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[Simply Sarah]

As a huge phasing fangirl (yes, we somehow exist) I'm totally on board with this. The card is almost perfect for flavour except not having any blue. If you play this hope that no one drops Stasis before your next turn.

Yo what happens if someone ultimates a Karn while you're out via Teferi's Protection.

I know it's likely as boring as "you also restart the game". But how awesome would it be if you just phased back in, unscathed.

Sadly, it is indeed that boring. Phased stuff doesn't even leave the battlefield so there's no special zone for it to come back from that could even remotely hid it from being liberated.

 

[Vangu Vegro]

I created several custom sets that featured bounty counters as a mechanic, so Mathas gets two thumbs up from me.

 

[Crocodile]

So many cards revealed for today and the only one I care about is New Blood :/

Curse of Disturbance is a strictly better Curse of the Shallow Graves (except the new curse has worse art)

 

[Big Icarus]

Edgar is so boring. I was hoping that there would be some life gain synergy with his abilities, since you know vampires are the most notable tribe for getting Lifelink. That and like all the Battle for Zendikar and Orhzov vamps have a life gain theme throughout them. Ugh, pretty disappointed with this as it was the deck I was most interested in.

 

[charlequin]

I'm actually pretty happy with the commanders in this deck. Edgar doesn't do anything exciting but he's exactly what you'd kind of expect -- big beefy Vampire tribal guy. The life-matters and bounty effects should be fun to build around. All three of them do stuff that existing Mardu commanders don't do so we don't have "yawn another aggro Boros guy" problem or anything.

lol @ the idea that Mardu needs more broken commanders, anyway.

Blue was sharing Wizards with Illusions and Birds so there are a bit less card support for it, but it was obviously one of the main supported tribes for the block, I don't even know how you can argue against that?

There are ten supported tribes in Onslaught block. The number of cards of support each one gets:

Beast: 24
Elf: 20
Bird: 10
Cleric: 20
Goblin: 24
Soldier: 16
Zombie: 25
Dragon: 11
Sliver: 16
Wizard: 17

It's cheap enough to combo with board wipes to make them one sided.

Or stuff that deals damage to every player.

 

[bigkrev]

I'm actually pretty happy with the commanders in this deck. Edgar doesn't do anything exciting but he's exactly what you'd kind of expect -- big beefy Vampire tribal guy. The life-matters and bounty effects should be fun to build around. All three of them do stuff that existing Mardu commanders don't do so we don't have "yawn another aggro Boros guy" problem or anything.

lol @ the idea that Mardu needs more broken commanders, anyway.



There are ten supported tribes in Onslaught block. The number of cards of support each one gets:

Beast: 24
Elf: 20
Bird: 10
Cleric: 20
Goblin: 24
Soldier: 16
Zombie: 25
Dragon: 11
Sliver: 16
Wizard: 17



Or stuff that deals damage to every player.

Not sure how your metric worked- I just punched "Wizard" into Gatherer, set for Onslaught Block, and got 55 cards back. Includes a ton of creatures, and things like Lavamancer's Skill and Riptide Laboratory that would probably have had Tribal- Wizard if Tribal existed then

 

[Maledict]

To me the issue with wizards was always that their conceptual space was eaten up by Spellshapers. Spellshapers are much more "wizardly" than the vast majority of wizard cards in the game...

 

[Santiako]

lol @ the idea that Mardu needs more broken commanders, anway

? Mardu is really lacking in good commanders. Kaalia and Alesha are good but narrow and the partners are good but that's it. There's no broken mardu commander.

 

[Crocodile]

To me the issue with wizards was always that their conceptual space was eaten up by Spellshapers. Spellshapers are much more "wizardly" than the vast majority of wizard cards in the game...

I would say the real issue is that Wizard Tribal cards have tended to be awful with no real theme to them even though plenty of individual, powerful Wizard creatures exist in Magic. WOTC straight up said they nerfed Wizards in Onslught because they featured Patron Wizard (from Odyssey block just before) would be unbeatable surrounded by a shell of good Wizards. Wizard tribal didn't really get another shot until Morningtide which had some good Wizard cards to be fair but it was the Faerie and Merfolk Tribal cards that were the powerhouses and deck headliners, any Wizard bonuses have just been incidental to those.

