It strikes me that this little dork is almost certainly going to generate 1 mana and 1 artifact, probably more like 2 or 3 in most matchups. Given that, does this have combo potential? That is, is there a reliable way to blink this thing while accomplishing something else worthwhile?
Another thought: since he spams out permanents, does he also have applications with Tangle Wire or Smokestack?
I love this card as the second coming of Illusionary Mask. But, Dreadnought hasn't been good in Vintage for a long time, as far as I know. Even if it was, it's awfully hard to compete with Orb, or Stifle in decks that can support it.
There was a period of time when @Smmenen was maintaining and updating a list of Vintage playables. I wonder if he's still doing that?
Nature's Claim / Naturalize + Disenchant?
Naturenchant?
Nature's Chant?
PRINT.
Well, I guess the distinction between White and Green on removing artifacts and enchantments has been eroding for some time. This is the next logical step.
Interestingly, though, doing this after War of the Spark was means that we now have a bunch of enchantment/artifact-like effects on Walkers. So, while this card makes disenchanting easier than ever, we also have a new card type to pay more attention to.
I was thinking about how the ping protects this creature, and I actually decided it doesn't really because Vintage has so many decks with big-butt creatures like Eldrazi and Shops. I feel like this girl (girls?) protects herself (themselves?) about as well as Dack Fayden, maybe a little better. It's conditional.
Ironically, I think the protection is better in Legacy where small creatures tend to more consistently rule the roost in the first few turns of the game.
But, since this card only costs 2 mana and probably at worst gives you a rampant growth if it dies immediately, it may be that being somewhat fragile is irrelevant. It's such a small investment that the removal probably was more expensive (in mana or time) than this card was.
Coming to post this, too. Two mana wasteland/strip mine lock seems pretty brutal. Even the ping is relevant as a way to wipe utility creatures away or grind out the opponent. The ultimate is also pretty insane in Vintage.
The one down side is that this walker doesn't protect itself. But, at 2 mana, does it really need to?
It's a crime and a shame not to print the entire Horizon cycle in Modern Horizons.
I guess WOTC heard Modern players clamouring for enemy fetch lands and caught the "enemy" part.
@desolutionist Yeah, thats what Wagner was pointing out.
I have to think this is downgrade to Gempalm. How often is getting a french vanilla 1/1 going to be better than drawing another card in Goblins? I'm sure there are corner cases, but I think I'd rather draw a better Goblin and still get the burn.
As far as targeting planeswalkers, again, that's situationally good, but it seems like Goblins would already be particulary well suited to crash through Walkers just because they are attacking with so many bodies anyway.
This card seems incredibly well designed for its purpose. It appears they were trying to incorporate the combo fighting Power of force of will into modern without allowing people to use it to protect combos. They did so in a very narrow way.
I'm not sure this card actually matters at all for vintage because with excess to four forces of will, how many decks actually need another four cards to protect themselves from broken combo? What decks in the current meta have a huge problem dealing with combo? Those decks might have some number of these in the sideboard
I think MTGO is protected from infinite loops by the fact that it keeps prompting players when they get priority, and there is a game clock. If you turned off the priority checks and game clock then absolutely you could soft-lock the game within the Rules of Magic alone. I mean, legitimately, not just because MTGO is poorly programmed.
This is, incidentally, why the shortcut rules don't work and certain decks with infinite combos are more difficult or impossible to run on MTGO.