MTG Salvation

(Opened for August 03, 2015)
 
I’m really happy to see that prowess is now evergreen, and that it’s going to be featured primarily in red and blue, the spell-happy colors. For the longest time, red-blue is the color pair that hasn’t dominated any of the evergreen keywords for creatures, and it’s good that it still aligns with the two color’s strongest suit: instants and sorceries.
 
And it’s actually a good call that they decided to give the mechanic a non-culture specific name. Debuting in the Tarkir block – a plane with strong Asian, “Avatar: The Last Air-bender” elements – it would have been really tempting to just call it “kung-fu” or “martial arts”. Indeed, as Mark Rosewater once said, Wizards has learned its lesson to avoid such naming conventions, which effectively confined “bushido” and “ninjutsu” into the world of Kamigawa with little hopes of being reused for future cards outside supplementary products (unless we revisit that plane, which is yet another unlikely event). Then again, if they deem it flavorful and elegant enough, they can still rename it as a new mechanic with non-plane-specific nomenclature, as what happened with "devotion" in the Theros block, which was previously branded as "chroma" in Eventide.
 
We now see prowess cards even in other planes such as Bant (Jhessian Thief), Vryn (Mage-Ring Bully), and the mysterious plane of Regatha (Abbot of Keral Keep). Even creatures like owls get to have some of the prowess fun without having to be anthromorphic. I can’t wait for Wizards to think of an evergreen keyword to focus primarily on blue and black.

(Opened for August 01, 2015)

I’ve yet to create a Commander deck that features green, but I have white in four of my first five Commander decks and all of them include Land Tax. When it comes to mana ramp, It’s hard exclude that enchantment in any deck that has white in it simply because it generates an absurd card advantage, an advantage that is easy to abuse in multiplayer Commander where at least one player is sure to be one land ahead of you in the arms race.

As I continue to accumulate non-basic land cards, however, I began to feel less and less enamored of Land Tax. Sure, it nets me three cards in an instant, which may begin as nothing but basic lands but can easily filtered out to more useful cards with the use of Scroll Rack and Teferi’s Puzzle Box). In the first few turns of the game, however, one-shot cards like Tithe are even more useful since they allow you to play with non-basic Plains cards as well (like Sacred Foundry), which, in the long run, are even more helpful than a bunch of basic Plains. In spite of Moonmist Plains], I think there is still much room for Wizards to print non-basic plains to make Gift of Estates matter more than Land Tax in a multi-colored deck.

Knight of the White Orchid falls into the non-basic side of this debate. None of my white decks are creature-based, however, so I’m still looking for a niche for this reprint. Perhaps it’ll fit right into a Naya-tokens Commander deck that I’m hoping to build some day? Who knows.

(Opened for July 28, 2015)

With Magic Origins being touted as the “last core set”, some of the cards in the set feel like obligatory “call-backs” to old cards that were prominently featured in previous core sets. Mage-Ring Responder, for example, is hard not to compare with Colossus of Sardia, which got featured in three core sets before.

Even if Mage-Ring Responder is a bit of an upgrade, it’s still pretty bad, and it’s difficult to feel any love for a dud rare like this. I suppose we could try to look at it as an exercise in elegance? Considering that the number 7 appears somewhere on the card multiple times, would it have been too much to hope that there would be seven of such instances? Let’s see:

Mana cost = 7
Power = 7
Toughness = 7
Mana requirement to untap = 7
Damage dealt to a creature when attacking = 7
Collector’s Number = 232/272 (Probably shouldn’t count, but we really don’t have a lot of options here)

That’s 6 seven’s all in all. Would it have been too much to print this with Renown 7? Sigh. So close, Wizards… so close.

Mad Blue (Part 2)

(Continued from here)

The plan that I have for my Temur Commander deck is to play lots of chaotic cards like Grip of Chaos and Shared Fate to mess around with everybody’s planned courses of action and prove to Kira that blue isn’t always as calculating as she think it is (and that, Counterspell’s aside, it can actually be fun). The thing about such a plan is I’d then have to rely on spells that have really high mana costs, so I have to figure out a way of surviving the first few turns by slowing my opponents down.

Then again, I realized that I don’t always have to slow them down if I can speed myself up –after all, green is part of the Temur palette, so I might as well take advantage of it by playing lots of mana ramp. Typically, you’d want cards that not only searches for lands from the library, but also immediately bring them out onto the battlefield. I’d much prefer sorceries to do this for me because they are more mana-efficient, but Sword of the Animist would also be a good addition since it’s a repeatable source of extra land drops.

