Like many other new rares in Time Spiral, Lotus
Bloom brings us close (as
close as WOTC designers will allow) to enjoying
a great old card. Lotus
Bloom probably comes closer to recreating Black
Lotus than any other attempt
to date. Unfortunately, Lotus Bloom has no
casting cost, requiring you to
play it with Suspend and get your "Black Lotus"
later in the game. When a
card is created with the new Suspend ability but
WITHOUT a normal casting
cost, it seems to me that Wizards of the Coast
is admitting that their card
is too powerful to allow you to simply cast it.
Still, there may be a life
ahead for Lotus Bloom in constructed, where you
can play four of the card
and thus may reasonably expect to draw one at
the beginning of a game. In
limited, Lotus Bloom is just not good enough,
since there is no way to
reliably expect to gain any advantage from the
card. This may be the way in
which Lotus Bloom most closely approximates
Black Lotus. Black Lotus,
thousand dollar price tag and all, really
wouldn't be much better in
limited.
Remember, even if you suspend it on the first
turn, it doesn't come into play until turn 4. So
it lets you accelerate to seven mana on turn 4.
What good is that? It might be passable with
Mishra and multiples, since you could get two
out on turn 4, but that's still underwhelming.
In Limited, it's a mana source. You can use it
to help with your splash cards. It's okay.
Constructed- 2
Casual- 2
Limited- 2
Nick Tan
Lotus Bloom
The new Black Lotus. Once again, it’s free, but
the cost is three turns of waiting. Is the price
too high? Not exactly, depending on the
situation. The new Lotus can be quite a useful
mana accelerator still, if played right. For all
the hype, though, I wouldn’t depend on this card
all the time, as in late game, it might just be
too slow.
Constructed: 3.5
Casual: 4
Limited: 3
The Antman
Lotus Bloom-
Rare- Time Spiral
Man it has been a long time since I've done a
review, but I have finally stopped being lazy
and am back in action (hopefully ^.^), anyways
today we have Lotus Bloom to look over.
Most people are on opposite sides of the
spectrum on whether it is good or not. I
personally think that Lotus Bloom is one of
those cards that can be insane in some decks,
and trash in others. For instance, it is being
used in various builds of the new Dragonstorm
deck, but you won't see it in any aggro builds.
It is a card that will be used but only when
that extra 3 is REALLY needed, as it is in the
dragonstorm decks (plus the extra storm count
helps).
Ratings:
constructed- 3/5 like I said, good in some
decks, bad in others therefore no special score
casual- 4/5 I can see a lot of uses for this, or
just a poor mans lotus
limited- 1/5 not useful at all here, it isnt
hard to get to 8+ mana in this format
Aethereal
Lotus Bloom
Today's throwback card is the latest remake of
Black Lotus. This is good for combo decks,
especially those abusing storm, as you can
suspend two of these on your first turn and then
use them to fuel some storm. There's a deck in
the works right now that tries to Dragonstorm
with a storm count of 4, dropping 4 Bogardan
Hellkites and ending the game right there.
Outside of combo, not sure how much play this
will see in constructed. The casual crowd should
gobble this up though.
In limited, if you really need the fixing, take
it, but don't take it early unless there's
absolutely nothing else in the pack.
Constructed - 3.5
Casual - 4
Limited - 2
Matt Cortez
Lotus Bloom
Constructed - A great Free mana fixer. On turn 4
you get an additional three mana. Making that 7
mana on turn 4. Not including any other mana
fixer's that are already in play or additional
Lotus Blooms you may have played.
That is if you did play the Bloom on your first
turn. It's great can't wait to see it used.
Casual - Fun
in casual. Lots of fun. Cast your enormous
creatures or spell's a few turn earlier and make
your friends cry. Why not include some?
Limited - TAKE IT! Not many mana fixer's in
Timespiral. A free one is never a problem. The
only thing wrong is that you have to suspend it
and just play the card. Take it. A first pick.
Constructed - 4.5
Casual - 4.5
Limited - 5
GB250
Lotus Bloom
"Over such beauty, wars are fought. With such
power, wars are won."
Gilded Lotus's flavor text is quite relevant.
Easily the most well known card in the game,
Black Lotus was probably the most powerful Magic
card ever printed. It has its rightful seat at
the top of the Power Nine, offering obscenely
powerful mana acceleration to anyone who can
fork over an equally obscene amount of money to
buy one. You spend one card and get three mana,
of any color you want, at no cost to you. What's
not to love about that?
In an attempt to "fix" Black Lotus, a suite of
variants have come and gone. Lotus Petal, Lotus
Vale, Gilded Lotus... all were created to
capture the excitement and suspense that the
original Black Lotus provided, without also
being so ridiculously broken.
Lotus Bloom, I believe, is the most potentially
game-winning Lotus variant printed so far. For
the drawback of suspending it for three of your
own upkeeps, you get the real deal when it comes
into play. This can offer quite a few decks the
massive mana acceleration it needs to wrest
control of the game. Putting yourself even
temporarily several turns ahead gives you a huge
advantage. All it needs is a deck to go into,
and perhaps a way to get it into play without
having to suspend it. If it gets what it needs,
it will be a dominant force in Standard.
