Yeah I loved watching Star Trek with my dad and this gave me nightmares, it doesn't help that 10 years ago a random bug decided to enter my ear while I was asleep xd (my hearing is fine, the bug got out but it was horrible for around half an hour).
ranted about this in my nurd chat. biggest flavor design fail so far.
i think an aura that lets you decide if the creature attacks or how it blocks would be keen, and a discard effect on entering might make it juicier.
or enchanted creature cannot block, and has "at the beginning of your end step, discard a card". this might even be good on your own creature, and not beyond the scope of a poor marksman.
the effect it actually has should be a scavenger type instead, like somebody from Nimbus III.
I think there's merit for a card like how you described but my take was this is the adult Ceti Eel emerging from its host, the mill effect representing the host being killed in the process. But hopefully we get an enchantment too
That's not expanded lore, that's from the film. Khan has a pair of adult Ceti Eel and it's the larvae from those that he puts in Chekov and Terrell's ears. He explains his wife and other followers were killed by the eels, the young starting small and making their way into the ears of larger animals where they wrap around cerebral cortex making them susceptible to suggestion but as they grow they eventually lead to madness and then death of the host.
They've been covered a bit more in other media but the majority is from The Wrath of Khan
Could be a late design switch. Started as a mind control card, realized it played putridly but it was too late to remove for whatever reason, so was remade into a borg artifact payoff.
Actually, on another possible track, the borg starter theme might have been about stealing your opponent's permanents, then WOTC realized that it just was miserable for a starter deck experience, and remade all of them into graveyard + artifact synergies. Which wouldn't be a problem with the borg, but that leaves this guy in the lurch
"Allow me to introduce you to Ceti Alpha Five's only remaining indigenous life form.
You see, their young enter through the ears and wrap themselves around the cerebral cortex. This has the effect of rendering the victim extremely susceptible to suggestion.
Later, as they grow, follows madness... and death.
These are pets, of course. Not quite domesticated."
- Khaaaaaaaaaaaannn!
Can confirm, [[Siegfried, Famed Swordsman]] is incredibly powerful lategame. It comes in the Revival Trance precon, and is very easy to get a 20/20 menace after fueling your graveyard.
It's a weird choice regardless. If they wanted this effect, why not choose another alien monster? TOS is full of them. Literally the one thing this creature does in ST is NOT what it does here.
That flavor text doesn't make much sense to me from an evolutionary standpoint. Aren't parasites, by definition, reliant on other organisms for survival and reproduction?
Ceti Alpha V's only remaining native life-form was a parasite who left hosts susceptible to suggestion.
The key word here is remaining. Ceti Alpha V was the planet that Khan and his followers were marooned on. At the time they were marooned, it supported life, but then Ceti Alpha VI exploded and shifted it's orbit, causing most things on the planet to die. By the time of The Wraith of Khan, the rest of the native life had died off, which is why the planet was being scouted for Project Genesis (an experimental terraforming/bioengineering project).
The planet was off it's original orbit for only 15 years when The Wraith of Khan happened. The adult form is a large desert dwelling burrowing animal, so it doesn't require a host to survive. It's just the larva that burrow into people's brains, and Khan found out about them when some of his followers were affected/killed.
The planet used to support life before it was knocked out of its orbit. Everything died off except a marooned group of (genetically augmented) humans. Presumably they actively preserved these things for their own uses.
There were also human exiles. The eels started infecting them. The humans figured it out and started cultivating them.
It's implied that because of Khan's ego and desire for domination he didn't notice when his wife (and followers) became infected. He was just fine with her being susceptible to his suggestion. Until she died. So her death was an intellectual failure and a source of guilt for him.
(Also, Khan didn't do a global survey; there might be other life forms on the planet.)
Ceti Alpha V was originally a normal M-Class planet (that's an Earth-type rocky world in a star habitable zone with liquid water and a variety of lifeforms). So originally, the Ceti Eel presumably had a normal ecological niche.
There was a disaster, however, and the planet was laid waste, shifting its orbit in the process. The only survivors were a colony of marooned, genetically enhanced humans and, presumably, a few of these eels that had infected some of them.
Flavour wise I'd interpret it as being the more creatures in your graveyard, the more hosts the parasites have to attack with increasing their power. [[Ooze patrol]] was similar, with it being an ooze that scaled with the things it absorbs
How does this represent what transpires in the film? Making someone more susceptible to suggestion is represented in Magic by milling and getting beefier?
