I'm on board with Frilled Oculus. 5+ drops are a dime a dozen. Primordial is good value, but his slot can be filled with any number of high cost finishers.
I don't understand why people are raving about Voice. In a world of 4/4s for 3 and 5/5s for 4, a 2/2 hate-bear just isn't going to cut it. If you're playing against any blitz deck, the best you can hope for is to trade with a burning tree emissary. Against resto angel decks, they're going to flash and block with resto angel anyways, getting your 2/2 for free and then dealing with your token however they see fit, so it's not like you're gaining any card advantage.
This card would have been spectacular back in the day, but magic isn't about gaining small incremental advantages anymore. T2 is all about who draws the last haymaker. This isn't a haymaker, it's not even close.
Try hitting up local garage sales whenever you see them. Also, you really need to be way on top of craigslist if you want to get a deal. Get an RSS reader and set it to warn you whenever somebody posts anything with the words magic or gathering in your area. If it seems legit, drop everything and get there first (guarantee they'll be about 2-3 other people doing the same thing). My buddy got a lead on a lady selling magic cards at a garage sale through craigslist about 4-5 months ago in Central Florida. He got there an hour before she even started her garage sale to purchase. At our LGS later that afternoon, about 4-5 different guys came in complaining that they went to check out this garage sale and the cards were already gone. Point is, you gotta be ready to pounce at any time.
Accelerating into a card with only 1 generic manacost?
- Hiss.
Your point? Green can be used for that one generic mana cost. When all your green producing lands also produce white or black, this comes up more often than not. Not sure if you've played any games with post-GTC mana bases or not, but going 1G->1GW - 1WWBB- 4WWWW is the norm, not the exception.
Been playing this card to great effect in junk midrange. Accelerates into Obzedat which in turn makes it a 5/6 over a few turns. Also, turn 5 Angel of Serenity isn't too shabby either. Sure you can do the same with a pair of mana dorks, but I'd rather a 4/5 and a 5/6 over two 1/1s and a 5/6s.
Wight of Precinct Six - dodges mutilate if played correctly, cheap cost means you can play a removal spell on turn 4 and this guy to block (ideally you've removed 1-2 of their guys already), atrocious vs. control but that shouldn't really matter since we have so many other tools to fight them.
I'm gonna go ahead and give a shout out to Voidwalk. The card was extremely versatile at various points during the prerelease I used it to rebuy ETB effects on my creatures, trigger evolve for free, remove enchantments on their guys, remove enchantments on my guys, get rid of a block for a turn, give a guy pseudo-vigilance.
5-0'd my prerelease with Simic. My pool was mediocre, had 1 playable spell in blue or green. Since I didn't want to build 23 creature.dec I ended up splashing black off of a watery grave and two swamps. That gave me this deck:
Dispatched Dimir, Boros, Gruul, 4 color Gruul (feat Aurelia's fury), and Orzhov splash red along the way. Lost two games, one to the first Gruul (where I quickly learned that playing around bloodrush is subpar and to always block) and one to Orzhov deck that curved out boros elite, truefire paladin, kingpin's pet into removalx2.
My conclusion is that Simic itself is really weak since most of my games were won on the back of my black spells. Shadowslice on deathcult rogue is a very fast clock. Voidwalk on Dinrova Horror and splicing on an unblockable guy is equally good.
The math is that is takes just over 7 riffle shuffles to sufficiently randomize your deck. Pile shuffling doesn't randomize your deck because the system itself is not random, no matter how many piles you use.
Disagree with him going in tempo shells. I think he fits best in a control shell side by side with liliana, cheap spot removal, and some targeted discard.
I can't wait to cast this and have it hit itself or me.
Every.
Single.
Time.
....on second thought, maybe I'll just leave it out of my limited decks.
This card would have been spectacular back in the day, but magic isn't about gaining small incremental advantages anymore. T2 is all about who draws the last haymaker. This isn't a haymaker, it's not even close.
Your point? Green can be used for that one generic mana cost. When all your green producing lands also produce white or black, this comes up more often than not. Not sure if you've played any games with post-GTC mana bases or not, but going 1G->1GW - 1WWBB- 4WWWW is the norm, not the exception.
1 Keymaster Rogue
1 Sage's Row Denizen
1 Adaptive Snapjaw
1 Gyre Sage
1 Ivy Lane Denizen
1 Rust Scarab
2 Slaughterhorn
1 Drakewing Krasis
1 Fathom Mage
1 Prime Speaker Zegana
2 Deathcult Rogue
2 Nimbus Swimmer
1 Dinrova Horror
1 Voidwalk
1 Shadow Slice
1 Rapid Hybridization
1 Call of the Nightwing
2 Simic Guildgate
1 Watery Grave
2 Swamp
6 Island
6 Forest
Dispatched Dimir, Boros, Gruul, 4 color Gruul (feat Aurelia's fury), and Orzhov splash red along the way. Lost two games, one to the first Gruul (where I quickly learned that playing around bloodrush is subpar and to always block) and one to Orzhov deck that curved out boros elite, truefire paladin, kingpin's pet into removalx2.
My conclusion is that Simic itself is really weak since most of my games were won on the back of my black spells. Shadowslice on deathcult rogue is a very fast clock. Voidwalk on Dinrova Horror and splicing on an unblockable guy is equally good.