dragon’s maze

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Dragon’s Maze Preview: Plasm Capture and more

wave 11

 

Plasm Capture

plasmcapture

Mana Drain is back!

Boros Battleshaper

borosbattleshaper

Warcraft Master?

Sky Lasher

skylasher

Awesome set of abilities!

 

Feral Animist

feralanimist

Another Reprint!

Blaze Commando

blazecommando

Minotaurs leading the charge!

Bronzebeak Moa

bronzebeakmoa

Even Moas are back

Krasis Incubation

 

krasisincubation

Removal or combo? You decide!

Scab-Clan Giant

scabclangiant

Nice flavor – Random … FIGHT!

Species Gorger

speciesgorger

Nice ‘drawback’

Gruul War Chant

gruulwarchant

Two Enchantments in one

Gleam of Battle

gleamofbattle

A pity it costs a tad much

Drown in Filth

drowninfilth

Life from the Loam.dec removal?

Zhur-Taa Druid

zhurtaadruid

Angry Llanowar Elves

Armored Wolf-Rider

armoredwolfrider

Yummy vanilla!

Beetleform Mage

beetleformmage

Three creature types! and not much else…

Thrashing Mossdog

thrashingmossdog

Draft this puppy in multiples

Boros Mastiff

borosmastiff

Still , better than Grizzly Bears

Scion of Vitu-Ghazi

 

scionofvitughazi

Populate gets a neat boost!

Wake the Reflections

wakethereflections

We now know the official mana cost of Populate

Rubblebelt Maaka

rubblebeltmaaka

Hill Giant + OK ability = limited card

Battering Krasis

batteringkrasis

Not particularly interesting, aside from the art

Riot Control

riotcontrol

Warning: Will NOT work if your local NHL franchise wins the Stanley Cup

Crypt Incursion

cryptincursion

To deal with decks ending in ‘animator’

Riot Piker

riot piker

Goblin Piker Evolved!

Phytoburst

phytoburst

For when you need to be Big instead of Tricky

steepleroc

Yes! the limited white flyer common role is now filled!

Runner’s Bane

runnersbane

A cute little card you’ll be seeing a lot of at your local Pre-release

Sinister Possession

sinisterpossession

We have the  ‘You Make the Card‘ winner! 

Just kidding!

Punish the Enemy

punishtheenemy

Lash Out has seen better days

Mutant’s Prey

mutantsprey

Not a fan

Haazda Snare Squad

haazdasnaresquad

They’ll make you tap!

Mindstatic

mindstatic

Sometimes they print cards just to make Others look good

Hired Torturer

hiredtorturer

Play these in limited supply, in a limited envionment

Clear a Path

clearapath

I like it! Well, except the ability of course…

Kraul Warrior

kraulwarrior

Now to find an infinite mana engine … I kid, I kid!

Murmuring Phantasm

murmuringphantasm

A wall is a wall is a wall is a wall …

Bane Alley Blackguard

banealleyblackguard

 

I thought only Blue got these creatures

Awe for the Guild

awefortheguilds

I can go on and on about how awesome this card is, but I won’t.

Mending Touch

mendingtouch

Good for One Supreme Verdict survival

Wind Drake

winddrake

Now time for the obligatory Blue common flyer

Fatal Fumes

fatalfumes

Removal is removal I guess

Split card images

I had written about various split cards one or two articles ago but did not have the card pictures up. Without further ado, here are those cards:

 

downdirtywide

 

profitlosswide

protectservewide

readywilling

 

And that’s a wrap!

 

Hope you all have fun at your local Dragons Maze Pre-releases and open good stuff. Don’t forget the Pre-Orders!

 

dragon's maze preorder

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Dragon’s Maze Preview: Voice of Resurgence and more

wave 5

Voice of Resurgence

voice of resurgence

Mythically delicious!

How good is this card? Probably every Green/White aggro deck will run it. You cast it, your opponent plays a Restoration Angel at your end of turn step, BAM! free creature! not just some whimpy 1/1 token either. A token that can actually end up being larger than Restoration Angel.

