In the last few weeks a lot of you have probably played some M13 limited format, be it Draft or Sealed. I believe it’s probably the best limited experience for a Core Set in a long time. Ok, ok…since foreeeeeeevvvvveeeeerrrr!
They got rid of a few things that people did not enjoy. One thing I noticed was there are no more creatures that tap other creatures. I think this is definitely a step in the right direction as these little guys were a little too good last Core Set.
The set feels a little more dynamic, but then again that’s normal as it is fairly fresh. Here are a few of the ‘combos’ I have observed while playing M13 Limited:
Intrepid Hero is already a really decent creature in this format and it becomes much much better with these 3 effects that allow you to give an offensive boost to opposing creatures and blow them up. Even outside of this combo, all cards involved are fully playable on their own as well.
All Shock Land returning to Return to Ravnica aside, these land-dependant creatures are all very decent in M13 limited. A lot of people will notice you are trying to pull a fast one on them when making a sketchy block/attack but all you need to do is fool just a couple and it would have all been worth it.
Things is, a lot more people will overlook the uncracked Evolving Wilds than you think. A lot of players will not even pay attention to what mana you have open most of them time as well. It might just be worth leaving it open unless of course, it’s preventing you from casting other necessary cards.
This guy was very criticized when he was spoiled and I remember people saying that he would be horrible in limited and so forth.
Are you kidding me?
He provides a constant recycling of all your enter the battlefield creatures, my favorite 2 being Elvish Visionary and Mwonvuli Beast Tracker . He gives your green deck that extra value or oomph! It oftentimes needs.
There is the unfortunate event that he is your only creature in play at the beginning of your upkeep and you have to return him to hand. That’s probable, but wouldn’t you still be in trouble if it was any other green creature (save maybe Elderscale Wurm).
Not an exciting one I know. Think of it as an ever-recurring blocker or regenerating blocker for 5 mana. It’s sometimes necessary to do, cute and nice to know it’s an available option.
Also, it’s already regrowthing an unsummon that was used on something relevant. So it’s already a good bonus. He can also block pesky 1/1 tokens all day and not die. For the cost, I think Archaeomancer is a pretty neat card overall.
Unsummon is has not been too great for me, but it gains a lot of value if your opponent is playing a few Auras and/or Removal. It will either make your opponent lose a card trying to buff his guy or destroy yours.
Arms Dealer is always one of my favorite reasons to play Red in limited. If I ever get 2 in my draft pool or sealed pool, I try really hard to play them.
Obviously, Arms Dealer is always good with just about any goblin. You can just do neater things if you sacrifice a Golbin Aronist since it will split 4 and 1 damage respectively. This in turn allows you to kill a 5/5 or a 1/1 and something else.
For those of you who are not aware, Arms Dealer is actually a reprint from Mercadian Masques. Weird huh? At the time, there were very few goblins to even use his ability with. In M13 draft, you should have no problem picking some up. A lot of my draft decks with him have had about 8-10 goblins or goblin token producers.
I think it’s tough enough to actually have a proper constructed deck with this, what with all the shuffling and all. Are you really going to waste your time sleeving 200+ cards? Even without the sleeves, you better hope your shop and the other players don’t mind you grabbing up all the lands at the Land Station.
This is a classic limited combo as of late. It’s simple and pretty efficient and can provide some 2 for 1’s if you steal something like an opposing Nefarox, attack alone and make them sacrifice a creature and then sacrifice Nefarox to Bloodthrone Vampire.
Bloodthrone Vampire is actually pretty decent on her own sometimes to dissuade an opponent from attacking with more creatures than he should.
Putting an enchantment on a creature is not really a combo per se. However, being able to consistently attack for 4 damage as of turn 2 on top of the possibility of putting your opponent on a 5 turn clock … Now that, that’s a combo!
I rarely recommend playing Auras in limited or otherwise, but this one is too good to pass up. Tormented Soul for those who haven’t played much M13 limited yet, is actually also pretty awesome with the exalted mechanic. Send him over to beat down your opponent while your exalted dudes hold down the fort.
I am aware that this one involves 2 Rare cards so it’s a bit more difficult to have in your Draft/Sealed pool. It’s not a complicated one, but it’s chock full of awesome! Sac the Thragtusk to gain 5 more life on top of the 5 you gained when it entered the battlefield. You net 5 cards and a 3/3 beast in the process.
These 2 cards are really good on their own as well, but I don’t think I have to tell you guys that.
It’s a rather obvious one, I know. Also great with some Mind Sculpts.
A draft/sealed deck is only 40 cards, minus the initial 7 card handsize + whatever amounts of cards were drawn. 3 Jace Mills should always do it. If not (Elixir of Immortality) , it’s nice to know you can have a hefty 5/5 flyer for 1 mana finish the job.
Keep your deathtouch guy going by really only using one card to take out their biggest guy. Usually a R/G trick with Acidic Slime or Deadly Recluse.
Kindled Fury is probably the best ‘bluff’ card red has too. If you keep one red mana up, most people will just think ‘Shock’ then think ‘wait, there is no Shock in M13’. This can often times allow you to down one of their slightly bigger guys and save yours. Not a flashy card, but it gets the job done.
Artifacts creatures work really well here as they can be recycled pretty well. Chump block with a Chronomaton, sac it to get another Chronomaton or Phyrexian Hulk back. Good times!
There are no other ways to give flying to an opposing creature. If you are in a situation where you would have to take out a non-flyer, by all means give this combo a shot.
Again, as with the Intrepid Hero combo earlier on, both card are decent enough to be use separately.
Talrand is seeing some Standard play and it’s not totally unsurprising. With the amount of phyrexian mana costs from New Phyrexia (some costing 0 if you opt to pay the 2 life), this little merfolk can generate an army all by himself. His value in your deck definitely goes up if you managed to also draft a Talrand’s Invocation.
‘Grizzly Bears’ with an upside. Ok,ok, most Grizzlies get an upside these days. It’s not too hard to get 3+ sometimes while drafting. Obviosuly the value of each wolf increases each time you play another, giving you a better reason to ‘swarm’ the field with them.
Is there anything Trading Post can’t do? Well, actually, a few things.
Generate enough tokens and give this little guy some value as you sac them to retrieve lost artifacts. You can even have a draw-discard-regrowth engine going with Rummaging Goblin.
Not ideal, but nonetheless decent. Veilborn Ghoul cannot block for your Liliana but he can give you a sizeable attacker forcing your opponent to always trade with it or take 4 in the process.
Ah yes, the ‘dream’ than one must try to live at least once. If you can envision a situation where you will get to the 9-mana range and you happen to be playing red, give it a shot.
There’s also the small fact that it doesn’t have to be YOUR Oblivion Ring. Say you have a Chandra or whatever that you know your opponent is going to Oblivion Ring, try it out. The game might go long and this might be the ‘I win’ card. Everything will go bye bye, including the Oblivion Ring, thus bringing back your creature or planeswalker to win you the game on the following turn.
Hi guys, I’ll offer you my personal take on cards in a limited context. I’ll first start off with White since it’s my favorite color. I didn’t add any grades for the cards because I feel that cards have variable grades and that it ultimately depends on the kind of deck that you have. Also the information given encompasses both Sealed and Draft since I don’t have enough experience with the set to give out precise details on those contexts.
