Woolly Razorback has an ice counter on it, it has defender and any combat damage it would deal is prevented. Whenever Woolly Razorback blocks, remove an ice counter from it.
White Shield Crusader
WW
Creature — Human Knight
2/1
W: White Shield Crusader gains flying until end of turn. WW: White Shield Crusader gains +1/+0 until end of turn.
Stromgald Crusader
BB
Creature — Zombie Knights
2/1
B: Stromgald Crusader gains flying until end of turn. BB: Stromgald Crusader gets +1/+0 until end of turn.
(These last two are common, flying, pumpable nightmares. Wow.)
By the looks of it, Coldsnap is a strange place to be, full of very odd cards and some very powerful ones. But the main themes are clear: snow mana, tense card interactions (such as Snow versus Snow-hosers, and the difficulty of actually stranding a Recover card so that it stays dead this time), and unity: the more of the right somethings you have, the better these somethings all get. We may have laughed at Howling Wolves, being a 2/2 for 4 that could get you more 2/2’s for 4, but we have a lot of cards here that have the potential to gang up together and domineer you through the strength of their homogeneity, burying you under Ripple effects or trampling over mercilessly as Aurochs tend to do. “Homogeneity Matters” is a pretty interesting theme for a single-set, small-block Limited format, but there is also the potential that it could be an annoying one even though there are a large number of cards you might want to get a lot of. It certainly seems as if Coldsnap Sealed Deck, played with five booster packs plus basic lands, should be interesting… snow card and snow mana interactions, plus the possibility of maybe getting the crazy Ripple deck or the uber-Aurochs deck.
The uber-Aurochs deck. I just want everyone to know, as a player who started playing during Ice Age, that a small part of my soul just died while I typed that.
Have fun tomorrow… now that you’ve been presented with everything there is to know that’s been gleaned through public information clearly sanctioned by Wizards of the Coast, except for whatever the Friday preview card happens to be.
Sean McKeown
[email protected]
And then I write, by morning, night,
And afternoon, and pretty soon…
My name in Dnepropetrovsk is cursed,
When he finds out I publish first!
Tom Lehrer, “Lobachevsky”