Your opponent wants to kill it with something like Devour Flesh? Well, the trigger of  Voice of Resurgence goes on the stack, produces a token and you get to sac the token. You can also let the Voice die, in which case you will get another token (there are not really many situations you would want to do this though (unless you would get a really sizeable token, but at that point Devour Flesh would have sucked anyways).

What else does your opponent usually play on your turn? Counterspells ! This will maybe get him to reconsider countering a random creature spell. The token produced may end up being larger and more relevant than the creature you just cast (ie: Avacyn’s Pilgrim).

I would rank this thing as I would other hate cards like Gaddok Teeg normally. This card, however, is not Legendary. It’s going to be in really really high demand. I think its price will be close to the 15-20$ and has great potential of surpassing that price in the long run.

I highly recommend getting your playset as soon as possible, you might regret not picking these up early.

Council of the Absolute

council of the absolute

Enabler or Disabler?

Wait a second! Have we not already seen this picture?

grand arbiter

I knew it!

Once again, we have the lovely 2/4 stats. We get part Meddling Mage and part ‘mana reduction thingy’. Whatever expression you want to use for it, it’s pretty much a sort of derivative of Grand Arbiter Augustin.

The most immediate use I could find for it (quite fascinating!) is this card:

sphinx's revelation

Azorius Maximus!

So we get to effectively ‘negate’ our opponent’s copies of the card and make our Sphinx’s Revelations cost less? It’s non-legendary to boot, so don’t hesitate to drop multiples (even naming the same card). They act as pseudo Sol Ring but just for the name card of course. Good stats, ability but ugh! another Mythic! This feels more like a rare to me, but oh well… It’s going to affect its availability and raise its price in the short run.

For now, I see this being 12-15$ and then it will just stay in that range for quite some time. Get yours now!

Goblin Test Pilot

goblin test pilot

Almost good….

Why could they not have given this an extra point of toughness? I’m guessing they tested it and it was a little too strong? Perhaps… I’d try this in my low budget UR pingers deck for kicks. It’s obviously a card that illustrates the Izzet well. Potentially good effect, but it can maybe backfire.

Flying Goblins are pretty hilarious too! It seems like an Unglued card, but I think I would try one in limited once in a while. Who knows?

Putrefy

putrefyYes! So glad to see this back!

After being reprinted in Izzet vs. Golgari, I had a feeling this would somehow return to Standard. It’s one of my favorite cards as it combines Naturalize/ Murder (or Dark Banishing, Terror for the old school peeps). The can’t be regenerated part seems less important these days, but it’s a nice bonus. No longer does a Golgari, Junk, BUG or Jund deck have to decide on how it wants to deal with creatures and/or artifacts. You almost always have a target with this card.

It’s also one of the few targeted removals that hit any creature (barring protection of course) along with Murder and Orzhov Charm.

putrefy i v g

putrefy og

You can still pack the ‘older’ versions in Standard

If you don’t already have your playset, get one now or keep your extra copies from future draft/sealed events.

Far / Away

far away

Great versus Geist of Saint Traft

The ideal scenario for this is when your opponent has a random dude and another guy with Hexproof. You bounce the one you can target and make him sacrifice the other one.

The other play would be to bounce your creature in response to a removal spell and then make him sacrifice one of his (of course with 5 mana untapped, your opponent might have a clue that you are holding this).

As with all split cards, they offer a good deal of flexibility and being able to cast both sides when compared to split cards of past sets, is just gravy!

Flesh / Blood

flesh blood

You get to ‘fight’ for free

This one is probably one for the Bulk rare pile. The graveyard hate half is rather costly, but the other half shows lots of promise.

A lot of people will try to get the ‘Blood’ half to work and who knows, it just might. You get a Pit Fight only better (it is a rare after all). You can hit the player directly and if you manage to go for a full Fuse on this you get a great finisher!

It may start at 1-2$ or so, but don’t be fooled! This will be a Bulk Rare soon enough.

Ta Ta for Now…

Keep checking out the Previews for more ways you can improve your current decks or create new combos!

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Dragon’s Maze Preview: Teysa, Envoy of Ghosts and more

wave 3

Teysa, Envoy of Ghosts

teysa envoy of ghosts

Hey!!! Sexy lay-day!!! Ooh ah!

