Granted. The war wakes the Others from their long sleep, and they march down from the north, destroying all civilization with their twisted magics and blue-eyed undead wights. (Yes, I have been reading/watching too much Song of Ice and Fire lately).
I wish fantasy TV shows became the public's preferred genre instead of endless CSI and Law and Order clones.
Based on my limited experience with the format, my advice is to grab as many splicers as you can, especially if you can get the uncommon or rare ones. Sensor Splicer is especially useful. It may be slightly overpriced, but massing it and having 3 or more 3/3 vigilant creatures is a beating in this format. You can attack profitably every turn and still have a solid defense.
The thing I'm most surprised about is that Spellskite is only a 2-of in the sideboard. From all the rhetoric I've been hearing about the deck I expected to see it as a 4-of main board.
Blood Collection 1BG
Enchantment
Whenever an opponent loses life, put that many blood counters on Blood Collection.
Remove 2 blood counters from Blood Collection: Add 1 mana of any color to your mana pool. Why should we fuel our magic with our blood when yours will do just as well?
"Dies", like the M10 wording changes, is going to feel weird at first, but ultimately I like it better than the other recent terminology changes. For once, Wizards is making official something that players already use as shorthand. Before this change, if you were to ask me what Archon of Justice does, I'd say that it was a 4/4 flying that when it die lets you exile/remove from the game something. So this change simply makes the printed wording match my unofficial description more closely.
"Hexproof" I'm not as fond of. It was bound to get keyworded sooner or later (people kept begging for it every year), but Hexproof sounds strange and awkward, and isn't quite as intuitive as Wizards thinks it is. I'd personally prefer "Foe Shroud", which is two words and may not be as "flavorful" as Wizards likes, but works and gets the point across better IMO.
2x Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite last night, no lie I swear. That plus 4+ splicers in white and green; I went 4-0 easily. It might be early, but I love triple NPH.
Limited drives sales on sets because every time you play Limited, be it Draft or Sealed, you open and use brand new product. How often do you see a Standard, Block, or Extended player cracking packs to get cards for decks versus buying singles from dealers - most of whom get their singles from the initial cases they open and from buying back cards from the players (mostly Limited players who have no use for the cards after the tournament since they can't use them in another tournament).
Yes, but if more people start playing block they'll need more singles than they would have otherwise. You can't play caw-blade or vengevine in block, so people will need to make new decks, and they'll buy more singles from dealers who will need more stock, who will then need to buy more product from Wizards.
Great, so now JTMS and the Stoneforge/Hawk package will dominate FNMs forever. That or Jund. At least it's up to stores to decide what format to run, and I'm fairly confident that mine will keep it's draft/standard/draft pattern.
Thinking about it, I can only think that this is an attempt to create interest in the "new" extended format after they completely neutered it. Block, well, Wizards would love it if they could get all stores to run only block, since it would be the greatest pack seller after limited.
No, because Leeches sucks. If they ever did print something that would remove poison counters, it should do it in a way that doesn't convert poison to life.
Also, in the interest of good sportsmanship (wait for this to bite me in the arse, I know it will :P) may I remind you fine contestants that the keyword is "Living weapon", not "Living Weapon" and that it should have reminder text since ALL cards with it currently have it.
I just corrected my entry, so you have my thanks. I was wondering why MSE wasn't putting in the auto-reminder text like it usually does.
Didn't we just have this conversation about reminder text last round? I stand by my position that only cards with custom mechanics need reminder text, regardless of how new the official mechanic is.
It's mainly a flavor card, to show how far the Mirroden forces have fallen. Game-play wise, it's a poor Johnny-only combo card for metalcraft and Shape Anew, Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas, and the like.
Sadistic Sacrament is really only good against decks with no draw or Caw-Blade, where you can strip them of their 1-of equipments. Of course against Caw-Blade they're most likely to search up an equipment before your third turn, and BBB is a hard cost to bear. Of course in a GB deck with ramp you can remove much more, but how often will that happen, and how do you deal with the cards they cast in the meantime?
