Invasion First Impressions - Blue, Conclusion

At this point, we pick up where we left off, Probing into the set whose expansion symbol at first glance looked to me like either an ice cream cone or a mushroom cloud.

Probe
2U, Sorcery, Common
Kicker 1B (You may pay an additional 1B as you play this spell.)
Draw three cards, then discard two cards from your hand.
If you paid the kicker cost, target player discards two cards from his or her hand.

Again we have the essence of Kicker. Probe is two lousy but extremely useful spells in one. You can do a hell of a lot better than drawing three cards and then discarding two as a Sorcery for three mana (for example, Dream Cache wasn't constructed quality) and the five casting cost version has to best spells like Extortion that justify a high cost spell and justify tapping out as well. An unplanned Probe will often just hit two lands or otherwise useless cards, especially if your opponent knows to expect one. But if you're hitting your opponent's hand already, this could be a good way to finish it off. At the same time you get to dump excess lands into your graveyard (along with stuff like Nether Spirit maybe) for new cards. The smaller version of Probe would basically be held in reserve, in case your opponent doesn't feel like keeping cards in his hand anymore. You can also use it early on. In a format where those extra lands often go to waste, this card has a lot going for it.

Prohibit
1U, Instant, Common
Kicker 2 (You may pay an additional 2 as you play this spell.)
Counter target spell if its converted mana cost is 2 or less. If you paid the kicker cost, counter that spell if its converted mana cost is 4 or less instead.

Every time someone casts something for three mana you're going to want to strangle them. They're not playing fair! Trust me, I've been playtesting. So it comes down to whether most of your opponent's spells cost either one, two, or four mana - or at least the ones you want to stop. If you need to use this on Noble Panthers and Chimeric Idols, you'll end up annoyed. If you just need to stop (say) River Boa and Armageddon, you'll be happy with the results. Very few cards actually cost more than four mana, so this is most of a real counter if not quite all. Still, it can really hurt if you hold back and they do have something that costs five or more. While the new Earthquake is only better when you need to do exactly four damage and often extremely poor, this new version of Spell Blast is a definite impovement and saves mana most of the time. Even for those evil three casting cost spells this isn't any worse. But if your opponent starts bringing out the Maro -Sorcerers, you'll need another answer. Overall a solid card in the right metagame.

Psychic Battle
3UU, Enchantment, Rare
Whenever a player chooses one or more targets, each player reveals the top card of his or her library. The player who reveals the card with the highest converted mana cost may change the target or targets. If two or more cards are tied for highest cost, the target or targets remain unchanged.

Silly players used to take targeting for granted. Sure, the card may say ‘target player’ but we all know who that is. Some players are extra careful to play correctly, such as Dave Price (Unmask YOU) but most of the time people don't even bother specifying. Deflection came out, but it never saw play. Then came Misdirection, but it only works on spells. Now suddenly something like Disrupting Scepter can turn traitor at any time, and even cards with multiple targets start to act funny. Assume your deck has no targeted effects in it, or none that have other valid targets. Psychic Battle no longer has a liability and is going to make your opponent's life a living hell if he depends on the stuff. If the casting costs are even, half his spells will recoil back on him, and if yours are higher (which is likely for a deck that can afford this) then more than half will. If you want to get even more evil you can use stuff like Brainstorm to manipulate the top card when it counts. Best of all, a counter cannot target itself, so even if you play counters they can't be stopped unless your opponent starts abusing the stack. Of course, this kind of rule used to change weekly so make sure of these interactions if they ever come up. It's difficult to use a five casting cost enchantment well, but this one definitely has an effect worth investigating.

Rainbow Crow
3U, Creature - Bird 2/2, Uncommon
Flying
1: Rainbow Crow becomes the color of your choice until end of turn.

This ability definitely goes up in value with this set, beyond its normal rewards like fizzling black removal and getting around Story Circle. But it already flies over Teferi's Moat, so in many ways you're wasting your mana paying for both abilities. Of course, even if they complemented each other this would still be strictly a Limited card. Four mana for a 2/2 flyer with a nice but not devestating ability is the traditional form of Flying that never sees the Constructed light of day. The last one to break through was Voice of Truth, and that only happened because The Truth Was Out There at PTNY, in the form of countless white decks. Normally, truth is hard to find. When you really need a certain ability (like Protection from White) sometimes you're willing to pay the price. This one doesn't seem like it will be needed.

Repulse
2U, Instant, Common
Return target creature to its owner's hand.
Draw a card.

