[Born of the Gods] Spoiler Thread

Let's start with the 5 prerelease rares:

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Silent Centinel
Creature - Archon (rare)

Flying
Whenever ~ attacks, you may return target enchantment card from your graveyard to the battlefield.

4/6

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Mediator of the Ideal
Creature - Sphinx (rare)

Flying
Inspiration - Whenever ~ untaps, reveal the top card of your library. If its an artifact, creature, or land card you may put it onto the battlefield with a manifestation counter on it. It is an enchantment in addition to its other types.

4/5

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Devourer of Hope
Creature - Demon (rare)

Flying
, Sacrifice another creature: Regenerate ~.
, Sacrifice two other creatures: Destroy target creature.

6/4

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Firestir Dragon
Creature - Dragon (rare)

Flying
: ~ deals 1 damage to target creature. That creature can't block this combat. Activate this ability only if ~ is attacking.

5/4

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Wild Devastating Nessian
Creature - Hydra (rare)

Tribute 6 (As this creature enters the battlefield, an opponent of your choice may put 6 +1/+1 counter on it.)
When ~ enters the battlefield, if the tribute wasn't pay, you may have ~ fight another target creature.

6/6

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Buy-a-Box Promo:

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Nefarious Burn - 1RRR - Instant
Nefarious Bun deals 5 points of damage to target creature or planeswalker. If it is your turn, scry 2.

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The only Walker in the set:

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Kiora, the Crashing Wave - 2UG

Planeswalker — Kiora
+1: Until your next turn, prevent all damage that would be dealt to and dealt by target permanent an opponent controls.
-1: Draw a card. You may play an additional land this turn.
-5: You get an emblem with "At the beginning of your end step, put a 9/9 blue Kraken creature token onto the battlefield."

Loyalty 2

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Originally Posted by Lemnear

The only Walker in the set:

Kiora, the Crashing Wave - 2UG

Planeswalker — Kiora
+1: Until your next turn, prevent all damage that would be dealt to and dealt by target permanent an opponent controls.
-1: Draw a card. You may play an additional land this turn.
-5: You get an emblem with "At the beginning of your end step, put a 9/9 blue Kraken creature token onto the battlefield."

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Note that has loyalty 2.

Good thing I wasn't planning on going to the prerelease because those promos sure as hell aren't motivating me to do so.

EDIT: Interesting to note the promos for this set follow the same pattern as the promos for Theros: the blue one is the best, the white and black ones are conditionally good, the red one is a reasonable body, and the green one is kind of bad.

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Originally Posted by Aggro_zombies

Good thing I wasn't planning on going to the prerelease because those promos sure as hell aren't motivating me to do so.

EDIT: Interesting to note the promos for this set follow the same pattern as the promos for Theros: the blue one is the best, the white and black ones are conditionally good, the red one is a reasonable body, and the green one is kind of bad.

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I don't agree, I think the white one is clearly the worst. The green one is probably a lot better then you give it credit for a 6 costing 12/12 is big. the black one is the most powerful but also the most expensive the red one is better then the blue since they both need to attack to do something but the red one attacks for more and always does something where the blue one is a big gamble. So I think it's Red --> Blue --> Black --> Green --> White

Lol big monsters probably useless in legacy the blue one is laregely more powerfull than the others, are they taunting the anti blue community?

~Silent Sentinel is the only one that might see play in legacy. Returning an enchantment from the grave to play is pretty sexy. Even at that its not very good. Its overcosted and in legacy would require reanimator with additional set up. after some thought this set seems pretty terrible.

I'll add that spring leaf drum is still the best card in the set so far.

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Originally Posted by apple713

I'll add that spring leaf drum is still the best card in the set so far.

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That's not hard with 7% of the set spoiled.

Nefarious Burn at least somewhat tries to hide the "double the mana cost and effect"-thing that has been going on lately. Would it haven been broken to hit players? It costs tripple R, and for a rare, they could have upped the powerlevel quite a bit. It's not like Lava Axe was broken.

The white sentinel is the best. Could be played in some moat stompy or stax IF the mana cost was 5 or less. This way none of them might get play besides reanimation decks...

Lets see the rest of the set.

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Originally Posted by joretapo

Lol big monsters probably useless in legacy the blue one is laregely more powerfull than the others, are they taunting the anti blue community?

