Review: Ophidian Eye

Draft Priority: 2

Impact: 2

Stack Status: 2
Borderline. It’s not bad or anything, but it’s so unexceptional and almost always get picked last.

Discussion:

This is another instance of “it has Flash so it goes in”. While this philsophy isn’t necessarily a bad one, as you can see not all flash cards are exactly blowing up Type 4 tableaus across the continent. The question is: What would you take this over? I can grab a big pinch of cards out of my Stack and run through an awful lot before I find something that’s more appealing in abstract. This is a bad sign for Ophidian Eye’s longevity.

The truth is in play it’s almost always an ok cantrip spell. You cast it on an opponent’s creature in combat, draw a card and call it a day; anything after that is a bonus. That’s horrible. You don’t cast spells to cast spells, just like you don’t grind your boots into somebody’s couch just for the sake of doing it. There’s times when the Eye can do a LOT more work than you’d expect (having one on a Hydra Omnivore is obviously tits), but there’s not commonplace. A few cool combinations and circumstances, along with a healthy spoonful of bias, keep this off the chopping block for the time being.

That said, outside of play there’s a lot I like about this card. It’s a throwback to an old-school treat with pretty cool flavour implications. I really like the reference and just imparting an element of a previous card to another without being too obtuse about it. Time Spiral was hit and miss in this regard but Ophidian Eye nails it.

Overall: Two lazy workers kept on because of supervisor friends out of five

Review: Hornet Queen

Draft Priority: 3

Impact: 3

Stack Status: 3
Roleplayer. It’s not great, it’s not bad… it just is.

Discussion:

Few cards in Magic history have been better-suited to a Wu-Tang Clan themed alteration than this. When it was revealed in 2011 I was pretty excited, thinking I would alter it with a big ol’ Wu logo in the background and have it feature prominently in my 60×4 Astral Slide deck as a finisher.

Well, several years have come and gone and none of that shit happened. If it hasn’t already it probably never will. Sad but true (I’ve had six unpainted creatures left in my Descent: Journeys in the Dark box for a year now, you’d think I’d paint them just to be able to say I finished the project). But the fact is that Hornet Queen is a cool card that just doesn’t really outshine anything else out there.

I wanted to like it more, but it just doesn’t do enough. Even in the Type 4 environment, no longer having to worry about it’s mana cost doesn’t really offset it’s relative lack of sting (OOOOH killem) compared to what opponents will be casting. True, it’s a defensive powerhouse, but defense is for losers so who cares about that. It’s a perfectly fine card that will give you some momentum when you cast it but won’t make everyone at the table piss their butts like Myr Battlesphere or the like might.

Overall: Three killa bees on the swarm out of five

Review: Spinerock Knoll

Draft Priority: 4

Impact: 3

Stack Status: 3
Staple. A solid Hideaway land. Not especially good in Type 4 as opposed to say Commander but worth adding all the same.

Discussion:

“Oh, seven damage. What a rarity! I literally cannot think of a single way to do seven damage routinely in a Type 4 stack.  Guess this card is worthless. Guys, just let me draft it for your own safety.  I’ll throw it into the dog’s food. What? No, I hate my dog. Why else would I feed him this card?”

An excellent example on how to convince people not to take Spinerock Knoll. Yes, it’s obviously pretty good. The only thing to remember if you use it, your four Hideaway options will be Fulgent Distraction, Coral Trickster, Dash Hopes (HOW DID IT GET BACK IN HERE), and Telling Time. Your opponents will have four Emrakuls That’s just how the world works.

Overall: Four cheating bastard friends out of five

Game Mode: Loates Draft

I have a pretty solid crew in my area. One component of said crew is my man Loates. He owns what is objectively the best cube of all time. It’s arrival was prophesied by countless Oracles, foreseen in mathematics by brilliant scholars, and it actually causes changes in the planet’s magnetic field when he changes it.

It’s the Old School Cube, composed exclusively of cards from Alpha until Alliances.

In case you’ve been brought up on pure nWo-style Magic, it’s quite the shock to play. But that’s not the topic at hand here; it’s a rule variant he devised to play with this particular cube.

In it, each player is given a big stack of cards. They’re then permitted to return a certain number of them to the cube in exchange for the same number of cards. You only get one opportunity to trade in, then you play with every card you have. This is pretty interesting as you can take a risk trying to eliminate certain colours from your pool, and with such stellar cards from eras of Magic design known for overwhelming power like Homelands, you might swap one turd for an even stinkier one.

I stole his idea and it works even better in Type 4.

Rules: Singleton Stack

SWEET CHRISTMAS this already existed!

Usually discussions of Type 4 involve the default assumption that the shared card pool is singleton in nature. We push a multicultural agenda with VICIOUS intensity, checking the privilege of staple cards and enabling the oppressed cardboard of MtG’s unwashed masses to take their chance at stardom (I’m looking at you Crowd Favourites). However, in our mission to bring light to various marginalized cards, don’t we effectively end up OPPRESSING the ones that are already good, just because we’re trying to force diversity into our Stacks? Can replicating our standout cards like Return to Dust and Annihilate instead of clogging up the Stack with similar-but-inferior cards make for a better, more streamlined experience, even at the cost of JUSTICE for lesser-used cards?