Topic: Gatecrash Spoilers - Fact or Fake?

I would imagine that I'm not alone in looking forward to the next set in the block or that I will key "Gatecrash Spoilers" into Google every few weeks to see what, if anything has been leaked.  Imagine my surprise when just a few days ago said search came up with a hit.

For those of you who might not have seen/heard you can see the "leaked" cards here:

http://www.magicspoiler.com/gatecrash-spoiler/

First off, I'm curious, do we all believe these to be legitimate cards or are they really well crafted fakes?

Secondly, if we assume them to be real, thoughts?

Re: Gatecrash Spoilers - Fact or Fake?

Yes, I'm pretty sure that they are real.

Some of them are kind of lame (Borborygmos), some are pretty great (Aurelia, Domri) and some make me squirm simultaneously with EDH glee and Standard uncertainty (Infinite, Hellkite).

Re: Gatecrash Spoilers - Fact or Fake?

I was actually kind of liking Borborygmos - the obvious challenge would be getting him onto the field, but then once he's there, Mulch becomes a crazy burn spell and creatures like Borderland Ranger and Gatecreeper Vine are just sick.

Re: Gatecrash Spoilers - Fact or Fake?

Yeah my guess is someone broke their non disclosure agreement and leaked the cards.
(or it was a planned spoilers)

New planeswalker looks pretty neat.

Re: Gatecrash Spoilers - Fact or Fake?

I was thinking he looks underpowered to me.  Outside of aggro builds (yes, I know that's what Gruul is supposed to run) his +1 doesn't even guarantee a card draw.  The -2 requires you to have a creature to fight with (and is something you can do with Ulvenwald Tracker easily enough.  The only one of his abilities that is worth much in my eyes is the ultimate.  I get that he's a 3 drop, so you could realistically have him/her out on turn two (thank you green), but beyond that, you're not doing much with it.

Re: Gatecrash Spoilers - Fact or Fake?

TyWooOneTime wrote:

I was thinking he looks underpowered to me.  Outside of aggro builds (yes, I know that's what Gruul is supposed to run) his +1 doesn't even guarantee a card draw.  The -2 requires you to have a creature to fight with (and is something you can do with Ulvenwald Tracker easily enough.  The only one of his abilities that is worth much in my eyes is the ultimate.  I get that he's a 3 drop, so you could realistically have him/her out on turn two (thank you green), but beyond that, you're not doing much with it.

Fairly reliable card draw in red or green is a very powerful ability and is nothing to shake a stick at, look at Harmonize, it's considered amazingly good while Concentrate is just bad. The worst case scenario is knowing what's ahead and in formats where there are fetchlands that shuffle libraries the ability to know what's coming up can be really good, maybe it's not the best planeswalker ever printed but I'd say that it's better than Vraska by a pretty wide margin

I'd also say that Borborygmos is better than Aurelia, I'm not too impressed by a 3/4 flier for 6, it seems like it's a Timmy card that won't do much, extra combat is nice but doesn't dig you out of a hole the way that being able to turn all of your lands in hand into free lightning bolts can, by the time you hit Borborygmos you're probably topdecking and if you hit a land it can kill you under the wrong circumstances, however I am not impressed at all by the Hellkite Tyrant, blech what a silly win condition without scars block

Also Omniscience + Enter the Infinite deck??? I'm thinking Blue Green Ramp... Sounds fun to me smile

Re: Gatecrash Spoilers - Fact or Fake?

I think my disappointment in the PW is just that the -2 ability is so mediocre.  I normally only run 1x of any PW because they're often so easy to deal with, meaning that more often than not, their ultimate abilities are totally irrelevant.  That said, I would argue Vraska has more uses simply because at that point in a G/B curve, you should be hitting something that can perform multiple removal and protect itself - both of which she does in spades.  Even Jace, Memory Adept's second ability can be very useful, but to make two creatures fight?  I'm just not feeling it.  I could be wrong, it certainly wouldn't be the first or the last time, but I'm not seeing where it'll make that big of a dent in things.

For Borborygmos, I'm having thoughts of Conjurer's Closet paired with Gatecreeper Vine and Borderland Ranger to simply just mess things up once you get him on the field.

Aurelia can be useful in the sense that some well timed flickering can actually result in more than two attack phases.  I actually spoke with a level 1 judge on the topic and asked if you use Cloudshift on her at the resolution of the first attack phase (before damage is dealt) but after her trigger hits, would she be able to attack in the second attack phase and generate a third one.  He said that because she technically leaves the battlefield, her attack in the second attack phase would count as though it were her first attack that turn, meaning you would get a third attack phase.  Pair that with a few other pieces and you can imagine things get pretty nasty, but that's the only combo where I see her being all that powerful.  But she could make for quite the useful piece doing that in a red deck dedicated to using their own creatures against them (could Tibalt actually have a place?).

The Omniscience combo would be nice, but really, that's 21 mana across two turns... I'm just not seeing where you're going to hit that and still be alive - at least not unless they make ANOTHER ramp defender to go with Axebane Guardian.  Otherwise you'd do it once and BAM, they'll be onto you and kill the rampers.

Hellkite clearly was designed for Modern and other formats to deal with people abusing affinity.  For Standard, it's a waste of space.

Re: Gatecrash Spoilers - Fact or Fake?

Ah creature based ramp, that's where we miscommunicate, the vision for my combo is actually a 4 color deck, all but black, terminus, temporal, devastation tide, supreme verdict, the Green sorcery speed ramp (Farseek Rangers path, boundless realms), and 8 5 damage burn spells, x4 explosive impact, x4 thunderous wrath, mostly a deck for online since miracles tend to be a bit spendy...

TyWooOneTime wrote:

Hellkite clearly was designed for Modern and other formats to deal with people abusing affinity.  For Standard, it's a waste of space.

I'd say it's more for casual, if someone is playing affinity and you can get out a Hellkite Tyrant before you die that person is playing affinity wrong tongue

It could work in an artifact ramp based red EDH deck, maybe Bosh, Iron Golem? Well that's a fun idea...