I’m not sure that the announcement of the upcoming Planechase 2012 product was all that exciting in and of itself as a format mechanic but a huge amount of interest has been gained from what was announced in the product and hinted at in addition to the product:
First up: cards exclusive to the Planechase product. The Commander pre-cons (and, I suppose, to a certain extent the recent changes in the core sets) have galvanized the community and led to a huge amount of interest in non-core products. If the 21 new & exclusive, planechase-product-only cards are anywhere near as awesome as the ones that went into the commander product, then Wizards will have scored another home run.
Second up: a cycle of multi-colored legendary creatures. They don’t confirm they will all be enemy wedge, but the mention of a cycle strongly suggests they will be. We know there’s at least one enemy wedge legend because they showed it to us:
While I concede that this could be extremely cool, in only 24h of interweb fapping over Maelstrom Wanderer, the idea-mongers have managed to produce just 3 ideas that everyone keeps coming back to again, and again and again.
And again.
And once more again because we’re now approaching 36 hours since the announcement.
- Fix the top of your deck to a Tooth & Nail.
- Play Maelstrom Wanderer.
- Cascade into the Tooth & Nail, paying 2 for Entwine.
- Get Primeval Titan & Avenger of Zendikar.
- Resolve second Cascade into whatever.
- Resolve Maelstrom Wanderer.
- Everything gets haste. Attack for 7+5+6+4X (where X is the number of lands you controlled when the Avenger triggered), so probably in the region of 50-ish damage.
>yawn!<
- Get Momir Vig, Simic Visionary into play.
- Play Maelstrom Wanderer.
- Stack the Momir Vig triggers so you draw first then tutor for an Avenger of Zendikar to put on top of the library (just hope you didn’t draw either it or PT).
- Resolve the first cascade into Avenger of Zendikar and play it.
- With the new Momir Vig trigger, tutor up Primeval Titan and put it on top of the library.
- Resolve the second cascade into Primeval Titan and play it.
- With the new Momir Vig trigger, tutor up something else and put it on top of the library.
- Resolve Maelstrom Wanderer.
- Everything gets haste. Attack for 7+5+6+4X (where X is the number of lands you controlled when the Avenger triggered), so probably in the region of 50-ish damage. [Yes, I did just copy/Paste that]
>yawn!<
- Fix the top of your deck to a Jokulhaups or Devastation.
- Play Maelstrom Wanderer.
- Cascade into Jokulhaups or Devastation.
- Either set up your second cascade into Primeval Titan or cascade blind.
- Have a fun game!!
>yawn!<
About the only suggestion that I saw that was in any way original was by putting a Selective Memory out there, exiling all those annoying little spells that you really need in your deck but are really not exceptional when you are cascading so you know that whatever you cascade into will be pure gold. That gets the thumbs-up for being ballsey from me even if the original poster was still intending to cascade into Primeval Titan / Avenger of Zendikar.
So, yeah, Maelstrom Wanderer will be huge and swingy and big and epic but only if some effort is made to make his cascades original. Otherwise he, like so many other cards, will merely become another route to Primeval Titan / Avenger of Zendikar.
Another 6 months of this before we even get to touch the card.
>yawn!<
Third up: hints at another commander specific product.
So not only do we get more commanders, more cards, more new cards, we’re also getting additional commander product?
