Hey guys, I'm new here. I've played the deck a long time ago and trying to catch up to the meta.
As I see it, this deck has its best cards in the 1 drop and 4 drop. It has pretty much the best removals in fatal push and path to exile, which are important to keeping the deck alive to employ its late game win cons. It's actually ridiculous how many great planeswalkers are in black and white, arguably many of the best are in this color like the new Serra, Sorin SV, Gideon AZ, etc. It's honestly tempting to just go full out control rather than having half the deck dedicated to a midrange token strategy.
While the 3-drops like Lingering Souls are insanely good, it seems in general the 2-3 cmc cards are where this deck loses a lot of momentum. Let's look at some of the cards:
History of Benalia - not sure how I feel about this, ranges from bad to good
Raise the Alarm - can range from meh to very good but very good when the deck needs an aggro pressure and can double as removal
Liliana - can range from meh to very good. I've ran fetid heath to cast this more easily. The key is its versatility as it is 80% of the time going to put some kind of pressure on your opponent.
Bitterblossom - either really good or really bad. No in between. The card is absurdly slow unless it's played on turn 2. Drawing it late sucks.
Auriok Champion - I'm not entirely sure how good it is in the meta. If someone can chime in, that would be appreciated. This thing would be consistently good if the deck had access to Stoneforge Mystic.
Kaya's Guile - versatile but the deck has such a high mana curve already. It also already has access to the best removal spells. To me, this is overkill and not nearly as versatile as something like K-command to justify playing.
Hidden Stockpile - has been very bad for me, I question why people play it. It's just too slow most of the time. But I would love to hear counterarguments.
Legion's Landing - I've only been able to test this a couple times. Being able to serve as a land later on seems like it would help enable a heavier PW oriented strategy.
The card choices come down to your local meta, mine is very heavy on UW control, dredge, GDS and rock/jund and that explains my choices
Bitterblossom, it is simply amazing vs any kind of control (except whirr prison), they can't keep up with the constant flow of creatures.
Auriok Champion, it is great vs dredge, gds, rock and burn, can win those games almost on her own.
Hidden Stockpile, I agree with you on this one, it is only real useful in long matches and at that point I would better pack a card for that that actually is great for grindy matches (In my case Liliana, dreadhorde general). Stockiple can filter but doesn't draw, sometime it is akward if you can't activate it. The only thing going for it is that it shines in multiples. For actual drawing I prefer Smuggler's copter
Legion's landing, the up of this card is transforming it in turn 3 to get to 4 mana fast but this actually doesn't happen that often, and then you have to keep investing 4 mana each turn to make a token, in that sense stockpile is actually better because it can produce the token for free.
Kaya's guile, I haven't tested this, at first sight it seems cool to have a versatile card that would help in different matchups, the problem is the cost, it is just to expensive as an answer (we have access to card that do anything this card does cheaper and better). But I am open to give it a chance to see if versatility can go over pure "value".
IMHO raise the alarm is a card that shines is agro builds, History kind of similar.
Not really, tokens decks advantage is that one card produces multiple creatures, if this is used pitching a card the tokens deck just got card advantage anyway, if they use mana it is 1vs1 card.
I would just wait some months, after everyone gets theirs the prices will come down, ordering all of them from a Japanese site looks like the best thing to do instead of buying boxes.
I have a chance to buy a Japanese box for around 170 euros, I’m not really into the prices what do you guys think? I think is neat the alt art and there are some quite nice and I’m afraid it will get almost impossible to get one sealed box in the near future..
I think there is too much craze at the moment, war of the spark is a print on demand set so we will be able to buy boxes for a long time, in 6 months we will be getting japanese boxes at normal prices. WotC already is distributing japanese boxes around the world BTW, stores here in Mexico already got some.
I am testing the new Dovin as a sideboard card, I played a few matches vs ad nauseum and it shined giving me 2 full turns to win.
I am going to test it vs Phoenix, UW control and other combo matchups, maybe even vs Burn, the loyalty ability is quite relevant vs burn and Phoenix and in the worst case they waste to two cards and two turns removing it.
Given the start of the book, how Bolas sees "no plan", and the new Jace card which wins by milling yourself I thought they were going to reveal that "showing no plan" was the plan all along to trick bolas, that Jace had wiped his mind as well as those of his team in order to hide the real plan, that every member of the GW had a part and was ignorant of the others, so Bolas will be caught off guard.
But well Ugin says it was all "casually" happening
People are quite hyped and over reddit panicked there aren't japanese boxes aviable anywhere, people have to remember this is a print on demand set, that it will have big sales and WotC will be printing this for more than a year.
Buying this alternate editions now seem like a bad idea, i will wait 6 months and even if the mythics go expensive (probably only liliana because the other two aren't as desirable) the rest is going to be easy to find as time goes by.
The card choices come down to your local meta, mine is very heavy on UW control, dredge, GDS and rock/jund and that explains my choices
Bitterblossom, it is simply amazing vs any kind of control (except whirr prison), they can't keep up with the constant flow of creatures.
Auriok Champion, it is great vs dredge, gds, rock and burn, can win those games almost on her own.
Hidden Stockpile, I agree with you on this one, it is only real useful in long matches and at that point I would better pack a card for that that actually is great for grindy matches (In my case Liliana, dreadhorde general). Stockiple can filter but doesn't draw, sometime it is akward if you can't activate it. The only thing going for it is that it shines in multiples. For actual drawing I prefer Smuggler's copter
Legion's landing, the up of this card is transforming it in turn 3 to get to 4 mana fast but this actually doesn't happen that often, and then you have to keep investing 4 mana each turn to make a token, in that sense stockpile is actually better because it can produce the token for free.
Kaya's guile, I haven't tested this, at first sight it seems cool to have a versatile card that would help in different matchups, the problem is the cost, it is just to expensive as an answer (we have access to card that do anything this card does cheaper and better). But I am open to give it a chance to see if versatility can go over pure "value".
IMHO raise the alarm is a card that shines is agro builds, History kind of similar.
3 minimum, maybe 4. The only bad part is we can't choose one of the modes twice.
I played the Tinker deck when it was legal in extended around Invasion/Onslaught, lots of memories.
Not really, tokens decks advantage is that one card produces multiple creatures, if this is used pitching a card the tokens deck just got card advantage anyway, if they use mana it is 1vs1 card.
I think there is too much craze at the moment, war of the spark is a print on demand set so we will be able to buy boxes for a long time, in 6 months we will be getting japanese boxes at normal prices. WotC already is distributing japanese boxes around the world BTW, stores here in Mexico already got some.
1.- Blast Zone
2.- Dovin, hand of control
3.- Neoform
4.- Ashiok, dream render
5.- Saheeli
I am going to test it vs Phoenix, UW control and other combo matchups, maybe even vs Burn, the loyalty ability is quite relevant vs burn and Phoenix and in the worst case they waste to two cards and two turns removing it.
But well Ugin says it was all "casually" happening
Buying this alternate editions now seem like a bad idea, i will wait 6 months and even if the mythics go expensive (probably only liliana because the other two aren't as desirable) the rest is going to be easy to find as time goes by.