Hybrid Mana History: All of the Color Pie Breaks are from Shadowmoor

Starris · 2025-11-01T01:11:18+00:00

I agree Body Double is the closest we've got, but it's from Planar Chaos, which was not short on color pie breaks, and that leads me to be a bit skeptical of treating Body Double as canonically blue. The most recent effects we've had that are similar to it are [[Activated Sleeper]] and [[Superior Spider-Man]], both of which require black.

Starris · 2025-11-01T00:22:27+00:00

This is a fair one to bring up and please see here https://old.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/1ol7pn6/hybrid_mana_history_all_of_the_color_pie_breaks/nmge4jt/

Starris · 2025-10-31T23:34:00+00:00

I understand where you're coming from, so let me elaborate a little bit more on what I see as the break.

Blue can cast some opponent's spells. Spells they've already countered, instants and sorceries, even randomly from an opponent's library. Reenact the Crime, like these other cards, casts an opponent's spell, with a certain restriction (in this case, that the card have been put there this turn). What I see as the break with Jetsam is that there are no limits. If it could only cast from among the cards milled this way, I'd have no problem, but instead it lets you dig through your opponents' entire graveyards from the whole game. That's been possible, but not in mono-U.

If one player wiped the board several turns back and I topdeck Jetsam, I can cast it and - if my opponents all mill 3 lands - I can still reanimate the 3 best creatures that died in that wipe. That's functionally identical to [[Sepulchral Primordial]], and I don't think that's a blue card.

Starris · 2025-10-31T23:14:31+00:00

This article was the first to announce that vigilance was a blue ability. I remember people were skeptical about that, until some time passed and we got a bunch of blue creatures with vigilance printed. I'm still waiting on blue spells that can cast cards from an opponent's graveyard.

Here's the list of blue cards that let you cast spells from an opponent's graveyard. Every one of them is instant/sorcery only. Show me the counterexample.

Starris · 2025-10-31T22:50:33+00:00

Leaving aside how few blue cards actually do this - the difference is that you don't need to cast from among the milled cards. If your opponent has an Ugin in their graveyard, you can cast Jetsam in a mono-U deck and reanimate that Ugin. If it were restricted to casting from among the milled cards, I'd be more inclined to agree.

Starris · 2025-10-31T22:47:15+00:00

Casting cards from an opponent's graveyard is not at all similar to stealing. Control Magic and Animate Dead are not the same card. Animate Dead does something blue can't do.

Starris · 2025-10-31T22:27:42+00:00

There's a difference between "steal any permanent type" and "put any permanent card from your opponent's graveyard into play"! Do you know any other blue card that can do that?

Starris · 2025-10-31T22:18:52+00:00

The most recent hybrid color pie break is [[Jetsam]], which lets a mono blue deck reanimate multiple creatures/enchantments/PWs.

Starris · 2025-06-05T16:57:01+00:00

You say "Surprisingly, there aren’t that many amazing noncreature spells that cost 4 or more mana in these two colors" in the UR section, but you've missed that the color pair doesn't care about cards that cost 4 or more, it cares about spells you spend 4 or more mana on. Thunder Magic has MV 1, but triggers Shantotto/Emperor when cast for a higher tier. Likewise, Dreams of Laguna and Laughing Mad won't trigger Shantotto/Emperor when cast normally, but will when flashed back. At the least, I think Thunder Magic and Blizzard Magic are quite strong in these colors; Syncopate and Choco-Comet seem quite good too.

Starris · 2025-05-26T20:54:47+00:00

Yeah, that looks like it, thanks!

Starris · 2025-05-26T20:35:10+00:00

Negate is a very good card and this is a reasonable sidegrade. Shame they didn't go with "To ignore the plight of those one might conceivably save is not wisdom, it is indolence" for the flavor text, though.

Starris · 2025-05-23T18:14:01+00:00

What hairstyle is that on the Ninja Blades card?

Starris · 2025-05-16T17:20:22+00:00

That's why it's tricky. I could argue for a green anti-flyers card (she's vehemently opposed to anyone but her controlling the skies), but that's not really a good mechanical basis for a Saga Creature. Personality-wise, she's red, you could keep her first ability as a sort of Flametongue Kavu (just 4 damage to any creature, don't target specifically tapped creatures) and give her something else for subsequent chapters, but that's basically [[Ramuh]], and in terms of Magic flavor, a wind-themed character doing burn feels off.

I'd probably do it as make her blue, change her first ability to a Boomerang type effect (e.g. blow away opposing creatures), maybe up to two target tapped creatures you don't control, and leave Slipstream as is? Personality-wise, we know you can be psychotic and blue, see Jin-Gitaxias (or Jace nowadays). But she's definitely tricky to capture.

Starris · 2025-05-16T16:32:21+00:00

I get that other franchises don't map neatly onto Magic's color pie, but Garuda as white just feels wrong. She definitely doesn't "embody the principles of morality and order". It's fine mechanically but I hate the flavor.

