Silmarillion: The War of the Jewels: Recent Activity
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Recent updates to Silmarillion: The War of the Jewels: (Generated at 2025-08-02 21:56:22)
That does sound rather dangerous. I felt like the 4 life was rather lousy since you can usually get away with
"Target player loses 3 life" and it also felt like "bad Flame Rift".
Along with Rebels, there seems to have formed this symmetrical lifeloss archetype in
. Child of Melkor especially is drawing in neat bombastic interactions with cards like Let Them Burn and Fire-Ridden End.
For whatever reason, I was pretty sure that this said "... beginning of each upkeep". Eh, I'll try out the
though I might later go back to "each upkeep" version.
-> 
"controls" -> "control"
"controls" -> "control"
Black overall seems very weak to me, but I might be underestimating the power of Rebel Synergies with Lifeless Recreant in relation to the relatively weaker creature suites than normal. The primary issue, in my opinion, seems to be an overabundance of Auras that don't meaningfully contribute to the board, like this one. I like the design, but with the amount of commons you have I would rather see a bunch of cards that affect my opponent immediately, rather than cards such as this and False Counsel which affect the opponent's future decisions.
Fair enough: I applied the mana cost change.
On a side note, what do you think of Final Flowering? Especially if I went with
variation that could destroy any land? That would be much more usable in limited. The set is planned to have an uncommon dual land cycle (for ally colors?), but I still don't think that the Flowering would be that pickable in limited as a "nonbasic" version. It's unfortunate that one of the potential prime targets, Undying Lands, has indestructible. Though you could use Final Flowering on your own Undying Lands to get a "gold" token for 
which isn't half bad. Or maybe Flowering could exile the land instead now that I think about it...
controls > control
This seems pretty weak at 6 mana, especially because I can just exile random lands or tokens (which also don't make it grow) I don't need when playing against it. This is compounded by the fact that Black doesn't have that much removal in this set, compared to Blue. By my counts so far:
White: 1 Hard Removal, 1 Soft Removal Blue: 3 Soft Removal, 1 Counterspell Black: 1 Hard Removal, 1 Soft Removal (((Ungoliant's Offspring)))
You also have 4 Aura cards in Common and Uncommon in Black that don't do a whole lot, which seems a bit much for a small set in a color that doesn't have Chant.
You can probably get away with the current version at 4 mana, especially because of the abundance of tokens in this set. But maybe I am underestimating its effect?
-> 
as suggested
Not sure I like the Hidden + Can't be blocked combo either, but you can probably get away with this at 1 mana. Auras are traditionally weak so the best comparisons I can find for this are Aqueous Form in Blue (which gives unblockable + upside, though scry 1 is arguably better than hexproof until attacking), and Predator's Gambit, since Intimdate was sideboard unblockable anyway. Since this gives no P/T bonus, I am not sure I would be happy to have this in a color with so much menace and flying spirit tokens anyway.
I ran a quick and casual triple threat match with monocolored decks I made the players construct for themselves. I went with mono-
- the other two were a mono-
rebel deck and mono-
"landfall" deck. The mono-
most likely won since it had gained the embel from Yavanna Kementári and was drawing a card and gaining 3 life for each land drop. The game kind of stalled to a halt so we decided to just quit it. Lifeless Recreant's "target opponent" has a quite a difference in multiplayer - it made the rebels pseudo immortal. Two were sleeping under Veil of Sleep and one played afterwards. I was at 11 life so I wasn't exactly interested in paying 6 life just to keep one of the rebels dead.
This into Veil of Sleep was rather nice. However, going with Wingild Foam-Maiden and using Ulmo to bounce your Undying Lands to hand so you could trigger Wingild again and again started to look rather concerning + I could also bounce the Veil with either Wingild or Ulmo and replay it.
-> 
-> 
I am going to assume that Orc tribal is gonna be a thing in the later sets. Is this set meant to be drafted alone or is it a "you should only draft the full block"? I mentioned this earlier, but the low amount of commons may make drafts a bit same-y, like Coldsnap draft was (though that had mechanics that encouraged picking up as many copies of certain cards as possible).
Two 1 mana black enchantments at Rare seems a bit odd, though both fill different roles. I like this effect, though it is a bit of a color pie bend.
In a set with a very small number of commons, I expect this is a lot more powerful than usual. Chaining two at 6 mana seems pretty broken as a game ender.
Swanship isn't exactly a thrilling pick to begin with and Drift Apart specifically references Islands already through you could reasonably play it with only one in play.
The Swamship would likely to be the target for a modification such as the one you suggest (the common slots in blue are already filled and of the uncommon slots only is left blank) so maybe at that point it would also make sense to adjust its mana cost to be more color intensive.
Hmm, I have to delve on this.
There is a little question that popped to one participant's mind and I think it's justified given that the other proclaim cards note on it: Can you proclaim with this at instant speed - unlike with the nonaction keyword "version"? The answer is supposedly yes, but I'm thinking the card might still have to especially pronounce that fact somehow.
While straight "handsize matters" is pretty unfun, strategies that play well with large hands like discard or flash tribal could be reasonable fits and be fun. MM3 had instant control that was really fun, and you already have a card that gets back specifically instants - Alas, Fleeting Dreams. In addition, I think you can probably include a spellshaper or a card with "Discard a card: ~ can't be blocked this turn." at common and have it perform well.
So as to not comment on multiple things at once, I would probably recommend any of the following: Swanship of Alqualondë, Lady of the Sea, or Drift Apart to be bumped to a
cost. Blue seems extra strong right now with all of the pseudoremoval they have.
Well, all things considered, that effect might be a lot easier to understand. The current variation leaves much to be desired as far as "can I play this 3-drop without there being really any event in the game where there's three
in my mana pool?" I should check up how did the process of casting a spell go again...
Hmmm, I never noticed the bounce theme. That's a really nice observation - there might be indeed something that could be scrambled together with that. Hand-size mechanics though, at least the kamigawa variants, were found to be not that fun to play by WotC since it encourages not playing your cards.
I've been shuffling the main mechanics (chant, distinguished, proclaim) so many times that I don't think I have the tolerance/patience/resiliency to do it again: especially for proclaim, since creating cards that make a sensible mechanics/flavor package for that mechanic is surprisingly taxing.
The whole "hard counters require
" has been lessened recently. It has been updated to "requires two colored mana of which one has to be blue". In any case, this is quite similar to Frazzle. I just don't really see the double 
being an important factor - even for hard counterspells. I think these recent updates to this policy also reflect that it isn't that important: it's more of a tradition.
As for Call of the Sea, it would be wholly pointless to make its cost more color intensive - the effect is powered by the number of Islands after all. I'm fine if someone wants to use it to gain control of a 1 power creature (or even 0 power).
Are there other cards in the set that you think should have
in their mana cost?
Scry reminder: It's definitely because it's a Masters set. Didn't the first set have a storm/suspend archetype for example? That would be hiiighly unlikely to be ever seen done in a standard legal set.
It might be just confusion with your updated wording on my part. When I initially read this, I "translated" it as "Until end of turn,
mana doesn't empty from your mana pool as steps and phases end. Creatures get -1/-1 for each 
in your mana pool.", which is why I asked the questions I did.