Shadows over innstrad cards here

Morphis

We are discussing already the set on Facebook group.
Is would be unfair for those not in the group to be excluded so here it is the card list: https://d3go.com/mtgpq-card-list-shadow ... innistrad/

It was just discovered casually by a member of the group.

(thanks jackburton)

Coconut99

Edit: Some interesting stuff here, for sure. As long as my draws don't suck, at least, heh.

Diregraf Colossus, From Under the Floorboards, and Ever After look to be a nice set-up for a zombie-based deck.

This may be a current mechanic and I just happen to not have anything that triggers it, but how does something like Ghoulsteed work, with "If this creature was Destroyed this game, Discard 2 cards and return this creature to the battlefield." If you don't have 2 cards in your hand, or all your cards are Madness cards and so un-Discardable, will these cards still return to the battlefield, or do you have to meet the requirements (Landfall Black in this case) AND have at least that many discardable cards in your hand?

Also, Goldnight Castigator plus the new Enraged game mechanic (or whatever it was called...the double-damage-after-5-rounds games)...we think they will be/cause 4x damage?

And Transform mechanic with reinforced cards...will the Transformed card be Reinforced, or is it going to lose all the Reinforcements? (I'd expect the former, but at this point, the latter may very well happen if only as a bug...)

Curiouser and curiouser...given the delay until new PWs come out and become buyable with crystals, I may end up buying a BB of the new set just to speed along the collection and hopefully nab a good number of Rares (and maybe a Mythic or two).

rob443

Seems like some of the werewolf cards are wrongfully listed with mana cost "1".

Also wondering how to see the transformed versions.

Coconut99

rob443 wrote:

Seems like some of the werewolf cards are wrongfully listed with mana cost "1".

Also wondering how to see the transformed versions.

Those are the Transformed versions, I'd think. There's a sun and moon icon, one is probably the Transformed version of another. The page just doesn't tell what, but some are obvious (i.e., Archangel Avacyn -> Avacyn, The Purifier). All the moon icon cards have a mana cost of 1, probably because they can't be 0.

madwren

rob443 wrote:

Seems like some of the werewolf cards are wrongfully listed with mana cost "1".

Also wondering how to see the transformed versions.

The transformed versions are shown in the card list.

Here's an easy way to figure out which card goes with what:

http://magic.wizards.com/en/content/sha ... trad-cards

Click on "double face".

Rootbreaker

I kind of hate how they print so many horrible cards and a handful of preposterously powerful cards with high rarity.

On the other hand, I really enjoy that they take completely unplayable magic cards and turn them into great magic puzzle quest cards.

Coconut99

Heh...I like the Skin Shredder entry...

Morphis

Coconut99 wrote:

Hmm...other than Mythics, I'm kinda "meh" on a lot of these.

Uhm.... Sorry?

Think you need to read again most cards...
I'll list some:

Avacyn judgement: 4 times(repeat three times) 2 damage to target creature or pwalker. 8 damage split almost as you like for 9 mana. Madness 3 for occasional discount(or consistent if you include self discards).

Corrupted Grafstone: think almost any Koth will include this. Can be considered for non green landfall decks.


Fevered vision: turn one cast this and it will likely deal like 20 damage at least in the battle(unless the match ends pretty fast). Think it is worth 6 mana...

From under the floorboards: think u read zombie and stopped there.
"Ok it is good for zombie decks".
Cause for non zombie decks a 6/6 creature that heal 3 and has also madness three is pretty bad.... :O

Haunted cloak: haste, trample and vigilance for only one mana... Not good enough?

Inner struggle: I've read somewhere that if you deal damage to a creature equal to its toughness it should die unless has some special ability... Am I wrong?

Silverstrike: do not like Gideon reproach cause it can not kill big creature? No problem now you can AND heal at the same time!

To the slaughter: so killing a creature for 5 was good but I do not need those damn void gems! Ok what about some chance to deal TEN damage instead?

That's all non mythics(I think) and do not include transform creatures cause it is not easy right now to link the two versions.