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Seriously, these are prerelease promo's this is sealed not legacy. None of these cards are playabel in legacy, no cards that cost 5 or more and that not immediatly win the game once they hit play are playabel in legacy (batterskull costs 2)

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Originally Posted by Barook

That's not hard with 7% of the set spoiled.

Nefarious Burn at least somewhat tries to hide the "double the mana cost and effect"-thing that has been going on lately. Would it haven been broken to hit players? It costs tripple R, and for a rare, they could have upped the powerlevel quite a bit. It's not like Lava Axe was broken.

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Yeah, I thought it was a real shame that this spell says "target creature or planeswalker". 5 to the face for 4 is just too good, apparently?

I'm impelled to rehash ye olde "planeswalkers and burn spells are fucking stupid" monologue… but I'll skip the preamble and just say that it is going to generate an amount of RTFC now whenever there's a burn spell if they make a habit of printing burn that applies directly to the planeswalker. They can't print too many of those before they start wondering wtf all those burn redirection rules are actually there for, amirite?

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Originally Posted by apple713

~Silent Sentinel is the only one that might see play in legacy. Returning an enchantment from the grave to play is pretty sexy. Even at that its not very good. Its overcosted and in legacy would require reanimator with additional set up. after some thought this set seems pretty terrible.

I'll add that spring leaf drum is still the best card in the set so far.

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Lol after like 5 cards!? Really?!
And especially after the spoiler of promos, which are notably underpowered to not spoil the prerelease and such events...

- L

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Originally Posted by TsumiBand

I'm impelled to rehash ye olde "planeswalkers and burn spells are fucking stupid" monologue… but I'll skip the preamble and just say that it is going to generate an amount of RTFC now whenever there's a burn spell if they make a habit of printing burn that applies directly to the planeswalker. They can't print too many of those before they start wondering wtf all those burn redirection rules are actually there for, amirite?

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And they can't even errata old burn spells to target planeswalkers because due interactions which make them untargetable.

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Originally Posted by Barook

And they can't even errata old burn spells to target planeswalkers because due interactions which make them untargetable.

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That's fine, they can totally print

Bolt Two
Sorcery :r:

Bolt Two deals 3 damage to target creature, planeswalker or player.

Arguably this is not 'better' than Chain Lightning. There are precious few times when a dedicated burn deck does not consider Chain Lightning's 'drawback' a boon. Ask a Red Mage how they enjoy throwing Chain Lightning back in their opponent's face without losing cards. But there are a ton of intangibles to consider as well, and I know that just uprooting a bunch of rules can be as careless as creating them willy-nilly.

It does begin to beg the question though -- "why does old burn work so much different than this new burn spell" or "why does targeting a creature or a planeswalker with a burn spell have no special rules, but burning a player has all these redirection rules". It really does feel like the only thing they're waiting for is a richer set of tools to supplant the current kludge.

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Originally Posted by TsumiBand

That's fine, they can totally print

Bolt Two
Sorcery :r:

Bolt Two deals 3 damage to target creature, planeswalker or player.

Arguably this is not 'better' than Chain Lightning. There are precious few times when a dedicated burn deck does not consider Chain Lightning's 'drawback' a boon. Ask a Red Mage how they enjoy throwing Chain Lightning back in their opponent's face without losing cards. But there are a ton of intangibles to consider as well, and I know that just uprooting a bunch of rules can be as careless as creating them willy-nilly.

It does begin to beg the question though -- "why does old burn work so much different than this new burn spell" or "why does targeting a creature or a planeswalker with a burn spell have no special rules, but burning a player has all these redirection rules". It really does feel like the only thing they're waiting for is a richer set of tools to supplant the current kludge.

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Sure, they could print that, but since it can already damage players, there's no point to include Planeswalkers under the current rules. Maybe if they abolished the current redirection rule, but that would make red suck even more as a color and Planeswalkers even stronger.

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Originally Posted by Barook

Sure, they could print that, but since it can already damage players, there's no point to include Planeswalkers under the current rules. Maybe if they abolished the current redirection rule, but that would make red suck even more as a color and Planeswalkers even stronger.