You replace Repulse, he gets the creature back in his hand. Next turn it's time for round 2. That gives you a chance to counter things you couldn't stop the first time, stop a creature enchantment or similar. In short, you get bounce without risking a loss of card economy (except against the truly creatureless) so it does something you couldn't do efficiently before. It also has the opposite effect, where you use it to ‘Repulse’ your own creatures that are about to die and therefore gain card economy. If they happen to have fading or have a coming into play effect, so much the better. If you're not worried about either the nightmare case (no targets) or the long-term land glut problem, this is a solid addition if you have space. You probably don't have space, but maybe you can make some.

Sapphire Leech
1U, Creature - Leech 2/2, Rare
Flying
Blue spells you play cost U more to play.

If you didn't know from the flavor text on Deralor, Leeching can lead to premature uncastability, injury or death. If you played with them you probably know it wasn't just for the breeder. You get a creature about a half mana cheaper than it would otherwise be, but all your new blue spells cost an extra mana. If you intend to cast any more blue spells while the Leech lives, that's a pretty bad deal. So the key must be that you don't. Who needs the most powerful color in Magic? I want a 2/2 flyer! After that, who needs anything else? Just in case you do, maybe your deck should be based around other colors. So now what you have is a creature that requires off-color mana in exchange for its mana cost being a little low. If you have all the colored mana in the universe and have nothing better to do than summon a 2/2, call the Sapphire Leech. He's your dude.

Shimmering Wings
U, Enchant Creature, Common
Enchanted creature has flying.
U: Return Shimmering Wings to its owner's hand.

A card that just gives one creature at a time Flying, and it's not even new. Sorry I'm not more excited.

Shoreline Raider
2U, Creature - Merfolk 2/2, Common
Protection from Kavu
“This strange new beast makes for an excellent meal. Get me more.” - Empress Galina

Protection from Kavu! You gotta admit it was an eerie coincidence that this was the card revealed in the auction. From this you can see a whole new set of Protection coming up - Protection from Elves, Protection from Global Removal, Protection from Mike Long, Protection against Leaks. but aside from Protection from Legends this was it. We also expected Kavu to be something amazing, something mysterious, something worthy of Protection. So we braced ourselves for the sixth color of Magic, a new type of card or the Russian Mob, and what do we get? A bunch of dorks, basically. Some of them decent, many of them very big and twice as ugly, but still dorks. And when you get down to it, even against a deck full of Kavu this is still probably worse than Protection from Red since it's just going to get Shocked out of existance. The package is less than the sum of its parts even if it's what you want. That's what you get for trying to sell on E-bay I guess.

Sky Weaver
1U, Creature - Wizard 2/1, Uncommon
2: Target white or black creature gains flying until end of turn.

To the air! As long as you're willing to play creatures of another color anyway, two mana for a 2/1 isn't so bad for a creature with a nice ability. Although being able to launch your creatures for two mana each isn't as good as say the Hate Weaver's pumping effect, it beats the hell out of Spirit Weaver's giving them +0/+1 or Rage Weaver giving out Haste. And the green one's just pathetic. In this era of unparalleled media sex and violence, I have to register my moral objection to the Hate Weaver being by far the strongest of the five. What kind of message are we sending our children? Not since the pentagram that graced every decent copy of Unholy Strength have we seen such craven indifference to the public good. Weave Spirit and you waste your mana, Weave Hate and you get what you want. It has to stop. But I digress. For for this to be good, it has to work on your creatures and be the effect your deck needs. That means you creatures have to be primarily either white or black, although gold cards like the Merfolk Knights work as well. Then you have to be able to cast Sky Weaver reliably on turn two so it fits your mana curve, and then you need to get into situations where you need to launch your creatures into the air on a frequent basis and have the mana to do so. That rules out the white creature deck (rebels), it rules out the black creature deck (beyond the problem that there basically isn't one anymore) and this doesn't fit into a blue based one either. So thanks for another powerhouse in Limited that doesn't get played in Constructed. We didn't have nearly enough of them.

Stormscape Apprentice
U, Creature - Wizard 1/1, Common
W,T: Tap target creature.
B,T: Target player loses 1 life.

The first ability is nice, but not a good justification for the card to make constructed. The rule to keep in mind is that any card that only does one damage to your opponent a turn is like playing one of those new split cards: You only get half of one. The only difference is that a lot of those smaller spells pack a much bigger punch. On the other hand, tapping target creature every turn can be a wonderful thing. Taking the casting cost down from the two slot of Master Decoy to the one slot gets you into the database of creatures worth looking at, but you still have to justify a slot in your deck for this card. First, you have to be creature based. A control player isn't willing to put out a nice, juicy Stormscape Apprentice with a huge bullseye on his head when the bullets would otherwise stay in the gun. You don't have targets for creature removal, so why start now? This isn't MBC, where the only two decks that never had creatures on the table were a deck that instead kept its creatures in its hand and a deck whose creature hanged out in its graveyard. So there are two choices. One of them is to play an MBC style of control deck, putting your fate into the hands of bloated creatures. The other is to be aggressive, and still find room to play both white and blue and then play a creature that isn't a rebel. If you think it sounds far fetched, I wouldn't argue.

