This card right now does not interact well, speaking in terms of Flavor, with the pre-existing Akroma's. This is a point a lot of people are overlooking when they have artifacts that power-up all of your creatures. The ability would have to be something more like:
"Non-legendary creatures you control..."
Or something along those lines. The alternative is to make it a targeted ability as mentioned before. Flavor is an important element in cards, especially a card like this. They will not make a card that makes no sense.
I think that the possibility of an Army of Akromas is realized in the idea of Future Sight. Think about it. Akroma won the legends vote. We had a reprint of Akroma, Angel of Wrath in Time Spiral. This was timeshifted. We had a new version called Akroma, Angel of Fury in Planar Chaos. This too was timeshifted. It is thus likely and relatively reasonable to infer that Akroma, Angel of _____ will be a timeshifted card in FS.
Was this supposed to be sarcastic? If not, you might like to know that Ancient Tomb was banned in extended...
Tomb was banned in Extended because of its synergy with the newly released Mirrodin block, as well as with this terrible degenerate creature that most kiddies may not have played against: Metalworker. It was used in a format with extremely broken decks. To list a few of these monsters that many of the newcomers to Magic and Standard never had to play:
Oath
Angry Ghoul
Tinker
FCG
SeverenceBelcher
RDW
Alluren
The list goes on. This was a format of nightmares. Everything was just too fast, and a lot of bannings ensued after a particularly nutty Pro Tour New Orleans. Among those banned were Goblin Recruiter, Oath of Druids, Tinker, Hermit Druid, Grim Monolith, and Ancient Tomb.
Will they reprint tomb? One answer is "no," because the pool of cards is not broken enough.
The real answer though is "Yes." Tomb would be a powerful addition to Standard. It would be an absolutely BROKEN addition to Extended. Ancient Tomb, at its height in PT New Orleans, was the most played card of any card other than basic lands. The most played card. It found a place in every deck, regardless of what you were playing. This would totally warp Standard and Extended bringing them to speed levels that the current meta would not be ready for.
-DL
EDIT: to emphasize Tombs power, consider this. Of the top 8 decklists at PT New Orleans, 26 copies of Tomb were run. Every deck save one had at least 3 copies of tomb in their mana base. The one deck that did not was Scepter Tog played by Tomohiro Yokosuka. He went 0-3 in the first round of the T8 to Nassif, piloting his extremely fast Severence Belcher with 4 Ancient Tomb.
Yep. No tomb please.
reactive cards are never banned. And hosers are even more unlikely to get banned. It's not insanely powerful, its just removal. Against most decks, it's likely that they wouldn't have seen any cards that were removed anyway, and not had any way to get the card back from the graveyard. The only time this actually creates card advantage (against typical decks) is when it hits a card in your hand. But the likely hood isn't that great that a card that already made it to the graveyard will have had a duplicate of it drawn by your opponent. This is an excellent sideboard card, nothing more. And yeah, it will be 10-20$ because its something many people (even type 1/1.5 players) will want a playset of.
The problem is that it warps formats. I put it in a similar category with Aether Vial. Vial was in every deck that used creatures. This will be in every deck that uses black, either boarded or even maindecked.
My biggest problem is it seems too conveniently timed. Right after combo and graveyard based decks survived Crypt they print this. That is what is most frustrating to me.
I am rather tired of these timeshifted cards. They are, as mentioned by other people in the past, quite boring.
Soul Warden in green is decent, and concetrate is also alright. It seems that this block in general is pushing for mono-colored to balance out the multicolored madness of Ravnica.
-DL
A Green Ichorid would be a little too good, because of its uses with GGT. If nothing else, you would get 3 or 6 damage extra by turn 3, which would guarantee a turn 4 win. A turn 3 win would further be possible with a timeshifted Ichorid.
i havent tested breakthrough at all. is it any good?
It's good in that it allows you to run fewer lands in your deck; I run 14 with 4 Mox, meaning while I don't always have 2 mana to cast Winds, I almost always can discard on turn 1 and then go nuts with Breakthrough on turn 2. Winds is slightly better in terms of explosiveness, but Breakthrough is a card you can consistently cast.
i've also cut careful study becuz the turn 1 play should be an imp, zombie infestation, or therapy. sometimes u get that nutty winds hand where u have 3 ichy's swinging on turn 2 but not very often.
