Zimone, All-Questioning – Duskmourn
Date Reviewed: October 8, 2024
Ratings:
Constructed: 3.25
Casual: 4.25
Limited: 4.13
Multiplayer: 3.63
Commander [EDH]: 3.88
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is bad. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
I was not expecting to see a reference to prime numbers in rules text, but that’s kind of why it works – that, and the fact that it fits very well with Zimone and with Quandrix in general. It’s also not the first Magic card that has driven people to use mathematical theory: Unstable had people arguing about whether a creature’s power can be uncountably infinite, and I’m seeing an increasing number of people reach for concepts like Graham’s number when they do an infinite combo. This card encourages you to play your deck the same way higher math researchers play with numbers: pushing things around and trying to find the weird spaces within the rules. If you’re hoping that Zimone will trigger just from playing lands in the regular way, you’re not going to get much out of it; that’s not much more exciting than counting up by one. But if you remember that this color combination has lots of ways to ramp lands, ways to sacrifice lands and replay them, and the ability to dip into other colors and do weird stuff like flicker lands, things get really interesting. You might even run up against the walls of reality, just like a Quandrix mage-student!
Constructed: 3
Casual: 4
Limited: 4
Multiplayer: 4
Commander [EDH]: 4
Have to say, Wizards finds new and interesting angles to explore for designs at times. Zimone, All-Questioning is, presuming nothing goes wrong, probably going to give you her mana’s worth of stats, as her Fractal friend will be able to come out on curve at the end of turn. That she triggers at the start of the end step is definitely a boon, since it lets you try to make for some impact on your next turn, and she can continue to make a bigger Fractal. The kicker is that it only triggers on certain land counts; realistically, you’re probably only going to get a 7/7 at most (though Simic does love its ramp), and while it is a very large and indivisible friend, it’s just a large and indivisible friend with no keywords. That can sometimes be enough, and Zimone seems like she’ll be fun, but she feels too fiddly to really be effective as a consistent threat.
Constructed: 3.5
Casual: 4.5
Limited: 4.25
Multiplayer: 3.25
Commander [EDH]: 3.75
Prime numbers don’t stop at 31, of course, but the next one on the ladder is 37, and unless you’re playing some janky Battle of Wits brew or taking advantage of land creature tokens/making your creatures lands, having 37 lands in play feels particularly challenging.
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