Invasion First Impressions - Blue
**Barrin's Unmasking
1U, Instant, Common
Return target permanent to its owner's hand if that permanent shares a color with the most common color among permanents or the color tied for most common.
The second half of this is annoying but not serious. There are decks which generate enough permanents that they risk not being able to bounce the right card when they need to, and they should stay away. If you're not normally playing multiple permanents of the same color simultaneously, this bounces any nonland nonartifact permanent you want, with a few exceptions when your opponent's board is starting to get out of hand or he has too many green mana creatures. In short, there is a risk it won't work but most of the time it'll be fine. Still, it's basically a Boomerang that doesn't work on lands. Wait a minute. It's a Boomerang that doesn't work on lands! And all you save is you get to use a colorless mana instead of a second blue one. Are you really that desperate? If your second color is black you get Recoil, and that card shows just how weak this card is. You don't have the out of using it to bounce a land early on, and it's not reliable late. Maybe we'll be this desperate for a Boomerang you can use reliably on turn two in a few months for Block, but I sure hope not.
2UU, Creature - Legend 3/3, Rare
1U: Target spell or permanent becomes a color of your choice until end of turn.
I smell a Coalition Victory on the way, don't you? All right, maybe that's a little mana intensive. What this does do is let you shamelessly manipulate color hosing cards for your benefit. Counter anything you want with Stormgald Cabal, or the rarely seen but very heroic Order of the Sacred Torch; they'll be back from Australia by the time you get to use Invasion in Standard. You can protect yourself from harm with a Teferi's Moat or a Story Circle, counter black removal, get through every direct color hoser that doesn't go after your lands. This is a pretty powerful ability, and if you give him Protection from any one color he'll be safe. The best part about him is that the price is right. Most of the time, any creature with a useful ability is made into a 1/1 for about 2WUG in this set, just in case anyone was thinking of actually using it. But they missed Blind Seer; if you can't see them, they can't see you. If they can't see you, they can't water you down. It's still a creature and it still has to live, but I'll definitely take it.
2UU, Sorcery, Rare
You may play Breaking Wave any time you could play an instant if you pay 2 more to play it.
Simultaneously untap all tapped creatures and tap all untapped creatures.
Are we sure Magic players can handle doing all this at once? If they don't should you call a judge? Will we all be doing the Breaking Wave? Maybe they already are. But the card isn't going to be the reason. You can probably blame someone in the Future Future League. There was some series of cards involving an Elvish Champion, a Seeker of Skybreak, a reprinted version of Citanul Hierophants that, when combined with a Winding Canyons, an Anarchist, three Parallax Waves and an Opalescence, was allowing you to torture a poor little Urza's Steam Engine, and R&D decided that had to stop. So they made sure that without six mana, no one would ever cast this spell in such a way that allowed them to stop or help an attack. Unfortunately, that means that no constructed player will ever use this card outside of an Inquest dead man's hand puzzle, but that's life.
3U, Enchantment, Rare
Creatures can't attack you unless their controller pays X for each creature attacking you, where X is the number of basic land types among lands you control. (This cost is paid as attackers are declared.)
The name for this card's pretty ironic, because making it good involves using something like Clear the Land and Scouting Trek to put an Island, a Swamp, a Mountain, a Plains and a Kitchen Sink directly into play. You could use Harrow if you really wanted, but where's the fun in that? Once you've decided to lose one round of the tournament against some five year old with a deck full of Alabaster Leeches while you look at your extra off-color lands, this card makes your opponent pay five mana to attack with a creature. That pretty much limits your opponent to one creature attacking per turn, and it's a major hassle to attack with that one. If you can back that up with another Restraint or a Kor Haven, you'd be pretty much untouchable as long as your lands are intact.
2U, Instant, Rare
Change the text of target spell or permanent by replacing all instances of one color word or basic land type with another until end of turn. (For example, you may change "nonred creature" to "nongreen creature" or "plainswalk" to "swampwalk.")
Draw a card.
