Pointed Discussion

Fateful hour seems like a really, REALLY cool idea, but how long can you stay there?

Oh, Worship, lulz.

Almost strictly worse than Tangle

Tangle has both abilities without the need for you to be reduced to near death and is also cheaper, but it cannot tap creatures with vigilance like this can

Though in a Limited environment this is the closest thing you get to a Fog

This is, indeed, worse than Tangle. However, for my pauper deck it may find itself a home. It is a bit costly, but having a potential for two fogs in one card is too much card advantage for me to simply overlook without at least some play-testing.

Commander Review: since having only 5 of 40 life left in multiplayer is what you want to avoid at all costs, you want to avoid the fateful mechanic as much. What's left is a fog that costs three times as much as a regular fog. 0.5/5

Turbo fog!

I'm beginning to wonder if majinara is serious, or just parodying Commander players?

In Commander, I would think this is much better than Fog, since the extra cost should be negligible and the Fateful Hour mechanic turns this into Green Sleep. Fateful Hour does not suck in any format- in fact, it's much more dangerous in Standard than Commander, because in Commander you have access to cards that let you gain and pay life at will, allowing you to turn on Fateful Hour whenever you need it, while remaining at a safe functional life total because of other effects you've set up just right.

4/5

@DarthParallax: I hate to disagree with you (you in particular), but I have played many EDH games where I was able to leave 1 mana open, but not 3. And majinara is right that 5 life is a very dangerous place to be, since it is a good bet that any single player will be able to kill you on their next turn, especially if any of them are playing red or black.

I'm not sure how useful this will be in any format. If you don't have <6 life, it really is just a bad Fog. In casual, it's pretty much just a bad Tangle. At best, it's a conditional Sleep that only works on attacking creatures, thus defeating the whole point of sleep as a way to stop attacks for a turn AND clear the path for your own attackers.

So, its usefulness is basically going to come down to how feasible it is to stay at a low enough life total to satisfy Fateful Hour without dying, outside of casual, legacy, and vintage which have Tangle (unless you don't own Tangle and you don't want to shell out about a dollar for a playset, and also unless your playgroup uses lots of vigilant creatures). That's standard and modern.

Modern has enough things to fuel turbofog, and that deck does NOT want to be reduced to Fateful Hour, since that's far too dangerous a position.
Modern does, however, have Death's Shadow, so a deck built around that might have use of Clinging Mists if it wants a good defensive card.
I don't know crap about standard, really, but I can make up stuff like that the decks that let you go below 6 without killing you are probably packing countermagic and/or don't care whether you buy yourself an extra turn or two, since they are in control.
It's really only good for mid-range creature-on-creature combat that swings the game back and forth.

So it'll be good in limited.

Don't like, it'd be one thing if Fog was cycled out of limited but... it wasn't so...

This says one thing - Wizards really hates Turbofog. Which is fine with me.

Won at the prerelease because this wasn't tangle. Tapped down Geist-Honoed Monk to swing through to win the net turn. Usually a more expensive fog but fun when it works.

This card won me a game at the Dark Ascension prerelease event; it was very close and seeing the surprise on my opponent's face makes this card all the more memorable to me. XD

Fateful hour is so situational it should not call for a raise in CMC, especially more, thats just ridiculous. It might have been good for draft, but making the card slightly more playable in constructed would benefit the draft more then harm it.

I could live with this costing , maybe, maybe not. Fog barley gets played anyways, and yeah making a strictly better version wouldn't be the worst thing for the game. If this costed then yeah everyone would play this over fog, but like i said before most of the time the 2nd ability would not even matter.

No, I think the best solution is . It would preserve the legacy and simplicity of a classic, while still making this thing a consideration for constructed.

Commander Review; +1 card to singleton turbofog. 4/5

i'm putting this here, because this is probably the best example of how bad the fateful hour mechanic is. special mechanics are supposed to make cards more playable. who is gonna make their life total less than five just to play a not very good sleep. phyrexian unlife? i would erase that. and you would be screwed..