Happy Friday MTG peeps,
As it is Friday, we suggest you get out to your local gaming store tonight for Friday Night Magic. We'll be off to OMG! Games tonight in Barrie, Ontario where snow is laying deep - which means we may even have to get our snow shoes on for this trek.
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Whispering Madness, 2ubSorcery, Rare
Each player discards his or her hand, then draws cards equal to the greatest number of cards a player discarded this way.
Cipher (Then you may exile this spell card encoded on a creature you control. Whenever that creature deals combat damage to a player, its controller may cast a copy of this card without paying its mana cost.)
Illustrated by Clint Cearley
#207/249
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Almost like an improved variation of Haunt on potential repeating Urza Saga's Windfall or like an aweome version of Darksteel's Spellbinder. Hold up though - did you see the art ? Don't get us wrong - we aboslutely love Clint Cearley (think Intangible Virtue or Destroy the Evidence) but this card art in our opinion is just awful (a creepy / evil Jon Finkel looking mage) - We don't put the blame for nasty art on Clint but rather the WotC art request (lead concept artist Rick Whitters or other MTG minion).
Anywhoos - let's have a closer look at the new House Dimir keyword 'Cipher' which reads (after resolution of that spell), 'then you may exile this spell card encoded on a creature you control. Whenever that creature deals combat damage to a player, its controller may cast a copy of this card without paying its mana cost'.
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3 comments:
Loving this effect but to all the people crying out that the mechanic is broken, definitely not so. In addition to all the reasons mentioned already, one must bear in mind that this is an ability whose effectiveness is based very heavily upon the card itself. This ability has potential for extreme levels of broken or just plain unplayable in any format, all depending on what kind of effect the rest of the card does.
Effects like Overload seemed like an amazing effect but ended up being overall rather poor in performance because of the cards themselves with effects that were too situational and/or cost prohibitive. This can EASILY become the case with Cipher.
However with the only Cipher card currently preveiwed, I have to give this little idea that can mitigate the problems of having Ciphered abilities you may not need or even want to have going off every time you attack. Niv Magus Elemental is a 1 drop blue/red hybrid, so extremely easy to throw a playset of him into this deck. His ability will greatly benefit from having spells you can cast without paying a mana cost for. Say you use Whispering Madness as a cipher but every card in your hand is currently needed for your strategy for the coming turn, you can still attempt to cast the copy of whispering madness and still get a benefit by having Nivmagus Elemental eat it.
I can see Nivmagus Elemental being VERY strong card when used in a Dimir deck, reminds me of the effectiveness of Delver in both the short and long range.
Cipher has the potential to be completely broken especially if given a Mill effect. Cipher effect reads as such "Then you may exile this spell card encoded on a creature you control. Whenever that creature deals combat damage to a player, its controller may cast a copy of this card without paying its mana cost" so (and please correct me if I'm wrong) if you place it on let's say invisible stalker, deal damage, you get to recast the ciphered spell IN WHOLE, which means you can cipher that card on a different creature. It's going to be an extremely powerful ability unless they make the spells incredibly bad.
@Brock, you are reading it a little wrong. Once you cipher, the card is stuck to a creature. When you cast again after damage, it's a copy of the spell. You would need another card to cipher again. Your point still stands though, it has the potential to be incredibly powerful with cards like Stalker in the mix. Its not completely broken though, you just need counters ready for anything hexproof and a lot of removal, both targeted and mass.
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