Lotus Cobra: Not Just A Birds Of Paradise

The following card was spoiled by Mike Flores on the mothership today:



Let's ignore the Mythic rarity, and ignore my inevitable rant about the fact that it's Mythic and doesn't seem Mythic.

So let's focus on the gameplay and ARGH THIS ISN'T MYTHIC AND IT NEVER SHOULD BE MYTHIC AND IT SHOULD BE RARE BECAUSE IT DOESN'T FEEL MYTHIC AND WIZARDS SHOULD BE SHOT AND BURIED IN A SHALLOW GRAVE SO WE CAN DIG THEM UP AND SHOOT THEM AGAIN BECAUSE THAT'S THE BEAUTY OF A SHALLOW GRAVE AND WE'LL **** THEIR **** WITH **** **** **** AND ***** ***** THEM IN THE ****** AND THEN THEY'LL HAVE TO ***** SIDEWAYS AND....

Sorry. Had to get that off my chest. Now we can focus on the card itself. Mike Flores already made some great points over in his article, but the main thing I'd like to talk about, and correct, is the following claim made by some Twitterites:

"It's like a Birds of P that untaps if you fetch a land. Not really impressed enough."


 "I see everyone hyping up Lotus Cobra. Most of the time it will just be a Birds of Paradise. Sometimes not even that."


My rebuttal: No it isn't.

Oh, you want proof? Facts? EVIDENCE? What do you people want from me?

Alright, fine. I'll actually explain WHY I think it's better than Birds of Paradise. The sacrifices I make for you people.

Let's put Lotus Cobra and Birds of Paradise together:




(Wow. How subtle. Making Lotus Cobra bigger. That's REAL quality, right there.)

Okay. Let's count the ways Birds of Paradise is better than Lotus Cobra.

It flies.
It's one mana cheaper.

Now let's count the ways Lotus Cobra is better than Birds of Paradise.

It can activate twice with a fetchland.
It doesn't tap to make mana.
It has two power.

Short list, but all of these should raise alarm bells. A 2 power creature for 2 mana with a powerful, relevant ability that it doesn't tap for. Hmm. I wonder if there are any other cards like that.

SPIKE HALL OF FAME






Yeah. I could rest my case here, but some would be unsatisfied. Let's go with the following scenario.

You have 2 mana. You've played a Lotus Cobra or a Birds of Paradise last turn, and now you've untapped. You're playing Jund. Here is what could happen, in the best scenario:

YOU DON'T PLAY A LAND.

Birds of Paradise: You play a 3-drop from your hand.

Lotus Cobra: You play a 2-drop from your hand. You attack for 2.

Verdict: I'd say Lotus Cobra wins here(especially since Jund's 2 drop of choice is Putrid Leech), but we'll call it a draw.

YOU PLAY A SAVAGE LANDS.

Birds of Paradise: You play a 3-drop from your hand.

Lotus Cobra: You play a 3-drop from your hand. You attack for 2.

Verdict: Lotus Cobra wins.

YOU PLAY AN UNTAPPED LAND.

Birds of Paradise: You play a Bloodbraid Elf, cascade into something, and swing for 3.

Lotus Cobra: You play a Bloodbraid Elf, cascade into something, and swing for 5.

Verdict: Lotus Cobra wins.

YOU PLAY A FETCHLAND.

Birds of Paradise: You crack the fetchland and play a Bloodbraid Elf, cascade into something, and swing for 3.

Lotus Cobra: You crack the fetchland and play a Bloodbraid Elf, cascade into something, swing for 5, and Bolt the player at EOT, or the next creature he plays.

Verdict: Lotus Cobra wins.


Of course, we're assuming we play BoP turn 2. But how likely is that. I mean, how many lands in Jund come into play tapped Turn 1?

4 Dragonskull Summit
4 Rootbound Crag
4 Savage Lands

Oh right.

Okay, so assuming half the time, you can play a BoP turn 1, here's what happens. We will play 2 identical Jund players. One player has Birds of Paradise turn 1, the other, Lotus Cobra turn 2.

Birds:

Turn 1, Birds. Pass.
Turn 2, land, 3-drop, pass.
Turn 3, land, Bloodbraid Elf, cascade, swing for 6.
Turn 4, land, Bloodbraid Elf, cascade, swing for 9.
Turn 5, win the game.

Lotus:

Turn 1, land, go.
Turn 2, Land, Lotus Cobra.
Turn 3, Land, Bloodbraid Elf, cascade, swing for 5.
Turn 4, land, Bloodbraid Elf, cascade, swing for 8.
Turn 5, win the game.

Now this is assuming the following scenario:

The players don't play a land that enters the battlefield tapped.
They have a land every turn.
They never draw a fetchland.

