Following that meta question last night -- and after sleeping on it -- I've come to realise the issue is a bit deeper than I first approached it with. As I understand it, there are "spoilers" -- cards previews that are done by Wizards or sanctioned by Wizards -- and "leaks" -- which are nonsanctioned card previews, e.g. done by someone who found a file on their site, or snapped a photo of something they weren't supposed to, etc.

The crowd being discussed in the question enjoys spoilers and does not enjoy leaks. The trading economy, as I understand it via Rainbolt, is bolstered by spoilers but compromised by leaks. So, the ideological positions seem to be: sanctioned spoilers = fine, unsanctioned leaks = either good or bad depending on your position.

I feel that Stack Exchange has two goals: one, to benefit whatever community it services, and two, benefit it via expert questions and answers. Goal one is the foundational reason for everything Stack Overflow Inc does, specifically targeting the software development community. Goal two is effectively just the chosen M.O. for a Stack Exchange Q&A site to meet goal one; it's a means to an end where we've dedicated ourselves to that means.

If leaks specifically are detrimental to the community, it may be viable to have a policy against them, but then I'd want a way to quickly be able to check what is a spoiler and what is a leak. As far as I understand, though, there's no way to do that: there are sanctioned previews done by third parties (like Channel Fireball) which Wizards does not reveal in their card image gallery for some time.

And how can I, as an ordinary user, tell the difference between a gaming site showing a leak or a spoiler?

If we can give those questions a solid answer we may be able to seriously consider a leaks-no-spoilers-yes policy, but I feel that if we can't help users distinguish between leaks and spoilers, such a policy will not work very well.

I'm considering this because I also note there's no "neutral, do nothing" position for us to take: our options are allow or disallow leaks. Doing nothing is often seen as a neutral action, but by allowing leaks to be posted to BGSE we are tacitly endorsing them.

[/soapbox]

@DrRDizzle Hi!

@diego Thanks for this story link. :)

@doppelgreener Hi there.

@doppelgreener As far as I know cards are put in to the Card Image Gallery the day after they are spoiled by a non-Wizards source

@diego Oh, that'll work a lot better.

And I know there is a tumblr post that has guidelines for detecting leaks, but it is difficult to find right now since my work blocks tumblr.

Right, supposing we do have a no-leaks policy, I'd prefer something as simple as possible, like: is it on this page? Then it's OK. Is it not? Then please wait until it's on this page.

Asking people to wait one day is reasonable, provided that timeframe's reliable.

Yeah, that would make sense

This is all viability analysis for me at this point, not so much "let's do this" or "should we do this?" but "if we did do this, would it work...?"

Personally I may not be a huge fan of leaks, but I don't think it is really our place to police them. I think as long as a card has rules that either already exist (like Yahenni's Expertise) or have rules that are simple enough to guess what the rules will be (like that leak we were talking about earlier with Improvise, while we don't have the actually rules text for it it is pretty much going to work exactly like Convoke just with artifacts).

The only time I think we should stop them is if they have rules that we currently have no understanding of, like last year when Kozilek was spoiled early and nobody had any idea what {C} meant. (Some people had guesses, and some of those were correct, but nobody knew for sure)

I think it would be ethically right to police them. The reason I'm not for it is because it conflicts with our other, higher priority (IMO) goal of answering questions about card games.

@diego I absolutely agree with this scenario: if we got a leaked Rigger card that said "{T}: Assemble a contraption", probably a number of us would be totally gobsmacked and freaking out, but we would be 0% equipped to answer anything about what it means.

@Rainbolt Indeed, the ethics of allowing asking about leaks (and thus tacitly supporting and endorsing them) versus forbidding them, separate to sanctioned spoilers (which would be permitted, with/without spoiler-friendly policy), is what is having me seriously consider the viability of what we can actually do about them.

RoboRosewater just made a card that probably would've been pretty interesting during Oath of the Gatewatch: a Ritual spell for colorless mana.

probably should grant more colorless mana than it costs, though.

@doppelgreener It should also be a different color, probably red.

@diego Red or black. Or both!

