@Wrenn: Nice to see the dryad with the treefolk mechas again, but at five mana, I have trouble seeing how useful the first two abilities will be.

@13-phile: 2 mana on an alternative win con looks insane at first glance (I mean yeah Thassa's Oracle is a thing, but that is strong), but the requirments are so precise and are based on an asset that naturally depletes itself as the game goes on.

@Consider: It's better Thought Scour in any deck that isnt mill.

@Champion: Heh I like this as a play on the original

@Grasp: Eh not bad, but doesnt really strike me in any partocular way. Then again I play mostly pauper now so we have Cast Down and Terminate if willing to splash.

@Play with Fire: I love this mechanically. Strictly better than Shock, but Shock hasnt really been relevant as far as I can recall, and it is nice to see burn having some incentive to hit a player directly other than 'end game quicker'.

@Join the Dance: Why is this uncommon or multicolored? Like Gather the Townsfolk makes 5 tokens for 2 mana under certain conditions, Cenn's Enlistment can make 2 tokens for 4 mana and a card each time, and there are enough Dragon Fodder and Krenko's Comman variants to suggest that this is pretty weak. Wait ... Lingering Souls ... but these tokens dont have flying.

I see consider as a better Opt

Grasp is a common ymtc design, previously all these 1b instants have some kind of creature they can't kill like Go for the Throat

Join the dance is dragon fodder with upside. Most of the others just make two tokens once


13-phile has a harder to kill body than Azure Mage and carries a free Spellbook as well as freeing up deck slots from needing more win conditions. Perhaps the meta has changed since Jushi Apprentice dominated control mirrors in standard

Wrenn can use her +1 to help fill the graveyard which will probably be relevant here and use the 0 to make her own treefolk tokens bigger. There's always something people can do with lots of mana - remember that Avenger of Zendikar x Time Warp deck?

Wrenn is probably my favorite design for a PW in the modern era. Dude wired into a treefolk. That is oldschool M:tG fun. The abilities are niche but I could see him going into a Zillion Lands Titania EDH or such. Tatyova especially could probably do really dirty things with that +0.

Don't like how 13phile obsoletes Azure Mage (a favorite of mine). The art and flavor don't seem to go with the name. The Alternate win effect is hilarious though.

Grasp is kind of brilliant. There's always a place for 2-mana hard removal

Champion is a good take on the original. Feels like it should have been in Dark Ascension, but I guess this is kind of Dark Ascension 2.0

I like the flavor of Join the Dance, like we're going full Wicker Man, but the card itself seems kinda meh outside of limited.

@Consider: That is actually fair; I was thinking Thought Scour because of the potential to self mill, but forgot it was an instant already.

@Grasp: Pay or lose life to get some benefit has been a thing for Black since Alpha with Juzzam Dijinn (that was Alpha right? very early on at least), so being a common YMtC design before doesn't real mean much to me, especially considering Vendetta or even Anguished Unmaking. Also most of that two mana conditional removal has been intentional to help push removal for other formats without breaking limited and standard (most notably Ultimate Price in a Ravnica block, Victim of the Night in an Innistrad block, Go for the Throat in a Mirrodin block, Cast Down in Dominaria and Commander Legends, and Fatal Push in Kaladesh), so while this would be nice for say a more permanent set like Modern Horizons or a Commander product, this seems like a bad idea for Standard and Limited which couldnt even handle Heroes' Downfall--essentially instant Dreadbore for the same cost as Murder.

@Join the Dance: Thing is we have already gotten Dragon Fodder variants that are strictly better or that cost more with a lot more utility. In fact we already have Lingering Souls--which yeah was pretty much too strong that they had to ban it in Block Constructed--and Gather the Townsfolk. But aside from that, what really bothers me is why is it gold? I don't believe Standard has the mana fixing to reliably cast two colors on turn 2, I don't see any non rotating formats using this over Lingering Souls or even just something else for tokens, I don't see this even being used in Modern Humans--the one deck that might actually care about the subtype produced--because they care about actual cards with relevant effects instead going wide while going tall with Champion. Like holy crap it is as if they don't want to make something like Lingering Souls again and are doing everything to make it not so instead of just the one or two key things (namely not giving the tokens flying, though being a Sorcery does help as well).