With Lotus Cobra essentially at it's worst, the two players STILL GOLDFISH AT THE SAME RATE. With fetches, Lotus Cobra becomes insane. A turn three Bituminous Blast into Bloodbraid Elf is possible. So is a Turn 3 Baneslayer Angel. With a fetch, Lotus Cobra is crazy. Without one, it swings for 2 in exchange for being one turn slower.

So, essentially, we have a card that without a fetchland, is just as good as Birds, and with a fetchland, is much better. Added are these two facts:

You have a slightly better chance of drawing a Cobra by turn two than a Birds by turn one.

Lotus Cobra is undoubtedly a better topdeck (assuming, by the time you're in topdeck, you've played enough lands to play all your spells).

Thus, Lotus Cobra: not just a Birds of Paradise.

What If: There Was No Such Thing As Blue?

Greetings, readers. I've decided to take a break from serious posts about PTQ's and catching up on Magic to write a more whimsical post. I hope you like it. If you do, leave feedback in the comments. Positive feedback = I'll do it again.

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What if there was no such thing as blue? There are five colors in Magic, and these colors make up the color pie. So what would happen if one of them was eliminated?

Card draw, counterspells, flying and flash are all a big part of the game, so we can't just get rid of them entirely. We'd need to give them to the other colors. So without further ado, let's move into the fictional Zendikar previews, but without blue in the midst...

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Welcome to Zendikar Preview Week on mtgsalivanth.blogspot.com! We've already shown you Kicker, Trap and Landfall on the site, so let's have a look at some more generic cards.

Our first card is one you've all seen before, so let's show you it before we get to the good stuff:

Our next card came from something we figured we needed in Red: decent card draw. Drawing two cards for four mana in M10 simply wasn't enough to let Red keep up with the other three colors. Even Green had better card draw than Red with Harmonize. So we made a card that we feel really symbolises Red's flavour: if you're willing to go all-out, you'll receive a pretty neat reward.

Check out Burning Inspiration:

This card is pretty good in Draft if you draft the right deck to make use of it, and it'll probably see play in Constructed too. Could this push Red Deck Wins into the top decks?

The next card to show you has an interesting design story. R&D wanted to make a red counterspell, since it's hardly fair for Red to miss out when everyone else gets a cut, but counterspells aren't exactly random. We tried with different variations, like "Counter target spell with an odd converted mana cost", but eventually we figured out what was wrong.

We were coming at the problem from the wrong angle. Being able to play the card was pretty random, but what we wanted were the kind of cards where when you PLAYED the spell, you didn't know what would happen. Of course, that was weak in a counterspell, so we decided to give Red a helping hand with counterspells, without quite giving it the same level as the other colors.

I think the solution we came up with is a good one. Let's give a warm welcome to Chaos Swerve.

The templating here is pretty confusing, so let me explain. A spell is only a spell while it's on the stack. Once it's off the stack, if it's not a permanent, it leaves the stack and goes to the graveyard, and if it is, it becomes that permanent type. So essentially, we have a card that counters a card half the time, but if you counter a counterspell with it, it will always counter the spell. So we have, rather unusually, an anti-counterspell counterspell: a great way of letting Red fight counterspells without giving it the same level as White or Black, the primary counterspell colors (Green, of course, only getting counterspells to protect itself and it's permanents).

The next card to show you is a multi-color card. Multicolor will only show up on a few cards in Zendikar, but the ones we have are quite good. Here, we originally had the following card:

4GW

Instant

Counter target spell. You may put X +1/+1 counters on target creature, where X was it's converted mana cost.

However, this card felt too much like Draining Specter from Time Spiral, which essentially did the same thing in mono-black.

So we decided: What if we made an 'either-or' card rather than a 'both' card?

This led to Managrowth:

Managrowth will often go one way or the other, but it can lead to good 'Magic stories' when your opponent makes the wrong choice. All in all, it's a fairly elegant design.

The next card came from a need to make mono-green a bit more powerful. Mono-green by definition has a hard time dealing with creatures, but it is the master of Flash and of Deathtouch, so when you combine them you get a strong card, as evident in Winged Coatl, the 1GW card from Alara Reborn. But it wasn't quite enough: so we decided to make a better one.

Winged Coatl 2.0 is here: Venomweb Spider.

And now it's time for the last one. We've deliberately saved the best for last: Mind Crush is certain to become one of the power cards in the set. Rather than set it up, we'll just show you this powerful counterspell:

So now you have it folks: some of the goodies from Zendikar. We've got more next week as we discuss the design of the Trap mechanic, why we brought back Kicker, and more. We'll also have a couple of preview cards for you, so be sure to tune in.

Until next time, may the answer to your problems be elegant.

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Well, I certainly hope you found that interesting (and I hope I didn't butcher your writing style TOO badly MaRo, if you're reading this). Remember: if you liked this post, be sure to tell me on Twitter or via the comments, and I'll do some more every couple of weeks.

Until next time, may you explore the hypothetical.