Stormscape Master
2UU, Creature - Wizard 2/2, Rare
WW,T : Target creature gains protection from the color of your choice until end of turn.
BB,T : Target player loses 2 life and you gain 2 life.

It made me skip a beat. With the ability to both protect creatures or cast a Syphon Soul every turn, maybe we can afford to pay four mana for a 2/2. Then I thought about all the cards that came before and I snapped out of it. A four casting cost 2/2 creature with a tapping ability requiring mana to activate should have it all. Seahunter spends its time pumping out dorks, which is at least as efficient as this is. Then think of Moggcatcher and Skyshroud Poacher. You can tap him and get four 1/1s with an option! And even so, in the end the card was fair. Angry Hermit evolved away from it, although Trinity still used it. If you don't remember this kind of rule, every weird creature starts to look good. Good try guys, but ‘good try’ generally just means we won't quite use it in Constructed so all it'll do is serve as a bomb. He doesn't get you any Stormscape Apprentices out of your deck, and unlike them he's not even reasonably priced.

Sway of Illusion
1U, Instant, Uncommon
Any number of target creatures become the color of your choice until end of turn.
Draw a card.

You never realize all the neat things you can do by changing the color of creatures until you suddenly have the chance to. It's late, you've been testing for hours and somehow you decided that you needed to maindeck Perish so you've let the Sway of Illusion slip into your deck. And what a sway it is. Soon you're realizing all the things you can do. You can use Vendetta on a black creature. You can stop it from being used on a white one. You can turn off your opponent's Crusades for a turn, quite possibly engaging in a Massacre before the turn ends, or turn around and use it yourself. And all without wasting a card. The problem is that WotC was apparently under the Sway of some bigger Illusions than usual, and decided that ‘any number’ means any NATURAL number, so instead of letting the card be played as it was printed and allowing it to get cycled whenever it didn't matter, there has to be a creature in play or you can't cast it. You'd think this would be the kind of effect they'd want to encourage. You'd think they'd have a grasp of English. You'd be wrong.

Teferi's Response
1U, Instant, Rare
Counter target spell or ability an opponent controls that targets a land you control. If a permanent's ability is countered this way, destroy that permanent.
Draw two cards.

Fact: I covered Teferi's Response in greater detail earlier, on the Sideboard.
Fiction: This card is unplayable or makes anything else unplayable. Any Questions?

Temporal Distortion
3UU, Enchantment, Rare
Whenever a creature or land becomes tapped, put an hourglass counter on it.
Permanents with an hourglass counter on them don't untap during their controllers' untap steps.
At the beginning of each player's upkeep, remove all hourglass counters from permanents that player controls.

Your powers are weak, old card. You should not have come back. I remember playing against Freyalise's Winds. I was playing another one of those deckbuilders who keeps trying to use every neat card with a wacky ability, except that he didn't have (and back then I didn't have) that finely honed sense that speaks to you and says: Why are you wasting your time? As a result, I got to play a lot of reasonably interesting games against a deck designed to slow things down but that never seemed to quite win out in the end, although it kept coming close. That doesn't mean the card was destined never to work. It definitely slowed the game down, thereby allowing both players to have time to draw more cards. It let you get better use out of those cards that didn't tap for their effects. But sadly, it also cost one less mana than Temporal Distortion. So despite my automatic liking of any card with the word Temporal in its title (since they always seem to let you cheat the rules or at least stay sober) this one seems destined for the useless rare bin unless great synergies become apparent later.

Tidal Visionary
U, Creature - Wizard 1/1, Common
T: Target creature becomes the color of your choice until end of turn.

The Onion has a column called ‘Justify Your Existence.’ Most of its subjects don't. And as I said in part one, the burden's on them. He may have the vision thing down, but the usefulness thing still needs work. The least he could be is a Merfolk.

Tolarian Emissary
2U, Creature - Wizard 1/2, Uncommon
Kicker 1W (You may pay an additional 1W as you play this spell.)
Flying
When Tolarian Emissary comes into play, if you paid the kicker cost, destroy target enchantment.

