Soradyne Laboratories v1.2: Recent Activity
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| Mechanics | Skeleton |
Recent updates to Soradyne Laboratories v1.2: (Generated at 2025-08-18 13:40:56)
Eh, I guess I look at it like Mindstrike is enough to dissuade non-Mill decks from caring about this, as the effect without Mindstrike is a very low pick anyway. And that one extra word, which people aren't going to expect, will probably just get ignored by a lot of folks.
Besides, the name suggests an intention other than a straight-up fight. Letting it affect a fistfight isn't very "ulterior".
Call it ham-handed, but I wanted this card to specifically be something that only the Mindstrike/mill player would grab. It's a last-pick card in a draft, but if you happen to be going mill, it's a last pick that you probably don't mind.
Flavor text: “Hey! Jimmy! You wrestling with your snake over there again?”
While we're at it, the illustration should show him wearing Wrangler jeans and driving a Jeep Wrangler.
Does this need "unblocked" in there?
At first I thought it was because black didn't deserve a +3/+0 combat boost, but then I remember they get that a lot. (Vampire's Bite)
So, I don't really know why it's there. In most scenarios, you could probably cast this on something pre-combat, and your opponent just won't block it. Because who cares about being milled?
Now I'm disappointed that it doesn't have "Whenever Viper Wrangler blocks or becomes blocked by a Snake creature, gain control of that creature."
If you're a big mana Tron deck, the first thing you're doing is casting Emrakul and winning the game.
That's not a knock on this design, because I think it'd be foolish to really approach this from the angle that it should be built for constructed. I'm just reiterating Vitenka and Dan: there's nothing busted about this. It's flavorful and it's powerful, but it's not broken. And that's a good thing.
And in Modern, the first thing you fetch is Voltaic Key.
The turn you play it you fetch a 0-drop artifact, like a Memnite. The next turn you juice the Grid and fetch equipment or an aura. After that, pretty much anything goes.
If the best you can do for paying 10 mana is get 3 mana of any colour... yeah.
It's good, it's gonna rock if it ever actually goes off. But it's too big and slow and probably never will.
Okay. This still costs 9 to pull a 1cc, but works on the first turn — and can pull Memnite, Ornithopter, and the Moxes. Screams busted, but what the hell. For seven mana (hello, Urzatron), go big or go home.
Maybe the answer here is just a simple Stoic Rebuttal retread. It's clean and it works.
Works for me.
Not that I wholly disagree, but you have to recognize the distinctions in my (very similar) arguments.
With the Fabricator Grid, the "don't play like a moron" swung the way that it did because it pertained to a positive effect. You could either make the card terribly unexciting and lacking the ability to punish morons, or you could improve its potential for "awesome" and allow stupid people to do stupid things.
Here, you have an issue that's maybe closer to why I didn't like the untap ability on Newbridge. The complexity of the Newbridge untap ability didn't come with the side-benefit of making Newbridge a better card, instead you had this drawback (doesn't normally untap) intertwined with a bonus (it can potentially be used once each turn), which made for a card that was tough to evaluate, tough to play with, and convoluted the game state.
Likewise, I don't know that having an unconditional Negate paired with a conditional Counterspell is a net-positive in terms of design, especially when presented as a modal spell that isn't actually always modal. And what's the story? Why do creatures require additional interference from things I put on creatures in order to counter?