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Dec 20, 2011 -- 5:42AM, willpell wrote:

Dec 19, 2011 -- 6:51AM, Qilong wrote:

I think you got your cycles mixed up. Punish Ignorance isn't part of that cycle, the others are just power rares without any effective cycling aside from being rare and doing something.

The fact that they're rare (and don't have Ultimatim in their names) IS what makes them a cycle.  They are "the cycle of three-color non-Ultimatum rares in Shards of Alara".  This is enough to qualify them as a cycle by R&D's standards - Rarity is one of the weightiest factors in how R&D makes cards.  The fact that the cards have nothing to do with each other means they're a bad cycle, but they do count, and the irregularity in them is transparent given their visibility as the only cards of their exact colors in their exact rarity apart from a more obvious cycle.

but Punish Ignorance isn't even a creature

That was kind of my point dude.

in a break with the other Shard creatures, simply because there is a dearth in SoA for rare creatures.

Mirrorshine Phantasm
Creature - Spirit, WUB, 1/1
Flying.
WB, Remove a creature card in a graveyard from the game: Put a 1/1 white and black Spirit token into play.
UUU, TAP: Each Spirit becomes a copy of target creature card in a graveyard until end of turn.
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There are no shortage of creature concepts under any circumstances period.  If Wizards didn't make a creature for this slot it's because they didn't think it was important that they did so.  I disagree - the Ultimatums were all sorceries or instants, so their correspondents in these slots needed to be permanents.  (If nothing else I doubt Punish Ignorance would have broken the game at uncommon, they could have tossed Vigilance onto Tower Gargoyle and made it a rare, maybe Limited would have been worse off but then if you drafted Esper you had to put up with the astonishing awfulness of nearly every blue common in SOA, lack of uncommon Gargoyles would just have made it easier to avoid the temptation, or else easier for Wizards to make cards like Vectis Silencers suck slightly less than was necessary to keep Esper from being borked.)
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Toby:  I don't think Mikaeus is intended to correspond to Grimgrin, Olivia and St. Traft; there isn't a matching werewolf in any case so I suspect both an RG werewolf lord and a GW human lord are coming in DA, and that Mikaeus is just a one-off legend akin to Ob Nixilis in Zendikar or Glissa in MBS.

I tend to think that there has to be a common connecting theme across cards despite rarity to create something even remotely like a cycle. They don't have to be tight ( Sowing Salt and kin, the Titans, or the Keepers from Exodus), or loose (Legendary lands from Urza's Saga, Grandeur legends from Future Sight), but there has to be some structural thread that combines them. Rarity isn't even implicit in this one because the outlier, a spell, doesn't even have the same effective mana cost structure, even were it to be designed as a piece of the cycle in the first place. It's about the expectation of the Rule of Five, that when you break it it should be obvious and noticeable (that's the point of the Rule of Five). As you note, that's not the case here, it just happens to be the only other rare that isn't in other cycles, so it must be in this cycle! Even if designed as true, it stands too far out without any blatant pointers (cost, effect, type) to be effective as part of the cycle, which implies it replaced or was modified from the original holder, if there was truly a cycle.

Nov 29, 2011 -- 9:54AM, WotC_Monty wrote:

This thread is for discussion of magicthegathering.com's Magic Arcana, Card of the Day, and Daily Decks features for the month of December, 2011.

dose anybody have any ideas for a top teir plainswalker deck?

Dec 22, 2011 -- 10:02AM, xavier3034147 wrote:

Dose any body know how to make a plainswalker deck

Please ask that in the Casual Play forums. That's where you'll get deck help.

And double posting is frowned upon here. I was about to report you for spamming, but I'll give you a chance to be corrected.

Dec 26, 2011 -- 3:12PM, occamsrazorwit wrote:

Dec 22, 2011 -- 10:02AM, xavier3034147 wrote:

Dose any body know how to make a plainswalker deck

Don't even try. Plainswalker decks are notoriously bad. If you are really set on it, Aysen Highway , Conversion and Graceful Antelope would be your best bets.

Don't forget Boggart Arsonists and Zodiac Rooster !