MTG Salvation

The first card from M19 that has really caught my eye for casual 60 card play is Sarkhan's Unsealing. The effect is amazingly powerful if you can consistently (and preferably repeatedly) trigger the 7+ power effect. There are a lot of ways throughout Magic's history to get 7+ power at a discount, and the first rough list I've come up with simply plays a bunch of undercosted giants and ways to take exploit them.



Chandra's Ignition in particular seems like a go-to as redundancy for your "nuke the world" effects. This list may be a little rough but is a simple demonstration of how to abuse the Unsealing. Blow everything up, and clean up your defenseless opponents with your giant monsters!

There are lots of other ways to build around Sarkhan's Unsealing and I'm sure I haven't found the best one yet. An elemental tribal deck with Nova Chaser, Thunderblust, and Force of Savagery? A self mill deck with Boneyard Wurm, Splinterfright, and Ghoultree? An artifact build with Traxos, Scourge of Kroog and Metalwork Colossus? Perhaps a Death's Shadow build or simply recurring Shivan Wurm?

I believe */* creatures retain their P/T in all zones, so those work while cards like Wight of Precinct Six and Golgari Grave Troll unfortunately won't trigger. Power on the stack also means weird things like Nyxathid always works even though it's smaller in play, and Mogis, God of Slaughter always works even when it won't actually be a creature upon resolving.


I'd love to hear your input and ideas on how to best abuse this engine of destruction!

I started workin on a similar list when I first saw Sarkhan's Unsealing. I was leaning towards a Jund build since I found the most applicable creatures in green.

Some other possibly useful includes that you didn't already mention:
Blistering Firecat
Greater Gargadon
Hunted Troll
Gigantosaurus
Blitz Hellion
Ghalta, Primal Hunger

Since the deck is based on Sarkhan's Unsealing, the hard part will be finding one and keeping it on the battlefield. Luckily black has a slew of tutors. I'd almost want to include Razaketh, the Foulblooded for more tutor effects.

I do think Green has a lot of potential, since it has lots of 7+ power options, ramp to get Sarkhan's Unsealing in play faster, and Life's Legacy, Greater Good, Momentous Fall, and Rishkar's Expertise as excellent ways to turn giant creatures into insurmountable card advantage.

The next brew I came up with though is one that focuses on the problem of finding Sarkhan's Unsealing consistently by running tutors, and abusing the trigger to its fullest extent by looping Death's Shadow every turn. Unlike my first list, this one has no focus on playing beaters and attacking at all, since 5 Unsealing triggers is 20 damage anyways!



6 Tutors and 8 draw effects work to find the combo of Sarkhan's Unsealing + Death's Shadow + Oversold Cemetery while Abyssal Gatekeeper and Fleshbag Marauder buy you some time to get it online. This list is much more gimmicky than the first, as it's very soft to enchantment removal and has no real plan B if opponents break up the combo or you simply don't find the necessary pieces. It certainly highlights the signature card though!

Something like this seems interesting too. This card seems like it's going to be extremely fun to build around :). If only Phyrexian Dreadnought were cheaper, then could build a siiiiiiick Varolz, the Scar-Striped Death's Shadow deck.

Quote from Prid3 »

If only Phyrexian Dreadnought were cheaper, then could build a siiiiiiick Varolz, the Scar-Striped Death's Shadow deck.

Not rubbing it in, but I happen to own Dreadnoughts. Any surprises or specific additions you would put in that particular build?

What about a Torpor Orb build? Eater of Days Hunted Phantasm Leveler Phyrexian Dreadnought.

Quote from Tamrian »

You pathetic plebians should bow before my might!

I'm not saying that it's remotely affordable but I kinda want to build something like:



Something close to this.

Quote from Prid3 »

Super sexy deck.

The Meren and Jarad spice was what I was curious about!

Quote from genini2 »

What about a Torpor Orb build? Eater of Days Hunted Phantasm Leveler Phyrexian Dreadnought.

Play Hunted Horror over Hunted Phantasm and add Sundial of the Infinite as Orbs 5-8 as needed. Something like:



The deck isn't optimized but you get the idea. You could also go for a White build that eschews Hunted Horror so that you can field things like Tocatli Honor Guard and Hushwing Gryff.

