Scapeshift

Brakkis

With HoU rotating out, green is left with Thunderherd Migration and Animist's Awakening as it's only converters in Standard.

The color that is all about big creatures and big ramp to play them, will have no big ramp.

Scapeshift was supposed to be that ramp card. It has huge potential in paper as a Mythic Sorcery, higher than Hour of Promise did by far. Why is it instead an uncommon in PQ with such a pittance of its power and a minor return on investment? Destroy all of my own gems to draw and fill a land that I cant play until the next turn anyway? 

It should have been a Mythic card that destroys and converts.

Enygma6

Don't forget Commune with Dinosaurs and Grow from the Ashes.  Neither is a huge gem converter, but they do exist.  Plus all the supports.  
  
A Mythic version of Scapeshift that I would have liked to see would be something along the following:
cost 15
Fetch the next Land card from your library.
Destroy all gems of your Plainswalker's colors.  Convert X gems to green where X is the number of gems that were destroyed.  

or
cost 5
stored mana 10 (15?)
Fetch the next Land card from your library.
Destroy X gems of your Plainswalker's colors.  Convert X gems to green where X is the stored mana on this card.

Unknown

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Brakkis

Storm is great, but it is not Green. Now I'm not saying Thunderherd is bad, but it pales to greens mythic converters.

Scapeshift is literally a mythic green that plays lands (potentially, a lot of lands). I'm baffled that they converted it to an uncommon in PQ.

DumasAG

Brakkis said:

Storm is great, but it is not Green. Now I'm not saying Thunderherd is bad, but it pales to greens mythic converters.

Scapeshift is literally a mythic green that plays lands (potentially, a lot of lands). I'm baffled that they converted it to an uncommon in PQ.

I got the sense they're trying to buff up lands, and green appears to be the primary color for "cares about lands" cards. Maybe the idea is less big spell conversion, more land conversion?

Tilwin90

Wait, don't you get to play the land immediately, seeing how it's fetched in the middle of your casting phase? (oh lol, can't believe I just invented an MTGPQ phase)

DumasAG

Tilwin90 said:

Wait, don't you get to play the land immediately, seeing how it's fetched in the middle of your casting phase? (oh lol, can't believe I just invented an MTGPQ phase)

Yes, you should be able to cast it immediately.

madwren

Early returns on Scapeshift indicate that it is indeed pretty useless.  If you have a negative gem board state, it's a waste of 11 mana.

Tilwin90

It forces you to have lands in your deck which is even more **** seeing how not all lands are consistently marked as... lands. (can't pair it with the IXN flip lands or even Nissa's Pilgrimage which is still a huge thing in green)

Mburn7

Tilwin90 said:

It forces you to have lands in your deck which is even more tinykitty seeing how not all lands are consistently marked as... lands. (can't pair it with the IXN flip lands or even Nissa's Pilgrimage which is still a huge thing in green)

The flip lands aren't lands until they flip (wow, great sentence), so they can't be fetched.  And Nissa's Pilgrimage is a sorcery in paper, which is why it isn't a land in PQ.  Just because it converts gems doesn't mean its a land.

Tilwin90

Mburn7 said:

Tilwin90 said:

It forces you to have lands in your deck which is even more tinykitty seeing how not all lands are consistently marked as... lands. (can't pair it with the IXN flip lands or even Nissa's Pilgrimage which is still a huge thing in green)

The flip lands aren't lands until they flip (wow, great sentence), so they can't be fetched.  And Nissa's Pilgrimage is a sorcery in paper, which is why it isn't a land in PQ.  Just because it converts gems doesn't mean its a land.

I am aware of this. It simply feels slightly non-intuitive, not to mention these are the gem changers of choice for people nowadays. Pure translation from paper is not always possible and then when certain characteristics are simply copied, yeah, we end up into this confusing land (pun intended).

Mburn7

Tilwin90 said:

Mburn7 said:

Tilwin90 said:

It forces you to have lands in your deck which is even more tinykitty seeing how not all lands are consistently marked as... lands. (can't pair it with the IXN flip lands or even Nissa's Pilgrimage which is still a huge thing in green)

The flip lands aren't lands until they flip (wow, great sentence), so they can't be fetched.  And Nissa's Pilgrimage is a sorcery in paper, which is why it isn't a land in PQ.  Just because it converts gems doesn't mean its a land.

I am aware of this. It simply feels slightly non-intuitive, not to mention these are the gem changers of choice for people nowadays. Pure translation from paper is not always possible and then when certain characteristics are simply copied, yeah, we end up into this confusing land (pun intended).

Nissa's Pilgrimage I definitely agree feels like a land, and I always forget it isn't.  The flips are a little more easy to understand why they aren't, although it would be nice if they didn't show up when you filter by "land" to avoid confusion.

The issue (I believe) is that the devs are being kept on a somewhat short leash when it comes to card design.  They may not be able to add or change a card's subtype when porting it into PQ.  I don't know this for a fact, but it would make sense based on what I have heard about how strict WoTC is with their licensing.