Black hasn't really had fast mana in a long time. These days pretty much all of its mana acceleration is making swamps produce more mana, so I wouldn't put it there. If it weren't in red my other choices would be green (because it is the color of most ramp),

blue (because it tends to get ways to produce colorless mana, though it would probably need a 'only for artifacts' type rider), or colorless (as a 1 time mana filter, this one I would have the cost be the same as the mana gained like the robo cards has)

I would prefer 2RG Instant, but otherwise that looks like a reasonable cards

@diego It was 2RG sorcery for a moment but that didn't feel right; 2RG instant feels pretty good though.

and better than 1RG Sorcery.

Maybe a compromise? {1}{R}{G} get 5x{C}?

Lol I almost didn't edit that in time.

It could possibly even produce a little more mana and not be broken. Since cards like Desperate Ritual have a 2:3 input/output rate, but they have the advantage that you can chain them together, this card doesn't have that problem.

The thing I would worry about is giving Tron an alternative way to play turn 3 Karn, without even having Tron online.

Wait... nevermind. Doppelgreener's original suggestion doesn't give them turn 3 Karn.

@Rainbolt That also has the downside of allowing a 5-drop on turn 3 which I don't think is currently possible in Standard, 6-drops on turn 4 though is already possible so that isn't as bad.

That would be a turn three Reality Smasher. Yea... that seems hard to deal with.

Or Flagship... ouch gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/…

Ok, looking at what's in Standard now it is technically possible with Vessel of Volatility, but as far as I can tell that is the only card that would allow a 5 drop on turn 3

The more I think about it, the more I think that allowing a colorless 5 drop on turn 3 at the cost of a card would see zero play in standard. I'm thinking that a turn three Smasher is probably not a death sentence if your opponent had to discard a card to play it. Same for Flagship - you need something to crew it, and you are down a card. Colossus decks would rather ramp by playing artifacts instead of this. I'm not sure it has a place in standard unless you really push it and give it 6x{C}.

@Rainbolt so 1RG for 6x{C}?

Yea, I think that's what it would take to see play in standard

I think 6 is too powerful and 5 is powerful but not good enough for standard

6 allows you to start dropping the midrange eldrazi (World Breaker, Bane of Bala Ged, etc.) on turn three

thanks to cards like Hedron Crawler

I'd love to be in the room when WotC talks about stuff like this

At 5x{C} it's at least better than Vessel though, because you don't have to take turn 2 off to play it

The two of those combined might allow for a pretty early Ulamog

@Rainbolt I'm pretty sure I'd have a lot of fun on their development team; sucks that it would require not having my regular day job.

@Rainbolt If I am counting mana right you should be able to get a turn 4 Ulamog with 4x Land, 1x Vessel, and 2x Ritual

Using the 5xC version?

4 Land + three spells that ramp you by 2 = 10. So yea, looks right.

@Rainbolt Yes, using the 1RG for 5xC

Are you winning if you just spent 4 cards to cast Ulamog? I'm not totally sure lol.

@Rainbolt something like that makes me think the 5xC version could have a small additional effect, like a cantrip "draw a card". or the 6xC version could come at a small cost: sacrifice a creature (it will very likely be an Eldrazi Scion).

A cantrip would make it a 4-of in my mono blue turns deck I think

I'd love to ramp and draw cards at the cost of playing three colors

Current decks can get a T4 Ulamog with Aetherworks Marvel

So, I'd imagine that anything at that speed or slower would be fine.

Actually nevermind. I can't figure out how to filter all of that colorless mana into blue mana in Modern.

If it cantripped I would be tempted to change my Modern Storm deck's wincon to Banefire instead of Grapeshot (though it might be too much colorless mana, not sure either way)

@JonTheMon We have to be careful about giving an already Turn 4 deck more consistency. It's okay if two decks can both combo on T4, but not always okay if one deck gains an additional way to combo on T4 (and other decks don't gain an equivalent amount of strength).

@diego How did you type that message such that it didn't mention doppelgreener by name?

There are always bad cards like Gemstone Array you can use for filtering

@diego Testing...

Yea... I don't know how you did that

@Rainbolt There is a bug with our autocard where it doesn't display the @name if you also have a card you are linking

Oh, okay

Oh, everyone, there was something I wanted to get your thoughts on -- can I make a change of topic?

