gatecrash previews

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Gatecrash Preview: Boros Reckoner

borosreckoner

Oh My! Spitemare has Evolved!

This is a pretty big deal if there ever was on in Gatecrash. A 3/3 creature for 3 in either Red or White with nothing but bonuses is really pushing the curve. Sure, it’s all colored mana and no colorless, but it’s well worth it. If you do some quick math, you will notice that this minotaur can take down things like Primeval Titan and Wurmcoil Engine (or both its tokens). These creatures are not in Standard at the moment, but they are in Modern. There just happens to be one obscure Modern format deck that will be trying to fit this guy in:

jeanhugues (3-1)
Modern Daily #4776257 on 12/29/2012

Main Deck
60 cards

3 Scrying Sheets
21 Snow-Covered Mountain
24 lands

3 Magus of the Moon
4 Spellskite
3 Thundermaw Hellkite
10 creatures

2 Batterskull
4 Blood Moon
2 Dismember
2 Flame Javelin
4 Koth of the Hammer
4 Pyroclasm
4 Relic of Progenitus
4 Skred
26 other spells

Sideboard
4 Mindbreak Trap
2 Slagstorm
4 Torpor Orb
4 Vandalblast
1 Wurmcoil Engine
15 sideboard cards

Yup! right at home! I had suggested Boggart Ram-Gang as a 3-power creature for 3 that would be good versus bigger creatures as well since it would effectively shrink them down with Wither. It was tested with less than good results, but I think Reckoner is a four-of in this build. The overall Moon color-screw package will remain as well as giving you the opportunity for hitting a potentially lethal Skred late game.

skredCome on Boros Reckoner, take one for the team!

For Legacy or casual decks, there’s always:

didgeridoo

Blast from a forgotten past

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Gatecrash Preview: Borborygmos Enraged

borborygmos enragedBack and better than before

Another costly rendition of the Gruul Guild leader.

old borborygmos

 

Totally unimpressive ,Eh?

This one is a Seismic Assault on legs with a +1 damage on the activations.

As if this wasn’t enough, he can potentially feed his own ability each time he deals combat damage. Much like Seismic Assault in older formats, games will not last long if you manage to find Life from the Loam and proceed to cast it over and over(works best with cycling lands).

life from the loam

 

The best Dredge card and it’s not played in Dredge decks

Obviously, he fits into the whole ramp sub-theme/mechanic of the Gruul guild. He gives added benefits to drawing those late game lands (something akin to landfall from Zendikar block). He provides a rather huge body at 7/6 but I would almost always like to see those statistics reversed. A seven on the butt is huge in Standard.

 

 

He might seem to be the least desirable of the Gatecrash guild leaders, but don’t count him out just yet!  He will probably be easy to trade for unless a big ramp style deck surfaces early on and increases his demand. Hopefully he will not go the way of poor Isperia who seems to be beyond neglected at the time being.

isperia supreme

It’s a sad story indeed

 

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Gatecrash Preview: Bioshift

bioshiftOh the humanity!

This cute little card can work for Simic as well as against it. I see it mostly used in Pre-Releases and releases as a way to get your biggest guy through. However, it’s also great against the Simic as you can just block their biggest dude and put the tokens on a creature with lesser effects that didn’t attack. That way you probably kill their better creature and have an extra turn to deal with the ‘new’ big dude.

Other than that, I guess if you’re playing with a couple of Undying Geralf’s Messengers that each have a +1/+1 counter on them, you can cause one to ‘Undie’ again. But I digress…

 

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Gatecrash Preview: Beckon Apparition

beckonapparition

It’s been a while

backon apparition

Indeed

A cute little card that might make an impact as a sideboard card against Reanimator decks and Snapcaster Mage decks. In response to them targeting their card you have a window to cast this and remove their target effectively ‘countering’ their ability

I can see this in a tokens deck maybe featuring Parallel Lives (that card is soooo close to being competitive). It also disrupts the ever-annoying Deathrite Shaman slightly. In limited, it can buy you a turn by stopping the Treasure Thrull ability once. Alternatively, it’s a great end of turn Extort enabler, often grinding off the final few points of life from an opponent.

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Gatecrash Preview: Basilica Guards

basilicaguards

Guarding and boosting your life total

Allright, so it’s a wall. Big deal! Normally that would be enough of a blurb, however these guys are much much more. Strictly speaking in limited, they end up doing something between 3-5 Extorts before biting it. That’s pretty significant – it’s like a Lightning Helix on a stick. A slow one, but still it’s just a common.

At four toughness it takes a while for it to actually chump something, it usually survives barring a combat trick. Even at that, it took an extra card out of your opponent’s hand (another form of ‘extort’).

That’s right Basilica Guards : never for ‘free’

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Gatecrash Preview: Bane Alley Broker

banealleybroker

Has the name broke in it, but not exactly ‘broken’

Ah, a broker in the long line of blue brokers past:

merfolk looter lore broker civilized scholar

Looters from another mother

This one in particular does something the others don’t : it can potentially net you real cards. You see, the others only switch one card for another at times. This one has a little sac (like in the World of Warcraft online game) that allows it to store the cards for possible later use. It’s a simple mechanic but I like it a lot. Early on, you might want to loot away your business spells for lands. Then when you can potentially cast your bigger card, you can activate her ability to recover one of the cards you ‘temporarily stored’ under her.

Again, its applications are probably limited to limited formats (I would say Commander, but just play Archivist instead)

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Gatecrash Preview: Agorophobia

agoraphobia

 

Scared of large crowds? You aren’t alone.

Great little pick in Limited! Drop it on an opposing creature and basically render any of its involvement in combat useless, almost.

See, if your opponent choose to chump block with the enchanted creature: simply bounce Agorophobia back to your hand. His creature will die and you will have a fresh Agorophobia to antagonize another opposing creature with. As I mentioned before with cards that bounce back to your hand, the ‘Extort’ mechanic loves them.

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Gatecrash Preview: Aetherize

aetherizeEvacuation for a Standard situation

This is one heck of an exciting card to be sure. You probably would think its applications are rather straightforward, but let me assure you they are not.

You see there is still a point AFTER you have dealt combat damage with your creatures that they are still considered attacking. I mentioned this a while back in my Maverick article. The trick was with Maze of Ith which gave your creatures pseudo-vigilance (usually to a Knight of the Reliquary)

What does this have to do with Aetherize? Well, you see…if you play a lot of  ‘enter the battlefield’ trigger creatures much like everyone does in the current Standard metagame, you might want to do this. You can get insane value off of your Thragtusk, since you get a 3/3 then recast to gain 5 life afterwards. Or it can just be a great way to play around cards like Supreme Verdict as well (by returning not all creatures, but the ones that you can recast for value while retaining a good threat and forcing the Supreme Verdict).

Gain even more value with Snapcaster Mage too! Any whacky scenarios you can conjure up are sure to be reasonably good.

 

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Gatecrash Preview: Aerial Maneuver

aerialmaneuver

 

Great white combat trick

This card has many applications all of which are strictly relegated to the realm of Limited magic. The one I think is most relevant is to give you a great defence against a card like Aurelia, the Warleader.

Next!