This is comparable to Child of Night. It has an extra toughness at the cost of a more color intensive mana cost. This also gets the boost from the exalted mechanic in this set.
Don’t even try to play this. I would play any other card on this list over Angel’s Mercy. It doesn’t affect anything on the board. Hell, I wouldn’t play this even if I had 4 Rhox Faithmender in my deck.
Good way to push damage through versus creature-light decks. Personally, I don’t like this card much because it doesn’t provide the body that a creature with exalted would give you, but it does have some utility if you’re planning to attack with only one creature.
I have to say that I like this card a lot. It provides so much for so little. You get two bodies; it can fit in control and aggressive decks. This is a card that I will never cut from my decks, Ever.
It’s A bird… It’s A plane… Oh wait, it’s really a bird, and one worth playing. This avian creature has multiple uses. It’s an early relevant drop that has evasion and stays useful throughout the game. The only thing this bird doesn’t do well is block.
This is a functional reprint from Shards of Alara and it can fit two kind of decks: an aggressive one or a green-based ramp style kind of deck to fly your fatties over the enemy border.
Sure this is no Lingering Souls but for a Core Set, it can pack quite a punch. It combos well with other cards such as Griffin Protector, Crusader of Odric or if you’re really lucky: Sublime Archangel.
It can also substitute as life for more controlling decks.
It really saddens me that this card is not as playable as it was with the last Core Set. They didn’t reprint Auramancer, so this greatly reduces its value. I would side it in against aggressive decks and that’s about it.
This card is playable but I prefer Oblivion Ring and Pacifism over this since it doesn’t require you to leave mana open during your opponent’s turn. However, removal is still removal. I wouldn’t play too many of these though…
I really like this card, it can work very well with some other cards like Fungal Sprouting or Captain’s Call. Generally, it’ll attack for three but it can stay on defense if needed since it does have three toughness.
You could potentially rub against them since they are not going to bite neither you nor your opponents. I have to say they do have big butts for lions.
This guy can give your opponent quite a headache if they are the beatdown. Not only does he stop a number of creatures from attacking you, but he also gains you back the life you lost.
He has a nice body for the mana cost and he also has First Strike. He doesn’t always activate his second ability, but when he does, ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I will always include this card in my deck. Just make sure you don’t have any Oblivion Ring on your side of the table. (Or if you do, that it targets your own permanent)
This card makes life so much easier! You simply don’t have to think about combat math anymore. If someone attacks you in a non-profitable way, he (or she) probably has this card under their sleeve.
I did not have any good experience with this card. At times, I was simply staring at it in my hand, wondering why the hell I added this card to my deck. Other times, it was simply a moderately fat a** that couldn’t get through any damage because my opponents simply chumped her.
This card basically has haste if you have at least one other creature in play. It has a nice body, a nice price too, so snatch this up if you see it in a draft simply for value.
Let’s consider the worst case scenario. You have 6 lands in play and you can’t cast this.
Done reviewing.
I kid. Imagine if you cast this with 7 lands in play, this means your life total will become at least 8 during your next upkeep. This is not too bad and your life total will simply go higher and higher as turns go by, I wouldn’t include this in aggressive decks because of the cost but mid-range and control decks can make good use of such a card.
With around 10 Soldiers and Knights in M13, I would not take this early, but if you do end up with a good number of those creatures, I would say around 8 to 10 sources in your deck, I would play this.
It’s almost strictly better than Silvercoat Lion. If you get Mindslavered with an Oblivion Ring on your side, it can get ugly but it’s a good thing that Mindslaver was not reprinted in M13.
They should have reprinted Tundra Wolves with the old art. At least, it would’ve had a nostalgic value. This card offers you nothing but it’s still better than Angel’s Mercy.
The standard metagame today looks pretty healthy, even though we were all in doubt for a bit during the great Delver invasion (pre- M13). Plenty of decks are a viable choice for those who wants to play something different.
Most people have realized that there are plenty of answers to the Delver decks. With that realization, Naya Pod and Esper midrange decks have been putting up great results. Faithless Rites won the last TCGplayer platinum 5k event.
With that said, there might be one problem with this diversity. It’s not that the format isn’t very diverse. In my opinion: it’s more like something is missing. The format is filled with aggressive, midrange and tempo decks. Now if you’re like me (a control junkie) you must have been asking yourself: “Where the heck are the control decks?” Apart from Solar Flare having making appearances ,no other control deck has been cutting it. What is keeping the control decks from making a break for gold?
Let’s try and see why, let’s make a trip back in time … all the way back when Dark Ascension was released.
Some of us might remember U/B control being the best control deck when Dark Ascension came out. How times have changed! I remember playing that deck and thinking it was the most fun I’ve had in a while. I mean, the amount of times that deck put me in what I like to call “the zone”( you know, when you’re in a kind of bubble/state of mind that you don’t care about whatever your opponent will do because you just know you have answers for just about anything he can do) is insane.
Add to that, the fact that you usually won by milling out your opponent was loads of fun. I remember playing a version without any creatures at all and my only win conditions being Jace, Memory Adept and Nephalia Drownyard. This allowed me to have tons of space for yet more answers for their threats as well as making their creature removal spells rather useless. However, suddenly (well not really suddenly, metagames don’t shift thatquickly) (Editor’s Note: Wanna bet?) U/B control became worse and worse in Standard.
Why is that?
Well, you see, with the same set that brought U/B Control to the spotlight, it also brought one of the most annoying abilities for control decks: Undying.
Undying, the ‘inverted’ persist mechanic, brought aggressive decks to a whole new level! It is very hard for control to deal with undying creatures since it will often require you to have 2 removal spells for a single threat (unless you play white and want to waste your Oblivion Ring on a Strangleroot Geist) instead of something harder to deal with such as a planeswalker , Birthing Pod or bigger undying guy.
Again, you need to remember that Pillar of Flame did not exist yet.
In the beginning, the first deck that brought down control with undying was Zombies (both monoblack or U/B versions). You couldn’t successfully mill Zombies either, without helping them find a Gravecrawler in the process. Their extremely aggressive one-drops would slip right under your Mana Leaks and they could just start attacking as of turn 2. While doing that, they could just wait to have 6 mana and drop a Geralf’s Messenger while having enough mana to pay for your Mana Leaks. The matchup was worsened if you didn’t deal with all the zombies on the field at once. Otherwise, you would just have an army of Gravecrawlers coming back each turn. The UB version had Phantasmal Images with Undying (since they would have copied the Geralf’s Messengers with them. You can just imagine how difficult that was for control.
Then the Strangleroot Geist decks came along. At first, they were in Red/Green agro decks. A 2/1 creature for 2 Green mana with haste and undying is extremely hard to deal with. It enters the battlefield, it attacks for 2 damage and requires 2 removal spells to kill. Otherwise it will just come back and pummel you with a vengeance. Plus, don’t you even think about countering this little guy! Your opponent will just cast another one or an even bigger threat. Equipped with a Sword of War and Peace, you will be punished you for having cards in your hand, something you need to have when playing control.