You can also get very good mileage out of Sarkhan's Unsealing by sticking with the actual intended flavor of the card... releasing Eldrazi!



This list functions a lot like traditional Modern RG Tron but the triggers of Sarkhan's Unsealing and Kozilek's Return do the battlefield clearing rather than Oblivion Stone or Ugin, the Spirit Dragon. On the bright side this version is much more affordable than running traditional top end cards like Wurmcoil Engine, Karn Liberated, and Ugin.

Quote from Xyx »

Stuff.

Unfortunately Wight doesn't work :(. He's not 7+ power when you cast him.

FWIW I think that this card can be good even if it forces you to play with "bad" ones. In my experience "7s" don't win multiplayer games. That is, you can play all the good stuffs in the world but you're still going to consistently lose to the people doing broken things. Sealing, to me, is a very broken card if you can realistically trigger it more than once. Heck, even if it's only one time it's still bonkers (compare it to Mizzium Mortars or w/e) and once you hit 2+ triggers it's game over. I'm not saying that this happens every game, or even every other game, but if ~33% of the time you're going off with "Yargles" that's still better than a random good stuffs deck. That's how I see it anyways.

Warstorm Surge & Where Ancients Tread work with graveyard strategy, Mimic Vat-like perms, blink and whatever other ways to cheat fatties into play. Sarkhan's Unsealing has that ugly word - CAST - which forces us to play with ugly cards like Blistering Firecat.
Warstorm is still the card to beat for me, even at 6cmc.

Sarkhan's Unsealing obviously takes more specific building parameters than Warstorm Surge but not only is it 4CMC, the 7+ power trigger hits EVERYTHING and not just one target- this is a ridiculous power gap. Turning your creatures into overloaded Mizzium Mortars (that also hit opponents) is immensely better than turning them into Flametongue Kavus. Getting a couple triggers from Unsealing likely does as much damage as a few dozen Warstorm Surge triggers. All you have to do is look back through this thread for multiple examples of creature bases that comfortably support it, and I'm sure there are more builds we haven't even touched on.

Warstorm Surge certainly works in a greater number of decks with more flexibility. You can slot it into almost any deck with large creatures and it will do work, while Unsealing is much more specialized. I think Sarkhan's Unsealing offers a much higher ceiling in power level however- and for me creative deckbuilding restrictions are part of the fun!

Quote from LukeFoley »

Sarkhan's Unsealing obviously takes more specific building parameters than Warstorm Surge but not only is it 4CMC, the 7+ power trigger hits EVERYTHING and not just one target- this is a ridiculous power gap.

Yep - I agree with you. It's a powerful card in a niche build, but it's a marginal card otherwise.
My thought keeps returning to a simple "but how many 7+ power cards can you fit into a deck?"

From the perspective of running this in post-ramp with Eldrazi & Eye of Ugin, I'd prefer All is Dust
4 damage to each creatures isn't going to sweep away the threats you need gone.
In the Torpor Orb scenario, running creatures like Phyrexian Dreadnaught, Eater of Days etc., you first need to assemble a 3-card combo in SU, Torpor & fatty in order to sweep the weenies away. I don't think this deck needs SU at all, I'd rather run Stifle.

Living Death, Ghostway, Mass Polymorph, Day of Dragons and a whole lot of others that spew a lot of power on the table quickly work with Warstorm Surge, as do Beast Within, Swan Song etc. targeting something of mine.
I totally understand if you prefer this card to Warstorm Surge, but I'm just not convinced Sarkhan's Unsealing is worth playing over Chandra's Ignition in any of the deck examples listed in the thread so far.

Quote from bleedin_eyeball »

I totally understand if you prefer this card to Warstorm Surge, but I'm just not convinced Sarkhan's Unsealing is worth playing over Chandra's Ignition in any of the deck examples listed in the thread so far.

It's cheaper, repeatable and less vulnerable to creature removal.

Stiflenought decks don't need or want 9-12 stifle effects. That's way too many dead draws. It's also not a 3 card combo. Casting 'Noughts as Mizzium Mortars is fine.

I don't think that the card is perfect by any means but I think that it's significantly more powerful than Ignition in decks that can thoroughly abuse it.