[CMR] Jeweled Lotus
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This card has no Vintage implications, but is a notable printing nonetheless as the closest replica yet to MtG's most iconic card:
Jeweled Lotus 0
Artifact
T, Sacrifice Jeweled Lotus: Add three mana of any one color. Spend this mana only to cast your commander.I don't play a lot of Commander, but naively I expect this card to dramatically increase the variance and power level of that format...
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I suspect it is worse than you think. Unlike vintage you always start with your commander "in hand" and the mulligan rules are far more forgiving in that format. Drawing this is almost always going to be live and basically a 3 turn ramp into your game ender, or at least something that will give you a near insurmountable lead.
The closest parallel to this is when Lurris was legal before the companion change. Yes in commander you are potentially looking down the barrel at 3 other players who can interact with you, but not everyone is running blue or FOW in that format anyway. Turn oneing this into Azusa, Lost but seeking and dropping 2 more land into play is scary, and there are a number of other commanders that are very scary if they can come down that much earlier and combo off.
The only thing that actually holds that format together is the pact the players made with each other for it to be a "fun" format, but the rise of cEDH is going to test that and this is really going to push boundaries. I never much liked the format myself, too much shuffling and I don't find playing underpowered decks for fun to be very compelling, so it should be interesting to see where this goes.
Also, can they even ban this if it's too good? It cannot be played anywhere else and it no doubt is going to hit with a huge pricetag. There are not that many card that can be banned in one format and not be functionally playable anywhere else.
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I'm buying 4x (maybe 40x). They printed Companion last set and I hear they are printing Commander as a Vintage type in Kaldheim. Can't wait!
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@thewhitedragon69 said in [CMR] Jeweled Lotus:
I'm buying 4x (maybe 40x). They printed Companion last set and I hear they are printing Commander as a Vintage type in Kaldheim. Can't wait!
Seriously? Source on this?
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I think this is Wotc's doorway into reprinting the RL list. If they can put it under the shadow of "commander," they can reprint almost anything.
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@joshuabrooks said in [CMR] Jeweled Lotus:
I think this is Wotc's doorway into reprinting the RL list. If they can put it under the shadow of "commander," they can reprint almost anything.
Not really a reprint then is it? Unless the plan is to cancel other formats and move them to commander only.
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This is another example of something I've been saying for years:
http://www.themanadrain.com/topic/1473/the-reserve-list-the-reddest-red-herring
In short, the Reserve List does nothing whatsoever to stop Wizards from printing all the broken nonsense they like and giving us substitutes or replacements for Reserve List cards. They do it all the time. Every time some whackadoodle on Youtube or Twitter complains about the Reserve List, they're just plain wrong. If you want to improve access to eternal formats, you print functionally different cards that compete or replace Reserved List cards. The reason we don't get them isn't because WotC can't do it, it's because it wrecks Standard and other formats.
I don't think WotC has been playing around with nonfunctional reprints any more frequently in recent sets. Hell, we get a Mox [Whatever] almost every other year. It's just that since War of the Spark, power creep has been going really bonkers. Multiple fetchable duals and trilands. A true Mox for Commanders only. They seem more willing to swing the wrecking ball at Standard, which I'm all about!
I wonder if we're getting the point where Scry duals or some other nonsense is actually on the radar?
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$150 ugly Black Lotus proxy
Quote from: Stormanimagus on March 16, 2016, 06:39:41 pm
>Instead of tearing things down we should calmly explain our opinions. -
@maximumcdawg said in [CMR] Jeweled Lotus:
This is another example of something I've been saying for years:
http://www.themanadrain.com/topic/1473/the-reserve-list-the-reddest-red-herring
In short, the Reserve List does nothing whatsoever to stop Wizards from printing all the broken nonsense they like and giving us substitutes or replacements for Reserve List cards. They do it all the time. Every time some whackadoodle on Youtube or Twitter complains about the Reserve List, they're just plain wrong. If you want to improve access to eternal formats, you print functionally different cards that compete or replace Reserved List cards. The reason we don't get them isn't because WotC can't do it, it's because it wrecks Standard and other formats.
I don't think WotC has been playing around with nonfunctional reprints any more frequently in recent sets. Hell, we get a Mox [Whatever] almost every other year. It's just that since War of the Spark, power creep has been going really bonkers. Multiple fetchable duals and trilands. A true Mox for Commanders only. They seem more willing to swing the wrecking ball at Standard, which I'm all about!
I wonder if we're getting the point where Scry duals or some other nonsense is actually on the radar?
Printing cards that are parallel or better to most reserve list cards is only going to open the format up if they preclude the use of the reserve list cards. I have yet to see a replacement for Gaea's Cradle that didn't want to be in a deck with the real card. Mox Diamond, Opal, Chrome, etc did not reduce our reliance on Moxen and in some cases made them more prominent.