Another factor, which was kind of brought by the presence of swords, is threat density. Their whole deck is a threat to you. With a sword in play, even a weak little Birds of Paradise is something you just have to deal with. If you waited to Mana Leak their late-game threats they would just beat you down with it.
Too many counters made the deck worse.
Another thing that made Counterspells worse was the ‘birth’ of Birthing Pod decks. Earlier on, Pod decks were a joke because without the actual Birthing Pod in play they did little to nothing. Newer Pod decks became good even without their namesake card. Have the Pod? Well, I’ll be playing the threats I need when I want them and you can’t even stop me from doing it!
Cards like Blade Splicer and Huntmaster of the Fells are hellish for control because if you don’t counterspell them they will enter the battlefield and their job. Your opponent will not care if they die, since they brought in a second creature with them that you need to deal with.
What if you don’t destroy them? They will just PodBlade Splicer or just simply attack and wait for their Huntmaster of Fells to flip to get a bigger creature as well as free damage in.
Now with all that said, (I might be missing a few points) the environment in Standard right now is pretty hostile to control decks. On top of it all: let’s not forget the printing of Cavern of Souls and Restoration Angel.
I was once told that I had to be a masochist to keep trying to play control decks (back in the days when I brought a different control brew every week). Well ladies and gentlemen, looks like I like being hurt because I’m back! I just guess playing Delver decks made me realize how much I missed the control archetype.
I chose the Grixis colors for this control deck as I find that they have the more proactive ways to fight aggressive decks.
I know, I know: Another random control deck …
It has Pillar of Flame, which I definitely want to play main deck. The card might seem a bit weak to some but it’s a permanent way to deal with undying creatures, like Strangleroot Geist. They don’t play them? It’s still a 2 damage burn spell! Also, if you finish off a Wurmcoil Engine with this, your opponent gets no Wurmtokens! That’s pretty a pretty nice interaction to be aware of.
Sweepers are also amazing versus undying dudes because you get to kill a bunch of other creatures along with the undying ones. You even get value if you destroy at least 2 of them . In addition Grixis has access to the best discard spell in the format: Despise. On turn one it can really ruin your opponent’s game plan.
If a big threat hits the table, well hey! , guess what: we play Go for the Throat, Doom Blade and our latest addition:
Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker is probably one of the best win conditions for this deck since just like Karn Liberated, if it isn’t dealt with you pretty much win the game. He deals with pesky permanents while getting even more loyalty counters. He can even steal you a couple of creatures like an opposing Titan or Elesh Norn to turn the tide!
Speaking of planeswalkers, Grixis has less problems dealing with them compared to other control decks. You can keep your permission for them because you have the rest of your deck to kill their creatures. We play things like Slagstorm and Bonfire of the Damned, which is just such an amazing card. The burn spells in the deck are very versatile as well.
So here is what I think would be a good Grixis Control decklist in the current metagame. I believe that a lot of sweepers is what you need. They dispose of hexproofcreatures and somewhat counteract the token producers.
I will be going over my specific card choices for this deck in Part 2 as well as the game plan and sideboard.
We also noticed another major thing: How the heck does this deck ever win?
For starters, we have Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa’s Rest . Looks slow and clunky and rather unimpressive. Well, it does give us a 5/5 when i enters play. That’s somewhat cool in that if it gets destroyed you still get a dragon.
However, if this stays in play, it should be an easy game to win. You are just hitting ability after ability, spamming dragons or just playing conservatively with just a couple of dragons and enough cards in hand to back them up. Barring some kind of board whipe AND equipment destruction, you should be winning that match.
Mr. Wafo-Tapa is renowned for running such decks in the Magic: the Gathering world and it is not surprising to see him play this in WOW. What is surprising though, is that it performs extremely well. It also implies that the deck requires more skill than your run of the mill WOW deck does in order to get some wins.
Secondly, you can win with Abyssal Maw coupled with your Monster hero’s ability:
I guess you would need to see the flip side eh?
Now that’s more like it! Now you’re playing with power (TM) !
mmm….are you really though? how often are you going to be “storming” into 3 frost/ICE symbol spells?
Not very…
While you can realistically do it, chances are you will not. See, usually doing something like playing 3 spells a turn in wow to get a hero flip would imply it’s an ‘Epic’ flip, which this isn’t.
So we are stuck grinding the long game, Wafo-Tapa style. I know for the majority of WOW players, the long game is something past turn 6 or so. So let me rephrase that: the ‘really long’ game!
On the small plus side, her flip can probably also count as a win condition if your opponent does not pack any maindeck equipment with an Armor Value of 1 or more.
Oh wait! Cut the presses! Teeeecccchnicalllyyyy….there is one final win condition:
I had to restrain myself from laughing. Don’t get me wrong, this is one solid piece of cardboard. It would be sooo hot if it wasn’t actually a frost-looking water elemental.
All kidding aside, this guy is awesome. He will tap down their big guys and no get attacked into. If he really needs to he can even attack into a really annowying 1/1 (I just can’t think of a relevant one). He’s a frost card too, so he can also be one of the 3 cards you play to ‘free’ flip Sira’Kess and start pinging away.
I went back to the list..now feeling like a complete idiot….but of course! there had to be a more ‘real’ win condition. And there is…
In all it’s large glory, so that you may read the text. So, tap their guys, AOE/board whipe their guys and pacify their guys. This will do the rest.
You now begin to understand the reasoning for the Mosnter Hero. She will be able to ping down opposing Ice Barriers in order to not die to them. The Abyssal Maws can also provided extra life in the mirror match in order to outlast your opponent. Good Stuff!
When I first saw this card, I knew I wanted to play it in my old Frost Mage control build. It’s pretty neat in the sense that it obviously ‘fogs’ their dudes but in many events, can even kill some. This is great value. Also, as a frost card it can allow you to storm flip Sira’Kess and also trigger an Abyssal Maw sometimes. However that second one can be tricky, since you woudl need to use this otherwise defensive card offensively and on your turn, ouch!
Gets rid of creatures, like for good. 3 is the magic number for early drops and we don’t absolutely need the versatility of Fire blast to shoot players really.
I put these together because you need to sometimes counterspell thing that are one shot-ish or really do something nut. However if it’s an ability or abilities that you can just steal with Manashift (Grand Crusader, Ice Barrier), why bother? is it a weapon or annoying ability? Mask it!
The card draw and boy is it ever good! Agate is a 4-of vs Bottle because on turn 4 you can safely cast it and then have a Overload backup for their turn or crack it to draw 2 if they do nothing.
Boundless Magic is surprisingly insane. Comparable to a Brainstorm in Magic, but much much better late game because it goes back into your deck and allows you to go through more cards per usage. I also just noticed it’s NOT an isntant. Boo! I guess that makes it more of a Ponder.
Bottled Knowledge is still a necessity as it digs 4 cards for 3 mana which is huuuge. Versus less aggro decks you can drop it without having 2 up for an Overload, however that’s more the exception than the rule.
Made nicer with the reprint, it is sometimes a necessity against things that generate wayyyy to many guys and swarm kill you. I know 6 ressources is a lot in this game, but it kills a small horde and slows down their subsequent attacks.
Quest
Some card draw,selection. Also Signed in Blood, which seems more like a European meta-call that I would not mind trying locally.