This would mean that I’ll have to play more basic lands in the deck, which is not easy to do since I rely so much on non-basic lands for utility (ex. Halimar Depths) and consistency (ex. “shock lands” like Steam Vents). Then again, that decision wouldn’t be so hard to make in the next few months, considering the return of full-art lands in Battle for Zendikar.

(To be continued)

(Opened for July 24, 2015)

Mad Blue (Part 1)

My close friend, Kira, said that the reason she disliked building a Commander deck that had blue as part of its color identity was that she hated to overthink when playing a game. A very mindful, analytical, and diplomatic tactician in real life, Kira sought an escape in Magic by playing a persona that allows her to throw caution to the wind. Because of this, I’ve been toying with the idea of making a fun, chaotic, deck for my blue-green-red commander.

I’ve initially thought about creating a scaling “envy” deck using Yasova Dragonclaw (Maelstrom Wanderer would have been better, but Yasova is all I have at the moment), and originally, it was to include all sorts of cloning, copying, stealing, and swapping effects to take advantage of the best creatures and spells that opponents had to offer.

Chaotic, high-impact spells, however, often have ridiculously high mana costs, and I’ll mostly likely be overrun by my hasty opponents who have come bursting out of the gates if I just rely on my land drops to hit 6 (or more) mana. I need to survive the game until I’m ready to cause some mayhem, and one of the ways I can do that is by slowing my opponents down. Returning permanents en mass to their owner’s hands sounds like a good plan, and when done carefully, Displacement Wave will even leave behind permanents like Shared Fate so it can continue to cause more mayhem.

(To be continued)

(Opened for July 22, 2015)

I’m writing this while on assignment somewhere in Vietnam, where I have very limited internet access. Since I’ll be posting this (and most of the stuff while I write here) in one whole batch by the time I get back, I decided to just write about one card every other day.

Anyway, with Magic Origins being the last “core set”, we might as well expect that it would be a long time before Wizards would release a set that references more than one plane in the Multiverse. Plane-specific cards like Llanowar Wastes will probably have a harder time of becoming Standard-legal from this point forward, and will only be reprinted if we ever visit that plane again. Will Wizards ever let us planeswalk back to Dominaria again?

(Continued from here)

It took me a while to process this, but I soon learned that even if the cards would get cheaper, they also would eventually become harder to find, especially if I’m looking for cards that were no longer reprinted. I didn’t really have a solid play group that I could trade with back then, and I relied solely on the secondary market provided by local hobby stores. I never really thought about trading online or checking out online stores in the internet back then. I probably would have completed either (or both) sets had I known what I know now.

I decided to keep trying during the Time Spiral block. Because of the number of “time-shifted” cards included in the set, it remains to be the block with the most number of cards in the history of Magic. The Time Spiral block was filled with heaps of nostalgic references to old Magic cards more than a decade past. The set made me a lot more ambitious, as it inspired me to collect not just cards from the block, but also the old cards that each one was connected to. The fact that Opal Guardian is a actually reference to two old cards (Abbey Gargoyles and Opal Gargoyle) is hardly known to a lot of players, and I wanted my collection to showcase that kind of trivia.

(To be continued)

(Opened for July 20, 2015)

There is not much I can say about Evolutionary Leap other than how astounding the art is. Doesn’t this give you dreams of snakes molting into gorgons with snakes molting into gorgons with snakes molting into gorgons ad nauseam? I’ll definitely translate this art into a different medium, once I find the time.

(Continued from here)

I think it was partly due to my fondness of things that no one else wants that I found myself drawn into making a mini-set based on the cycles from the Mirrodin block. Janky cards like Titanium Golem and its brothers found no love from the other players after cracking them open in booster packs, so I felt that I had to find them a home, a setup where to which they absolutely belong, a niche where they can never be ignored or replaced. Of course, there were a lot of expensive cycles in the Mirrodin block too, but I tried to make up for it by trying to collect as many cycles as I could and just dropping off the ones that I didn’t complete by the time I reached some arbitrary critical mass.

This went on to the Kamigawa block, which was yet another trio of expansions where most of the cards were deemed famously weak outside Block Constructed Formats. By then I had incomplete mini-sets of cards for both Mirrodin and Kamigawa. I didn’t give up hope that I would still complete them one day, as I kind of expected that unpopular cards would drop in price and would eventually become more accessible to me.

