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Ojutai, Winter's Soul
5WU
Legendary Creature - Dragon
Flying, vigilance
Whenever a Dragon you control attacks, Tap target nonland permanent your opponents control. It doesn't untap during its controller's next untap step.
This is a creature that's just fine on its own. It isn't likely to see more standard play than Archon of the Triumvirate and it's worse than Frost Titan in EDH, for a lot of reasons, but some decks might want it.
We're running into interesting territory here, frankly. The adage that "Angels, Dargons and Hydras are always money" is being tested by what is frankly a real glut of these creature types. Hydras are more common than goblins these days. You need to be the best of the best to be worth money. Just being a dragon likely won't be enough to make Ojutai worth money. Doing a bad impression of Frost Titan probably isn't enough outside of Dragon-specific decks where this is probably a role player. EDH players like to copy Frost Titan with Rite of Replication making this a poor substitute. I think if I had a Sion of the Ur-Dragon deck I would likely jam this, but I'll wait until it hits bulk to buy in.
Wildcall
So how good is Manifest? I think Manifest is somewhere between "Better than a vanilla 2/2 creature like the ones generated by Huntmaster of the Fells // Ravager of the Fells" and "Worth spending a card to do once."
The X +1/+1 counters are a neat trick, but this is a bad Gelatinous Genesis for the mana you're investing. If you flip a Hooded Hydra, hooray, you're a hero. I just think Manifest is good when you do it every turn for free, not because you spent a card to do it once. If Manifest is so good you need this card, I could see it being a few bucks, but I think most sets have bulk rares better than this.
Atarka, World Render
If this were a mythic, I'd be much happier. This is the kind of card that makes Timmy salivate and wins limited events. If Craw Wurm had had flying, trample and double strike when I first started playing Magic, I never would have traded that Birds of Paradise for a Shivan Dragon back in 1996.
Every EDH deck with Dragons in it that can manage the colors will run this. This coupled with Utvara Hellkite means business.
In fact, with all these cool new EDH dragons being spit out, Utvara Hellkite looks really good right now.
I bet a lot of you thought this was a bulk mythic. You'll be even more surprised in a year when these are $5. Not only that, the foils are only $5. EDH staple dragons have a 3 or 4x multiplier, so the foils are due a correction even if the non-foil price stays static for a while. Barring a reprint (something the foil is relatively safe from) this has a lot of room to grow.
Back to Atarka, it's a $3 card right now and being a non-mythic with a low likelihood of applicability in any 4-of format makes me think that's a bit high. I'd let this sink low, trade for foils if it gets a 2x multiplier and sit on them for a while. This card is powerful, but the number of people who like this kind of card is relatively small.
Alesha, Who Smiles at Death
I LIKE this! I keep hearing about the "Tiny Leaders" format which is a new way to play EDH smaller and faster, and this would be a sweet general for that format. I actually think I'll brew with this today and put the deck list up on Gathering Magic next week if you're into that sort of thing.
The ceiling on this is relatively low, but I think this has a lot of potential. Then again, so did Exava, Rakdos Blood Witch. I don't have pricing data for this yet, but I'm not bullish at any price. Foils will be cheap and I might snag one to build around, but I don't think Tiny Leaders will ever skew prices unless the format ends up solved and staples mean each person has 3 or 4 personal copies of each staple. I can't see that happening.
“If you could chain the instants you draw with his ability into more untaps, that would be insane.”
You can still cast the instants you draw off the first instant (and each subsequent one) though right (i.e. cast Defiant Strike, Humble trigger on the stack, +1/ +1 trigger on the stack, untap trigger on the stack, draw and discard trigger on the stack, resolve them in reverse order, continue with the instant you just drew as long as you don’t let any Humble triggers resolve)?
No, the same line of text that lets you draw the cards makes you relinquish control. You can respond to the ability on the stack, but as soon as you let it resolve and draw cards, you lose control.
Are we talking about the same draw trigger? Because I meant the loot ability of Jeskai Ascendancy, not the Humble Mentor trigger.
Also, Alesha gets back Golgari Grave-Troll…
I think you are underrating Wildcall. This is a 3/3 for 3 mana with an upside. Compare that to a 1/1 for 3 mana on the ooze card you listed. For 5 mana this is a 5/5, compared to two 2/2′s with the ooze.
Once you get silly high the ooze is great, but being so much better at low values, plus the flexibility and the potential upside of flipping a manifested card…This thing may not be money but it is a great card.
I think it is fine in Limited. I am just not convinced Manifesting is worth paying an entire card to do it. I’m much happier letting it happen as a repeatable trigger on one of the green creatures.
I think you even play the less effective spells of this ilk in limited that are at common. I am not convinced that this is good enough for Standard, but that really hinges on how good Manifest ends up being.