We had the artwork available to us since PAX, but we never had the slightly more important part: Mana cost and Text.

This version of Teysa is obviously somewhat of a let down, but I’m sure she wasn’t really meant to be played competitively. She has quite a few abilities. The first two work great in tandem as they provide a great attacker/defender. No blockers and she block can block anything short of unblockables,flying and protection from black/white creatures.

The second text is a combination of No Mercy and a random token generation bonus.

no mercy

Ah! such a neat card

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that she will probably be relegated to casual and Commander play. Nonetheless, there is a very slight possibility of seeing here in a Black/White tokens build if enough support cards arise. She basically is a burn for 4 mana every turn (barring removal,etc,etc).

In the end, she will probably dwindle down to 1-2$ territory just like the old version.

Renounce the Guilds

renounce the guilds

Seems like an Odyssey throwback

I have no idea why this needed to be rare, but I guess Wizards of the Coast R and D has their reasons. Of course it’s another card to deal with the always-annoying Geist of Saint-Traft. I can always welcome that!

Other than that, you get to destroy some planeswalkers here and there .

Flavor text is kinda cool. It will no doubt see play in various sideboards where you need to immediately answer a multicolored card (Obzedat) and cannot afford to wait around for an Oblivion Ring. Greatest part of all?

snapcaster mage

Yep! This guy!

In the long run, demand for last second sideboarding might drive the price up to like 3$, but it will probably be like a 1-2$ card.

The Gatekeepers

sunspire gatekeepersopal lake gatekeepersubul sar gatekeepers

smelt-ward gatekeeperssaruli gatekeepers

Pauper fans rejoice!

Ah! the Gatekeepers! It’s really nice that they are pushing the ‘Gate’ keyword ‘mechanic’. I like the green one the best personally as it’s another card to stall with in a Battle of Wits deck (you can usually run gates in it because it”s almost always 4-5 colors).

The red one is like a very poor man’s version of Zealous Conscripts (only hits creatures). On the plus side they all have big butts (4 toughness) so you will want to play as many of them as possible within your colors in a limited setting (Pre-Release/Sealed). I just noticed that they’re all either Warriors or Soldiers, but I doubt they will ever really be played in a tribal deck.

Of course at common level there is not much room for these to grow. You should horde some of these and some Gates to build some cheapy pauper decks to give out to younger players in your school/area.

Exava, Rakdos Blood Witch

exava

Carnival Hellsteed, step aside!

The Rakdos guild champion is much better than I would have expected. It’s a nice little Unleash lord. Its stats are great and of course unleashing this for some haste damage action is going to be a common play. There are pretty good incentives to not unleashing too thanks to its first strike ability.

It will probably be a heavily traded card in general and its casual as well as competitive appeal will keep its price afloat for quite some time. It will probably maintain a value of about 5$ for quite some time.

Lavinia of the Tenth

Lavinia of the Tenth

Judge, Jury … Executionner?

It’s been hard to locate a proper spoiler art for this card , but the ability has been confirmed:

3WU

Legendary Creature – Human Soldier

  

Protection from red
When Lavinia of the Tenth enters the battlefield, detain each nonland permanent your opponents control with converted mana cost 4 or less.

4/4

Ah, a big pacifism. Alpha strike and win! It gets even better with blinking shenanigans. At least Venser, the Sojourner is no longer in Standard.

venser the sojourner

Remember him?

Of course you can just ‘blink’ her with Restoration Angel next turn and Beta Strike if you didn’t win on the first short. Not like you were counterattacked, since Detain lasts until your next trun.

The thing I most dislike about this card is the protection color. I mean red already has issues with blasting 4 toughness + creatures and it’s not like they can really get a huge benefit from Zealous Conscripts off of it (since it’s just an enters the battlefield ability). I think it was more of a flavor call than anything, since she’s ‘judge-like’.

 The cost is not too high and the ability is great in a more proactive Azorius deck. Playing a second one on top makes them die due to the Legend rule, BUT the effect will still go on the stack (so it’s not a bad idea if it wins you the game).