Constructed 4/5: This card might have what it
takes to be golden. It only needs someone to
unlock its potential.
Limited 5/5: There is almost no reason
whatsoever to not take this if you see it. The
mana advantage that this thing can give you will
allow you to drop your expensive bomb three
turns earlier than normal.
Casual 5/5: Amazing. What it lacks in speed, it
makes up for in raw power. I haven't been crazy
enough to try to get any yet, but if you have
one, it is worth giving it serious consideration
in your casual deck.
Gackley Ferguson
Gackley
Ferguson's Review for MTG-COTD for 10/17/06
It's Tuesday, and you all know what that means!
Nothing really, I was just trying to get you all
psyched for today's card. Lotus Bloom! Everyone
remembers Black Lotus, you know, play it for
free, tap it, sacrifice it, and you get three
black mana. That's a really good card, since you
can play a 4 cast spell on turn one a 5 cast
spell on turn 2 etc, etc. Well Lotus Bloom does
essentially the same thing, but there are
certain variations that need to be looked at.
First of all, you can't hard cast Lotus Bloom
due to the fact that it doesn't have a casting
cost. Instead you have to use it's suspend
ability.
For those of you that don't know the suspend
ability is a new ability from TimeSpiral.
Basically on a suspend card, you pay it's
suspending cost, and remove the card from the
game with the appropriate amount of "time
counters"
Once during each of your folllowing upkeeps you
remove a time counter from the card, and when
you remove the last one, you play the spell w/o
it's casting cost.
So in the case of Lotus Bloom you pay it's
suspend cost (which in this case is zero) and
three turns later, you have an artifact that you
can tap, sacrifice, and squeeze three of any one
kind of mana out of. So you can't get a 4 cast
on turn one...but after three turns (you could
speed it up if you had clockspinning) you could
unleash a 6 cast.
Yes this is a really great card, but the fact
that it has to be three of a single type of mana
is a drawback, but nothing too major.
Here's the verdict.
Constructed: 4/5- I'm giving it a 4/5 in all
three because while it's not a
5/5 (if you didn't have to use it's suspend, or
you could produce multiple mana colors, it would
get a 6/5) this is still a really good card,
that when used properly can get any card combo
off once it hits the board. 4 of these belong in
every deck.
Casual: 4/5 See above explination.
Limited: 4/5- again, nothing changed here.
Mr. Anderson
Today's card is
the watered down version of the Black Lotus,
Lotus Bloom. As turn 3 starts, you have 6 mana
already, if you suspended it on your first turn.
In constructed, this will make Ravager Affinity
dominant again in Extended. This will speed
things up in casual. This is a definate in
limited. In all formats, run it unless you don't
have any copies.
Constructed: 5
Casual: 5
Limited: 4
Cyrus Huang
Lotus Bloom: A
very interesting card to rate at this point of
time. Right now with the influx of a ton of new
cards, no one really knows what the new tier one
decks are going to be, so most people are
sticking to the old U/R control builds and
various aggro builds. Lotus Bloom is obviously a
combo card, being too slow for aggro and
pointless for control. Combo decks are the
hardest to figure out when a new set comes in,
so it's extremely difficult to see the future of
this card.
Constructed: So far there's been only one deck
that's emerged running this card, and that's
Dragonstorm.dec. If you haven't seen it yet,
basically it runs 4 copies of bogardan hellkite
and a couple of other dragons, 4 dragonstorms,
red accel like seething song, counters and card
draw, and finally Lotus Bloom. Dragonstorm is
the deck I've been testing with for the past two
weeks, and let me tell you, it is going to be
tier 1. It's nothing like heartbeat combo of the
past. It's much more similar to enduring ideal
decks where all you gotta do is play your main
card and survive for about 2 more turns to win
the game. Lotus Bloom is essential in the deck
because it raises the storm count and acts as
copies 5-8 of seething song.
However, I believe Lotus Bloom has even more
potential. I'm fairly sure this card will make a
splash in the future combo deck, whatever it may
be. Probably not now, but when other sets come
out, we'll see.
4/5
Limited: The decision of adding this card into
your deck is an extremely difficult one. I've
seen it in my pool before and I've come to a
conclusion. Unlike most artifacts which you can
basically divide into automatic-play or
automatic-garbage in sealed, the addition of
this card is based upon the mana curve of your
deck. If you have 8+ mana bombs in your deck,
you play this card. If you don't, forget about
it. Not all decks are going to have that Akroma
or Bogardan Hellkite, and that's just fine. If
it does though, Lotus Bloom is going to be a
huge help in getting it out. If your deck has a
good number of 6-7 mana fatties, play it
anyways. If your deck is an evasion/control or
weenie deck, this guy isn't going to help you.
2.5/5