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I'm not talking about 'current rules'. I'm imagining some weird 'in-between' place where they have this collection of burn/other spells that target planeswalkers explicitly, so that by the time they launch a new block which starts the trend of offering new burn spells (Bolt 2.0, followed closely by Shock 2.0, Volcanic Hammer, and so on and so forth, in different blocks or m-something Core Sets, whatever), there is existing Red jank to try and mind the gap for a brief period while new-burn comes trickling in. In fact, according to the BotG spoiler, that new burn is already trickling in, so… yeah.

Look, I understand the arguments against making a change for change's sake when we have a working model for burn redirection to include a card type that was never a consideration when 99% of the burn spells in the game were already printed. And I'm legit not trying to turn the thread into a bitchfest about how planeswalkers are or aren't a giant monkey-patch into the game's previous set of permanents and methods for interacting with other cards. However - and this is of course an opinion, so take it however you like - IMO it's a poor practice to start introducing these spells (damaging spells in particular) that all have different methods for dealing with the same permanents. The fact that Lightning Bolt AND NewBurnSpell interact with planeswalkers - but one is explicit and the other is implicit - is exactly the kind of rules garbage that WotC tries to get rid of lately.

There are two sets of cards for two sets of rules to accomplish the same game action - I'm not talking about "everything is a Time Walk" here, I'm talking about literally casting a red burn spell that deals damage to a planeswalker as part of the spell's actual resolution and rules text. The only reason to even print this card in this way is to introduce the possibility of seeing more burn spells that damage one or more targets but exclude a particular kind. You can't print "[this] deals damage to target player or planeswalker" under the current rules, not because it isn't allowed, but because the rules of the game currently make that a really subversive card to print. For example, giving your permanents shroud becomes meaningless against such a card, under the current rules. Take the rule away, and this card has limited potential to be okay.

In fact -- take the rule away, and now change "target" to "each"! That card should never exist under the current rules because redirection makes it super good against players with walkers, and there isn't even actually a good way to print that card under the current rules without breaking a lot of things or having a shitpot of convoluted text.

So yeah, I mean… again I don't want to derail here, but look at the most recent series of blocks. There are more damage prevention spells that just say "permanent" instead of "creature or player". There are "destroy" spells which target planeswalkers. There's going to be a burn spell that excludes players in favor of planeswalkers. IIRC they weren't even going to print Dreadbore when 'walkers originally came out because they built all these goofy rules up around them, so why bother with targeting them at all? Now I can just Dreadbore a motherfucker, which to me feels like the question of "why bother" is now being applied in reverse internally. I mean given enough cards and time, at some point someone will look at Gatherer and go "there are like 27 different Red spells that target planeswalkers, and we have all these shitty rules on file to fix… what problem, exactly?"

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Originally Posted by Jitse

I don't agree, I think the white one is clearly the worst. The green one is probably a lot better then you give it credit for a 6 costing 12/12 is big. the black one is the most powerful but also the most expensive the red one is better then the blue since they both need to attack to do something but the red one attacks for more and always does something where the blue one is a big gamble. So I think it's Red --> Blue --> Black --> Green --> White

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The green one is a vanilla 12/12, though, and it's only a 12/12 if your opponent lets it be a 12/12. Actually good cards with Punisher-type mechanics have historically given you insane card advantage and/or allowed you to make some decisions to mitigate those of your opponent (see: Gifts, FoF). This card doesn't do either of those things.

Reading the red one again, it actually is better than I gave it credit for. The problem is that red in Theros Sealed is painfully mediocre. Maybe Born of the Gods changes that, but my suspicion is it doesn't, so in that case I think the blue promo edges it out for being in a stronger overall color.

EDIT: I sure hope there's more mechanics in this set than Tribute and whatever Inspiration is supposed to be (my guess is that the relevant bit is making other permanents enchantments for whatever reason). If not, I'm calling it now: Bad Set in a Row #5.

The Green one is Not Great if your opponent has a creature that doesn't give a shit whether or not it fights anything. I'm not sure when a vanilla 6/6 for 6 became "not great", but there it is; if they have no reason to pay Tribute, it's pretty much guaranteed to be a very expensive chump blocker.

Little kids will eff up the Red one because no one ever seems to activate abilities/play spells before they pass priority for blockers. :/

Blue Sphinx is a weird S&T that works with untapping things? Hm.

It's all pretty EDH-y right now. Eh.

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Originally Posted by TsumiBand

I'm not sure when a vanilla 6/6 for 6 became "not great", but there it is;

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A vanilla six mana creature of just about any size is pretty meh.