Due to the popularity of the Azorius color combination, this card is sure to hover at about the 5$ mark for a while.

Armed and Dangerous

armed and dangerous

Ack! I don’t speak Japanese!

You may or may not remember that line from a Chris Farley SNL skit. Here’s the English text:

Sorcery

  Target creature gets +1/+1 and doublestrike until end of turn.

//
All creatures able to block target creature do so this turn.

Lure plus Assault Strobe, I guess. A great limited ‘trick’, not really because it’s Sorcery speed. Another way to let your army through enemy lines. If your deck plays either color, you probably want to put this in (limited of course).

Irrelevant in constructed for the most part, it will remain a 50 cent card.

fifty cent

It should really become the official price tag for all 0,50$ items

Trostani’s Summoner

photo_unavailable

This next one we didn’t have time to get a picture for as it’s ‘hot off the presses’. Here is the card text:

5GW

Creature – Elf Shaman

When <this> enters the battlefield, put a 2/2 white knight creature token with vigilance, a 3/3 green centaur creature token, and a 4/4 green rhino creature token with trample onto the battlefield.

1/1

So you get 10 power worth of creatures for 7 mana on 4 separate creatures. Like a cone/pyramid with base 4.

o

o  o

o  o  o

o  o  o  o

A rough sketch

This is also the Dragon’s Maze Gameday promo, so make sure to mark the date on your calendar.  It’s probably going to be a highly sought after promo due to the absurd token generation it provides. It’s like your all-in-one Population Station.

Rhinos, Centaurs, Knights, Oh My!

I’m probably gonna horde infinite copies of this card because it’s just so awesome. I wonder how many I can realistically accumulate….

Until the next wave:

“This is DDT reminding you to help control the MTG pet population, have your tokens spayed or neutered!”

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Dragon’s Maze Preview: Advent of the Wurm and more…

wave 2

Advent of the Wurm

advent of the wurm

Flash Wurm

One of the best abilities hands down on a creature is Flash. It allows you to keep your mana untapped and respond to what your opponent will do on his turn. Usually if nothing has been cast on his end, we will wait for the end of turn and Flash in something like a Restoration Angel.

flash logo

End of turn …

We spring into action once we hear the magic words! The ability is somewhat split between 3 colors, the Bant colors: Blue, White and Green. The proportions being in that order. This is one of the rare times that a multicolor Flash creature is not blue. I know what you’re thinking : this is not a creature card!

Technically you would be correct. However in the Selesnya colors, it’s much better as a token-producing Instant. It works nicely with the Populate mechanic, which to this day has not really see the light of day in competitive play. With the recent FNM Promo and now this spoiler we get the feeling that Wizards wants Populate to be a ‘thing’. We will have to wait for the rest of the set to be spoiled before we can judge on how viable the token strategy will become.

I see this being a pretty heavily traded for Rare that will eventually settle at around the 3-4$ mark as it’s just a really good card in general. Of course, we can’t purely judge Magic cards in a vacuum.

Master of Cruelties

master of cruelties

Poke of Doom

Up next we have a card that might as well have been the winner of the ‘Create a card‘ event that Wizards of the Coast is currently running. Three great abilities with a random ‘drawback’. Obviously he’s the ideal blocker, but we need to try and win and that does not happen by merely blocking all day long.

Of course all one needs to do is make him unblockable and there are a near infinite number of cards that do that, most or all of which are blue. Casual players will try and get cute with it and whatnot, they just need to remember to pack something to deal that final one point of damage. Even if Master of Cruelties attacks again the following turn, it will not change anything. Your opponent’s life total will still be 1.

This will be a good ‘build around me card’ but I’m not sure it will see heavy competitive play. Cards like this sometimes don’t have to as their casual appeal usually keeps their value pretty high. I’m going to say it will settle around the 5$ mark once prices stabilize.

Sin Collector

sin collector

Not bad at all

At first sight this is a great ‘Hate Blue’ card as it is the primary color of non-creature spells. I think it’s optimal usage would indeed be hating out a blue card, but not the one most people think….

supreme verdict

You again?

