Sarkhan the Rad!

^This card is good. Been testing him in a Jund deck on MWS. Pretty standard decklist, except I replaced Garruk with Sarkhan, and went a full 4 copies so I'd get to see him in action regularly. He is almost never a bad thing to draw. He cannot be picked off with burn until you've gotten some card advantage out of him. He will always replace himself at least, and almost always more. He works miracles on Thrinaxes. He can turn any creature into a blocker that will stop Sphinx of Jwar Isle. If you have a Broodmate he is a 16 damage alpha strike. He ain't Jace...but Jace can't be played in Jund. He is a planeswalker whose merit is more difficult to see, as he is explicitly ephemeral, but maaaaaaan does he go out with a bang!(Click to embiggen):

26 damage finish with the dragon squad. Coming back from 2. Such a brutally Timmytastic victory crushed my opponent's morale so thoroughly that he couldn't even muster the energy to sideboard. I gave Sarkhan a high five. He (with only one loyalty counter and a threadbare shred of his sanity left) said, "We did it garbleman. We beat the dragon hunting wilbrogs and saved dragonia forever!"

We sure did Sarkhan, we sure did.

A quick X prediction

X spells are going to get better when cascade rotates. Buy yours today!

Get Dusted

So much for my carefully edited photoshops based on that bunk hybrid colorless conjecture. Oh well, 'twas fun making them.

All is Dust is the latest ROE card spoiled. A colorless 7-mana super wipe. It has people positively fomenting on the MTG Salvation forums. I suppose it is exciting. And as any deck can play it, it may become very expensive as a mythic rare; however, just because a deck can play a card, doesn't mean it will (that's a massive foundation stone in the appeal of this game.) There are lots of white decks that don't run DoJ. Every deck can run Basilisk Collar, and that's a good one drop in a format full of creatures, and we don't see it in every deck.

If you're playing a colorless deck it won't hit your guys, but what will they be? A few spawn tokens and an Everflowing Chalice. Once you have Kozilek out, who cares if All is Dust hits him or not, he is an All is Dust on a huge card-drawing beatstick.

Prediction: When the dust settles, Realms Uncharted will be the more highly sought card.

Secrets of the Eye

The latest rumor is that Rise of the Eldrazi will be an all colorless/hybrid block. Not the U/G, B/W, R/G style that we have mostly been exposed to, but the 2/G, 2/U style showcased on the cycle that included Beseech the Queen, Flame Javelin, Advice from the Fae, Spectral Procession, and Tower Above. Zendikar has chaotic mana. When the Eldrazi bust loose they change the nature of the mana there even further, causing every spell to be castable with any color of mana if you just dump enough into it. If we see a lot of Eldrazi-type spells, this will also make the Eye of Ugin even more valuable.

The Eye of Ugin will be more versatile, as it will discount your big nasty 10cmc Eldrazi AND will also allow you to cast your 2/R 2/R 2/R Eldrazi burn spell for RR.

Eye replaces a land drop, so really, you haven't gotten a discount. You could have just dropped a 3rd mountain and been good to go, but if this scenario is the case, then picking up the Eye early won't be a bad thing. It will also save you mana if you can manage to cast a second hybrid Eldrazi spell before your next untap.

The Mythic Issue Reminds Me...

I read a very cool article by Reinhart over at Gathering Magic. It reminded me of a key part of the original design of the game: ante. Richard Garfield anticipated the current 'rich kid syndrome' and figured the best solution was to make it possible for the poor kid to take the rich kid's cards. To that end, ante was a part of the original Magic rulebook. Before drawing, each player would shuffle, then cut the others deck and remove a card: the ante. The winner of the game got to keep both cards. It added a little excitement, and it made a deck into a less static entity. Cards came and went. You might lose one of your Lightning Bolts and have to settle for a Mons' Goblin raiders in its place. Then, you might win a Shivan Dragon and put the goblins back on the bench until you lose something else.

How does ante counter rich kid syndrome? If you have a deck full of expensive cards, and I have a deck full of gumballs, even if I win only a fifth of our games, I can probably trade back what I won for what you won, plus maybe something extra. Or I could keep the Taiga I won and let you keep my three goblins and a Fireball. It was an excellent way to balance the power level between decks. Of course, what Richard Garfield DIDN'T anticipate was that people would be pulling cards worth $50 from packs. It made them a little more resistant to playing for ante. Also, some parents became concerned it was a form of gambling. I suppose it was in its way, but I liked the healthy perspective it granted. The cards were just cards, and they came and went from your deck.