What used to be one casting cost specialized-use cards are now three casting cost specialized cantrips, as if to say "And your little dog too!" Instead of being permanent like a Slight of Mind or Magical Hack of old, you only get the effect for one turn. This makes it most effective when protecting a card from removal, invalidating Protection so something dies a horrible death its insurance no longer covers, or using it to turn spells like Perish or Boil from a problem into a solution. As with all cards that try to make a sideboard strategy playable in the maindeck, you have the problem that it's hard to give it a maindeck slot but it's not as effective out of the sideboard, also making it harder to put it in the sideboard. Keeping three mana untapped is hard. But if you can do it, the rewards are there, and if you're also abusing your own spells they get even better.
U, Instant, Uncommon
Counter target instant or sorcery spell unless its controller pays 1.
Draw a card.
Disrupt is back! Its juicy targets are legion, with Fact or Fiction being the new spell most likely to walk into this on a regular basis, with Opt coming in right behind it. If they change their behavior to play around it you're better off, and if they don't you're better off still. So why doesn't it seem to be making it into my blue decks? I'm not convinced yet that enough decks will provide targets. When you know you'll be able to cast Disrupt when you need to, it's a relatively painless way to torture your opponent. But when there are decks without Instants and Sorceries, or that contain only four or eight copies total, it gets harder to justify. And the effect isn't powerful enough for a sideboard. Still, this has to play a part in the format: Like Daze, if players ignore it then it's definitely worth using. One last point, though: Who changes the flavor text? I mean seriously.
XUUU, Sorcery, Rare
Return X target nonland permanents to their owners' hands.
It's a quirk of copying the spoiler list from a browser into the word processor that the colored mana symbols are deleted and have to be added back in. When there's more missing symbols than your instincts tell you there should be, the card's generally pretty bad. That was the case here. It's not ridiculous at this price, and in Limited it's almost certainly a bomb. But if you try to figure out when this card will be good, the answer gets pretty narrow pretty fast. You're going to need at least six mana and three significantly costed targets, and something to mop up before they can get their cards back down. Maybe you'll need this effect enough to pay the price in Invasion block, but this is why they made Withdraw. Use it.
1U, Creature - Bird 1/1, Common
Flying
T: Target land becomes a land of the basic land type of your choice until end of turn.
The burden of proof is on a 1/1 to prove that its ability makes it not suck. The Thrush didn't present much of a case - it muttered something about having Collective Restraint, finding colored mana and landwalking and walked away, then sat down and wondered why it had to have Flying and therefore the extra mana cost that came along with it, forcing you to pay for what you cannot use.
3UU, Creature - Legend 1/3, Rare
UU,T : Gain control of target Legend or legendary permanent. (This ability's effect doesn't end at end of turn.)
In Prophecy, we got a cycle of five casting cost creatures with amazing special abilities that actually worked out. But the Empress is a wimp. That keeps her from being useful the turn she comes into play or in games when there are no legends to take. Using Galina on a minor target like Rath's Edge wouldn't be enough to justify her anymore. When there's something like Mageta around for the taking, she gets more attractive - but most of the good Legends tend to kill you pretty quickly, or at least kill off Galina. But to be honest, did you really want the Empress to be any good? Legends are cool! They come out and do these amazingly powerful effects and you get to claim you have Advantage. There's always Card Advantage, Time Advantage and such, but who wouldn't want to have Rath's Edge Advantage or Mageta Advantage? If the Empress was good it would discourage the use of Legends, and aside from that punk named Lin we don't want that.
U, Enchant Permanent, Uncommon
If enchanted permanent is red or green, it has "At the beginning of your upkeep, sacrifice this permanent unless you pay its mana cost."
Permanent echo. Permanent echo. Of Pendrell Flux. Of Pendrell Flux. Which no one used. So no one will use this either. It gives your opponent too many options. It's nice to be a little cheaper and it's nice to hit enchantments and artifacts, but green and red don't normally have anything all that big that isn't a monster. Even if it was decent, it would fall into the maindeck vs. sideboard trap, not being game breaking enough to board while being clearly impossible to maindeck.