Let me explain. You are playing an aggressive Black/White plus maybe a third color deck and you don’t want to uselessly overcommit to the board only to get wiped out. Playing a card like Duress is not proactive enough to your overall strategy as you don’t advance your board and is kind of a dead draw when you need to get a creature on board or when your opponent has little left in hand.

The first comparison we can make is with this card:

tidehollow sculler

One of the best Zombies ever made

I must admit that most of the times I have personally used this cards it has been to exile an Instant/Sorcery with it. A lot of times it’s been something like a Path to Exile . Of course, the problem then becomes what happens when they draw another removal? Sure, they wasted it on the Sculler but they are also getting their other card back. In that respect, Sin Collector seems stronger.

The other thing that is very relevant at least for the current Standard environment is its creature type. At the time being, Humans are greater than Zombies. Sure, this may change. Having this interact with cards like Champion of the Parish or having it come back from the dead with cards like Angel of Glory’s Rise can be pretty sweet. It keeps the aggro going while having a small insurance versus any board wiping card.

Another card we probably want to hate on possesses the exact same two colors as Supreme Verdict …

sphinx's revelation

The 30$ answer

If you’ve been playing standard for the past few months, you undoubtedly know how frustrating it can be to have this card resolve against you. It’s almost soul-crushing. A little less so if you run your own copies of it, but it still hurts a lot.

I’m not saying that Sin Collector is going to be the greatest card ever printed, but he does have tons and tons of great targets. He will always be a solid 1$ Uncommon, which is saying a lot these days where most uncommons fall in the 25-50 cent range.

Vorel of the Hull Clade

vorel of the hull clade

Almost a proliferate card

We quickly read the card and think great things of it and then it happens: What? no Planeswalker? Yeah, it’s a bummer!

So it ‘Doubling Seasons‘ something. That’s pretty sweet.

In Standard it works really well with the evolve mechanic allowing your dudes grow when they would not be able to otherwise (not having creatures that are bigger than the ones in play). It makes sense to have a guild champion work with the guild mechanic.

assemblethelegion

What? oh wait….

No enchantment either? There goes any Assemble the Legion shenanigans!

grimoire of the dead

Hmmmm…

Grimoire of the Dead and the M13 Rings (ignore the Oblivion Ring in the Search results) say Hi!

gavony township hellion crucible

Hellion Crucible and Gavony Township say “What’s up?” (Of course you don’t directly add counters to Gavony, but you get the point).

As randomly cute as these are they are just that. The obvious use is to add +1/+1 counters to creatures, which is fine. I think it will hover around the 2-3$ mark, again when prices stabilize more (usually around 1 month after the set’s release).

Until the next wave, I hope I haven’t ‘spoiled’ your day!

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Dragon’s Maze Preview: Ral Zarek and more…

wave 1

Ral Zarek

ral zarek

Izzet Planeswalker time ?

He’s finally arrived and is much better than expected. You get a little Ajani Vengeant and Tamiyo in addition to a pretty sweet ultimate ability!

ral zarek ability 1

The first ability is definitely a better Tamiyo +1. You can tap down one of their dudes and give pseudo-vigilance to one of yours post combat. Of course it gets better depending on what you would be untapping.

Land = extra mana

In that respect he’s like half a Garruk Wildspeaker. Not too shabby! He can ‘ramp’ you so that one turn 5 with a land drop you would have 6 mana available. Where are those Titans when you need them?

Then there’s other cool things you can untap like Staff of Nin.

staff of nin

Woah! Shock at every turn!

Maybe we can get enough searches on Staff of Nin to start a Twitter Trend? LOL

The list goes on, but essentially any creature that would tap for an effect can now get more ‘value’ in a deck featuring Ral Zarek. I know that I will personally be adding it to my Blue/Red Pingers EDH deck. Extra turns might be heavily frowned upon in Commander, but his ultimate will not really be what I am aiming for in that deck anyhow. Eventually i’ll post a list or something, but I assure you it’s a low budget deck I made purely to fool around and contains no ‘big’ cards. Ral Zarek would be the ‘money’ card.

ral zarek ability 2

Ah, Lightning Bolt! 

As for ability Number 2 we get one half of the Ajani Vengeant -2 . Even half an Ajani is good really.