To me overall the power creep is evident.

MTG_Mage

Grotesque Mutation B(C)
Uncaged Fury R(C)*
Stitched Mangler U(C)*
True-Faith Censer C(C)*

Lightning Axe R(U)
Inner Struggle R(U)***
Always Watching W(U)
Creeping Dread B(U)
Weirding Wood G(U)
Silverstrike W(U)

Anguished Unmaking BW(R)*
Altered Ego GU(R)
From Under the Floorboards B(R)
To the Slaughter B(R)
Declaration in Stone W(R)
Corrupted Grafstone C(R)
Haunted Cloak C(R)*

Odric, Lunarch Marshal W(M)
Descend upon the Sinful W(M)*
Olivia, Mobilized for War BR(M)
Ulvenwald Hydra G(M)


so these are the cards that made me go wow, and if it has a * beside it it is a must have, which there are 3 common, 1 uncommon, 2 rare, 1 mythic.

I am most excited about haunted cloak as that is for all colors and grants a ton of stuff.
Stiched mangler is guaranteed to be very annoying and powerful,
and descend upon the sinful is a white crush of tentacles.
white is now the strongest color and has best removal!

inner struggle has a typo, should say power instead of toughness because as it is now it is super OP and is 6mana destroy target creature for red!

madwren

To that list I'd add these great cards:
Call the Bloodline - Black Unc - lifelink tokens!
Cryptolith Rite - Green Rare - immediately over Fertile Ground in my Garruk deck
Drownyard Temple - Colorless Rare - great accelerant
feverd visions - Blue/Red Rare - draw and damage.
harness the storm - Red Myth - gotta be a deck tp break this sonewhere
avacyn's judgment - Red Rare - custom damage
Devil's Playground - Red Rare - scales well, great to take down defenders up to 8 toughness for cheap
Survive the NIght - White Com - replaces Enshrouding Mist
Welcome to the Fold - Blue Rare - another Exert Influence, will get most creatures

Angel of Deliverance - White Myth - destroys creatures every round if you have delirium, and isn't easily killed
Thing in the Ice/Awoken Horror Blue Myth - easy-to-trigger board clear
Crow of Dark Tidings - black common - underrated gem converter
Hanweir Militia Captain/Westvale Cult Leader - White Rare - could power up fast, like warleader
Mindwrack Demon - black mythic - black power and speed on display
Startled Awake/Persistent Nightmare - blue mythic - wow mana

Jazzpha

All these zombies are really, really making me wish I had Kalitas. Alas.

Super excited to open some big boxes and see what comes out! Also looking forward to seeing what people do with Nahiri-- I'd love to be proven wrong about my initial lukewarm impressions.

Dodecapod

Thanks for the heads up about the new cards; looks like there are going to be a lot of powerful options in this set, and possibly some new tribal archetypes emerging for humans, spirits, zombies, and/or werewolves. Many of the cards below have already been mentioned by others, but as a first impression, these look like some of the potential highlights for various formats to me:

Nodes of Power/PvE

Anguished Unmaking - The efficient support removal that mono-black and mono-white decks have desperately needed.
Archangel Avacyn/Avacyn, the Purifier - Everything this card does is amazing, and it looks undercosted by about 4-7 mana at first glance.
Descend Upon the Sinful - The cheapest guaranteed board wipe yet, and if that's not enough, Avacyn can even be used on the same turn to prevent your creatures from dying if enemies with menace or unblockable are ever a problem (obviously this "combo" isn't the most mana-efficient way to kill most creature lineups, but it's still one more broken thing Avacyn can do to put its owner ahead on cards and tempo).

