I really liked M12's Illusion tribal subtheme,
and Theros' Minotaur tribal subtheme; and I have
a feeling I'm going to enjoy Origins' Thopter
tribal subtheme just as much. These made a
really cool change from the more "standard"
tribes, and the fact that such a thing is even
possible helps distinguish the game from generic
fantasy. (Even Pathfinder, which has both orcs
and hobgoblins, gives a lot more attention to
the former.)
An uncounterable late-game boost to numbers is a
major help for any tribe, especially a rare one
like Thopters that doesn't get as much support
in general. And in a non-tribal deck, there are
actually almost as many applications. If you can
recur your lands from your graveyard, you have
an expensive but very hard to stop source of
flying creatures (much like Urza's Factory from
Time Spiral). You may be playing something like
Soul Warden or Atog that want a constant string
of a specific card type. I feel like this card
offers a little something to almost everyone.
Today's card of the day is Foundry of the
Consuls which as a land adds a bit more than
just tapping for one, but the five mana and
sacrifice to put two 1/1 Flying tokens into play
is fairly situational. An excess of mana
in the middle to late stages of the game is
needed while this is available and the deck
can't be slowed down by having a colorless land
in play early. Overall it is an efficient
way to turn a less useful land into more useful
creatures later in the game, but it can't just
be placed in any deck as it requires a lower
mana curve and reduced color mana requirements
to minimize risk.
In Limited this can be very strong later in the
game even as a topdeck as it adds either
blockers or evasive attackers. The
colorless mana is a drawback, particularly in
multicolor decks, though the tokens should
balance that out if this is not counted as a
full land when building. A reasonable
third or fourth pick in a weak Sealed pack,
though on color removal or solid creatures
should trump it. For Booster this can be
included with few drawbacks if the deck has a
spare slot, lower colored mana requirements, or
a lower mana curve.
Hmm. I'm not sure how I feel about this one. on
one hand, you've got late-game value in chump
blockers late game, but on the other the cost is
pretty high for the price of admission. The new
Thopter archtype is somehow in U/R colors, which
doesn't have any ramp capability at all. Then
again, I doubt you'd want to ramp for this
anyway. But i've seen crazier things run in
standard for less.
