[BFZ]Battle for Zendikar spoilers thread

Is it even right to play a KotR+ Retreat "combo" like it's always supposed to be a 20/20 Knight you're trying to make, though -- like, this is Bant we're talking about, board control is second-nature here, there are probably times more often than not where you'd just play the Knight like it was a Phyrexian Processor or something, and just make it a 10/10 unless you actually had to go huge. That shouldn't dick with your target land base too badly, right?

Retreat seems like one of those cards that would be a pretty good enabler type thing in a deck where you can just make it do more good things more often, though I guess that's the embodiment of a "win-more" card isn't it. Hmm

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Originally Posted by Barook

Any ideas how the Retreat to Coralhelm combo deck could look like?

I'd start probably with something like this:

4 Noble Hiearch
4 KotR
X GSZ utility creatures

4 GSZ
4 StP
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 FoW
x Retreat to Coralhelm

1 Dryad Arbor
1 Kessig Wolf Run
Fetches, duals and a number of Wastelands + a Karakas (probably around 18-20 total of those?)

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Lotus Cobra.

I'm still wonder how good Painful Truths would be if Dig was banned in the upcoming announcement. Draw 3 for 3 mana is pretty sexy.

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Originally Posted by Barook

I'm still wonder how good Painful Truths would be if Dig was banned in the upcoming announcement. Draw 3 for 3 mana is pretty sexy.

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It's a powerful effect, but sorcery speed is a big deal for something like that. I'm sure it will be a player in standard and limited though.

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Originally Posted by Barook

I'm still wonder how good Painful Truths would be if Dig was banned in the upcoming announcement. Draw 3 for 3 mana is pretty sexy.

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As said before, if something like Thirst for Knowledge doesn't make the cut, I'm not sure how a color-intensive sorcery ever could.

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Originally Posted by iamajellydonut

As said before, if something like Thirst for Knowledge doesn't make the cut, I'm not sure how a color-intensive sorcery ever could.

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Thirst of Knowledge can only get +1 CA at best with some deckbuilding restrictions, this one can get two extra cards. And colors should hardly be a problem if you run DRS.

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Originally Posted by iamajellydonut

As said before, if something like Thirst for Knowledge doesn't make the cut, I'm not sure how a color-intensive sorcery ever could.

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Because a draw 3 effect is better than a draw 2 effect.

Thirst for Knowledge is an instant and it goes in a deck for which the one discarded artifact is an advantage. It is a far superior card, but limited. At any rate, we are talking about blue here, so the only way Painful Truths has any prayer of making it into anything is in a three color deck that does not include blue. Beyond the color requirements though, and due to the existence of Deathrite Shaman, I can see it as a miser's singleton since it has no further requirements.

Well, ya gotta have 4 remaining life.

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Originally Posted by Barook

Thirst of Knowledge can only get +1 CA at best with some deckbuilding restrictions, this one can get two extra cards. And colors should hardly be a problem if you run DRS.

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Originally Posted by rufus

Because a draw 3 effect is better than a draw 2 effect.

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Then Infernal Contract or some shit. Point is that if you've been wanting a 3cc sorcery that draws cards, you've had options for a while now.

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Originally Posted by iamajellydonut

COLOSSAL UNIVERSE GORGING ENTITIES THAT HAVE TRANSCENDED EVEN THE MOST FUNDAMENTAL ASPECTS OF CREATION BUT STILL CAN'T SEEM TO GET RID OF THESE AWESOME ROCKING TITS.

I mean, like, genders on these things just don't make sense. If they wanted to call Emrakul a "she" or a "he" for just stylistic references, that's fine, but Emrakul actually being a milf or having a dong makes no fucking sense when I think of the Eldrazi, and any story they come up with to justify the pronouns is a terrible one.

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Right, calling an Eldrazi "she" makes as little sense as calling it "he." You call an Eldrazi "it," or if it is standing in front of you, "YOUR EXCELLENCY."

...HOWEVER, the mythical Gods invented by the Merfolk of Zendikar DID have genders, and Emeria was a female deity. That's probably where the gendered pronouns are coming from. It's like how people would still call Jesus a "he" even if it turned out he was a flying spaghetti monster who was coming to eat the world but had instead been sealed in the Great Pyramid.

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Originally Posted by MGB

This set is one of the worst Magic sets I've seen in a long time in terms of Legacy-playable cards.

A scouring of the spoiler shows maybe... two or three cards, at most, that have any chance of even being considered for Legacy play. Compare that to Tarkir block that had a handful of "definites" during the initial spoiler and a few more that showed some Legacy applications later on.

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Ya'll got a short memory. This set is pretty meh for eternal, sure, but most sets are. At least it's not full to the brim of eternal-hostile mechanics and five-mana Holy Strengths like Theros was. Not every set can be Khans of Tarkir.