All in all, I think everyone should at least try this deck once. It allows you to at least see how hard it is to play a proper control deck in this format. It rewards great technical play and punishes sloppiness. The greatest part, in case you hadn’t noticed is that it costs a LOT less than all the other decks. In fact, even without the other decks having Edwins, they still have things like Mazu’Kon which costs a fortune compared to everything in this deck.
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Not too shabby, I guess. The rumors that it may have been a Thawing Glaciers have been put to rest.
This was a one-of in the 40-something Lands deck in Legacy. It shut down insane amounts of aggro for sometimes NO life payment as you just recurred it over and over with Life From the Loam.
2) Dryad Arbor
At least some Legacy players can now ‘pimp’ their decks. However, I personally prefer the old art. This card makes it clear to all that it is a forest and all, but it also kind of makes it look like a ‘proxy’ card for some reason.
Maybe it’s just me, I don’t know…
3) Forbidden Orchard
This reprint seem legit. It’s good in multiplayer EDH to temporarily buy yourself an ally by perhaps providing someone with a chump blocker and it gives you any color mana as well. I think the art on it is on par with the old version as well.
4) Grove of the Burn Willows
A much appreciated reprint for Legacy as it has been banned in Modern (well, technically the card that combos with it was, Punishing Fire) . Very acceptable for EDH as well since the one life gain is somewhat never an issue. Again, can be used to buy yourself an ally if you can save someone who was about to die on the nose (unlikely in EDH) but you never know.
Art-wise, I am still a fan of the old kind of charcoal-color feel the trees have. And yes, I adore the Future Sight frame. It’s neat and well thought out as far as design goes. Th new one seems less stylized, and blends in more with a lot of the other lands/backgrounds. It doesn’t stand out enough to make a newer player exclaim: ” What on Earth is that?”
5) Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
Wow! I think a reprint of this has been long awaited. Playable in just about every format it’s legal in, this land is always in high demand by new players and old. It, along with maybe Wasteland were the most anticipated ones. We have no confirmation on Wasteland so far, but we can hope. It would totally help in bringing down the barrier to entry in Legacy somewhat. Of course, this is depending on how likely players that buy this 15-card box are to trade them away or how much the reprints would sell for.
This one gets the same art treatment, so you can use it to bling your deck instead of having to track down an expensive original foil one.
6) Murmuring Bosk
Another reprint I can really get behind. It’s a fetchable dual-painland hybrid that can maybe not come into play tapped depending on the deck. Usually used in old Standard, Extended and Modern Doran decks, this land will always fix your color issues. If you play some kind of GWB deck in Legacy you can also kind of use it if Overgrown Tombs and Bayous are a little too pricy for your taste.
It’s also pretty cute that it has the little forest symbol in grey as a watermark. Comes out clean and is a great way to remember that it always counts as a forest. Nice job on that on Wizards!
I think also be more of an indication that the Shocklands from Ravnica are returning in the Return to Ravnica block. Having the split symbols on the Shocklands would be a dream come true for some players. There have been rumors that they may also be full-art ( a la Zendikar) as well, but let’s not get carried away here, eh?
In conclusion, I believe this From the Vault box in particular will be a real hot ticket item, more so than all previous versions combined. The Legends version was the least popular and is still obtainable in certain retail store for a not too high price. i really don’t see this happening with this From the Vault series.
7) Maze of Ith
Just recently announced.
Wow!!!! just wow! talk about addign value to this From the Vault series.
8) Ancient Tomb
Legacy players rejoice! This one was a long time coming, especially in the stompy builds.
It was a rather costly uncommon too.
9) Vesuva
This time the EDH community gets a nod. Not bad at all. How many FTV: Realms are you all planning to buy?
10) Cephalid Colisseum
A Legacy Dredge mainstay is now a From the Vault foil. Not bad, seeing as how a foil version of this uncommon runs you about 15$.
11) Desert
I guess they have to print some bad ones sometimes. Maybe if you play FOIL Pauper EDH. LOL!
12) Shivan Gorge
Speaking of bad reprints. Eh! You can’t win ’em all. I guess you don’t want this whole box to seem like a total cash grab…
13) Windbrisk Heights
Hm, they printed one of each ‘colored’ ability lands. This one was a staple in Lorwyn Standard Kithkin and I believe some Extended and Modern decks. All in all, some good value on this one for all formats it would be legal in (ie: all but the current Standard).
14) High Market
A wonderful little gem here!
I don’t believe they were allowed to reprint Diamond Valley. This is pretty much what you think it is: an EDH card.
It’s kind of important to be able to sacrifice your permanents for value or to save them from Control Magic effects in EDH and that is what this card does for your creatures. The 1 life gain is usually irrelevant, that much should be obvious.
A foil version of this card was quite pricey so this can now be an auto-include in all-FOIL EDH decks .
15) Boseiju, Who Shelters All
Almost exclusively an EDH card, it does see some fringe play in Modern and Legacy formats alike. Definitely a nice card in casual formats if you are tired of the control player in your playgroup.
I’d say this is one of the money card in the box set. Probably what I would consider the middle ground of the box, financially speaking.
I was a fan of the art on it, so it’s cool that they kept it intact.
+) Moving Forward …
Hopefully these reprints will breathe some more life back into Legacy and EDH for now and make the game as a whole more accessible to those who really want to play it.
Let us know what you think about this awesome little box of value by commenting this post.
Until then, may you never have to shuffle a Battle of Wits deck!
Today we will take a little break from the usual CCG discussions and shed some light on a brand new one:
Marvel Super Hero Squad TCG
Upper Deck has been trying to do something with the Marvel License for quite some time now since VS. System is no more. They also apparently changed their target gaming audience. While VS. System targeted players of about 16 years or older, I believe this CCG is targeting a much younger audience.
The game itself is really simple and well-desgined. You can literally grab 4 boosters per player, shuffle up and then duel! You heard right! This is no exaggeration. No resources/mana (like Magic: The Gathering) and no card restrictions (like color, faction,etc.). There is a maximum number of copies of any card you can pack, 4. It is rather unlikely you get more than 4 of the same card in 4 boosters. Barring some card collation errors on the factory side of things, it’s impossible.
Allright, you have your 40 cards. Now what?
Now we decide which players starts. Coin clip, Die Roll, Odd or Even card number, etc. Randomly determine who starts the duel. Each Player’s POWER Rating will be 1. At the beginning of each player’s turn, a coin is flipped to check wether or not the Power goes up by 1. It is possible, though unlikely that certain games will end with the power being 5 or lower. However, most games I have played saw the power go up to like 13.
Sure, seems easy enough.
So far so good eh? Now we will begin with the different card types.
Attacks
These are your bread and butter in this game. You need these to damage your opponent and win this heroic battle.
Also….
There is no other card type! Simple enough for ya?
While there may not be another card type, there are a lot of things to take into account. For starters, there are 6 different kinds of attacks and they are color-coded even when reference by other cards. There is never really a need to remember the names of these attacks (in fact I only recall a handful).
There is only one set so far, so these are true as of that set.
One color of attack cannot block against its own color.