This printing does nothing to make Lotus any less restrictive, and short of them banning lotus and making vintage a commander only format it never will. If you didn't ban it outright then this new lotus would just sit next to the real one. This paradigm does not apply to all reserve list cards. MAYBE dual lands they can power creep a bit to make you not want the originals, but even that is murky and doubtful.
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You can easily make lands that preclude reserved list cards. For example, trilands that enter untapped and say "your deck may not contain lands that have less than three land types" or a non-legendary Gaea's cradle that says "your deck may not contain legendary land cards." Companions already opened the door to maindeck constrictions on what it can contain, so this doesn't seem that hard to pull off.
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This is a gateway to reprinting “functional identical” RL lands.
True duals lands that can only be the colors of your commander.
A true black lotus that can only give you colors of your commander.
A gaea’s cradle that can only be a color of your commander.
A Mox that can only give you a color of your commander.
A time walk that works any turn you haven’t cast your commander.
You get the point. This is a great “cheat” to the RL.
I suspect we’ll be seeing the duals soon.
...and I’m sure we’ll see them try to force commanders into constructed again soon. Companion didn’t work, maybe their next try will.
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@joshuabrooks said in [CMR] Jeweled Lotus:
This is a gateway to reprinting “functional identical” RL lands.
True duals lands that can only be the colors of your commander.
A true black lotus that can only give you colors of your commander.
A gaea’s cradle that can only be a color of your commander.
A Mox that can only give you a color of your commander.
A time walk that works any turn you haven’t cast your commander.
You get the point. This is a great “cheat” to the RL.Again, none of these are cheating the reserve list for multiple reasons
1 - Many of these exist along side the RL copies you would be using anyway. As it stands you cannot use duals that are not your commanders colors anyway, and why wouldn't my UB Commander want Underground Sea AND functionally identical underground sea?
2 - They have flat out said in the past that they would not cheat the reserve list by printing effectively functional reprints with different names. The example they tend to give are snow duals but thats a lousy one because Snow is different. A better example would be a reprint of Underground Sea with a new name that just said that you could not also have Underground Sea in your deck. This is not that because the card is functionally very different, as are many of the ones you just listed.
3 - Some cards they simply will not reprint in a new format because the old version was broken and a mistake. Ancestral recall is a broken card. Many attempts to make balanced ancestrals have fallen apart as well. Why would they introduce that into a casual format when no one is clamoring for it?
@joshuabrooks said in [CMR] Jeweled Lotus:
You get the point. This is a great “cheat” to the RL.
I suspect we’ll be seeing the duals soon.But we have duals in that format, specifically for that format, and they are not strictly better, and that is by design. Why would they make more and powercreep them as such when the last 25 years has been them intentionally not doing that with the exception of under estimating how warping the fetchlands would be?
I think more likely would be that we get snow true duals that are fetchable, but along side that we get playable cards that punish snow in such a way that they are not strictly better or worse than ABUR Duals but rather subjective. Time will tell I guess.
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I think they would because many commander players don’t have $200-$600 for duals and never will.
If they “reprint” true duals (with commander backdooring), they will sell lots of packs.
That’s why they would circumvent the RL with commander only RL cards.
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@thewhitedragon69 said in [CMR] Jeweled Lotus:
I'm buying 4x (maybe 40x). They printed Companion last set and I hear they are printing Commander as a Vintage type in Kaldheim. Can't wait!
Good luck. It's selling for 150-160 dollars.
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@joshuabrooks said in [CMR] Jeweled Lotus:
I think they would because many commander players don’t have $200-$600 for duals and never will.
Again, that does not work. If they backdoored dual lands like this all it would do would be add another dual. The ideal manabase for that deck would likely still want the original dual and the new one and cut something else like a shock land.
Maybe in a 4 color deck where you don't have room for 2 of each it helps solve a problem, but 2 color decks are sure going to want a second matching true dual.
I honestly think just banning every reserve list card in that format would be a better option than trying to patch it, and that way wotc wouldn't have to print replacements because they are not trying to fix a market problem.
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@fsecco Yeah, I'm not baying $15-16 let alone $150-160. This card can only cast commanders, so it's basically junk except as a 1 of in a single format.
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@thewhitedragon69 said in [CMR] Jeweled Lotus:
@fsecco Yeah, I'm not baying $15-16 let alone $150-160. This card can only cast commanders, so it's basically junk except as a 1 of in a single format.
It is. Except that Commander is the format that drives cards' prices more than any other. I bet this price will come a bit down once people realize this card is not as busted as they think. But the high demand alone will keep it way high. Being a Mythic won't help.
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@thecravenone said in [CMR] Jeweled Lotus:
$150 ugly Black Lotus proxy
My thoughts as well.
I’ll just stick with Blacker Lotus as my proxy, thank you very much.
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Just leaving this here.
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@john-cox well, that's the double-pimped version though. I get your point, but I don't think it counts as a good measure of the card's price.