 

[alternade]

Vampires looks decent and they expanded their tribe attributes a bit but ultimately looks kinda boring.

That Teferi card is in the Vampire deck though?

Please let the Wizard commanders be good. I'm willing to bet the Eminence ability will be copying spells or spell reduction

 

[Santiako]

Another card. WotC remembered that goblins exist for a minute!

 

[Simply Sarah]

Apparently it had been so long since I had last reviewed that phasing rules that I had forgotten phased tokens cease to exist. I think it's a bad mechanic and a relic of when the "phased-out" zone existed. It's also kinda awkward in a deck with a main commander that makes tokens.

All that being said, it sounds like this may not be the case for long.

@truknightmare Those rules might be getting some updates. Stay tuned.

 

[charlequin]

Not sure how your metric worked- I just punched "Wizard" into Gatherer, set for Onslaught Block, and got 55 cards back. Includes a ton of creatures, and things like Lavamancer's Skill and Riptide Laboratory that would probably have had Tribal- Wizard if Tribal existed then

I used Scryfall (whose Oracle search excludes the type line) and then manually cut out some false positives from the matches. These aren't 100% but they're pretty close.

? Mardu is really lacking in good commanders. Kaalia and Alesha are good but narrow and the partners are good but that's it. There's no broken mardu commander.

I love Kaalia (still have a deck together) but people bitch about her all the time. Alesha and Marchesa both also get an eyebrow from people occasionally. Not saying they shouldn't get good commanders, just saying they're not lacking for stuff people will chuck on the "overpowered" pile.

I would say the real issue is that Wizard Tribal cards have tended to be awful with no real theme to them even though plenty of individual, powerful Wizard creatures exist in Magic.

Yeah, this is about right. They've never been the type of individual block theme that's made types like Soldier and Warrior more interesting, they got a fairly boring and low-powered execution in Onslaught, and they barely registered in Morningtide.

All that being said, it sounds like this may not be the case for long.

Only makes sense. Every time they've revised the phasing rules they've made them work less like exile, so now the token thing is the only part that's weird. Might as well get rid of it, I don't think it's holding up any other part of the rules structure.

 

[SigmasonicX]

Glad to see goad really does appear to be "multi-player evergreen" like I suggested before.

Edgar Markov seems like a good utility Commander, given the article's point about the number of cards that care about having multiple vampires.

Teferi's card bringing back phasing is fun and wacky. Note that the article talks about how they used that wording only because they didn't want the point to be retriggering ETB effects, not that they have any intention of making a grand return for it.

I love the curse cycle and the guy who's sure to get a card in an upcoming Commander release. Greg the Unlucky, perhaps. I don't get the flavor of the white curse, though.

 

[Big Icarus]

I love Kaalia (still have a deck together) but people bitch about her all the time. Alesha and Marchesa both also get an eyebrow from people occasionally. Not saying they shouldn't get good commanders, just saying they're not lacking for stuff people will chuck on the "overpowered" pile.

Yeah, but none of them are what you'd want for a Mardu vampire deck. Which up until now desperately needed a commander, and as such Edgar (edit: I take this back. He's actually quite good, but not exactly conducive to a durdley format like commander can be most times. ) is not super exciting I guess.

I mean he's overcosted for the body, and just in general, aggro creature strategies are typically not very good in commander. He also doesn't really play on any of the mechanics that vampires care about with the exception of +1+1 counters (which is also terrible in commander, usually). I think the three drop commander looks more interesting as a political commander, but it's problem is that it too is also just not a very powerful card.

(Although, I have to admit, that getting some sacrifice outlets in play with Edgar as your commander, and having maybe a skullcap on the board seems very powerful.)

 

[Poppy]

i just want more gotdang abzan commanders, preferably that arent about +1/+1

teferis protection seems sweet, wonder if it has eternal implications

 

[OnPoint]

I love Kaalia (still have a deck together) but people bitch about her all the time. Alesha and Marchesa both also get an eyebrow from people occasionally. Not saying they shouldn't get good commanders, just saying they're not lacking for stuff people will chuck on the "overpowered" pile.