Memoricide has an easier casting cost, but again is too late for the Caw-Blade match-up. It's really best against combo decks like Valakut (naming Primeval Titan) or the new Exarch-Twin (naming Splinter Twin), but other than that it doesn't do much. At 4 mana it takes a while to cast, and most decks run multiple threats, so removing only one doesn't help you much.
I will say this, though I'm not sure how viable it would be. A deck running massive discard (4x Duress, Inquisition of Kozilek" target="blank">Inquisition of Kozilek, and Despise might be able to make use of it, but without instant-speed discard, the risk of awesome top-decks is just too much.
The circles of protection, as awesome as they are, are too narrow to see print in a modern core set. The updated "charms" are ok because they work with your cards as well and are thus never completely dead, unless you include them as hate cards, which they are obviously not designed to be. CoPs would be sideboard cards at best (the red one, mainly, and perhaps black if MB-whatever picks up), and most likely casual fodder for that one guy you know always uses his mono-whatever deck.
Personally, I'd rather see a Story Circle variant that used colorless mana instead of W for the activation, but I suppose that would be too much. For all those who are saying that plain old Story Circle would be unfair, it saw absolutely no play while it was legal during 10th's reign in Standard, and that was also during a time of heavy multi-color, so it had more potential targets than today. Plus we now have a colorless answer in Ratchet Bomb, so every deck can potentially deal with it if it becomes too much of a problem.
I wish fantasy TV shows became the public's preferred genre instead of endless CSI and Law and Order clones.
I liked the old Garruk better. It had more of a "wild" feel to it, and he didn't look like he'd been shooting steroids since he was 5.
Enchantment
Whenever an opponent loses life, put that many blood counters on Blood Collection.
Remove 2 blood counters from Blood Collection: Add 1 mana of any color to your mana pool.
Why should we fuel our magic with our blood when yours will do just as well?
Next card: Urza's Armor
"Hexproof" I'm not as fond of. It was bound to get keyworded sooner or later (people kept begging for it every year), but Hexproof sounds strange and awkward, and isn't quite as intuitive as Wizards thinks it is. I'd personally prefer "Foe Shroud", which is two words and may not be as "flavorful" as Wizards likes, but works and gets the point across better IMO.
Yes, but if more people start playing block they'll need more singles than they would have otherwise. You can't play caw-blade or vengevine in block, so people will need to make new decks, and they'll buy more singles from dealers who will need more stock, who will then need to buy more product from Wizards.
Thinking about it, I can only think that this is an attempt to create interest in the "new" extended format after they completely neutered it. Block, well, Wizards would love it if they could get all stores to run only block, since it would be the greatest pack seller after limited.
I just corrected my entry, so you have my thanks.
Didn't we just have this conversation about reminder text last round? I stand by my position that only cards with custom mechanics need reminder text, regardless of how new the official mechanic is.
Memoricide has an easier casting cost, but again is too late for the Caw-Blade match-up. It's really best against combo decks like Valakut (naming Primeval Titan) or the new Exarch-Twin (naming Splinter Twin), but other than that it doesn't do much. At 4 mana it takes a while to cast, and most decks run multiple threats, so removing only one doesn't help you much.
I will say this, though I'm not sure how viable it would be. A deck running massive discard (4x Duress, Inquisition of Kozilek" target="blank">Inquisition of Kozilek, and Despise might be able to make use of it, but without instant-speed discard, the risk of awesome top-decks is just too much.
Personally, I'd rather see a Story Circle variant that used colorless mana instead of W for the activation, but I suppose that would be too much. For all those who are saying that plain old Story Circle would be unfair, it saw absolutely no play while it was legal during 10th's reign in Standard, and that was also during a time of heavy multi-color, so it had more potential targets than today. Plus we now have a colorless answer in Ratchet Bomb, so every deck can potentially deal with it if it becomes too much of a problem.