Here’s another edition of the upcoming Magic 2014 Core Set spoilers. Let’s get things under way with somewhat of a combo card:

 

Bogbrew Witch

They can’t all look like Sabrina the Teenage Witch

Not even close !

Let’s focus on what this flavourful card does:

Festering Newt and Bubbling Cauldron?

So what are these cards she can search for and how do they fit in the grand scheme of things? Does she give us anything neat to do or are we just tutoring for random jank?

Festering Newt

Festering Goblin‘s ‘evolution’

So this thing can take down 5/5 s? Nice.

Oh wait, there’s some fine print on the Witch that indicates our little Salamander enters the battlefield tapped. There will be no easy value tricks here! Still, you can block some 2 power dudes and activate the witch at your opponent’s end fof turn to slowly gather your army of salamanders.

Let’s take a look at the final piece of this odd combination of cards.

Bubbling Cauldron

Like a mini Trading Post

Oh! I see… That’s how the poor little Newt dies. Neat! So if all goes according to plan, we can kill 4 of our opponent’s creatures AND drain them for 16 points of damage. Cool cool! This is probably going to be a nice little gimmick deck to keep around. Not really going to cost much to build and it’s fun to play with once in a while. Unless something really insane is released in M14 that makes this ‘deck’ (and I use the term loosely) viable, I don’t see this getting played in Standard. If such a deck were to exist, you probably would only need one copy of the cauldron since it’s tutorable and is less likely to be destroyed/countered (especially if it’s just put into play with the witch).

It reminds me a little bit of these past ‘built-in’ combos.

Spirit of the Night represent!

So powerful it cannot be spoken of

While the ‘big’ card may seem weaker in the Bogbrew Witch ‘engine’ , the end result is much much better than these previous ‘combos’ could hope for. Plus it featured cards that potentially are more useful on their own.

It’s nice to see Wizards of the Coast redo something like this. A lot of people have complained and said it’s very Yu-Gi-Oh! ish , but I think it has its place in Magic: the Gathering as long as it’s done in small doses.

If you ever open a Bogbrew Witch in a draft format it’s definitely worth trying to incorporate in your deck (even if you only get like 0 Cauldrons and 2 Newts).

Door of Destinies

Slivers rejoice!

It’s been really popular since its introduction and is actively sought after still. Of course the first thing that comes to mind is Slivers, but elves are not too far behind. Granted there are not many elves out at the moment but that may change (probably after Theros block since there are no elves in Greek Mythology).

Door of Destinies is going to find its way into numerous deck, but of course most of which will be casual. A self-bouncing creature could potentially put a great deal of counters on this thing.

A couple of these might do the trick

Sprinkle some of this…

That’s just a quick example and perhaps not all that impressive but you can do some pretty sick things with it for sure. Infinite sacrificing of Persist creatures also work (just that most don’t share a creature type). You’re gonna have to choose between Ouphe or Goblin.

 

                                                  Decisions, decisions …

One more before the next article

Witchstallker

Of course there have been many similar to it in the past

I really dislike the Hexproof ability as it produced perhaps the most unfun deck to play against in recent memory (the deck being Bant Auras in Standard, which featured Geist of Saint Traft and Invisible Stalker). It really discourages any interaction and purely gives you an advantage. At least the Shroud ability made it fair to both players.

Then again, I can’t really argue much since Magic: the Gathering is now more popular than it has ever been. They are obviously doing many things right. I just don’t think this is one of them.

Witchstalker is fierce but it fails the Restoration Angel test. The angel is not a blue or black spell, so when it is flashed in as a blocker against the Witchstalker it will block, kill it and live to tell the tale. However, since Witchstalker is hexproff you might as well enchant it with something like an Unflinching Courage before sending it off to battle. If Unflinching Courage gets countered, the Witchstalker grows, in which case Restoration Angel is no longer a problem.

Come out come out wherever you are

This thing looks like the big bad wolf and in many cases it will be. It’s going to give multiple headaches to a lot of control decks out there.

That about wraps it up for…. Ok, ok! One more for the road.

Path of Bravery

Part Glorious Anthem part Righteous Cause

I’m not going to go into much depth about this as there are countless lifegain cards, but we’ll just leave it at this guy:

Will he be returning in M14 ?

There are many lifegain cards already in the M14 Core Set, so a return would somewhat make sense. On that note, I’m out of here.