Kaalia is super fun to play, but some draws are just too much to deal with haha I remember once I was playing a friend 1v1. Turn 4 he Lighning Greaves'd up his angel and swung in, putting in Grisselbrand (who is now banned).

Turn 5 showed me how futile any further turns would be.

Scoop city.

 

[Crocodile]

This is more like it <3

Source

 

[Pundere]

Mathas could've been much more interesting if they found a wording that would only reward the player that actually killed the creature. Or if the bounty counters stacked.

Feels like a bit of a flavor fail that everyone gets rewarded when the bounty creature dies and that multiple bounties don't make for bigger rewards.

 

[Violet_0]

there's also always the new Grixis wizard legendary in Ixalan

 

[bigkrev]

What would happen if every Artifact ever printed entered the battlefield simultaneously?

Frank Karsten is on the case!

Spoiler

Dampening Matrix and Null Rod and Darksteel Forge are real assholes.

Also, LOL at him not even trying to figure out the Painter's Servant-Myconsynth Lattice-Thran Lense nightmare

 

[Simply Sarah]

Yeah, this is a one card engagement for phasing. That said, I always like seeing the willingness to bring back somewhat weird ancient mechanics for cases where they are the best solution to making a card work.

I love Kaalia (still have a deck together) but people bitch about her all the time. Alesha and Marchesa both also get an eyebrow from people occasionally. Not saying they shouldn't get good commanders, just saying they're not lacking for stuff people will chuck on the "overpowered" pile.

I think people underestimate both Alesha and Marchesa. They're actually both extremely good if you build to their strengths, although if you don't want to play a deck with combo and/or hatebears stuff then Alesha certainly loses value since she gets a lot of work out of abusing ETB/death triggers and bringing back the right hate piece for a situation.

Only makes sense. Every time they've revised the phasing rules they've made them work less like exile, so now the token thing is the only part that's weird. Might as well get rid of it, I don't think it's holding up any other part of the rules structure.

Exactly. At this point the token thing is actually an exception to the normal token rules:
"704.5d If a token is phased out, or is in a zone other than the battlefield, it ceases to exist."
That said, it's also possible they'll leave the rule on tokens disappearing but will just have any Equipment come back unattached and who knows about Auras and Fortifications. I hope this isn't the option they pick, since as you say nothing seems to depend on the token disappearing, but who knows.

 

[Santiako]

there's also always the new Grixis wizard legendary in Ixalan

I think that's a pirate not a wizard.

 

[jph139]

I actually have a Queen Marchesa EDH deck and it's a lot of fun (well, fun for me at least). Lots of lockdown enchantments, targeted removal, taxing, punishing, life gain/drain. Honestly, just being able to become the Monarch every game on Turn 4 is such a useful tool, and makes it so you always have answers to keep your slow grind to victory going.

Like, mine is super cheap/shitty, but it's still a solid contender in my circle. I can imagine her being super obnoxious in the right hands.

 

[RuinerPrime]

I actually have a Queen Marchesa EDH deck and it's a lot of fun (well, fun for me at least). Lots of lockdown enchantments, targeted removal, taxing, punishing, life gain/drain. Honestly, just being able to become the Monarch every game on Turn 4 is such a useful tool, and makes it so you always have answers to keep your slow grind to victory going.

Like, mine is super cheap/shitty, but it's still a solid contender in my circle. I can imagine her being super obnoxious in the right hands.

I have Queen Marchesa EDH built as well. Going for the pillow fort method and encouraging my opponents to attack each other. I(and my playgroup) don't really play infinite combos and such, so its all about combat/control and politics.

 

[Yeef]

I didn't see it posted, but there's an Unstable Obelisk reprint.

 

[Justin]

Here you go.

Effective 8/25 (#MTGC17 release), we're changing the rules so tokens can phase out and phase back in. Batterskulls rejoice! #WotCstaff

 

[Simply Sarah]

Here you go.

Huzzah! This does seem to indicate they didn't consider that interaction when they templated the card. But this is a very good change that makes phasing relatively entirely straightforward now. I mean, outside the fact that stuff like Stasis and Sands of Time prevent stuff from ever phasing back in.

