Official Spoilers for 1/2/12 -- New Gideon!

[Thrillho]

Way behind on this one, sorry!
DailyMTG spoilers include promo cards (Game Day, Buy a Box, Release and Prerelease), a draft common, and Gideon!

[Thrillho]

Feel free to add anything I may have missed.

[Pendulum]

They aren't even trying for flavorful Ultimates anymore, are they?

[Yannaria]

Hands of Binding is sweet
New Gideon is also pretty cool. I like how his power scales depending on the number of permanents. He sort of protects himself, but he's basically useless if you have no creatures.
but dat ultimate o.o

[iamabadman]

i like how gideon's ultimate costs -15

if you do hit -15, you do deserve to win.

[Thrillho]

Although Gideon v 2's ultimate steals a good deal from Elspeth, the fact that he's so hellbent on justice is that same Day of Judgment/Wrath of God/Balance method of doling out justice and equality that also conveniently and likely happens to leave you with an indestructible planeswalker creature.

I imagine that most comment strings on other sites are freaking out about Gideon. I'm not entirely sure about him. His +1 "protects" him against attacks, he has a win condition built in, and he has a way to win without winning you the game (after you accrue 15+ loyalty). I feel like he's a good compliment with Tamiyo, 3cc Ajani, Gideon v1 (which you obviously can't play him with, but a man can dream), and Jace v4, and all of those cards are good cards you'd play.

I think this Gideon's main weakness is that he suffers from being too much of a team player without the defensive buffs you'd have from v1 or requiring
either additional creatures on your side of the board, enough mana to cast this and Wrath, or dropping him into an otherwise empty board and having a +1 ability that does merely that. However, Gideon is at base price an indestructible 5/5 for 4 assuming your opponent isn't murdering him after you've paid for him, and gains exponentially with a little help from other cards. I do think people are going to be evaluating him in huge swings, where they either expect him to do things you shouldn't be expecting him to do (and inflating his price to the $40 presale end of the spectrum) or terrible and he's decidedly in the middle.

I'm a pretty big fan of Clan Defiance even though it's probably not even remotely as good as Rakdos' Return. Being able to 3-for-1 your opponent off of a removal spell seems like very swingy technology, but knowing that it's likely to just be X: Kill a Planeswalker and occasionally a single creature will probably exclude it from seeing play. It doesn't seem like a real card in
Limited, though.

[iamabadman]

http://mythicspoiler.com/newspoilers.html

found this on reddit not sure how real the top 2 are

[Thrillho]

Both cards seem kind of only ok so even if they're made up I don't see what the big deal is (if they're real I just assume they're templated with translated text; I also have no reason to not believe they're real). Biovisionary seems like another in a line of Timmy/Johnny win the game cards that will not make it into decks. It's a nice new touch on the trope, though.

[iamabadman]

apparently the gruul keyrune is a 3/2 trampler

[Yannaria]

Biovisionary was spoiled here: http://mtg-jp.com/reading/special/004164/
that's an English mock up.
Won't see any competitive standard play, but I'm sure someone will put together a clone/eviltwin/cacklingcounterpart BUG deck to try and win with it.
the angel is a bomb in limited, it won't see competitive standard play. 6 mana seems way to much for a Boros aggro deck, which would probably want gideon as the top end.

Also a fan of the new Simic Guildmage and it's anthem for 2 mana. also draws cards which is pretty nice.

[iamabadman]

Elusive mutant - 1ug
Creature - ~Fish Mutant
Unblockable
Evolve
0/4

http://ch.nicovideo.jp/channel/mtg

can we nickname this 'Sene' ?

[Second Harkius]

Gideon is crappity crap. He pumps himself and sits there, or becomes a chumpable beater, or he ultimates in some win-more situation.

Skargg Goliath is an overcosted Might of Oaks that doubles as a huge beater. Maybe cool in EDH, along with the U/B Lord of Extinction that mills.

And as usual, another bad Specter. What was the last good one? The R/B one with haste from Invasion? Who knows

This set has duals which will move boxes but so far it doesn't look that exciting.

[iamabadman]

Gideon is crappity crap. He pumps himself and sits there, or becomes a chumpable beater, or he ultimates in some win-more situation.

Skargg Goliath is an overcosted Might of Oaks that doubles as a huge beater. Maybe cool in EDH, along with the U/B Lord of Extinction that mills.

And as usual, another bad Specter. What was the last good one? The R/B one with haste from Invasion? Who knows

This set has duals which will move boxes but so far it doesn't look that exciting.

all i heard is 'bring back draw-go!'

[Second Harkius]

I like midrange

[Second Harkius]

3-5 mana cards = love

[Thrillho]

exile all is not win-more; you literally said he's a chumpable attacker in the same breath as exile all permanents is win more.

[Pendulum]

exile all is not win-more; you literally said he's a chumpable attacker in the same breath as exile all permanents is win more.

I'm inclined to agree with KS on this one. An opponent that doesn't see it coming is in a losing position anyway. Granted, he's a good tool for midrange against certain aggressive strategies, and if Magic were a game where taking the primary strategy was always the best option his value would go up, but he seems easy enough to play around.

The thing I really don't like about him is that post-Ultimate it's going to be hard to recover his beef; if there were more times he'd be a 5/5+ after he wipes the board away I'd think more highly of him.

[Kaitscralt]

The thing about Gideon is that I just hate everything about the card except the word Indestructible.

[Thrillho]

like i said, he's a team player. if you + jace 4 or have tamiyo in play, you very likely have an unreasonably large indestructible creature to kill your opponent with and if things get hairy and you get that loyalty up, you have Karn-level hard reset on the board.

[( G_R )]

Barren Glory
Oblivion Ring
New Gideon

[imopen2]

you would still have a hand..probably

[imopen2]

one with nothing

[Pendulum]

you would still have a hand..probably

And a Gideon.