(To be continued)

(Opened for July 19, 2015)

I'm really digging this renowned mechanic in Magic Origins not only because it is so darn flavorful, but also because it's a status word that's used for nothing other than to describe the card. It's almost like color, or converted mana cost, or simply being tapped or untapped, but unlike these examples, there is nothing in the card itself that explicitly indicates that a card is already "renowned" (other than, perhaps, the +1/+1 counters that it gained in the process).

Incidentally, "renowned" (and its sibling, "monstrous") is not the first status word in Magic. "Indestructible" started off as a status word as well when it debuted in Darksteel, but back then, unlike renown and monstrous which were more like a "flags" that check for that status, it was a word that actually had a notable game implication: namely, the immunity from destruction.

Starting with the Return to Ravnica block, it was errata'd to become a keyword instead, which is a good thing in a way, because it helps conserve space in the text box. Now, they don't have to say that "this card is indestructible" but simply print "indestructible" as part of a list of that card's abilities.

Dance of the Skywise will now remove indestructibility, but a creature's monstrosity or renown, if present, will remain intact for the remainder of the game... until something pushes them off the battlefield.

(Opened for July 18, 2015)

I just got my Magic Origins booster box and fat pack yesterday and I'm really trying my best to stop myself from tearing through all of the booster packs in one go. I still have a few Dragons of Tarkir and Fate Reforged packs to talk about though, and in light of the recent retirement of my Zurgo Helmsmasher Commander deck, I'll talk about the poor ol' Bellringer for now.

It must have been hard for Sarkhan to find out that the old khan that he wished to enact his vengeance upon no longer existed in the alternate time line that he traveled to after saving Ugin's life. Sure, Zurgo is still there in body and name, but not only isn't there any left in Zurgo's spirit for Sarkhan to chew on, but the poor ol' orc doesn't even know Sarkhan's name. Or maybe Zurgo does, since Sarkhan is known throughout Tarkir now as the "great dragon man" of ages past, but this Zurgo would sure have no idea what he did to that "dragon man" to earn so much of his hatred to begin with.

If Sarkhan still had a hint of black in him like when he was a bit mad, he probably would have tortured and killed this lowly Zurgo just to sate his bitterness towards the latter. But now that Sarkhan is a little bit aligned with blue, he's probably rational enough to realize that such hateful violence would no longer have a point.

Good for you, Sarkhan. Good for you.

(Prerelease Pack #6 opened for July 11 to 17, 2015)

I couldn't believe my unusual stroke of luck when I opened my second mythic card during the Magic Origins prerelease. Honestly, I find it ironic that I got Jace when I specifically chose Liliana Vess for my prerelease box. I guess Jace was house sitting for Liliana while she's out demon-hunting in other planes? I heard they're close.

What's even more surprising is that I managed to cast (and transform!) Jace in all but two of my matches that day. I guess he's trying to compensate for the fact that after being regarded as one of the most broken planeswalkers ever printed, this early incarnation of him is being rated as definitely one of the weakest. I actually had more utility from him as long as he remained a legendary creature, as I ended up putting together a blue-black spell mastery control deck (poor choice for an archetype, but what choice do I have with a mind mage?). I wish I had the option to keep his looter ability as long as I needed it, but I guess once you reach the five-cards-in-the-graveyard threshold, a planeswalker's gotta come when a planeswalker's spark gotta go.

With my current Magic skills all rusted and frayed, I really struggled a lot during that day (and ended up with a pathetic 1-2-0 standing), but Jace worked really hard to help me out, keeping drakes properly heeled with -2/-0 and allowing me to flashback Unholy Hungers during dire times. I never got to reach his ultimate, but without his help, I probably wouldn't have won a single match either.

(Prerelease Pack #5 opened for July 11 to 17, 2015)

I don't know what it is with this card that made me fell in love with it. To begin with, it's not even new (but at least, unlike Rain of Gore, it's mono-colored, and it's not symmetrical). It has little synergy with the battleplan that I have in mind for my Oloro, Ageless Ascetic Commander deck. But still, something that turns my opponents' life gain into life loss (obviously a more menacing alternative to preventing life gain in the first place) made me smile... (does that make me a mean person?)

When this card was first spoiled, the Magic community (particularly the Abzan sub-community) was a-buzz with all sorts of dastardly plans of tricking our opponents into drinking suspicious esis root remedies (which is what Liliana is doing to her brother in this picture). Players suddenly remember the green "free" cards from the Mercadian Masques block (Invigorate, Skyshroud Cutter, and even extremely narrow cards like Refreshing Rain) and imagined nasty turn-around scenarios for a well-accumulated Wall of Shards.