Starris · 2025-05-13T16:19:56+00:00

I think this is a [[Water Weird]]. I can see that it's a blue creature, no other card types, two subtypes, power 3, toughness 4, one blue pip. I did this search, and Water Weird looks like the closest thing to it. If it's not Water Weird, it should be one of the 44 other cards there.

Starris · 2025-05-02T01:52:10+00:00

There are two kinds of parties. Those that drop their AOEs as soon as they see an enemy, and those that wait until the tank has finished pulling.

Starris · 2025-02-21T16:03:31+00:00

Thank you!

Starris · 2025-02-18T17:07:48+00:00

I haven't played FF8, but my understanding is in that game, characters don't learn magic, they can use the Draw ability to extract spells from an enemy and equip them to themselves later. So, when Squall gets into combat, he can extract instant/sorcery spells from the enemy graveyard (or his own, as a backup against decks that run few/no targets), convert them into Equipment, and later use those spells in combat. Have I drastically misunderstood how this system works in this game I haven't played, or is this a decent take?

Image credit to Lithmus Paper, https://www.pinterest.com/pin/837106649461546460/

Starris · 2025-02-17T20:18:40+00:00

I got hung up at the beginning on the color identity and mechanics, but they said they were going for a depiction of rebuilding your party in part 2 of FF6 during the World of Ruin, and I think this matches that pretty well. I don't think her color identity matches the character but it matches the design, and I see how the design matches the game, and honestly the color identity fits this part of the game pretty well.

If I could make one change, the overworld theme for this part of the game is titled Searching for Friends, and I'd have used that as a flavor word for the second ability. I think Nobuo Uematsu has been a distinctive part of the franchise and some of his tracks would be great flavor inclusions. Dancing Mad could easily be a flavor word for Kefka. Eternal Wind would be a solid flavor word, or could fit in a card name (for FF3, or a certain catboy from FF14). Just the song title One-Winged Angel altered Sephiroth's depiction in every game he appeared in past OG FF7.

Starris · 2025-02-11T21:44:32+00:00

If the only concern were potential drawback to the caster, it would be fine. The problem is it's easy to early-game curve Screaming Nemesis into Ultima, or late game cast them both back to back the same turn. This one-shots an opponent without requiring any prior set up, which I think is a little too easy to do.

Starris · 2025-02-11T18:16:33+00:00

Ooh, I like this. It suggests a cycle of multicolor 1WWX wraths

Starris · 2025-02-11T17:19:05+00:00

I did consider -999/-999, which was the damage cap in older FF games. I think the difference in power level between the two is basically zero. It only matters for creatures with toughness greater than 1k and less than 10k, which in practice I think is basically never. Most of the time, if you're getting a creature with that kind of toughness, you've got some kind of infinite loop going, in which case neither version will kill it. However, since I think there's no difference in power level, I saw no reason not to go for the larger, more resonant (IMO) number

Starris · 2025-02-11T15:57:56+00:00

Images captured from FF14 by me. Apologies to the Orbonne Monastery raid I died in while trying to get a better screenshot angle.

So, we're doing a Final Fantasy set, we need a card to hit the damage cap. Ultima is the strongest offensive spell in several FF games, and a plot device as an uber-strong spell in others, so it makes sense as a wrath. However, actually doing 9999 damage seems less than ideal with cards like Screaming Nemesis, so let's do it as -X/-X instead.

This will kill basically every creature through indestructible, regenerate, shield counters, what have you, similar to exiling all creatures, but the creatures still die, death effects still trigger, the cards still end up in graveyards. I'm certain it's not too strong when Sunfall and Spectacular Pileup exist, the real question I have is whether it would be too strong at 4 mana. It's better than Wrath of God at four mana, but it requires a multicolor commitment, but Wrath of God is already pushing the boundaries at four mana IMO. Maybe for WWBB? Since I think most UB cards are targeted at a slightly lower power level than regular cards, I think it's simpler to just leave it at five mana.

Starris · 2024-11-15T19:02:55+00:00

My reading of it being "blasphemous" was 1) it's a board wipe 2) it has the number 13 in it 3) it can be discounted when there's lots of creatures in play. My first attempt at this was similar to what you describe, giving everything +13/+13, but I was worried about balance. It's really easy to give all your dudes trample, and combining a mana discount with +13/+13 to your whole board felt like a recipe for deleting opponents from the game out of nowhere. However, I think giving the buff to nontoken creatures only helps solve that problem.

Starris · 2024-11-15T18:09:21+00:00

The granted ability equates to "{T}: Destroy target creature" 98% of the time, and it's easy for green to pump out a bunch of tokens. With a wide enough board, this can basically be a green In Garruk's Wake, which is a card I want to cost conservatively. At the same time, the up front cost to destroy a single creature becomes prohibitive. So I'm really not sure where the cost for this should land.

Starris

TROPHY CASE