 

[bigkrev]

It's so weird for them to bring back Phasing, when there have been a billion other "Exile, then return" cards. It has so much unintuitive rules attached to it, and it has not been used on a black bordered card in literally 20 years (1997).

It's not even a Teferi thing- I'd say the thing most people think of when they think of Teferi is his legend card from Time Spiral (featuring Flash), tournament players would jump to his highly played in standard cards from Invasion (Teferi's Moat and Teferi's Response).

If they aren't willing to give us real Slivers, why the fuck are they bringing back Phasing?

 

[Zocano]

What would happen if every Artifact ever printed entered the battlefield simultaneously?

Frank Karsten is on the case!

Spoiler

Dampening Matrix and Null Rod and Darksteel Forge are real assholes.

Also, LOL at him not even trying to figure out the Painter's Servant-Myconsynth Lattice-Thran Lense nightmare

Unfortunately, the solution is fairly simple. You choose the timestamp order for cards like that when they all enter simultaneously so you can decide whether everything is colored or colorless, basically.

 

[Simply Sarah]

Also, LOL at him not even trying to figure out the Painter's Servant-Myconsynth Lattice-Thran Lense nightmare

I assume he's joking about this because it's irrelevant to the analysis since it's pretty straightforward. When the artifacts ETB you order the timestamps on, uh, all of them and, for this particular interaction, whichever you pick to have the latest timestamp wins.

Edit: Too slow. Was too busy being excited about the phasing change.

 

[kirblar]

It's so weird for them to bring back Phasing, when there have been a billion other "Exile, then return" cards. It has so much unintuitive rules attached to it, and it has not been used on a black bordered card in literally 20 years (1997).

It's not even a Teferi thing- I'd say the thing most people think of when they think of Teferi is his legend card from Time Spiral (featuring Flash), tournament players would jump to his highly played in standard cards from Invasion (Teferi's Moat and Teferi's Response).

If they aren't willing to give us real Slivers, why the fuck are they bringing back Phasing?

I'm going to make a guess here. Dominaria's 5 regions are going to be mashups to help simplify things. White? New Benalia+Serra's Realm.

Blue? Tolaria West Africa. (Jamuraa x Tolaria = Wakanda, MTG style)

They're not just going to drop a rando off-theme Teferi mass phasing card for no reason.

 

[Yeef]

It's so weird for them to bring back Phasing, when there have been a billion other "Exile, then return" cards. It has so much unintuitive rules attached to it, and it has not been used on a black bordered card in literally 20 years (1997).

It's not even a Teferi thing- I'd say the thing most people think of when they think of Teferi is his legend card from Time Spiral (featuring Flash), tournament players would jump to his highly played in standard cards from Invasion (Teferi's Moat and Teferi's Response).

If they aren't willing to give us real Slivers, why the fuck are they bringing back Phasing?

It's explained in the article.

That's right. It's been just over 20 years since the last time we printed a card with phasing, but it's back. Enjoy it, but don't get used to it. It's every inch the same bizarre and not-very-fun mechanic it always was, but it did the job here.
Phasing? Really?

So how'd we get to phasing?

Commander, and our other multiplayer-focused products, often have cards where there's something specific the designer wants to do but prioritizes a grokkable, intuitive card over having the edge cases work one specific way or another. There's a lot of back and forth with editing where editing tries to sound out what's important to the designer and what isn't to come up with a card that works the way people expect but preserves the intent of the design. Often the design changes to accommodate that to get 100% of the functionality, the card would need horrifying words nobody should ever read, but we can get 95% of the way there and have a pretty clean, appealing card.

Especially in cases where we need to handle situations with three-plus players making decisions or interacting with an effect in some way, it can get really complicated, and we often tweak designs or just throw them out if we can't come up with a way to express what we want the card to do.

In the case of this card, the conversation went something like this (with minor liberties on details):

Editor: What's important to you about how this card works?

Me: You're out of the game for a little while and nobody can mess with you. Also, that you can say "I'm out!" in an overly dramatic voice.

Editor: Is it important that it triggers enters/leaves-the-battlefield abilities?

Me: No, it's actually probably better if it doesn't because that's a lot of extra power that's not key to what we're doing and we'd probably need to charge more for it, which I don't want to do.