@doppelgreener Go for it

Thrasios, Triton Hero is a Partner commander with this ability:

> {4}: Scry 1, then reveal the top card of your library. If it's a land card, put it onto the battlefield tapped. Otherwise, draw a card.

That's {4} to scry, then ramp a land or draw. He's also a 1/3 that costs {G}{U}.

What are your thoughts on the power level of that Thrasios and his ability, especially with regards to the other partners available?

Seems like a reasonable mana-sink utility creature.

above sila, ludvec, kraum.

about the same level as Tyma, vial smasher, bruse

He is very good. He ability is never useless (barring unusual circumstances like no cards in your library or being unable to activate it). If you want one specific partner, but don't really care about the other he is going to be a good choice because he doesn't really have a direction he pushes a deck so he can go with anyone and be good.

For anyone other than Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix it is essentially 1 or 2 extra colors you have available for no cost. And with Kydele if you have some creature un-tappers you can gain a massive amount of card advantage if you have both out at the same time.

Thanks very much. That's very helpful.

I wasn't sure how to feel about him originally, it's good to get some thoughts on him other than the ones that were already in my head.

@doppelgreener What were your thoughts on him?

@diego I wrote him off as not worthwhile at all due to the cost of his ability beyond far in excess of anything that let me scry, draw 1, or ramp 1 (all of which I can get for 2 mana or less).

But the fact he can do that for me at anytime, especially in late game where I may just have a whole 8 mana to toss down the drain and want the extra cards, makes him at least decent.

Plus the scrying first means I have some limited filtering on what I'll draw. "Yes, I want that" or "no, I don't need another land, I'll see if I can get something else."

He came back to mind just recently because I realised green-black and green-blue *both* have a +1/+1 counter theme going on, which means Sultai is the overlap of two +1/+1 counter colors. Reyhan, Last of the Abzan + either Thrasios or Kydele would give me an opportunity to explore a +1/+1-counter based Sultai deck. I'm conscious I've also got the Abzan deck sitting there that plays with those as well, but maybe I can make them feel different enough to play with and against.

My main issue with him is he is rather boring, by himself he doesn't really push a deck in a specific direction. It will tend to be more goodstuff with probably some ramp to enable his ability. whereas most of the other partners give you at least some direction to go with the deck

@doppelgreener While his ability may not be the most mana efficient version of that ability the fact it is repeatable, and doesn't require him to tap makes it good

Both Kydele and Thrasios seem nice and neutral to me. Kydele is a reliable mana dork, though she'll certainly encourage draw effects like Well of Ideas and Elemental Bond.

@doppelgreener Yeah, by themselves both the UG partners are kind of meh. Oh I want to ramp? I'm in UG, of course I want to ramp. Oh I want to draw cards? I'm in UG, of course I want to draw cards.

But together they lend themselves to turning the ramp and card draw into overdrive, so while they will probably be somewhat just goodstuff decks you can focus more on creature untappers and X spells to at least provide some variety compared to generic UG goodstuff

@diego If you were just in simic colors, would you consider using both of them as your commander?

@JonTheMon Yes, I think they would work very well together

They definitely fill a different niche (independently or together) than any existing Simic commander.

Rashmi and Momir Vig are somewhat in the same space as Thrasios in that they are all card advantage engines. but they do it in different enough ways that they don't really step on each others toes.

@diego I feel the same way.

I learned how to play Go yesterday (although I might not ever actually play the game). I got sidetracked while watching some chess videos and ended up learning.

@Rainbolt Oh cool! That's a game I'd actually like to learn the rules of sometime.

It's probably the simplest game you can learn

I actually have a decent understanding of the rules of Go after watching the AlphaGo matches. And I think I almost understand how the game is scored

I think I learned all of the rules in less than 20 minutes watching a YouTube video

@Rainbolt Oh, can you recommend the one you watched?

The AlphaGo games didn't teach scoring very well because all of the games ended with concessions

@doppelgreener youtube.com/watch?v=xMshtO8h7RU

@Rainbolt thanks very much.

@murgatroid99 best idea I have of it at the moment is it's a game about surrounding and routing armies and controlling space.

Exclusively via the placement of stones.

@doppelgreener Yeah, that's a pretty decent high-level/flavor description