Is ante the answer to today's Magic environment of chase mythics costing over $30? Most likely no, even if Wizards did start pushing it, all it would do is piss off their buyers even more. "You want me to shell out hundreds of dollars for cards that I might LOSE!?" Pussies. I agree with the solution Reinhart suggested: make mythics just a little 'less mythic' by increasing the frequency that they replace the rare in your pack. Wizards might be seeing a boost in sales right now, and that MAY be correlated with mythics (it may also be correlated with people choosing to spend their money on reusable entertainment, like magic cards, over one-shots like going out to the movies.) In the long run, players are going to get tired of trying to track down a card that you have a 1/120 chance of pulling from a pack (such as Baneslayer: 1/8 chance of getting a mythic, times 1/15 chance of it being a Baneslayer). That is ridiculous. You could easily open a case and not see one. They could move the replacement rate to 1/6 or even 1/5, and mythics would still be rarer than rares.

Ante is still fun. Try it! I won a Volcanic Island off a buddy recently. He was pissed.

F'd in the A

Seeing the enlarged art for this card gave me a good look at the trail of blood coming from the injured demon. I don't see any visible wounds on this poor guy. Did Mister Bigshadow injure you somewhere...under that loincloth. How gruesomely appropriate for a card that rapes your opponent.

Chalice Malice

This card's a good time. It can act as some classic artifact mana acceleration, or it can be involved in charge counter combos.

The fact that this is the card Flores, as the writer of the official competitive Magic column, was given to spoil strikes me as unsettling for control decks. If artifact mana accel is the best Worldwake has to offer for control, we'll be seeing a lot more beatdown in the following months.

Seems like Wizards is dialing the power of control back up slowly. Very slowly.

Abysmal Purse-ecutor

How's the pocketbook Magic fans? Worldwake is looking to be loaded with enticing wallet-maimers like this here demon. Juzam Djinn got a big nudge toward the obsolete pile.

You might be saying, "but I can't win without removal with this thing out!" Aye, you can't, but let's look past that. You've bashed your opponent to -5 life with the persecutor. You have no removal, but, you, with your more efficient creature, ruled the board and are sitting at...let's say more than 10 life. In this creature-heavy Zendikar standard, odds are their overtime counterstrike will involve creatures. If their creatures are smaller, they're gonna get eaten. If they drop something BIGGER...well, what are they gonna do with that? Attack?

Things the Persecutor doesn't like:
-Wall of Denial: Oh, but how it doesn't like Wall of Denial. Gatekeeper of Malakir is probably his best bet (only bet?) in this situation.

-Baneslayer Angel: Protection from Demons! Lifelink! 5/5! Flying! Bugger me! The worst part here is that Baneslayer is the comeback kid against the Persecutor. If your opponent is in the negatives, that means you're waiting on removal, which means...

-Pacifism variants: You've nullified my demon AND kept his static ability on the table? Nooooooo! Nobody is really running pacifism variants right now. Oblivion Ring has taken up that role, but we may start seeing the sideboarding of "can't attack or block" enchantments if A.P. really starts going the distance.

-Counter Control: Control will give this lug a big snuggle every time he flaps over and swipes at them with his smoking hellsword. By the time they're into the negative health zone, they will have a big ol' grip of counterspells to protect him with. Then they'll hunker down and build up to their win condition in comfort. I have seen some canny players pointing out that there are uncounterable ways to get rid of Persey, such as Bone Splinters. Strike me as a good sideboard card for decks sporting the demon.

This thing is going for twenty bills on presale sites and on ebay. I don't expect it to go for any less unless the 2-mana counterspell makes some kind of decent comeback in Worldwake.

In Defense of the Baloth

Once upon a time, I was 12. I opened my first starter deck of Magic: The Gathering. In it, was this!!!:

Craw Wurm stole my heart. It was so powerful. But then I played more, and saw more cards. I saw white and black's flying 4/4's for 5 mana. I saw the 'cycle' of elementals. I saw Shivan Dragon, and then I saw Mahamoti Djinn. Despite being a guy who grants wishes, the Mahamoti made me sad. He was blue, the color that was supposed to have the weakest creatures, but here he was, having the exact same cmc and colored mana requirement as my beloved craw wurm, flying, and packing a summed p/t one higher than the crawmeister with no drawbacks!* It wasn't right!