Basically, each attack has one or more colors it attacks with and one color it blocks. So you can have a red attack that blocks a purple attack but not itself. This obviously prevents lazy deckbuilding , such as just making a mono-blue attack deck.
An Attack with 2 or more symbols requires the defender to block with one of each symbol.
If you can only block half, you will take the full damage regardless. Sometimes, it maybe not be worth losing a card from your hand for nothing.
When taking damage, you flip one card from the top of your deck into your graveyard for each point of damage.
This is similar to a now-extinct game called WWE Raw Deal. It’s a great design as it allows you to keep playing without having to keep track of things such as life totals.
If you flip a card that can block the attack while taking damage, you will stop taking damage.
Now, this is very important. If you think or know that you can block the attack from the top of your deck instead of your hand, you probably want to do that instead of using an actual card from your hand. Again, even if you block it at 2-3 damage instead, it may be worth it.
You lose the game when you have no more cards left in your deck AND no more cards left in your hand.
This is quite the change from Raw Deal as it allows you to mount a last-ditch blitz to rally and possibly win the game. I have had games go down to 1 card in hand on each side. If the active player plays his last card and in turn forces his opponent to use up his last card, the attacker wins. That makes sense right? You want to force aggression.
Keepers are like planeswalkers in Magic: The Gathering.
There are cards called keepers that will allow you to produce a bonus/ongoing effect if your attack hit the opponent for a at least 2 damage (sometime more). This will cause the card to stay in play and trigger its effect when the time comes.
For example, one of the keepers does something simple like hit your opponent for 1 damage at the beginning of your turn. This damage CAN be blocked and if it is, will cause the keeper to be discarded. Also, flipping a block from your deck while taking damage will cause the keeper to get discarded.
the Counterattack ability is not as good as it sounds.
Basically, if the card has the counterattack characteristic, it will deal a small amount of damage to the attacker when you block with it. They are usually attacks that cost more for the amount of damage they can deal as attacks, due to the fact that they can potentially do some defensive damage.
Most attacks are really balanced. There are no ‘strictly better’ cards.
Even vanilla cards are decent as they have a pretty good damage output compared to attacks that produce effect. This is a rather refreshing change from most CCG’s where you are stuck with filler cards that seemingly have no use except for diversifying the limited format.
You are not allowed to check graveyards.
This is super important as it wastes a lot of time in any CCG and you don’t want to have younger kids waiting around while their opponents sifts through his graveyard. Also, in this game , It can provide a lot of information as to what would be left in your deck and influence your decision as to how and if to block. It promotes having a good memory instead of fussing around endlessly trying to figure out that odds of a block of the appropriate color being flipped.
There are teams/affiliations but they only provided bonuses and not restrictions.
No card is unplayable in your deck. Just that some of them gain bonuses if certain conditions are met. This is a really nice feature for players who are starting this as their first CCG. It saves them a lot of time deckbuilding.
As a general rule, you want to diversify your block symbols.
Since there is no ‘stronger’ color of attack, this makes sense. You will have about 6-7 of each block symbol in your deck. This will prevent you from getting totally overwhelmed by your opponent’s attacks and not being able to block/minimize damage.
It is generally a good idea to have a kind of ‘curve’ in your deck.
This is probably the most important piece of advice for deckbuilding. You generally want to have a lot of your attacks in the meaty part of the curve 3-6 and a few high end attacks as well. Generally you may want to add low cost keepers that will grant your other attacks bonuses.
You can only play 1 Attack per turn.
Simple concept there!
When blocking you don’t need to have the Power level of the card.
Blocks can be done at all times, regardless of power level. Again, not super obvious at first, but you get used to it.
You are not forced to block if you don’t want to.
I know it’s kind of an obvious one, but for the younger players this can be important. You need to make decisions in this game and this is probably one of the most important ones. Don’t waste a card to block when you can use it on your turn to do big damage.
That about covers most of the game’s concepts. There are cards that increase your Power level temporarily and that decrease your opponent’s as well.
This is only a first set, but there are already little mini-themes that give you a heads up on how certain teams/characters play.
Spider-Man has the Power 1 theme where all his 1 Power cards kind of ‘combo’ together in a string of attacks. Hulk/She-Hulk gain bonuses from playing with no cards in their hand such as attack boosts and damage resistance.
There are also super finisher cards that cost like 12+ power and have insane effects. The likelihood of those getting played in a game is slim unless you can decrease the power they require to play. Oftentimes a 15 damage attack will just get overturned on 3 damage, so the actual number on the damage is not as relevant as one might think.
In conclusion, I would like to note that if you are looking for a CCG to get your young ones into and, like myself, you are finding games like Pokemon, Magic and Yu-Gi-Oh! a little too complex for them. Try this card game on for size!
I remember a few years back, during the beginnings of the Legacy ‘boom’. Force of Will and Brainstorms were everywhere and in that respect, not much has changed. As a player that prefers decks that are more ‘fair’, I abhorred the idea of Free Counters and card filtering. It seemed kinda lame that it was a strictly blue ability and more or less forced you to play the color or just lose ( General Assumption, but more or less true). I shelled out my then Type 2 cards and some cash in order to obtain these Legacy staples at the then ‘ridiculous’ price of 25-30$. I had somewhat of an idea that these cards would maintain or gain value seeing that the format was a nice break from the Type 2 format which was dominated by Fairie decks at the time, which many people, including myself despised.
At the time, I became more familiar with a site called mtgthesource.com. I frequented the forums during slower periods at tech support job (they were few and far in between). I fell upon what I thought was a pretty awesome deck called Death and Taxes. I am sure most of you are familiar with it. For those who are not, you can probably Google it and read the primers. One of the main ‘tricks’ the deck does is activate Mangara of Corondor then in response to his ability bounce him back to your hand with Karakas, Stonecloaker or a Aether Vial’ed in Flickerwisp. The deck relies on little tricks such as this to slowly gain an advantage over the opponent and beat him down with creatures like Serra Avenger (which can be vialed in as soon as turn 3 instead of cast on turn 4). I played the deck endlessly and became known as the White Weenie guy. I didn’t really like that term because the deck wasn’t entirely a White Weenie deck, but it was the existant archetype that it most identified to. I like to think of it more as a Tricked Out Creature deck.
Fast forward a few years to the point where Alara block is now Standard. The release of Alara Reborn produces perhaps the most pivotal creature in the Maverick deck or at least one of the main reasons for the then Mono-White deck to splash green. I had often considered such a deck with Green for the Tarmogoyf splash (of course) and Krosan Grips in the sideboard. There was still a hole to fill. In comes … Qasali Pridemage! How awesome is this guy? I remember the initial spoiler did not even include the fact that he had exalted and I still thought he was awesome. Rarity was not officially spoiled either and I was obviously thinking Rare,right? Nope. Just wow!
This dude allowed the deck to get to the ‘next level’ but of course, the deck still had a long way to go. I won’t go over all the long and boring-ish details about how all the other cards for it fell into place to produce this Legacy Staple. I will however mention that Scavenging Ooze and Green Sun’s Zenith were pretty key.
For starters, it should be noted that this list always goes through certain modifications to combat a lot of the other Legacy deck types that are becoming more and more popular (in this case, Reanimator).
We will go over some of the card choices and see how and why they are useful and chosen over other possible candidates.