Together, these could push Gideon Z (who I tend to think has a slight edge over Ajani in most cases) to become one of the most powerful all-purpose planeswalkers alongside Koth and Kiora. He now has most of the tools to build a control deck along the lines of the blue Drowner of Hope/Crush of Tentacles decks that often wreak havoc in NoP already, with Alhammarret's Archive or Tamiyo's Journal filling in for Prism Array. Perhaps a sample list could look something like this:

Archangel Avacyn
Veteran Warleader
Reflector Mage/Kor Entanglers
Anguished Unmaking
Descend Upon the Sinful
Smite the Monstrous
Encircling Fissure
Alhammarret's Archive/Tamiyo's Journal
Shrine of the Forsaken Gods
Oath of Gideon/Lantern Scout/miscellaneous

This kind of deck (minus the Warleader/Ally engine) might also be ideally suited for Nahiri's strengths, depending on how the mana gains and ability costs turn out, as white's main weakness right now is probably the inability to draw extra cards as efficiently as blue, green, and black, and to answer the Drowner/Crush matchup with large sporadic bursts of damage without putting itself too far behind when the next board wipe or Exert Influence hits.

Quick Battle

Devil's Playground - This reminds me a little of Flametongue Kavu from way back in paper MtG's Invasion block, in the sense that neither of its functions are especially exciting individually, but by combining average removal and an average creature, the card becomes a very solid all-around option that's likely to gain some kind of tempo, card, or mana advantage almost every time it's played.

Inner Struggle and Uncaged Fury - These will be great easier-to-attain alternatives to Exquisite Firecraft and Ravaging Blaze for newer players who want to branch out quickly from Origins packs instead of chasing rares, and might even be strong enough to replace some of the default red spells in top-tier decks as well.

Goldnight Castigator - This looks amazing for QB in general, and tailor-made for Koth in particular; the drawback will be negligible in many games, and in the meantime it's essentially an Akoum Firebird at half the cost, which makes it perfect for stacking on top of Mirrorpool with a single red match.

Every other color has some interesting new tools to work with too, but I tend to think red is and will remain the best color for churning out maximum wins/hour in most cases, even if Kiora and now one or more white planeswalkers might wind up having a slight edge in win rate at almost the same speed in the long run.

Miscellaneous

Behold the Beyond and Seasons Past - While each can simply be used for the base effects as (arguable) upgrades over Painful Truths and Animist's Awakening respectively, they can also chain into other copies of themselves very efficiently in the right deck, so it's possible that one or both could be part of the next Prism Array/pre-nerf Awakening engine waiting to happen.

Fevered Visions - This might not be strong enough to edge out Jori En for the same role in most red decks, but it could shine as a new kill condition alongside Thopter Spy Network for Tezzeret, as many of those decks already rely heavily on Sphinx's Tutelage to establish and maintain a soft lock.

Harness the Storm - Depending on how the timing works, this could potentially generate long loops of spells like Devour in Flames or Exquisite Firecraft by returning one after the other is cast, generating a cascade in order to cast the returned spell, returning the original spell and generating another cascade, and so on, repeating the cycle several times each turn before the gem destruction eventually fails to produce additional mana. That said, it might ultimately prove to be too inconsistent to justify building a deck around, or alternatively the timing could turn out to work in such a way that the cycle will end each turn after only one loop.

Westvale Abbey/Ormendahl and Thing in the Ice/Awoken Horror - These look like a lot of fun, if not necessarily competitive; while the restrictions are strict enough that it doesn't seem easy to trigger their transformations reliably, building elaborate combo decks to make the most out of awkward cards like these could lead to some great war stories if we ever get the option to issue private challenges, organize house rules tournaments, or something similar in the future.

All in all, this looks like a very interesting set, and could shake up the existing meta significantly once some of the mythics start to trickle into everyone's collections; while in an ideal world I'd tend to prefer slightly less aggressive powercreep among top-tier cards (especially in terms of mana costs), many of the effects themselves are unique compared to what we've seen up to this point, so hopefully we'll wind up with a lot of new variations and archetypes emerging in the weeks to come, to shake up the Kiora/Koth stranglehold once coalitions are released and begin to gather steam.

Morphis

Looking at inner struggle original card yea that is most likely a typo.
If it is fixed to deal damage based on attack will still be almost as useful since there are very few creatures righ now with of killing with less attack than toughness(Drana and dwynen elf the only ones that come to mind right now).