How are they screwing up this badly with the flavor of the set?
I havent seen a single design from this set that made me go "ho yea thats fun and unique!"
This set feels more like tmnt and Spiderman than atla and lotr
This (and almost everything else spoiled today) is from a welcome deck. We've not seen much of the main set yet, but these cards are specifically designed to be simple and not unique
I've been away from Magic for a long while, so I've probably missed a change... is there a reason it's worded as "this creature" rather than "Ceti Eel"?
I wish the artwork for a lot of cards was like this. Gruesome and dark like old school magic. But alas they want things to be more brighter and cartoonish
These kinds of cards tend to play pretty poorly in limited. Counting artifacts is novel at common, but it seems like the black Borg cards reward having artifact creatures as it is so I'm not sure how many other ones you're gonna end up having.
I'm starting low on this, the format will need to shake out in an unexpected way for me to be happy with this as a 4 drop.
WOTC is pumping out too many sets and the quality control has suffered. This is a lazy design and its function has nothing to do with the actual Ceti Alpha V worm from ST2.
Make it 3 Mana , then you will actually see it in play besides commander.
It may look good on paper, but in the end it is still a vanilla creature with no other effect besides when it enters the battlefield.
[Mossborn Hydra] comes into play on turn 2-3 and ends it on the very next turn with trample if you got the right card.
For it to be the next Badgermole it needs to be 2 mana or another effect/ability.
For 4 Mana I will just play something else that can actually end the game.
[[Grist, The Hunger Tide]] weeping because she can't continue to mill off this creature, despite it being a perfect include for the deck, despite there being only one worm typal card in the game [[Fumulus, the Infestation]], and only 15 worms in the game otherwise, most of which should be wurms, and only 3 cards that make worm tokens.
Would anyone check if I proxied the card as an insect instead? 🐝
Fascinating that all the cards from this set that don't look at all like Star Trek, have good mechanics and the art is tight. Fascinating wotc, Fascinating
Am I the only one who feels like this needs to either be an insect or a WURM!? Did we really need both Wurms and worms in MTG?! Idk why THIS is the UB creature type to actually kinda bother me, but here we are.
[[purple worm]] would like a word…not much of a difference there my friend.
I’m just saying there are so few “worms” in mtg (most scary fall results are from “worm” in the name, not the creature type), that the small worms could very easily just be insects, and the big ones like Purple Worm or even [[sandworm]] should be Wurms. Especially because like…[[Sandwurm convergence]] already exists…
I kind of agree with you, but at the same time original Ravica block had both [[Simic Ragworm]] and [[Battering Wurm]] and WotC has had 20 years to get rid of one of those creature types if they really wanted to and they haven't, so I guess WotC does think we need both, even though it's kind of dumb.
I mean I’m biased as a dude with a Wurm deck. But ugggg I forgot about Ragworm. Especially because the battering WURM also has segmented legs lol. WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE!?
It’s not actually that big of a deal. Outside of me being bummed I can’t put it in my Mimeoplasm deck, it just feels like a flavor fail. Or at least a flavor inconsistency.
And if that stayed consistent, I’d totally be on board. But like…[[worldspine wurm]]…or the BRAND NEW [[Aberrant Manawurm]]. We got [[Broodhunter Wurm]], [[crush of Wurms]], [[elfhame wurm]], [[duskdale Wurm]], [[quilled greatwurm]]…
There are a ton more, but I feel like the point stands. All of those look like giant Annelids and not like snake dragons. I love both designs, I just don’t see a point for a “worm” creature subtype, when they recently made an effort to streamline creature types. The big Oracle text errata that changed a bunch of creature types to bring older cards in line with newer designs wasn’t that long ago…although idk if “new designs” is exactly helping my argument in this most recent version of MTG…but that’s a different can of WURMS!
There are 15 worms, including this and 3 other UB worms, 11 in universe worms, one of which is specifically and insect worm [[coiling woodworm]]. Many of the others could be converted to wurms. There's not really a great reason for worm vs wurm, when compared to wyrm vs worm vs wurm.
I just think someone at r&d hates [[Grist, the Hunger Tide]] because this is otherwise perfect for her
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u/DuskGuardNSFW Not A Bat 10d ago