2U, Instant, Common
Counter target creature spell.
Draw a card.
It's good to Exclude. Normally you pay two extra mana and often slightly weaken the effect in order to make something (like for example Remove Soul) into a cantrip. Here you get that for only one mana, turning a very marginal counter into a playable card. If your opponent is playing enough counterable creatures (a few in the set are not) then Exclude is an excellent counter. In other matches it will counter almost nothing or nothing at all, making it uncastable and preventing you from getting the cantrip effect as well. If creature decks are most of the field then most blue decks will probably run four of these and sideboard them out when they have to. As creatures get less dominant, Exclude will get excluded. You have plenty of other solid counters to take its place if it becomes too risky. And don't forget that you have to WANT to counter the creatures for this to be worthwhile; if the key spells in creature decks aren't creatures (like Armageddon) then this will remain only in decks with a ton of counters.
3U, Instant, Uncommon
Reveal the top five cards of your library. An opponent separates those cards into two face-up piles. Put one pile into your hand and the other into your graveyard.
Fact: I've looked in depth at this card a ton already. (a whole Sideboard article in fact)
Fiction: This card is balanced.
Any questions?
U, Creature - Faerie 1/1, Common
Kicker 3U (You may pay an additional 3U as you play this spell.)
If you paid the kicker cost, Faerie Squadron comes into play with two +1/+1 counters on it and has flying.
This is the essence of the Kicker mechanic. It's not one of those stupid ones that give you Kicker 3UU for a +1/+1 counter. It's also not one of the cards WotC obviously really, really wants us to use so we can see how neat Kicker is (like Kavu Titan) and therefore makes one or both options good on their own. It gives you too cards, both of them major-league terrible on their own but not that overcosted. You ever been beaten down by a card Deepwood Tantiv or a Mon's Goblin Raiders and asked yourself what you did to deserve this? If you played those cards they'd just be horrible. But the key is that a card that's objectively bad still does a decent job if it's the kind of spell you need at the time. Paying five mana for a 3/3 flyer is a bad deal, but if you have a lot of mana it gets the job done. Paying one mana and getting a 1/1 that's missing a special ability is also a bad deal, but often it's better than wasting a mana. The primary danger of playing a 1/1 for one mana is that it doesn't 'count' in the long run, because you don't get a whole card's worth of effect. The Squadron no longer ruins your long term plans. That means that the right deck could have a use for it - in fact when I paused writing this, I played against a deck with four of them.
1U, Enchantment, Rare
Players can't play spells that share a color with the spell last played this turn.
If this card does not confuse you, you do not understand it. Or at least it should have confused you for a little while. When a mono red deck and a mono blue deck with no artifacts face off, this is the same as Arcane Laboratory. If a deck uses a good mix of different colored spells, it should be able to operate without too much trouble. Even a good number of artifacts will normally let most decks do more or less as they wish. Things get interesting when both players are trying to cast spells of the same color, and at least some of them are Instants. You could seriously cripple a monocolor deck if you started casting an instant of their color during their upkeep. Without an artifact they can't cast any spells, and if you respond to those artifacts with more instants their creatures aren't going to be coming into play any time soon. Buyback spells would be particularly effective here. The other situation is a counter war. If I cast a blue spell, you have to have a nonblue spell to respond with or you can't use a counter to stop me. If I then respond with another blue spell, you still don't get a shot if it's my turn. Or I can cast a spell of another color and respond right away with a blue one, stopping any attempt to use a counter. Or I can just use Mana Maze to stop some kind of combination that's primarily one color. Got all that?
1U, Sorcery, Uncommon
Search your library for three cards, remove them from the game, then shuffle your library.
Draw a card.