I'll play this when Wizards fly. Actually, I still won't. What would have interested me would have been the opposite card. How about if we got a card that cost 1W to destroy target enchantment, and if you paid the Kicker cost you got to put a 1 /2 flying Wizard token into play. That card might be worth considering. This is an extremely lousy spell both ways, and it's not a pair of situational spells that serve separate purposes, which is the way a Kicker spell justifies its existance if it's costed reasonably, which this one happens not to be.

Tower Drake
2U, Creature - Drake 2/1, Common
Flying
W: Tower Drake gets +0/+1 until end of turn.
Illus. Carl Critchlow (82/350)

Obviously this is a terrible unless you're playing a deck with a lot of white mana. If you are it improves to lousy. If it were then found to be actually good then the deck it would be good in would have to be good as well. Those are the breaks when cards are created for Limited play. For comparison with a better card in a color that doesn't have an overabundance of Wind Drake wannabes, check out good old Granite Gargoyle, which while decent mostly saw play only in monored decks abusing Power Surge (Citadel of Pain for those who don't remember when useless cards at least cost less mana).

Traveler's Cloak
2U, Enchant Creature, Common
As Traveler's Cloak comes into play, choose a land type.
Enchanted creature has landwalk of the chosen type. (It's unblockable as long as defending player controls a land of that type.)
When Traveler's Cloak comes into play, draw a card.

Everybody plays land. Well, almost everybody plays land. While there are ways around this like Armageddon or Trade Routes, this is essentially giving the creature unblockability. Blue enchantments granting unblockability have a long history. First there was Invisibility, which cost UU and had an exception for walls. This name and exception basically served to remind us just how silly Magic's blocking scheme really is. How do you decide which creature a Wall is going to block? Do you send it over to where the right creature is, or does the creature head for the Wall? Why doesn't it go around? How did it the others get around? But we suspended disbelief, we put this on Juggernaught and laughed evilly because that gave us true unblockability, and it was good. But when time came for the Revised Edition, WotC decided that Invisibility was too good and it was taken out of print. A few clever individuals I met later on said they saw this coming and traded for them, and suddenly they were holding a whole bunch of $3 commons. Suddenly people traded for them, but slowly we learned that people never really block anyway and stopped using them. Then came Cloak of Mists, which was cheaper and more effective. My first match with Urza's Saga I played it on a Winding Wurm against Andrew Wolf in a draft, and it seemed good. But later investigation proved that it too was terrible. So now comes the last refuge of effects that aren't worth it: It became a cantrip. Making it in Constructed requires that there be a format so slow that unblockability is worth worrying about, but it could happen.

Vodalian Hypnotist
1U, Creature - Wizard 1/1, Uncommon
2B, : Target player discards a card from his or her hand. Play this ability only any time you could play a sorcery.

They used to be called Zuran Enchanters, but I guess they don't get much respect anymore. The deck I used to win the first tournament I ever played at Neutral Ground had two copies of this card in it for a while, but they got cut before the tournament. The basic question is whether you'd rather have a two casting cost 1/1 creature or a three casting cost artifact, assuming you don't have a problem with getting first blue and then black mana. It makes it more vulnerable, and a 1/1 creature is normally not what this type of deck wants, but it allows you to get started a turn earlier if you have this on turn two. Which is all well and good, except that no one has used Disrupting Scepter in a long, long time. If you weren't thinking about reaching for the Scepter, there's no reason to think about this either. If there was reason to think about it, think about this as well.

Vodalian Merchant
1, Creature - Merfolk 1/2, Common
When Vodalian Merchant comes into play, draw a card, then discard a card from your hand.

They used to be called Merfolk Traders, and unlike the Hypnotist they've moved on to a more respected title than they had back in the old days. Perhaps not coincidentally, they also saw play back then. Good cards get rewarded while the marginal ones get demoted. I like it. One of the key things this card will do is let you play eight Merfolk Traders in Extended. I can see Alan Comer's mouth watering now. As for playability in Standard, there has to be some trick. Drawing and then discarding is nice, but normally nowhere near nice enough. Even if you can turn this into a cantrip with Squee, it's still not really worth bothering. Often it will replace itself without penalty, but all you get for your trouble is a 1 /2.You pretty much have to actively want to put a card into the graveyard, probably all the better to put them directly into play. We're talking reanimation. Nether Spirit would be the natural choice, but the Merchant will contaminate the graveyard. Coffin Puppets would be another, but you have to wait long enough to have two lands you can lose that you can probably just go ahead and cast it. The real business is in real reanimation, bringing those Dragon Legends out for a massive beating. Best of luck finding a way to make it work.

