Worldwake Spoilers - Celestial Colonnade analysis

Well the buy-a-box promo card for Worldwake has been spoiled on the MTG Salvation forums within the past couple days. Lets take a look below:


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Wow. Not only are man-lands back but they are back with a vengeance. This card has the spike in me jumping for joy. What we have is a mana-fixing man-land that can be turned into a Serra Angel each turn for a slightly more prohibitive cost. Besides the normal perks of dodging sorcery removal and counters as a man-land, the creature has vigilance so it can be tapped for mana after you attack or still be used next turn for counters. If we get some better counters in Worldwake this will fit nicely into a blue / white control deck for sure.

To me this seems like it has the potential to be one of the best cycles of man-lands printed. Having a mana fixer early in the game that can be used as a beater in the late game is quite powerful even if it does always come into play tapped. I would assume we will only see an allied cycle on these lands in Worldwake but I guess we will have to wait for more spoilers to confirm this. I personally can't wait to see the rest of the cycle. If they are anything as good as this I feel these lands have the potential to be big in standard as long as the activation cost is correctly priced for the type of deck they are designed to fit into.

One thing that seems a bit odd to me though is why we are getting the first multi-color man lands in what has been said to be a very mono-colored block. The Leatherback Baloth I talked about in the last spoiler post only seems to support the mono-color theme but this card certainly does not. Is wizards so caught up in multi-color land cycles that they would go against the theme of a block just to print some interesting cards? Must every set contain a cycle of $10 multi-color rare lands? Are they doing these things to cater to the type II players out there? I guess we will figure some of these questions out as the spoiler season continues.

Worldwake Spoilers - Leatherback Baloth analysis

Another card for Worldwake has been spoiled over on the MTG Salvation forums. Lets take a look at the card from nivek99 below:


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This card certainly is as boring as it is powerful. Powerful in the sense that it is much better than the 5 existing GGG creature spells (click here for the otheres) but boring in the design space since it is only a vanilla creature. I am certain this will see some sort of play however as it avoids most damage based removal. This card really is doing what green does best which is dropping big creatures; however, it is doing it much more efficiently than usual.

I do like that mono color cards seem to be catching up in power level to all the gold cards in the Alara block, but you have to wonder at what point is lightning bolt going to be too weak for the current meta? How long will it be before players will start with 30 life to offset the power of modern cards? Is black going to be the new king of removal since even a Flame Javelin, one of reds best removal/finisher cards from shadowmoor, can not even slay the beast?

The scary thing is that with acceleration this can be a turn 2 drop. I am not trying to cause alarm and say "a 4/5 for 3! the sky is falling!" but if Worldwake is going to be a set made up of many strong mono cards like this it seems like it will upset the meta game alot. I am going to call it now, this will see standard play.

It is assumed that the card was an early leaked common promo for Worldwake. It seems to me that it really will be an uncommon given its similarity to Woolly Thoctar. It is an interesting look at what Worldwake may have to offer us as it is the first non-reprint spoiled for the set so far. The Worldwake spoiler season seems to be starting early so lets hope we keep getting a steady stream of leaks as it continues.