Previous versions only played one copy, however with the emergence of more Reanimator and the rise of the Show and Tell / Sneak Attack deck popularity, this card is becoming even more of a necessity. It can also be used to bounce and save your legendary creatures from the likes of cards like Swords to Plowshares . Also, there is the off-chance that a dredge deck Dread Returns an Iona of their own (usually they won’t do that if you have Karakas already in play). It will allow you to then bounce it to continue to play your white spells (usually the dredge player will name white, usually). Against Reanimator, it will bounce their Griselbrand which will keep them off the lifelink plan after they have drawn 7 and paid 7 life thus allowing you to win via your smaller creature beatdown.
We are playing Green and White, in a Legacy format. If you feel these are somewhat expensive, then by all means, you can opt for the cheaper dual Temple Garden.
The seemingly useless land from Planar Chaos, now one of the key cards in the deck. This card allows us to do quite a few interesting things:
Ramp – yes, a turn 1 Green Sun’s Zenith for 0 will in fact allow us to put this land into play thus giving us a potential access of 3 mana on turn 2 assuming we play a land on turn 2. This then allows us to play our ‘fatties’ like Knight of the Reliquary.
Potential Infinite Blocker – I say Potential here because some versions play Scryb Ranger or Quirion Ranger that will allow us to bounce our Forest / creature back to our hand after blocking opposing creatures. This in turn can avoid things such as opposing Umezawa’s Jitte’s from getting charge counters put onto them since combat damage will not be done.
Potential post board-whipe Jitte carrier – So you’ve overcommited or just lost all your dudes to a Terminus courtesy of the Miracles deck or a Pernicious Deed. Luckily, you’ve ‘brilliantly’ foreseen this or simply played well by leaving an uncracked fetchland open. At the end of your opponent’s turn you proceed to fetch for a ‘forest’ which turns out to be Dryad Arbor . On your turn, you equip your awesome critter with the Jitte and go to town.
That’s quite some high expectations from this little guy eh? It should be ok, as long as you don’t draw him in your opening hand. 🙂
This IS Legacy we’re talking about. Why would you not play this land? Everyone is running non-basics and you get the upside of being able to search for these with your awesome Knight of the Reliquary. It is not uncommon to ‘Waste’ your opponent’s subsequent landrops by simply playing Forests or Plains and turning them into Wastelands with your Knight. Unless your opponent can draw basics or play fetches to get basics into the battlefield … they are in pretty big trouble.
Fetchlands
Effectively thin your deck and pump your knight by putting more lands into the graveyard and some basics or duals into play. These are also key to defensively pumping your knight of the reliquary when he is blocking by increasing his power/toughness by 2. You sac a Forest/Plains then you go grab a fetchland to crack it and fetch for a land again. 2 lands would have gone to your graveyard this turn and your knight will have grown. Again, better players will see this option so it’s not exactly a trick really.
It does, however become a trick if you are playing Scryb Ranger and flash it in so you can untap your knight and repeat the process. This is a +4/+4 play, much much more effective usually as it will maybe be killing something pretty large and surviving to tell the story.
Take a look, 16 of the creatures have a common creature type. In fact, you too, fellow reader share this creature type: Human. Yeah, ok kinda lame, I know.
Let’s take a look at why this might be useful.
There is still the combination Sensei’s Divining Top / Counterbalance running around in Legacy. This effectively counters all your one drops (and you run quite a few) as well as whatever else is in their top 3 cards (provided they have that extra mana open to change the order). It can be quite frustrating for this deck to get locked by this and thusly, Cavern of Souls gets the nod.
Elves might be the other creature type named with the Cavern, if you then want to start fetching other dudes with Fauna Shaman and simply need him to stick. You can also go get this land with Knight of the Reliquary which can be key in doing things like naming wizard to flash an end of turn Aven Mindcensor or simply get a Qasali Pridemage into play to then pop him and destroy say, a Counterbalance.
Of course, you can always just name ‘Praetor’ and drop an Elesh Norn for some real backbreaking action! But I digress …
The creature removal choice in Legacy since 199x. I mean seriously, you are playing white and need to sometimes get rid of their dudes. What ELSE would you play? If you were more aggro, you could opt for maybe Path to Exile. In this deck however, you are also running some mana denial and can’t really afford to have them go get lands. The life gain is ‘usually’ negligible. Even if you are using it on a Griselbrand. The dude will still gain 7 life if he gets to swing, so just do it!
This is probably the card that makes it all possible. You pretty much tutor for most creatures in your deck. You just need to make sure not to cast Thalia or Gaddock Teeg because that will cause some problems when you want to cast this spell. It can easily happen if you don’t plan out ahead and need to cast Gaddock Teeg in order to prevent a deck from casting things like Jace the Mindsculptor or a combo deck from casting Ad Nauseam. (in the later case, it’s not THAT bad)
What doesn’t this equipment do? It’s pretty much your removal against aggro, your lifegain vs. Burn decks and your clock vs. more control-oriented decks. I am sure after reading the card you will not need to understand why it’s legendary and why it’s worth over 20$. It’s that good. You will notice the absence of Stoneforge Mystic in this deck as an equipment fetcher. This is because we are rather equipment-light, the Jitte being the only search target. Also, Stoneforge is not something you can fetch with Green Sun’s Zenith.
However, a case can be made for including one copy seeing as how we run multiple Fauna Shamans. Feel free to experiment and gauge for yourself at its efficiency in the deck.
This is here for when your creatures fail to get the job done. Excellent vs. control decks especially the ones that are old school and run Humility (the rest of the deck does pretty much nothing against that card). But those are OOOOOOLD school. You never know though, they might make a comeback. Also, she acts as an equipment for when you can equip your guys and do extra damage and end the game. Post board-whipe she is awesome. Also works well with the Dryad Arbor plan fetching at the end of your opponent’s turn. This card has been praised to no end in almost all formats. No need to repeat what’s already been said except to say that some decks opt not to run her in favor or an extra Fauna Shaman.
Creatures
This is what it’s all about. Interact with your opponent’s board through creatures and provide the beatdown. First off, we have the 1-drops:
Similar to Birds of Paradise in Standard, this little girl provides us with the acceleration we need to drop accelerated threats in play ( such as Knight of the Reliquary) and potentially turn 3 Elspeth. Contrary to the Birds, this creature can properly attack with an Umezawa’s Jitte. It’s rather embarassing to equip a Jitte and then try to attack with the flying 0/1 and expect to do damage. However, the ‘Exalted’ keyword (something M13 brought back) rectifies this with the Hierarch.
Seemingly inoffensive until you see what it can do. I remember playing against this when me and my friend started playing back in the summer of 2001 and we didn’t fully understand the awesomeness of they protection keyword. It does a lot of neat stuff in your deck (again, even more ridiculous when paired with Scryb Ranger as it can double up on the effect).
It can single-handedly stop opposing ground creatures from hitting you and triggering their equipment or allow your guys to get past opposing defenses. A lot of times it will force your opponent to have a second removal card in hand as it efectively negates one on its own. Even when summoning sick, the opponent will be likely to Swords to Plowshares it or Lightning Bolt it in fear of having those cards be less effective vs your other threats later on.
