Playing With Magic

Will we see lore with any of these cards? :3c

 

Okay so I'm slightly terrified by the last creature, with Metalcraft she only has to have three of any kind of artifact to become immune to just about everything except Worldfire. Which usually is fine, but she also reduces the cost of other artifacts, meaning that in a Myr deck you can very easily get her out on turn 3 and then on turn 4 meet the requirements for Metalcraft. In fact on turn 4 you can get out multiple Myr in the same turn, which then will be able to fuel the mana to get out something like Darksteel Forge next turn. In that case, literally the only thing that can stop a field like that is Worldfire.

 

10/10 for Monster Hunter

 

I like these cards with one exception. Tascera is really, really pointlessly terrifying. Irouk says that a Myr deck can get her out and meet her requirements on turn 4, but that's being very generous. Turn 1: Land, four Sol Rings, Tascera w/ metalcraft activated. Even within the context of an Affinity deck, it's not hard to get her out turn 2 with Mox Opal or Springleaf Drum or something. You're selling it like it's going to be a 3/3 for 5 (garbage) most of the time, but a decent artifact deck is going to have metalcraft when you have her out already.

Something that would probably help would be to make her cost colored mana; it's way too easy to ramp into her otherwise.

 

Thoughts on power level:

Ravian's abilities are super cool! The problem is that he's waaay too expensive. Compare/contrast with Ral Zarek, who can come out two turns earlier and will just score turns. My suggestion would be to make his first ability +2, so that you'll actually hit that second ability. Fyuroth is cool; I'm kinda iffy on whether he needs the "one less than" in his second ability, though. (How do you put negative one creature tokens onto the battlefield?) Eleina's my favorite, although that's more because I'm a sucker for Orzhov than anything else. I imagine the white cards in this set are going to exile your own creatures in exchange for undercosted removal, right?

Kathlyn is the most powerful card here, surprisingly: turns out fetching a forest every turn is pretty darn good. Even if you ignore her first and third abilities she's fantastic. Her first ability is relevant in the lategame too, making sure you never topdeck land. And her ultimate exists too I suppose.

 

Ravian has a very nice concept but he is far too slow to be a reliable win condition in a competitive scene. And with the exception of final ability you can always find a Planeswalker who does his job better. His first ability is a worse version of Tamiyo's. His second can be achieved by Ral Zarek, who has 2 less casting cost and the only time when his guaranteed extra turn is better than Ral Zarek's final ability is when all the coin tosses comes up tails, which has about a 3% chance of occurring. Funnily enough his final ability technically is not a "free win" because of a clause already in place due to Sorin Markov's final ability. Within the clause it is stated that even if you control an opponent you may not force them to concede or scoop. That means even after you pop him for his final you are still required to play out the entire rest of the game. So you will still have to go through all the steps on both players' turns until you can win the game normally. While the final ability makes it much easier to win the game with minimalist requirement (for example swinging a single Thrummingbird at them for 20 turns) generally it would take a long time to even get to that 20 loyalty. So that would have taken a large chunk of time and in the case of most organized games there will be a time limit for the match which potentially leaves you with not enough time to win the next games which is especially true since he's most likely to be run in a control deck.

Kathlyn is strong and in modern would be one of the most terrifying turn 1 drops. Her first two abilities can give you ridiculous card advantage, and being a turn 1 means that you will always get something out of her, in fact you will most likely get at the very least two or three turns with her alive if you can drop her turn 1. And with the shock lands it's entirely possible to run her in a three colored deck and still be able to abuse her second ability, a deck that comes to mind is Storm. With the amount of Scry and cards like Sleight of Hand in that deck paired with her you will never actually draw a single dead card. I can't say whether or not she'll be broken so it may be best to see how well she works in practice with a proxy on Cockatrice or something or other.

I have a bit of mixed feelings on Fyuroth. First I see his first ability, which allows a creature to tap for Fall of the Hammer. Normally there's no problem with that but my issue is the fact that this added effect is permanent which I'm not sure if it's intended or not. All of these kinds of effects that aren't from Enchantments, Creatures, or Artifacts are "until end of turn." Even other Planeswalker buffs (for example Elspeth, Knight-Errant's second ability or Garruk Wildspeaker's final ability) have "until end of turn" attached to them. So the question then becomes if it's allowed for buffs that have normally been "until end of turn" to last permanently then what's the difference between those and Enchantments? I think the "one less than" in his second ability is unnecessary as the tokens he makes do not have Haste which makes them far less effective. Also because he starts off with 3 loyalty the "one less than" makes his second ability near-unusable when he first comes out, which somewhat defeats the point of making him a Planeswalker because a large chunk of a Planeswalker's value comes from the fact that they generally present to the player several viable options even in their hand. Take Elspeth, Sun's Champion for example. When you play her you have the option to use her to create tokens or wipe your opponent's field of all their powerful threats. With Fyuroth making two 2/1's that don't have Haste for 5 mana is pretty weak so even though he's a Planeswalker he doesn't present nearly as much utility as other Planeswalkers do unless you really build his loyalty up.

I like Elena quite a lot for the fact that she can double up as either a token factory or a setup for the casting from exile mechanic.. Though she seems fairly slow for a 4 drop since her first ability doesn't actually interact with the board in any way nor does it give you card advantage. Her second ability is pretty good and if not for the +2 loyalty on her first ability I'd say the second flat out outclasses the first because it gives you board presence. If you already have established board presence however, I can see how she can get out of hand very quickly once you start stacking her up. She's cool.

Do take my comments/criticism with a pinch of salt. I'm mostly speaking from my own experiences so I may or may not know what I'm talking about.