Coconut99

Weird triple posting when I was editing...

Coconut99

Weird triple posting when I was editing...

Coconut99

Coconut99 wrote:

Morphis wrote:

Coconut99 wrote:

Hmm...other than Mythics, I'm kinda "meh" on a lot of these.

Uhm.... Sorry?

Think you need to read again most cards...

Yeah I know, I was only about a quarter to a third of the way through them when I said that...I'll admit they got better going through the rest, heh.

Bit surprised at the lack of Ally cards, though. That mechanic basically just came and went with BFZ/Oath, and if future releases don't include any, it'll be hard for latecomers to make use of it as those cards get lost in the greater depth of inventory.

From under the floorboards: think u read zombie and stopped there.
"Ok it is good for zombie decks".
Cause for non zombie decks a 6/6 creature that heal 3 and has also madness three is pretty bad.... :O

I know it's good on it's own, I was just talking about it in terms of synergy with others.

Haunted cloak: haste, trample and vigilance for only one mana... Not good enough?

No. Clearly not. Not unless it also includes +5/+5, flying, berserker, regen 4, and lifelink. I want my mana's worth!

Inner struggle: I've read somewhere that if you deal damage to a creature equal to its toughness it should die unless has some special ability... Am I wrong?

Like I said above, that was my initial impression just a bit of the ways through, before I got to this. This will definitely be replacing my Scour.

tm00

Anything important without hexproof that can't be killed with inner struggle+chandra's or ajani's middle ability if it says toughness?

Barrelrolla

Coconut99 wrote:

Bit surprised at the lack of Ally cards, though. That mechanic basically just came and went with BFZ/Oath, and if future releases don't include any, it'll be hard for latecomers to make use of it as those cards get lost in the greater depth of inventory.

Well, that's pretty typical in Magic. Look at Devoid and Ingest for example. Many new mechanics are specific for the set. For example Madness and Delirium will not be in the next set and I highly doubt we'll be seeing Transform too. Allies were kinda specific for the BfZ set.

Rootbreaker

In paper magic and magic online though, you can buy singles, and not just as a limited time offer. It'd be really nice to have a store where you could spend crystals or runes for individual cards.

Coconut99

Barrelrolla wrote:

Coconut99 wrote:

Bit surprised at the lack of Ally cards, though. That mechanic basically just came and went with BFZ/Oath, and if future releases don't include any, it'll be hard for latecomers to make use of it as those cards get lost in the greater depth of inventory.

Well, that's pretty typical in Magic. Look at Devoid and Ingest for example. Many new mechanics are specific for the set. For example Madness and Delirium will not be in the next set and I highly doubt we'll be seeing Transform too. Allies were kinda specific for the BfZ set.

Didn't know how limited mechanics were these days. I quit paper magic back in like, 2000, and back then at least, most (not all, granted, but most) mechanics would last at least a couple sets...well, other than Slivers (off the top of my head).

Jazzpha

Coconut99 wrote:

Barrelrolla wrote:

Coconut99 wrote:

Bit surprised at the lack of Ally cards, though. That mechanic basically just came and went with BFZ/Oath, and if future releases don't include any, it'll be hard for latecomers to make use of it as those cards get lost in the greater depth of inventory.

Well, that's pretty typical in Magic. Look at Devoid and Ingest for example. Many new mechanics are specific for the set. For example Madness and Delirium will not be in the next set and I highly doubt we'll be seeing Transform too. Allies were kinda specific for the BfZ set.

Didn't know how limited mechanics were these days. I quit paper magic back in like, 2000, and back then at least, most (not all, granted, but most) mechanics would last at least a couple sets...well, other than Slivers (off the top of my head).

Yeah, I'm assuming that happened over the years due to a shift away from focusing on making persistent gameplay changes and more of a focus on thematic set identity, in order to make newer blocks exciting and sell more (as each new set of rules/interactions would shake the competitive meta up enough to become essentially required staples in top-tier decks).