I for one, would love an alternate art reprint. The artwork is ok, but seems dated by today’s MTG card art standards.
Let’s continue with the Legendary Creatures (aka. guys you can reanimate with Loyal Retainers)
Realistically, this deck would not have played such a creature. However, the combination of Fauna Shaman and Loyal Retainers makes it rather potent. Add to that the fact that you can actually amass enough mana via a Gaea’s Cradle to actually cast it instead of simply reanimating it. She probably will give you the upper hand in some kind of mirror match or vs. something like merfolk (despite their infinite Lords). Against Dredge, it will not leave them with many options either. Also, if your opponent would have a removal saved up for her, you can protect her via Mother of Runes or Karakas as well.
The little Kithkin with a infinite wisdom (or at least that’s what the flavor text implies). He stops Soooo many cards that they are just numerous to list. Eventhough Legacy revolves more around 1-3 drops, there are still a lot of cards at 4 or more that greatly impact a game.
If you can manage to play him or search him out with Green Sun’s Zenith (after a turn 1 zenith getting Dryad Arbor) against Ad Nauseam Combo, you have a great chance of clinching the game. It also stops Sneak Attack from being cast as well.
An almost strictly better version of Glowrider aside from the fact that she’s legendary. However in this deck the legendary ‘drawback’ is not so bad and is oftentimes an advantage.
A little note of interest:
She can be bounced to hand after first strike damage with Karakas. This is only really relevant if she had a jitte equipped and you wanted to get counters on it without having her die to the opposing creature. Granted, you can always add jitte counters to have her survive or finish off the bigger creatures. There are times where the opponent’s creature will be too big for the jitte counters to kill it, so just pointing out that option.
This creature will greatly slow down any kind of control deck especially if you can Wasteland their third land drop afterwards and keep them off mana for awhile. She also can be reanimated with Loyal Retainers, although this rarely happens. I guess against some decks it might be relevant though. Maybe even simply for the fact that drawing a late game Loyal Retainers with her as your only target is still better than just keeping a Loyal Retainers in play. Then again, you would just wait for something more relevant to go to the graveyard.
You can kill quite a few annoying creatures in Legacy with the first strike ability, such as random goblins and Scavenging Oozes with no creatures in graveyard.
The big white angel makes its appearance in a deck not featuring Dredge shenanigans. More often than not this is definitely getting discarded to Fauna Shaman (obviously better if you are running a version with 4 Fauna Shamans.
If she can be reanimated early enough, she will completely shut down an opposing color and oftentimes an entire deck. I’m not really a big fan of its inclusion in the deck but I can see it being an awesome silver bullet and an additional way of providing this deck some reach.
As an aside, she does great things like trade with a Griselbrand. She can also be pitched with Fauna Shaman and then reanimated when your Reanimator opponent cast Exhume. Again, this may or may not happen depending on if your opponent thinks this card is in your deck. If you name black against Reanimator, it may pretty much be game at that point. Against a lot of other white-based aggro or control decks, naming white will automatically make her immune to Swords to Plowshares.
Other random fact is that putting her into play and declaring a color named by painter’s servant will completely lock your opponent if he is playing the Painter’s Servant / Grindstone deck.
a 4$ uncommon from a set that’s not super old has to be good right? I personally would try hard to fit in a second one as deck searching is super common in Legacy. A lot of times he will act like a Stone Rain by having your opponent fail to find one of his lands in his top 4 cards after flashing him in response to him cracking a fetchland. Sometimes he will simply render a stoneforge less useful. Really awesome card in the mirror match!
I think I have covered this card enough in the previous paragraphs. If you don’t have it, you can always just play a version of the deck that is lighter on legends and pack more utility guys (like an extra Qasali Pridemage).
Its 120+ dollar price is somewhat out of reach of most players. Barring a reprint he should maintain or gain value as it is obviously also a great card in EDH.
The greatest little common that could! This cat packs a mean punch and allows this deck to aggro more and of course gives the deck access to naturalize/ disenchant effect. Dropping him on turn 2 allows your turn 1 Noble Hierarch to attack for 2 and then of course on turn 3 your Qasali Pridemage can attack for 4 damage!
Be sure to use him conservatively as you only have so many in your deck and make sure to activate him at the best possible time and not simply play him and do something like pop an equipment right away. The longer he can stay in play, the better. Force your opponent to force you to use him. Make him have to pay 2 mana to equip his sword/jitte/whatever and then sac him. Get some value! That is the message that should be getting accross.
Again, as mentionned earlier, he is a wizard so you can make him and Aven Mindcensor uncounterable with Cavern of Souls. A bonus to not be overlooked.
A peculiar little guy that appeared in the Commander decks. Initially, it didn’t make a big splash. In fact the commander deck it came in was the lowest priced one in almost all retail locations. Currently, I believe the Counterpunch Commander deck is the priciest one. Of course this is due to the fact that Scavenging Ooze is valued at about the 40$ mark.
Even more impressive is that it has replaced Tarmogoyf in this deck. It shrinks opposing Tarmogoyf and really does a number on Reanimator decks. Sometimes even, it can gain you enough life to keep you alive against Burn decks. Add to the fact that it gets +1/+1 counters and it’s almost like a reverse-Goyf. This and Knight of the Reliquary are your most likely targets with a Green Sun’s Zenith as they can really control the board with their effects.
Recently, there has been a Red-White-Black Zombies deck featuring Goblin Bombardment. Scavenging Ooze single-handedly kills that deck. It removes Gravecrawlers for good as well as Bloodghasts and Lingering Souls. It really does whipe the table with that deck provided you have the mana to activate it as it is in play. Otherwise, don’t be too hasty and just hold off on it until you can activate the slime 2-3 times. Seeing as how the Bombardment Zombies deck is essentially a sort of Burn deck, the slime also provides you with enough life to survive.
I recommend to at least trade for a couple if you plan on playing Legacy in the future as it does not really show signs of slowing down. If you can maybe find the random lesser frequented hobby shops or some random store that usually has only sealed product and not singles, you might be lucky enough to still obtain the Counterpunch Commander deck.
THE definitive Green – White creature! What doesn’t it do? From getting Karakas to bounce some legendary creature to fetching Gaea’s Cradle to get a huge amount of mana and drop Elesh Norn or fetching a Bojuka Bog from the Sideboard to whipe an opposing graveyard. In some builds, it can even fetch a Tower of the Magistrate and unequip a creature at instant speed thus throwing a wrench in your opponent’s plans (especially if it was a pro green or pro white sword that was equipped). Knight just feeds itself to get bigger and is thus an self-sufficient creature. Sometimes you can Bojuka Bog your opponent’s graveyard so that your Knight kills his.
The Knight used to be somewhat harder to get but was reprinted in the Knights vs. Dragons Duel Deck and is still somewhat available for purchase at some retailers I believe.
Also, the Knight is a staple for both modern and Legacy. Getting a playset of this girl is probably essential if you are planning on competing in those formats and would like to try out various deck instead of jsut using the same one. Of course, it’s also an EDH staple because it does waht EDH decks like to do most: it searches.
I won’t waste too much time on this aspect as it’s oftentimes a huge metagame call but again, since Reanimator is a dominant deck, you can clearly see the hate for it in this sideboard.
