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.