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So a few cards have been spoiled:


Any thoughts?

'Spoilers' are often used to mean 'official preview cards'; the above are [possible] leaks, and as such I'll refrain from any comments myself for if/when they are confirmed.

I'll say what I've said before: dubious but hopeful.

Interestingly, spoiler used to come only from leaks. Or, mostly, rather. Back around Mirrodin there were few official spoilers, and the rest were leaks. You'd have sets where the whole set wasn't known until the pre-release day, and then only because people at the midnight releases would try to catalogue every card.

As for these (which I can't see for some reason, but I assume it's Kozilek, Wastes, and Mirrorpool), I'll repeat what I said on twitter, from my perspective as a judge.

There's nothing on them that immediately stands out as fake. The art is all new, as best as I can tell. The crystals on Wastes match some of the background on Kozilek's Sentinel and Skitterskin (both Kozilek brood eldrazi). The templating is perfect. None of the abilities/etc seem unprintable or overpowered or off-rarity. The land doesn't have a new basic land type (which would cause all sorts of problems, rules-wise).

Which leaves only the weird mana symbol. I've heard a few plausible theories.

It could be effectively another colour - things make that mana, and things cost that mana.
I think this is unlikely. It's probably the simplest, rules wise, but it would get weird in limited, as you'd have to draft your manabase as well as the cards.

It could be the future symbol for colourless mana, distinct from generic mana.
Wizards has mentioned before that there is some confusion among new players between colourless mana (e.g. produced by Sol Ring) and generic mana (the cost for Sol Ring). Generic mana costs can be paid for with any colour, but colourless mana can't be used to pay for any colour. By giving colourless mana it's own distinct symbol, you remove this confusion (after everyone stops being confused by the change). Under this theory, you could only pay the new costs with colourless mana, generic mana could be paid for with any colour (including colourless), and Sol Ring, et al, would be errata's to say "Tap: Add {C}{C} to your mana pool".

I think the second theory is more plausible, wouldn't take much of an update, rules-wise, solves some problems they've had in the past, and opens up more design space (they can print colourless cards that don't just get slammed into every commander deck ever, but still play nice in decks more willing to give up colour).

Add to all of this, confirmation by an apparently credible source, and I'd put money on these being real.

EDIT: In retrospect, this might have been a little more than what I said on twitter...

I wasn't meaning to imply that they were likely fake (the majority of what I've seen of them seems plausible at worst), but rather WotC has been pretty good at previewing things in an intelligent order; when they preview something, they either explain anything new or leave us enough clues to figure it out. They also tend to have fairly big announcements made in an entertaining and enjoyable manner, so I'll go ahead and wait for those before paying too much attention. ^^

I am of the opinion that they are real. The art is perfect, and apparently unseen before that. The mechanics seem odd, but not unimaginable. In fact, I would stake an unplayable uncommon on that. Maybe Goblin Test Pilot.

New spoiler:

I take it she's the priestess of Ulamug the Jace set on fire I few weeks back in the uncharted realms article.

I do note she's not an ally. That's unfortunate given she slots really well into B/W Vampire Ally life gain.

I doubt it'll be good enough for standard, but in Magic Duels, small combos like Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim plus From Beyond could make for a very sweet part of an Abzan control deck. I'm quite excited to see how hard it is to meet the "starting life + 10" clause, and already thinking about Retreat to Kazandu and Nissa's Renewal. Add in Emeria Shepherd, because recursion is fun and Duels is generally slow.

Phi wrote:New spoiler:

Click to Expand

Maybe there'll be enough lifegain in the set that she becomes a good enough build-around that I'll finally be able to do something with some of the 10 copies of Tainted Remedy that I somehow picked up whilst drafting Origins.

But seriously though, she's really cool, I'm going to try and work her into modern soul sisters.

korvys wrote:It could be the future symbol for colourless mana, distinct from generic mana.
Wizards has mentioned before that there is some confusion among new players between colourless mana (e.g. produced by Sol Ring) and generic mana (the cost for Sol Ring). Generic mana costs can be paid for with any colour, but colourless mana can't be used to pay for any colour. By giving colourless mana it's own distinct symbol, you remove this confusion (after everyone stops being confused by the change). Under this theory, you could only pay the new costs with colourless mana, generic mana could be paid for with any colour (including colourless), and Sol Ring, et al, would be errata's to say "Tap: Add {C}{C} to your mana pool".

It seems that this is the winner, as there's a leaked picture of a Mystic Gate expedition, which says "{T}: Add {C} to your mana pool" (where the original says "Add {1}").

So it's basically Jon Loucks's "Cavern" idea. I really need to go through all of the things Loucks did for that GDS2 competition, look at how many of them were knocked back as completely unworkable at the time, and see just how many of them have been used in the last couple of blocks...

There's also apparently a new RG legendary spoiled in Russian: http://i.imgur.com/TiZDECO.jpg

What is that creature. It looks too skinny to be a minotaur, but what else on Zendikar has horns?

According to the MtGSalvation thread:
"Mina and Denn, Wildborn
Legendary Creature - Elf Ally
You may play an additional land during each of your turns.
RG, Return a land you control to its owner's hand; Target creature gains trample until end of turn.
4/4
Mina of the 'Green Spiral' and her twin brother Denn lead the last tribe of Mul Daya into their uncertain future."

Lycodrake wrote:There's also apparently a new RG legendary spoiled in Russian: http://i.imgur.com/TiZDECO.jpg

Man, it's been a surprisingly long time since I've tried to read Cyrillic. Especially in italics. That took longer than I thought it would.

That's pretty on par for the translations I've seen. They think the full title is Mina and Denn, Windborn.

Also, more expeditions?

We know that there are 20 new expeditions in Oath, that was announced when they announced the expeditions.
If that i'm not sure

Do note the symbol of the colourless mana produces by this card though. It is the same symbol of the "devoid" mana in Kozilek's new card.

Honestly, that's why I'm less convinced by the Mystic Gate than anything else. It doesn't fit the aesthetic of the previous Expeditions, and includes that symbol, which would be a fairly large change to make mid-block. Plus the original source was a thread on 4chan, which tends to be unreliable, to say the least.

Yeah, I feel like if that symbol meant colourless mana, they would've introduced it with Battle For Zendikar. I think if it's real (and I'm not convinced it is, though the cards are good fakes if it's not), it's a specific type of colourless mana (presumably called Eldrazi mana). Like snow mana, in that it doesn't have a specific colour, but is still required to pay for things like Kozilek.

I don't believe these are fakes, they're all over the magic subreddit and they usually get them this time (as when they did for BfZ). For the difference between colorless mana and Generic mana (IIRC the new one is colorless) See here

I was all for these spoilers until I saw the expedition. Something about the look of the symbol on the land like that, I find it to be aesthetically displeasing.

That being said, my only complaint is aesthetics, and it could just be because its new. It would make perfect sense to clarify between colourless and unspecified mana

It does seem odd that they're making the change here instead of in BFZ, but I can totally see the game design hole they're trying to plug here (and also open up more space in requiring colorless in costs).

I don't envy whoever they have going through Gatherer to make all the updates to anything that produces colorless mana, though