Crap, I'm starting to hate the PWs and the rules associated with them more and more and more. I guess time will come when I may throw my Lightning Bolts into garbage can because they won't hurt PWs anymore.
I'd love if Pws were never made. Or, if at least they made them with shroud (cause they're mighty PWs hiding in mist of their knowledge and powaful magick and stuff), so only the creatures may eat them because reasons why powaful magick and hiding in the mist don't work on creatures.
Wow, this game sucks.

EDIT: Otoh, maybe this is the first step before removing the rules' garbage and errating the burn that it targets the PWs. Idk...

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Originally Posted by TsumiBand

The Green one is Not Great if your opponent has a creature that doesn't give a shit whether or not it fights anything. I'm not sure when a vanilla 6/6 for 6 became "not great", but there it is; if they have no reason to pay Tribute, it's pretty much guaranteed to be a very expensive chump blocker.

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In this block, a 6/6 that fights something is not guaranteed to survive. Theros has several commons that will kill this thing in a fight, especially once we count creatures that have gone Monstrous. Bestow also makes this guy worse: even if you murder their primary guy, then still end up with the Bestow guy, and it's a toss-up whether your Hydra will survive or not. But if they have a dude that you can outright kill with the Hydra, and that dude is important enough, they just give you the 12/12 and chump it for a while. Bestow helps quite a bit with that plan as well.

The problem with this mechanic - and I say this without even seeing more cards with it, because it's kind of baked in to the mechanic - is that it's yet another Way to Make Big Dudes in a block that already has Bestow and Monstrous and Heroic. That Tribute is a Punisher mechanic just guarantees it'll be the worst iteration of Making Big Dudes in a block that didn't really need more ways to make derpy monsters derpier.

The Derp - 7 r/w/g/u/b
Legendary Enchantment Artifact Creature Planeswalker - Nicol Bolas God
Loyalty: 7
Say "herp": ~ gets +3/+2 until end of phase. If this is the fourth time you've activated this ability this turn, opponent may kick you in the balls. If opponent does, sacrifice all permanents you control.
0/4

http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/attac...7&d=1389589349

Yet another shitty Bob variant - hooray! :rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by Barook

http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/attac...7&d=1389589349

Yet another shitty Bob variant - hooray! :rolleyes:

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At least its possible to combine with Springleaf Drum :D

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Originally Posted by Rizso

At least its possible to combine with Springleaf Drum :D

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You can combine regular Bob with Springleaf Drum too. In fact, you don't even need Springleaf Drum to get value out of regular Bob.

I'm hoping there's some interesting cards in this set somewhere - today's previews don't contain any, and the block mechanics don't suggest there will be any - but even if there are a handful of sweet cards, we're just on the level of Dragon's Maze: an overall bad set with a few cool things in it. I kind of figured that would be the case given how committed this block is to creatures, but Christ, are a bad Punisher mechanic and an untap trigger the best they could come up with? Either Magic is running out of actual design space or this block represents some serious teething issues on the part of the new Design team members.

I think Pain Seer will mostly be used as a poor-man's-Confdant in modern.

I don't think there's much to say about it in legacy unless someone finds a [good] way to make it tap without attacking or untap multiple times in a turn.

I think there's potential for it to get played in Vintage. Blockers are less common and it can be 'turned off' when you're low on life or taking infinite turns but trying not to die.

A better than blood scrivenger. I kinda like it. Ral Zarek best friend

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Originally Posted by Megadeus

A better than blood scrivenger. I kinda like it. Ral Zarek best friend

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People are hyping this guy for Standard with Hidden Strings and Zarek, but at that point you're just making a bad Underworld Connections. I think Pain Seer will get tested in the WB Human Aggro deck, but I don't think there's anywhere else for him that isn't already running the vastly superior Connections.

Maybe if there's a BR Aggro deck or something, he'll get played there.

As it is, this looks like the set's designated Card to Dump ASAP.

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Originally Posted by Megadeus

A better than blood scrivenger. I kinda like it. Ral Zarek best friend

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I was kind of thinking that too. I have this awful Rakdos deck for Modern that runs Scrivener with shit like Dangerous Wager as it's easy to cast and my hand should be damn near empty by the time I'd cast it anyway, so maybe this thing could just hop in its chair and I could quit playing "sometimes" draw spells. Or I just could keep doing it anyway, because it's just a bad deck.