Also, this set seems to be designed to broaden the playing base for Modern. They didn't print a ton of new chase rares for that format, but they are dumping a ton of lateral substitutes for already played cards onto the market. The Crapduals, for example, can act as pauper's Shocklands. The Expeditions let them get a small amount of real mana bases onto the market. The set will be cheap and plentiful and not picked over by eternal players because there's not a ton there.

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Originally Posted by iamajellydonut

Then Infernal Contract or some shit. Point is that if you've been wanting a 3cc sorcery that draws cards, you've had options for a while now.

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It's that "SORCERY" part that just puts it out of consideration, in my mind. If this was an instant, we'd be talking Vintage applications.

I like the mana hedron. It's basically double mind stone or a smaller version of that 6 mana one. However, i think it has signifcant advantages over them because it come in a much better spot . Giving 2 mana is actually significant for ramping, 4 mana cost is not too much to not make the ramp irrilevant (as 6 is), and it doesn't cycle like mind stone, but actually give you cards. It's only significantly worse with voltaic key compared to Thran dynamo. I'd consider playing it in MUD lists that play Dynamo. Considering we had the UR-golem eye as a mana producer, i think it will see play, if not in legacy, probably in modern/standard as a ramp that double as draw.

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Originally Posted by Finn

Thirst for Knowledge is an instant and it goes in a deck for which the one discarded artifact is an advantage. It is a far superior card, but limited. At any rate, we are talking about blue here, so the only way Painful Truths has any prayer of making it into anything is in a three color deck that does not include blue. Beyond the color requirements though, and due to the existence of Deathrite Shaman, I can see it as a miser's singleton since it has no further requirements.

Well, ya gotta have 4 remaining life.

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...So, Jund or Nic Fit, then.

I want to see the person who lives the dream and casts Painful Truths for 5 against Death and Taxes.

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Originally Posted by jrsthethird

I want to see the person who lives the dream and casts Painful Truths for 5 against Death and Taxes.

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If it were costed at XB, that would've been awesome. Becomes a Night's Whisper with upside that cycles in a pinch and is a reverse Sphinx's Revelation if you can somehow produce 4 or 5 colors of mana.

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Originally Posted by maharis

If it were costed at XB, that would've been awesome. Becomes a Night's Whisper with upside that cycles in a pinch and is a reverse Sphinx's Revelation if you can somehow produce 4 or 5 colors of mana.

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Modern manabases are almost as flexible as ours. I think they likely toyed with it in development and decided that this was the simplest and easiest point. :3::b: would have pushed a serious 4c Modern/Legacy hard-control strategy. :5::b:/X:b: would have been really fun but likely too powerful to be honest (or at least too much of a draw to play 5c decks). Especially something of concern where Blood Moons are so rampant like in Modern.

Tidings only gets you 4 cards at 5 mana, Opportunity does 4 at instant speed for 6 mana. It's possible that they completely undervalued the life loss (against an aggro deck it's pretty much a Cruel Bargain), but with fetches and shocks it's completely significant (albeit easily mitigated).

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Originally Posted by maharis

If it were costed at XB, that would've been awesome. Becomes a Night's Whisper with upside that cycles in a pinch and is a reverse Sphinx's Revelation if you can somehow produce 4 or 5 colors of mana.

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And yet nobody plays Skeletal Scrying ... that 1 mana. So huge and yet so small.

XB would be too strong. You could cycle unwanted copies away for just B making it a cantrip and obviously only blue is allowed to do that!

Ugh, if they'd wanted Black to have good draw spells they'd have made Treasure Cruise an 8-mana Ambition's Cost with Delve. They'd never do the decency of printing a :b: spell with X in its cost that drew at a 1:1 ratio. You have to play Promise of Power if you want your draw 5 lose 5.

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Originally Posted by TsumiBand

Ugh, if they'd wanted Black to have good draw spells they'd have made Treasure Cruise an 8-mana Ambition's Cost with Delve. They'd never do the decency of printing a :b: spell with X in its cost that drew at a 1:1 ratio. You have to play Promise of Power if you want your draw 5 lose 5.

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Which is weird, because Black's whole jam used to be the "Greatness, at any cost" thing. I was about to rag on them for making it just average kill spells and mediocre "demons", but then I remembered Griselbrand is a thing so I'll shut up now.

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Originally Posted by Richard Cheese

Which is weird, because Black's whole jam used to be the "Greatness, at any cost" thing. I was about to rag on them for making it just average kill spells and mediocre "demons", but then I remembered Griselbrand is a thing so I'll shut up now.

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Um yeah, and like... I know that it's really easy to just go "oh fuck you MaRo, it's your fault" and I'm not doing that necessarily, but a minor theme over the last few years I've noted after reading Blogatog enough times is that they don't know what exactly they're doing with the color Black anymore. The narrative from his blog can IMO be summed up by saying, "We felt Black was too good at doing things that it shouldn't be able to do, so we toned down all the things it *can* do in-color like discard, tutor, and exchange life for cards. Unfortunately, we now have trouble coming up with any cards that aren't summarily color-derivative without being watered-down or secretly just a Red spell, so Black is really hard to design for right now."