@13-phile: Honestly I didn't know about Azure Mage, but that card seems ... eh? I mean I'm typically a BG player so my idea of drawing is putting them in a graveyard first then recurring them. However Spellbook is already a cost ability that gets stapled onto a lot already, including Reliquary Tower, Overbeing of Myth (edit: wrong card but I know this effect is basically free), etc. And yes, a 2 mana alternative win condition on a relatively efficient body does scare me, but again it's with a resource that naturally depletes itself as you play the game regardless if you are the control or the aggro. Even if you play her on turn 2 on the draw without a turn 1 play, you would then be at six out of the thirteen cards required to win. That would mean eight more turns of hoping your opponent doesnt do anything before you can win that way. Of course you could play this late game and then dump excess mana into the ability to win, but honestly if a control deck--regardless if combo-control or classic control--has reached a point where they can answer whatever you do and still spend mana on recurrable cantrip--one that's on a creature with 3 or less toughness even--then you already lost.

@Wrenn: I never played that deck or against that deck, and Im assuming it was during a Standard I never bothered with because, quite honestly, the idea of having to constantly purchase new cards just because old ones rotate out is even worse of a financial strategy than just obsoleting old cards with new cards but allowing both to be played. That tangent aside, I agree I have a very limited perspective on Wrenn's potential here within the context of a slower format--one where just getting to five mana isn't a statistical anomaly.

@My rant: I apologize if I come across as antagonistic here in regards to Grasp, Dance, and 13-phile; Grasp just seems something they should have done already but never did (unlike MH2 Damn which is something that seems genuinely innovative even after we have designed it over and over again), Dance just makes me question why it is Gold, and 13-phile ... well not really a fan of it myself, but that's also because there is no need to build around it like other alt win-cons--it's just a secondary finisher at best for control and a flashy Flagbearer otherwise.



@Flavor: I agree Wrenn is a great addition to the characters, Join the Dance is at least very flavorful, and that 13-phile misses a note here somewhere (I mean maybe it has something to do with 12 hours plus 1 extra? but there is a lot up for interpretation, and if time was a thing, why not give her a weakened Time Warp effect [the one from Lorwyn Block seems like it would have been balanced if costed appropriately] so the allusion is actually cohesive?)

@Champion: Huh ... come to think of it with all three Innistrad blocks, they've each hinted at major developments in horror fiction. 1.0 is obviously very Victorian/Gothic inspired, 2.0 definitely Lovecraftian, and 3.0 feels ... very contemporary for some reason. Like Vampires vs Werewolves hints at Underworld and Twilight undertones, but with your Wicker Man comment, I can see other tropes in these spoilers. Consider is probably a nod to Ghost Hunting as a whole, Grasp hints at the trope of lethal isolation, and even Champion goes beyond the magic/science zombie divide originally in 1.0 and gives these Zombies some sort of retributive/vengeful notions. Granted, none of that is unique to contemporary horror, but I believe all of it in one setting is a nod to it.

It's a draft uncommon signpost. It doesn't need to compete with anything else. Its role is to have a place in the GW draft deck. It's otherwise impossible to speculate what it's doing without seeing the rest of the set. Maybe there aren't other ways to generate two bodies for two mana at common or uncommon, which could be important for GW, especially if its focus is on getting three+ bodies out. Maybe it's the cheapest way to generate two bodies in the set, so it costs so the (hypothetical) white-black sacrifice deck doesn't snap it up.

Destructive Revelry is pretty generic but it's also the cheapest enchantment removal in Theros at common/uncommon, which gave RG an advantage other decks lacked.

@Signpost: Ok, I can accept that as the reason it is gold, though that makes me wonder why they didnt push it just a little more given previous token makers. Also Destructive Revelry seems like a bad example, both because it is actually used in Modern RG decks in the SB so it isnt exactly irrelevant outside of limited, and removal/hate isnt exactly enough for an archetype (though maybe it was just aggro?)

Wrenn scares me because I reallllyyyy don't like the kind of infinite mana infinite value decks where a turn 5 ramp spell is relevant.
I don't think 13phile obsoletes Azure Mage, since the mage attacks for 2 and 13phile's Spellbook and alt wincon are both trinket text. Anyways Spectral Sailor obsoletes them both.