This card simply rings a lot of Johnny-bells in all of us combo players, but one thing that I'm curious about is this: how does it interact with Transcendence when both cards are in the opposite sides of the battlefield?

(Prerelease Pack #4 opened for July 11 to 17, 2015)

I feel that Animist's Awakening is a card that's going to be very easy for casual players like me to evaluate incorrectly. Honestly, the first thought that came to mind when I saw this one was: "Hey look! A one-sided Collective Voyage!" Then I saw Bruce Richard's article about it and realized that it's not as ramped up as I thought it would be:

http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/serious-fun/mana-ramp-mana-overdrive-2015-06-30

I'm not very strong when it comes to doing the math in Magic, but from what I gather, since your deck would most likely contain 40% lands, this is far from an early ramp spell that you would like to be casting with X less than 3 if you're aiming to get more than 1 land. For X = 6, you'll get 2 lands on the average, which makes it kind of worse than Boundless Realms, a card that is already in a hard spot in terms of mana-ramping.

The key to maximizing the card, as Bruce mentioned, is in its spell mastery. You'll most likely ramp up using other spells like Kodama's Reach and Cultivate in the first few turns, and use non-basic lands like Karoos (Simic Growth Chamber et al.) and spell lands (Khalni Garden et al.) to really get the most out of Animist's Awakening. But still, with all things considered, is this really a good ramp spell? I don't know... but maybe if you're willing to put in a card such as Boundless Realms then you wouldn't mind squeezing this in as well. 

(Prerelease Pack #3 opened for July 11 to 17, 2015)

I have a soft spot for legendary creature cards depicting more than one personality. I briefly wrote about "multiple legendaries" in a old blog when I was brainstorming for ideas for my next Commander deck:

https://continuefromlastsave.wordpress.com/2014/06/20/462/

Thus far, I notice that while legendary triplets are depicted as siblings (or symbiotes, as with the case of Trostani, Selensya's Voice) and have white as part of their casting costs, legendary pairs are depicted as lovers and have red as part of their casting cost (Tibor and Lumia, Anax and Cymede, and now, Pia and Kiran Nalaar). This is most likely just a coincidence, but it is happy one at that: seeing red as a universally-accepted color for love.

Now that we have mono-red, red-white, and red-blue covered, I wonder how red-black, and red-green couples would look like?
 

(Prerelease Pack #2 opened for July 11 to 17, 2015)

Renown was designed as a flavorful way of capturing the essence of gaining prestige for successfully hitting a planeswalker for the very first time. It is a very interesting ability because it adds a certain status to the creature that does not go away with the use of spells and effects until it leaves the battlefield. Since the status is just used to describe the creature, it is not even an ability word, and almost does nothing other than to serve as a marker for other cards that look for this status.

Players who have started playing Magic a little bit earlier will notice that renown has a lot of similarities with another status-granting ability from the Theros block: monstrous. Just like being renowned, being monstrous does not mean anything by itself for the creature, unless that creature has some other abilities that care for it being monstrous (like Fleecemane Lion).

The only thing such kinds of status does is to prevent a creature that's already monstrous (or renowned) from becoming monstrous (or renowned) all over again. This matters because the moment of achieving this status is marked by adding +1/+1 counters on the creature as a memory aid, and obviously, letting those counters pile up by achieving renown or monstrous trigger over and over again is not what the designers are intending.

(Prerelease Pack #1 opened for July 11 to 17, 2015)

It's easy to anyone who looks at this card in isolation and assume (or hope?) that Liliana Vess (probably after redeeming herself?) turned into an angel. This is because the Archangel of Tithes is wearing Liliana's signature headband. Alas, we see in Unholy Hunge that this is actually the original owner of the said headband, and Liliana took it for herself after burying the poor angel underneath a mob of brain-hungry zombies.

This is a pretty nice card in Commander, though, especially in multiplayer. War Tax-effects that discourage your opponents from attacking you will most likely send them rampaging towards other opponents instead. If you have more of these in the battlefield, you would have dealt with two (or more) problems at the same time, as you leave your opponents exchanging blows with each other while you hide comfortably behind your pillow fort and assemble a game-ending combo.

This is an angel that will most likely be coveted by players who helm Kaalia of the Vast on their decks not just because they draw too much attention, but because the angel's second ability makes it even harder for their opponents to block their upcoming onslaught of angels, dragons, and/or demons. Then again, the Archangel of Tithes will find a sure home in my Oloro, Ageless Ascetic deck as well: I've noticed that gaining two life per turn paints a bright red target on my forehead, and I'm hoping that this beauty would at least distract them and make that target less appetizing to hit.