Vodalian Serpent
3U, Creature - Serpent 2/2, Common
Kicker 2 (You may pay an additional 2 as you play this spell.)
Vodalian Serpent can't attack unless defending player controls an island.
If you paid the kicker cost, Vodalian Serpent comes into play with four +1/+1 counters on it.

The powers that be were not subtle about hinting that you just might want to think about paying the Kicker cost on this one. It's almost like they were afraid of reanimation. God forbid you can bring a 6/6 that can't attack non-blue mages directly into play. So instead, you have an option to only pay four mana and get a 2/2. That's actually far from irrelevant. It lets you counter the Serpent with Prohibit. Actually, it means that you have an insurance policy in situations where you don't have or can't afford six mana. Some day, they'll print a Sea Serpent worth using, but that day has not yet come. If I pay six mana I want guarenteed beatings. And if I sideboard, I want those beatings for a lot less than six.

Wash Out
3U, Sorcery, Uncommon
Return all permanents of the color of your choice to their owners' hands.

I had this card in my prerelease Sealed Deck (which means I wasn't drafting, which is both a long story and a cautionary tale) and I wondered if anyone would actually play multiple cards of the same color. Then the organizers put a bounty on the first person to cast Coalition Victory. As it turns out, between multi-colored cards and most people playing at most four of them with one of them a splash, Wash Out seemed to give enough time advantage to justify it. That was in Limited. In Constructed, it's an odd card in the tradition of Story Circle. Almost all decks will at least lean on one color of permanent, but a four mana sorcery is a far cry from a three mana instant. If you have to tap out to force them to pick up their cards, what's to stop them from just putting them back down again? Even if you're trying to kill creature enchantments, you're likely to save them by accident. Then there's the problem that you're going to hit your own stuff about one time in five. That makes it too unreliable and too unwieldy for a control deck. For an aggressive deck it has more to recommend it, but it's still caught in the maindeck/sideboard trap. If there are multiple mono-colored decks and you need to hit all of them in the tempo department, this card might have an outside shot.

Well-Laid Plans
2U, Enchantment, Rare
Prevent all damage that would be dealt to a creature by another creature if they share a color.

They may have been Well-Laid Plans, but they still don't seem to do anything. It doesn't do much in combat. It does even less out of combat. Why would you spend a card and three mana (not to mention all that time Laying the Plans and maybe Plains, which are often Well-Laid as well) in order to prevent creatures from dealing damage to each other? If I save my creature then I don't get to kill yours either. The most realistic scenario for this card is two decks, both of them with the same color creatures, with yours generating more than his but his generating bigger ones, and to make it worth really thinking about some of yours have to be unblockable and you have to be able to block his. So if you have a deck full of small blue creatures and start looking at a deck full of blue fat, it's time for some Well-Laid Plans. If only the days of good big creatures didn't die with Morphling.

Worldly Counsel
1U, Instant, Common
Look at the top X cards of your library, where X is the number of basic land types among lands you control. Put one of them into your hand and the rest on the bottom of your library.

I guess we know what they think of Impulse. To get the same options from a Worldly Counsel that you did acting on Impulse, you need to control four of the five basic land types. To do better you need to have all five. But if you have four or five different basic lands without using duallands, you probably have more than five mana so what are you doing messing around with this silly Counsel? Opportunity knocks! But that's not the whole story. Worldly Counsel will probably end up letting you look at two cards most of time, which makes it only slightly more powerful than Opt. Still, that's far from terrible if you have the time. It's just no Impulse. Worldly Counsel basically has cycling if worst comes to worst, as long as your deck is base blue. If you cast it later on in a deck with three or more colors of basic land, it turns into a mana efficient way to search your deck without giving up card count. This isn't a good reason to build a deck with five colors of basic land, but if you already do have such a deck based around cards like Harrow and Rampant Growth, this may be a decent way to take advantage.

Zanam Djinn
5U, Creature - Djinn 5/6, Uncommon
Flying
Zanam Djinn gets -2/-2 as long as blue is the most common color among permanents or is tied for most common

A 3 /4 flyer for six mana is a really bad deal, so this is going to need to be a Fat Moti and that means finding a way to insure blue isn't atop the permanent count leader board. One way is to change the Djinn's color with something like Distorting Lens, making it unlikely that blue cards are a problem unless you're doing something silly like playing more of them. No reason to do that, but that also makes the Djinn a bad card. Another option is to have blue be a splash color in the deck. If you use Birds of Paradise and Llanowar Elves to cast the Djinn then blue is already one card behind, and the slight reduction in casting cost from 5U to 4UU actually helps a lot. But it's hard to lose the nagging feeling that if a 5/6 flyer were any good it would be rare.

• Zvi Mowshowitz