In their ongoing attempt to make Mental Magic players keep as many different cards as possible in their heads while also wasting as many cool names as possible, Foresight has been renamed Manipulate Fate. Both of those are great card names, but can't we just pick one and stick with it? It's not like we need to avoid references to the great Jaya Ballard, Task Mage or something, although she's been missing from the Assembly's last three meetings. Beyond all the name issues, Manipulate Fate and Foresight are both pretty bad. It's nice to get the worst cards out of your deck, or after a while to take land out of your deck, but it takes a long time before this effect becomes significant on average. To be interesting, this would have to be an Instant so you can cast it early without leaving yourself open. If Fact or Fiction can be an Instant why can't this be an Instant?
2UU, Creature - Ship 2/2, Rare
Flying
XU: You may put a creature card with converted mana cost X from your hand into play. If you do, return Metathran Aerostat to its owner's hand.
Take a moment, imagine this only costs three mana, and think of all the fun things you can do with it. Counter removal, put damage on the stack and get away, get your huge monster in uncountered on your opponent's turn as an instant, ready to block. Heck, bring two creatures in uncountered! These are all good things to do, but the price is way too high. Effects like this are good when they're incidental to an already solid card. A 2/2 flyer for three mana is a good base for something like this if the Aerostat is to make it into constructed decks. To use it you need to have at least two mana, normally at least three or four. Often you'll need to hold a creature back that you would otherwise have cast earlier in order to be able to bounce back the Aerostat - especially the turn it comes into play. So while this is definitely a cool and interesting card, and players will have circles run around them with this card in Limited, in Standard I'd say stay away.
1UU, Creature - Ship 1/3, Uncommon
Flying
Metathran Transport can't be blocked by blue creatures.
U: Target creature becomes blue until end of turn.
Maybe no one wanted to try and spell Fylamarid. I for one don't blame them, so I'll let this name change slide. The Fylamarid did actually see play a little during Tempest Block Constructed, and Tempest Block was probably stronger overall. It got used in Counterpheonix, to allow it to remove creatures with Protection and get around other weird stuff since the deck's removal options were so limited, along with the fact that if you have enough mana it can't be blocked by anything without Protection from Blue. Now there are even more reasons to want to shift the colors of creatures around. But there are also more ways to do that. I don't expect a major impact, but don't throw these away either.
1U, Creature - Zombie 1/1, Common
B: Regenerate Metathran Zombie.
The formerly Drowned; I thought the old lady dropped them in the ocean in the end. WotC went back and reprinted it for us. They shouldn't have. There's no good reason to play a blue Drudge Skeletons; there are many many better options.
U, Instant, Common
Look at the top card of your library. You may put that card on the bottom of your library.
Draw a card.
"We need alternatives, Hanna," yelled Gerrard. "Now!"
Flores needs to relax, but Opt is an excellent card. As long as you're already playing enough Islands to insure you'll have one so you can cast this on turn one, any deck without other one casting cost stuff to do would probably benefit from these if the room can be spared. Cast it on turn one, and shrink your deck with a very significant bonus. Unless your mana curve is tight as hell or you're using mana denial like Rising Waters you should have no trouble getting these out of the way when they come up without much trouble. In fact the key strategic question with Opt may be the same as Brainstorm, which is knowing when not to use it. If you'll have the mana to cast it later, there are good reasons to wait a while so that you can pass up a land if you draw it, or pass up anything but the last card you need or see what you need, et cetra.
UU, Enchant Land, Common
As Phantasmal Terrain comes into play, choose a basic land type. Enchanted land is a basic land of the chosen type.
This is one of Magic's earliest skill testers. Everyone can remember the point when they stopped playing with Phantasmal Terrain. Everyone can remember looking back and thinking: I used to play WHAT? That's horrible! And everyone can remember watching someone cast one, sitting back and trying not to laugh. And of course, you can remember the time this actually cost you a game and you wanted to rip it in two and scream "Why must I lose to this idiot?" Still, that attitude is deceptive. While the card is horrible in general, it does serve a purpose in case you really do need to give your opponent a copy of one of the basic lands that badly. In some decks, you can use it on yourself in a pinch. But if this becomes worth playing, that would mean there is something very wrong with Magic.
Don't miss part 2 next week...
- Zvi Mowshowitz
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