I can’t help but be fascinated by Gideon Jura in this sideboard. It seems really awesome actually. I have not had the chance to use it, but I can definitely see it being rather good. You can waste a Wasteland to target a land like Savannah on your opponent’s side of the field. In response he will tap his Knight of the Reliquary to sac the land (because he can, LOL)
I have to take a brief break from this to mention to you that this is what causes soooo many mistakes in this wonderful game of Magic: the Gathering. The more options that will become available to a player, the most likely he is to choose the wrong one/ play badly.
So here, we are presenting our opponent with a choice:
A) let your land die and keep the knight as a potential blocker
B) Sac your land and go get whatever land you think you need at the moment so you don’t just freely lose a land for nothing
Now, to be fair, most people will not be expecting a Gideon from the sideboard. Heck, I was surprised when I saw 2 of them in there. But if your seemingly skilled opponent is wasting his time to bust your land knowing you can sac it to replace it, he is probably baiting you.
Most likely. Especially if he has nothing great to mount an offense with. So what you expect to happen occurs and you then play your Gideon Jura and -2 his Knight of the Reliquary. Almost as if by Magic!
Hope to draw it early post-side versus storm or Elves. You can hope to tutor for it on turn 3 with Fauna Shaman and play it. It does what it’s supposed to do very well but you only run 1 copy (Again, adjust to your metagame if playing these Legacy decks locally)
Well…. those decks play counters of course. Do they have 2 counters for your Purify the Grave ? They better! Then again, will you have 2 white mana available when the time comes? Let’s hope!
For when your opponent plays Show and Tell ? Check. Do you have an active Fauna Shaman in play? ditch whatever irrelevant creature you have in hand and go get this guy. He will just clone Emrakul, Griselbrand, Progenitus,whatever. Legend Killer!
I think this one is obvious. Just mayyyyybe don’t play against merfolk? Still not 100% on that though. At least not the Aether Vial versions, which i think is in ALL Merfolk decks.
A nice little way to deal with creatures that need to attack. Also, a somewhat shrouded trick is to activate the Maze at end of combat after damage has been dealt but while your creature is still considered an attacker. Works wonders with Knight of the Reliquary in this respect as it gives her pseudo-vigilance. Against opponents who are not aware of this ruling, it can get a few free point of damage in as they will think that your Knight is now tapped for when they want to attack.
Clearly this article has gone on for some time now and you are probably getting sleepy. I invite you to give this deck a try if your budget permits or if you want to test it out with proxies before commiting to the real deal.
Hello Everyone,
Today’s Carte Blanche Hobbies article is about living the dream that many magic players, including myself, share.
M13 is coming out this week and is going to bring a bunch of new tools for Standard and other formats but out of these new cards, a handful have caught my attention. I’m talking about a reprint from Torment and the ‘’new’’ Black planeswalker in particular. That’s right folks ! Mutilate is getting reprinted for M13 and the new Liliana of The Dark Realm is right behind to back this card up. After seeing Liliana’s abilities, one would normally figure that this article is in fact about the most obscure of decks, Mono Black Control. So I started with this idea in mind and thought about how I could make a fun MBC deck while making it viable in a competitive environment for Standard. You may find something in the decklist that is not of your liking, feel free to change it to your preference/metagame!
First, we need creatures:
That’s right, even though we play control we still need bodies to defend ourselves (+4 x Vampire Nighthawk)/finish the game with(+1 x Griselbrand ). We also need bodies that don’t mind a Mutilate here and there (+4 x Reassembling Skeleton) (+4 x Mutilate). The reprint of Nighthawk in M13 made a lot of people happy and also some unhappy. Happy because we get to play with it for another year. Sad because we get to play against it for another year.
This creature is simply amazing : 2/3 Flyer Deathtoucher Lifelinker… FOR 1BB? Sign me up! This guy will stop anything that crosses its path and half the time stay alive to tell the story. 3 toughness might seems low but keep in mind that in today’s standard environment, there’s a lot of creatures with only 2 power (Thalia, Geist of saint Traft, Strangleroot Geist (kills its Undying version too). The lifelink ability is just a bonus. You will stop the attackers and gain life in return. Pretty Sweet!
At first sight, a 1/1 for 2 might seem unappealing since it doesn’t deal with a lot of creatures. The fact that it stays around forever as a blocker can really bug your opponents and slow them down. It gives you something to do with your mana every turn and with other cards that I will mention later.
The finisher, Griselbrand is just a bonus, it’s a big body that has a good ‘’enter the battlefield’’ ability and can finish the game on its own if left unanswered.
Now one last creature before we move, a completely new addition to Magic from M13: Disciple of Bolas . Just for utility reasons, one is enough. If you’re running out of life later in the game you can Tutor for him with Increasing Ambition, sac your highest power guy and gain life as well as card advantage. I almost forgot, even though it Lashwrithe doesn’t count as a creature, I like to include it in this section because it often times fills the role of a body and also helps your creatures out. Think Lashwrithe + Disciple of Bolas, 5-9 Life+Cards. Think Lashwrithe + Vampire Nighthawk ; Titan sized flyer with lifelink and deathtouch. You will gain so much life you won’t even need to worry about your opponent’s retaliation. Think Lashwrithe + Reassembling Skeleton ; recurring minimum 5/5 for 1BBB or even 1B 4 life if you can affort it.
The possibilities are just endless.
Secondly: Spells!
We play black and we need ways to disrupt the opponent’s board position.
As for discard, Despise is the key to deal with undying creatures, and the planeswalkers. Black doesn’t have a lot of ways to deal with walkers and other card type and that is a problem. That’s why we run 2 more discard spells. Duress, a new M13 reprint deals with those threats. Add to the mix one of the most amazing black Draw spells in Sign in Blood and you have a decent amount of Instants/Sorceries.
Finally! One of the most interesting, If not THE most interesting card type: Planeswalkers! That’s right! Black now has a new friend named Liliana of the Dark Realms to play with.
Nice Huh?
Having an assured land drop every turn past turn 4 seems like it’s not that big of a deal but it really is. Especially when you play control. The deck doesn’t play any mana acceleration but it doesn’t need to. Its constant land drops more than make up for it and, because of that, the deck can effectively run high CMC cards such as Karn Liberated and Griselbrand. The -3 ability on lili 3.0 may seem weak but sometimes you just need to kill a creature. Most of the time the ability will succeed in doing that. If you prefer, you can use it as a creature boost. You can also use this ability on a Vampire Nighthawk that was equipped with Lashwrithe to finish the game.
As for her ultimate ability… it may never happen, but the fact that it’s an option might scare your opponent enough into trying to deal with your Lili. By the time they figure a way to do it, you’ll be doing other shenanigans that will likely win you the game (Consume Spirit).
One last thing before we close this section: Lili3.0 little sister Liliana of the Veil fits pretty well here.She deals with hexproof creatures when you need her to. She works well as a one-way discard when combined with Reassembling Skeleton. Much more could be said about the planeswalkers in this deck ,however this article is already goin long and it’s getting late.
If we sum everything up and add some Swamps (+24x Swamps), salt and pepper, the deck should look something like this:
Brother Of Runes 