Spiraling Out of Control

I don’t know if I pointed out, but there’s another Vintage tournament in Michigan (about an hour and a half from Sandusky, I would guess) on the Sunday after the Gamers Lounge Volcano Tourney. Based on what I’m seeing preview-wise, though, I’m still going to the Time Spiral prerelease.

Holy crap.

Who was the head designer on this? Oh, right.

Rosewater. My arch-nemesis.

Okay, not really. I mean, I guess I’d actually have to know the guy before he can be my arch-nemesis. But still… [shakes fist menacingly]

Have you seen any of these? If you frequent the Magic: the Gathering website, you’ve at least seen the one, in the Arcana from Wednesday. You may not have seen that they’re bringing back Storm as a mechanic, and they’ve got uncounterable spells that make all of your other spells uncounterable as well.

Holy crap.

Rosewater!

Lotus Bloom
Artifact
Suspend 3 – 0 (Rather than play this card from your hand, pay 0 and remove it from the game with three time counters on it. At the beginning of your upkeep, remove a time counter. When you remove the last, play it without paying its mana cost.)
T, Sacrifice Lotus Bloom: Add three mana of any one color to your mana pool.

Is this any good? Well, frankly, I don’t think so. I mean, don’t get me wrong, the power level is awesome, but it still got that jank factor that will make it debatable. Lotus Bloom welds nicely (not as nicely as Gilded Lotus, though), makes a good Tinker target (not as good as actual Lotus or even LED in lots of cases), and makes more mana than it costs to play. That’s a solid card, but it’s not horribly broken. You can’t even Tinker or Welder it out until turn four. Don’t get me wrong, it’ll still be restricted, but it won’t reformat all of Vintage or anything.

First of all, Lotus Bloom is terrible in straight-up combo. Combo wants to win now, not on turn four. Likewise decks that want their control pieces on the board (e.g. Fish and Stax) don’t want to wait until turn four for the rewards because by then it’s too late. This card will shine in decks like Gifts and Slaver, and that’s why it will be restricted almost immediately. Gifts can drop this turn one, protect it, and then use it turn four to either get more cards for the win or to just go ahead and win with a combo (Severance-Belcher anyone?) and a fist full of cards. Slaver can use this even better by welding it in and out, and it still discards to Thirst for Knowledge.

Everyone in Standard and Extended will play four of these, though, and you’d better make sure you get one in your opening hand because otherwise you lose the game on turn four when your opponent makes seven mana first. Am I saying this will be banned in Standard? It’s possible.

What’s really interesting will be seeing how many other broken cards they reprint Suspended. The moxes could easily be Suspend 2 or 3. Ancestral Recall, Mishra’s Workshop, Berserk: all of them would be far more appropriate and fairly costed if they came out a few turns later. Well, maybe not Berserk, since that’s not really a first-turn thing anyway. Anyway, we’ll see.

Terramorphic Expanse
Land
T, Sacrifice Terramorphic Expanse: Search your library for a basic land card and put it into play tapped. Then shuffle your library.

It kind of reminds me of the Retch Lands (They’re like Fetch Lands only terrible!) from Mirage, only the comes-into-play-tapped part comes in a much better place. Seriously, this is a pretty decent mana fixer, but it’s definitely no Fetch Land. This will very much not see play in Vintage outside of the budget format, but it should be pretty common in Standard.

Unfortunately, this would seem to indicate that, if Wizards is going to print enemy-color Fetches, it won’t be in Time Spiral. If they do print them in Time Spiral, or even in the block, then that’s a whole lot of mana fixing, and Terramorphic Expanse won’t even be played in Standard.

Grapeshot
Sorcery 1R
Grapeshot deals 1 damage to target creature or player.
Storm (When you play this spell, copy it for each spell played before it this turn. You may choose new targets for the copies.)

Hey! It’s everything I wanted Scattershot to be!

Seriously, though, this will see play in all formats. Vintage can now build a storm-combo deck that uses both red and black acceleration that might have a manabase somewhat akin to that of 2-land Belcher. It reduces Storm count by ((n/2) + 1) rounded down, where n is the number of spells played before it, which means you can play it for six and have a lethal Tendrils for spell seven. I doubt that it will ever make its own combo deck (since 20 spells or two of these is a long row to hoe), but it’ll make a good Burning Wish target in both Tendrils- and Gifts-type decks and might see maindeck play in Tendrils.

The deck could start out something like this:

3x Grapeshot
3x Tendrils of Agony
4x Dark Ritual
4x Desperate Ritual
4x Rite of Flame
3x Cabal Ritual
3x Chromatic Sphere
4x Tinder Wall
4x Elvish Spirit Guide
2x Duress
1x Demonic Tutor
1x Demonic Consultation
1x Infernal Tutor
1x Burning Wish
1x Yawgmoth’s Will
1x Necropotence

4x Land Grant
2x Bayou
2x Taiga
2x Badlands
10x Artifact Accelerants

I think I just broke Vintage.

Okay, probably not (especially because I’m not sure how this is better than Meandeck Tendrils) but this could still see play. I would want to try it out at least. You know what would be really cool in this? Browbeat.

Anyway, it’s nice to know that Storm is back, I guess. Although, really, it’s a hugely powerful ability that really had almost no business being printed in the first place. If only they had made Storm more counterable. I expect we’ll see more Stifle-type effects in Time Spiral, to keep Storm in check in all formats.

Krosan Grip
Instant 2G
Split Second (As long as this spell is on the stack, players can't play spells or activated abilities that aren't mana abilities.)
Destroy target artifact or enchantment.

Is it just me, or does the Split Second ability seem somehow unfair? It’s no secret that Wizards has been hosing blue for the past few sets. Blue’s bread and butter, the counterspells, have been getting worse, and now this ability comes along and makes all of them suddenly useless. Even Time Stop, for when it absolutely positively has to be countered right now, doesn’t work on this.

Lately, there has been a lot of speculation that Wizards won’t let Counterspell (the actual one, not the generic term) rotate out of Extended, and this could be some indication that it’ll be in Time Spiral. Personally, I’d like to see it happen, but that’s just because I’m sick of having to be wary of people having Mana Leak mana open in Standard. I believe I’ve complained about this before.

It will be interesting to see what they put Split Second on. My guess is that it will just be utility spells and a couple of creatures, but there’s a lot to work with there. If they make a Split Second counterspell that costs less than four, it will almost certainly be playable. They won’t, though.

But if they did. Holy crap!

Curse you Rosewater for continuing to make cards that I have to buy!

Wizards has a habit of showing the most exciting cards of a new set, but if the average card is about as exciting as some of the other ones they’ve shown (Chronatog Totem, Coral Trickster, Kher Keep) it’ll be an awesome set. There’s a lot of Johnny potential already. I’m looking forward to seeing the other cards as they come out, and I’m definitely looking forward to the Prerelease, but after Volcanoes.