There’s not much to say about this one except that you can use it to finish off opposing ‘walkers. This will definitey happen quite often (except in cases where he will just enter the battlefield and ‘planeswalker rule’ an opposing Ral Zarek away.)

ral zarek ability 3

The ultimate to end all ultimates? Probably not, but one can dream.

Will this raise the value of cards like Krark’s Thumb?  Probably… If you bothered checking the price you would know that it already has!

krarks thumb price

This used to be in ‘Bulk Rare’ territory

While you most probably won’t get a full 5 turns of goodness with his ultimate, chances are you will get 1-3 turns. Zero is just sad! it is however a grim possibility. In that respect Tamiyo, the Moon Sage clearly possesses the better Ultimate.

Next….

Deputy of Acquitals

deputy of acquitals

Pauper decks rejoice!

Here we have a great common even the Azorius haters can get behind. How can you say no to this guy? He’s a ‘better’ Whitemane Lion.

The may clause makes him better for sure, but the color restrictions make him a little less flexible (a-la Restoration Angel). You get to save one of your creatures for a smaller price than Restoration Angel. You can also flash him in as a blocker and return a good ‘enters the battlefield’ creature back to your hand. It can also work pretty well with Bloodrush creatures in limited.

Melek, Izzet Paragon

melek

Commander material!

An obvious inclusion in any Commander deck featuring the colors Blue and Red. I’m really glad to see that he is not a Mythic as most of these kinds of cards end up in Mythic Rarity these days.

An interesting note is that he allows you to know what your top card is. Miracles making a small resurgence? Maybe…

He is rather small-sized for his cost but of course his abilities more than make up for it. He is one ‘Weird Wizard’ to say the least!

Render Silent

render silent

Kev Walker drawing an Izzet card? Sweet!

render silent

The regular art

I’m way more of a fan of the card’s artwork, but the ability is nice. One of the things that got me into this fabulous game was Kev’s art. I used to mock Collectible Card Games a lot before I was introduced to them in the year 2000. I usually stereotyped the players as little basement geeks that played Dungeons and Dragons. Much has changed since then….

So here we have another Azorius guild card which is basically Counterspell and Silence  jammed together in the same card. I can really get behind this card to a certain degree. The great thing about most counters is that they usually cost less than the cards they are countering. This card is probably not an ‘efficient’ counter. It does stop would be combo decks if they were to arise (featuring cards like Epic Experiment) .

I can see it being played in Commander and the like, but really how many counters can you shove into those decks? If anything it will give them options if you are having problems finding the ‘optimal’ cards.

Fuse cards

beck call

Glimpse of Nature + Token generation

toil trouble

Sign in Blood + Storm Seeker

wear tear

‘Disenchant’ x 2 or Duergar Hedge-Mage

These are sure to find their way into many many decks for years to come and are great cards. We’ve seen them before in multiple blocks (Invasion, Ravnica, Time Spiral). This time however, you can cast both sides if you wish. This is something most of us have dreamed about and now we can. (You used to be able to cast either side with Isochron Scepter, but that is a story for another time).

Until next Spoiler Wave, keep that mana flowing!

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Dragon’s Maze Preview: Maze’s End

DGM Mazes End

Ah! Seems like a deck

When they first announced the whole Dragon’s Maze random card replacing the basic land idea, people got excited. Of course for sealed deck purposes you would like a Guild gate or a dual land. They also mentioned one land would be mythic. It did not take people long to correctly guess that it would be something to do with Gates.

At first glance, it seems like a joke. However, those of us that have been around the Magic scene long enough know that given enough time even the most unlikely of win conditions can be achieved (Battle of Wits for starters). This one seems a heck of a lot easier to fulfill. We don’t know if there will be cards that get any land but there’s already this and Gatecreeper Vine which is a start.

gatecreeper

Yeah! this guy!

It’s sure to be a hit in some casual decks as well, featuring Primeval Titan (banned in Commander). Since it’s the pre-release card, it should be super easy to trade for as well. I’m looking forward to reading decklist and articles featuring this card in the months to come.

Mark my words: this will be a deck!