Editor: How much do you care about things like Exsanguinate?

Me: It'd be great if Exsanguinate worked the same as Earthquake, but not vital.

Editor: How about Fact or Fiction?

Me: Whatever makes the cleanest card.

(This continues for a while . . .)

Editor: So basically you want you and everything you own to stop existing for a little while.

Me: Yeah.

Editor: So, that's phasing.

Me: Sounds great.​

A week or so later, Aaron Forsythe enters the pit:

Aaron: Who put a card with phasing in their set?

Me: That'd be me.

Aaron, chuckling: Well, carry on then.​

And that's how we did it.

 

[Simply Sarah]

It's so weird for them to bring back Phasing, when there have been a billion other "Exile, then return" cards. It has so much unintuitive rules attached to it, and it has not been used on a black bordered card in literally 20 years (1997).

It's not even a Teferi thing- I'd say the thing most people think of when they think of Teferi is his legend card from Time Spiral (featuring Flash), tournament players would jump to his highly played in standard cards from Invasion (Teferi's Moat and Teferi's Response).

If they aren't willing to give us real Slivers, why the fuck are they bringing back Phasing?

I mean, maybe if you aren't familiar with the cards in Mirage Block or, like, any of the story around Teferi at all you would make an association but that's true for a lot of callbacks in sets. Beyond the reasoning given above from the article I'd also say that with the change on tokens they just announced the messy and confusing things about phasing have pretty much all been removed, at least as long as we're talking about spells and targeted/activated abilities causing stuff to phase rather than the keyword ability. And even then, that's less a complicated thing and more just an annoying thing.

I actually tend to think phasing is something worth them keeping in their back pocket because there are times it will be a better fit mechanically and/or from a flavour standpoint for various effects such as for this card.

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

phasing wasn't in the time spiral block but it was heavily used in the story of it.

Teferi phases a whole region back into dominaria when he loses his spark

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

Inalla, Archmage Ritualist
2UBR
Legendary Creature - Human Wizard
Eminence - Whenever another nontoken Wizard enters the battlefield under your control, if Inalla, Archmage Ritualist is in the command zone or on the battlefield, you may pay {1}. If you do, create a token that's a copy of that Wizard. The token gains haste. Exile it at the beginning of the next end step.

Tap five untapped Wizards you control: Target player loses 7 life.
4/5

pretty dang strong but Marchesa is better as a grixis wizard commander, though eminence makes her safer in accruing value.

 

[Violet_0]

I think that's a pirate not a wizard.

both, actually. And Orc

Inalla is really good. Not sure what you want to do with hasted wizards, though

 

[Yeef]

 

[Firemind]

both, actually. And Orc

Inalla is really good. Not sure what you want to do with hasted wizards, though

etb triggers

 

[Santiako]

pretty dang strong but Marchesa is better as a grixis wizard commander, though eminence makes her safer in accruing value.

That's a really strong effect to have while on the command zone.

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

important to remember that commanders don't die

 

[OnPoint]

Reminds me of Rogue Legacy

 

[Firemind]

Hot dang!

Vampire Day!

i don't really understand the flavour of vampires riding horses when they can fly and turn to bats.

another reason why mono red vampires are plain wrong.

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

heirloom blade might be low key a new skull clamp combine it with sliver queen for instance or other token generators that work well with a creature type.

 

[SigmasonicX]

i don't really understand the flavour of vampires riding horses when they can fly and turn to bats.

another reason why mono red vampires are plain wrong.

Not all vampires can fly, even in black.

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

Not all vampires can fly, even in black.

this ones literally floating next to his horse though

 

[SigmasonicX]

this ones literally floating next to his horse though

The horse is for his commander, though. And none of the vampire deck commanders have flying.

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

The horse is for his commander, though. And none of the vampire deck commanders have flying.

good point.

 

[Firemind]

The horse is for his commander, though. And none of the vampire deck commanders have flying.

proto vampire edgar markov doesn't have flying how much of a flavour fail is that though?

 

[Joe Molotov]

both, actually. And Orc

Inalla is really good. Not sure what you want to do with hasted wizards, though

Loot with a hasted Jace.token. Too bad you can't flip it.