As I learned more, I passed over green for a leaner U/W deck that ran Serra Angels, Air Elementals, Mahamoti Djinn, counterspells, and all that. To play the best creatures, I had to pass over the color that was supposed to be the place where the mightiest beasts could be found.

Many years later, I've been presented with a card that I wish I could send back in time to my 12 year old self:

To me this card represents the correction of the imbalance of power between creatures and spells, and the culmination of the past years of tuning up green's wedge of the color pie. This is a hard card to cast unless your deck is mono green. Why can't mono green ram a Baloth into the opposition turn 3 (with accel?) Nothing a Terror, Counterspell, or Path to Exile can't stop (sorry red, I know you and green are homies. You'll think of something).

I'll start calling this power creep if Wizards takes it any farther. If next year we see a 5/5 for 3 cmc with little to no drawbacks, or a 4/5 for 3 with abilities, it will be our duty to boycott that set.

*I didn't bring Force of Nature into the discussion because of its GGGG upkeep.

If You Can't Beat'em...

Resort to obscenity.

Coupla Eyecatchers

Two new spoilers that caught my eye: Bestial Menace and Dragonmaster Outcast.

Bestial Menace is 3 bodies and 6 P/T for 5 mana. Also has some great synergy with Oran-Rief. Token-generator that isn't countered by Maelstrom Pulse. Might be a contenda. Definitely looks like fun.

Dragonmaster Outcast...hmm. So fragile...and yet, so easy to protect. This is being compared to Scute Mob, and rightly so, but is it better or worse? I'd say better, because a terror will end the Scutemob and all it has gained, while keeping this dragon lady on the board to your next upkeep means they need a boardsweeper to deal with it. Boros likes it, as a Ranger can fetch it up lategame and give the Dragon token haste the next turn with a Bushwhacker; however, This card looks most valuable in a deck that can take advantage of some defensive cards. If we see a decent counter or two in WWK, this might be a finisher for some type of R/U(/W?) permission deck. R/G can hit this with a Vines of Vastwood, or that new troll shroud enchant for many dragons. A lot of exciting prospects with this little mythic rare.

Some Worldwake commons

There are some new commons up here.

Two of which I thought were pretty cool. Vastwood Zendikon is an interesting retake on Genju of the Cedars. We can definitely expect a cycle of these land animating auras. This seems like a decently strong effect, particularly, of course, in a landfall deck.

Mysteries of the Deep should have the blue mages out there all atwitter. This is some very solid instant-speed card draw, something blue hasn't seen for a while. Combined with fetchlands, or even harrow, this will consistently be an instant-speed three-for-one. If Wizards delivers that rumored multikicker counterspell, or something akin to it at 2cmc, blue will be a contender again.

Fear Me!!!

Wizards Thinks You're a Loser

http://wizards.com/magic/TCG/Default.aspx

Countless devastating spells. Legions of deadly creatures. Infinite ways to say Here I Rule. Sentence fragments=ME POWERFUL!

Riiight wizards, that's why we play. Because we want to feel good about ourselves. Because we're funny looking geeks who can barely heft a football, so we're willing to settle for a purely imaginary and cerebral forum. We don't rule in the hallways of schools. We don't rule in the workplace. We definitely don't rule in a gym. But here, here at this table, in this store, surrounded by Warhammer miniatures, manga, and a display case devoted entirely to dice, Here We Rule.

Why do you play? Do you play to feel good about yourself, or do you just play to feel good?

New Year's Spoilers!

So we got two new spoiled cards for the New Year.

Comet Storm:
This one seems to have the masses (at least the masses at MTG Salvation) in a small froth. "Shouldn't be mythic." "Not as good as Banefire for a finisher." "Not as good as Earthquake for a big sweeper." "Not as good as Fallout for a little sweeper."

I find it intriguing that it is being compared to so many cards. That's an indication that it might have merit. If it can do the jobs of three other cards decently, it might just be good enough for constructed.

This card looks like it will be valuable in W/B/R control if it is joined by a good counterspell in WWK. Being able to keep mana untapped and then launch a big face-melter at your opponent's end step looks good to me.

Aaaaand, some elf got spoiled too.

Joraga Warcaller, G (Rare)
Creature - Elf Warrior
Multikicker 1G
Joraga Warcaller enters the battlefield with a +1/+1 counter on it for each time it was kicked.
Other Elf creatures you control get +1/+1 for each +1/+1 counter on Joraga Warcaller.
1/1

Meh...elves. They always seem kinda neat, but then someone kills one of your elves and the whole house of cards falls apart.