I'm a bit behind schedule... I wanted to have this all wrapped up before the weekend, in time for the Prereleases. I'll try to have it wrapped up tonight if possible.
Anyway, toward that end, here's Green...
This thing can easily be a 5/5 or bigger, for only two mana. Thing is, though, it just dies to Tormod's Crypt, Bojuka Bog, or any other graveyard nuke. The lack of evasion makes in pretty worthless, despite the cost/size efficiency. It is my long-standing experience that creatures this big without Flying, Trample or some other evasion ability never, EVER connect with an opponent. This might still be played in Dredge decks, though.
This is pretty cool - an updated Creeping Mold that can now deal with Planeswalkers. They needed to make this card, but I think they should have made it BEFORE they made Beast Within, because, frankly, this is kinda dull after BW... Still, I'm sure there are some mono-Green decks out there still rocking the ol' Creeping Mold... this will replace or even supplement CM in those few decks. Everyone else will just run Beast Within.
I get what this is trying to do, and I think it will be good, but it's not fantastic. For one thing, it's basically going to be "Creatures" 90% of the time. And as long as your getting two or three cards back, at least, it's good card advantage. Still, it'd be easier to love this card if it said "card type" instead of "permanent type".
Seems okay. It's like Ezuri, but not Elf-specific. Doesn't give Trample, though, which will be a deal-breaker for some folks. Others won't care so much. Token decks actually don't need trample much because they have enough guys that blockers are usually irrelevant anyway. Seems like this guy will be playable in any deck in which Gaea's Cradle frequently taps for 8 or more mana...
A very amusing design. This is the kind of card you want to play with because it’s cool, flavorful and looks fun, but you aren’t quite sure it’s good enough. I’m probably going to try it out in a few decks and see if it works, but I don’t expect big things from it. Definitely worth pairing up with Doubling Season, though.
Interesting. Can potentially produce a lot of tokens, but an otherwise vanilla 3/4 isn’t the safest thing to be attacking with. Still, this card puts us one step closer to enabling a playable (if not exactly competitive) wolf token deck. Time to dust off those Master of the Wild Hunts and Wren’s Run Packmasters? Maybe.
Another one of those death-triggers that immediately makes me think of Kresh the Bloodbraided and/or Savra... and Hexproof is the one ability you always wish cards like this had, and they usually don't. However, all this guy does is get big, so I'm not sure he's worth four mana or the card slot... after all he's just a worse, slower version of Kresh. Someone with more experience playing Kresh can tell me: is this the card you've been waiting for all along, or is it just "meh"?
So, first off, an 8/8 Trampler for seven mana isn't bad. The fact that, when it dies, it reanimates two creatures to take it's place definitely isn't bad either. It's kinda like Wurmcoil Engine - kill it and suddenly you have two more things to deal with. Here are the parts that are bad: when this dies it self-exiles to prevent shenanigans, and it reanimates at random... I like shenanigans, so I'm not a fan of the self-exile condition, and I dislike the word "random" here, though you can control it's effects by rigging your graveyard. Kind of a lot of work to go through when you could just play Living Death or something. I think this will see some play in the format, but not widespread.
The tremendous popularity of Doubling Season practically guarantees this knock-off will be popular as well. It’s basically half a Doubling Season, and for the most part it seems to be the more relevant half. It doesn’t have the cool interaction with Planeswalkers, or +1/+1 counters, but it’s pretty much a lock that this will be a staple for token decks of all breeds, as well as Riku decks.
There are definitely decks out there that can easily set this card up, but is the payoff going to be worth it? I don’t see it being a huge bomb, but it could wind up as a metagame choice, acting as a potential foil for a certain deck giving you trouble. Kaalia, maybe? I dunno. Probably not going to see a lot of play.
Stupid name; cool card. Another potential inclusion for Dredge and Mimeoplasm decks, but not an auto-include. Would be pretty weak without Trample, but since it does have it, I think it will be fairly playable.
Probably has the best chance at being playable in Ghave decks. I really wish it had Blue in it's Flashback cost, so it'd be playable in Animar decks instead. I don't really see it being worth a card-slot even in Ghave, though. Doesn't have the "oomph" needed for most EDH cards.
WTF? I don’t even know what to make of this card. So weird. I’m not even going to try to predict what this one will do in the format. By itself, it probably won’t be very good at all, but I have a feeling there are some amusing tricks to pull off that will have the Johnnies of the format cackling like mad scientists.
This is such a mediocre imitation of Eternal Witness it's laughable that it even tries. Because it bears the faintest echoes of E. Witness, I expect some players to give this a shot as well. Witness is so damn good that even a "bad Witness" can still be good, right? Well, no, not in this case.
Interesting, but deceptively hard to use. The first thing I thought of was Ghave… but then I realized that if I drop this guy, then I am forced to re-cast Ghave afterward, Ghave comes into play as a copy of this guy… meaning he no longer has the ability to pump out tokens. Using him alongside creatures that make tokens is counterproductive. He’s far better with non-Creatures that make tokens. Think Kher Keep, Vhitu-Gazi, Sprout Swarm, Bitterblossom, Awakening Zone, Mobilization…
This is the one 'get-random-cards-back' card that I actually like and think is playable. It's a guaranteed two-for-one, and even if you don't get to hand-pick what you get back, you will almost always get something worthwhile at least. I'd play this one before I'd play any of the other Eternal Witness wannabes in the set. Sweet art, too.
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