The first God they spoiled seems real bad. I assume "Devotion to white and blue >= seven" means that it's white + blue symbols you control.. hard to say what hybrid mana does to the count without getting a ruling. Anyway, that particular card didn't seem very good. Not as good as the first round of Gods anyway.

Skyreaping is kind of interesting though, right? I mean.. if you're just casting Pyroclasm for flying things, it doesn't take too much Devotion to clear the skies of all flyers in the 2 - 4 toughness range. I dunno.

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Originally Posted by TsumiBand

The first God they spoiled seems real bad. I assume "Devotion to white and blue >= seven" means that it's white + blue symbols you control.. hard to say what hybrid mana does to the count without getting a ruling. Anyway, that particular card didn't seem very good. Not as good as the first round of Gods anyway.

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Originally Posted by WotC

Hybrid mana symbols such as [U/W] Mana count toward both their colors but aren't counted twice.

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SOURCE

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Originally Posted by thecrav

I think Pain Seer will mostly be used as a poor-man's-Confdant in modern.

I don't think there's much to say about it in legacy unless someone finds a [good] way to make it tap without attacking or untap multiple times in a turn.

I think there's potential for it to get played in Vintage. Blockers are less common and it can be 'turned off' when you're low on life or taking infinite turns but trying not to die.

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The problem with Seer is less the need to attack than the fact that you're skipping your first draw.

If you drew on your first turn it might well have been viable for very aggressive Jund builds. Pushing past DRS and 1/xes in general is big.

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Originally Posted by Nihil Credo

The problem with Seer is less the need to attack than the fact that you're skipping your first draw.

If you drew on your first turn it might well have been viable for very aggressive Jund builds. Pushing past DRS and 1/xes in general is big.

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This creature rewards being already far ahead on board, which is a plain stupid game design.

http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/attac...8&d=1389589690

Really Wizards? Did a card that basically says "All your creatures are unblockable*" really need to be at Uncommon?

I know, I know, it dies to removal, but it's still an annoyingly swingy card in Sealed/Draft.

*Unless the opponent has Reachers.

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Originally Posted by Jamaican Zombie Legend

http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/attac...8&d=1389589690

Really Wizards? Did a card that basically says "All your creatures are unblockable*" really need to be at Uncommon?

I know, I know, it dies to removal, but it's still an annoyingly swingy card in Sealed/Draft.

*Unless the opponent has Reachers.

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It's 6 mana ... c'mon pal

New Bob is bad Bob.

On the other hand, Bob is ridiculous and you can almost run eight, now. If you wanted. So that's a thing for like... I don't know. Dead guy ale? And such?

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Originally Posted by Worldslayer

New Bob is bad Bob.

On the other hand, Bob is ridiculous and you can almost run eight, now. If you wanted. So that's a thing for like... I don't know. Dead guy ale? And such?

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I was thinking the same thing, while it's not as good there is always the chance that hitting a critical mass of any one card effect makes a deck playable.

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Originally Posted by Lemnear

It's 6 mana ... c'mon pal

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Six mana is worth it in Theros Limited for a mini-Praetor.

I don't get why they're enchantments, though. You could remove the enchantment type from that card and it would make just as much sense. Weren't the enchantment creatures supposed to justify their enchantment-ness by, well, feeling like enchantments? The Bestow guys at least kind of get there because they can be auras as well, but I was pretty stumped at the beginning of the block as to where else they could go that would fulfill MaRo's dictum that enchantment creatures need to feel like creatures and enchantments. It looks like they didn't figure it out.

But I might be expecting too much from a set where the major selling points are a Punisher mechanic, an untap trigger, and Bestow creatures not having square stats anymore.

No, the new bob is NOT terrible. The new bob has the chance to actually provide value THE TURN HE HITS THE TABLE.

Bob is better, obviously, as he doesn't take any work (I'll just casually have my 2/1 wall that cannot block or attack into anything) to draw extra cards, but Pain Seer is fine too.

At least you can stop the lifeloss from Pain Seer unlike Dark Confidant if you are running low on life

I forgot about underworld connections being a thing. Not sure if any cards that untap creatures are worth running just to draw an extra card. Nothing I can think of anyway.