I find that Study is useful and reccomend running some. Ogura at Worlds ran only 1 Winds and 1 Study, which I feel could be overall raised, while his mana count (22) could be lowered. This would raise the speed of the deck significantly, although note that lowering the mana count means you need to decrease your reliance on Tog. It is in these lower mana builds that Return is going to be most important.
The main problem i have when playtesting this deck is when u dont get dredgers in your hand. it doesnt happen all the time but when it happens its almost an auto-mulligan. then u goto 6 and still dont have a dredger it really sucks.
so that stated, is it worth running 1-2 golgari thugs?
Due to running only 18 mana sources total, I cut Tog back to 2 and now run 4 Thugs. Having 12 dredgers greatly increases the chances of dredging early. Furthermore, Thug is quite the useful guy. You can use him to recur Putrid Imp for singular discard, you can use him as a blocker for dangerous critters (Tog and Piledriver come to mind), you can sacrifice him to Therapy AND to Return. Quite a versatile soldier he is. Oh, and he feeds Ichorid. No more reasons are really needed.
I have found that the best target for Dread Return has actually been Laquatus's Champion. I shall use the example I used on another site to illustrate his power (the opponent's life total is in parenthesis).
This scenario is statistically quite probable, especially in tandem with DA, Study, Breakthrough, Winds, Coliseum, or whatever you use to fuel dredge. This puts the opponent in lethal Champion range, essentially winning the game right there. This is absolutely critical against decks like BDW, Goblins, RG Aggro, and others that put you on a clock; same for combo decks like TEPS, Eggs, etc. The ability to win on that critical turn 4 (the turn most decks like to win nowadays) is absolutely invaluable.
For those that do not believe, another example to illustrate a worse case scenario.
In this situation, you do not see Ichorids at all until turn 4. However, between Imp and Ichorid you put them at 8. Not lethal Champ range, but what if they played a dual, as most aggro decks are liable to do? That brings them conveniently to 6 and to a matchloss.
I urge all of you to test out Champion. The big advantage he has over Akroma, Strossus, and Ghoul is simple; he can be recurred after you attack. This is absolutely huge. Furthermore, unlike Ghoul, he only takes up 1 slot, whereas the other black creature requires 3 (Itself, Breath, fatty).
16 mana sources are often more than enough for the deck to run at optimal efficiency. If there is a problem with getting ghoul out due to DR's flashback, you can always use the tech developed in part by john_mathias on SCG:
-1 DA
+1 Harvest
This virtually gaurantees that you have enough creatures to get a turn 3 or 4 ghoul out to destroy your opponenet.
As to the board, the only card that you mentioned which is important for Ichorid could be Coffin Purge, if for nothing else that it stops the brutal Moment's Peace, as well as cards like Wonder which slow you down. Seal stops nothing that Needle cannot handle on its own and with more efficiency. The same goes for Darkblast, although perhaps 1 copy would assist against Lavamancers and the like.
A strategy which has worked wonders in my considerable testing of this deck has been the inclusion of Sutured Ghoul in the maindeck. It is particularly powerful against aggro decks, when Ichorid is placed on a clock that it needs to outrun. The way to implement the Ghoul plan is simply to use a lone copy of Breath, and to add Gigapedes/Shambling Shells to the deck.
The latter two card choices may seem odd. However, both of them, while seemingly less useful than other cards, have numerous applications in a non-goldfish scenario. Pede has 3 things going for it. a) It feeds Ghoul, the primary reason to play it, b) It is a fine Return target against decks with tons of targeted removal but minimal mass removal and creatures, and c) it allows you to get cards from your hand into your yard if you lack a discard outlet.
Shell also feeds Ghoul, but it additionally feeds Ichorid. Its dredge is nothing to sneer at, as abundant dredgers are quite helpful to this deck.
The deck wins through traditional Ichorid/Imp beatdown, Tog, GGT, Ghoul, or Infestation. Removing Infestation from the maindeck has in testing proved to be a large mistake; it provides such explosiveness against many decks. As Ogura ran at worlds, Winds is a powerful card that should be capitalized upon. Against yard hate, board it out. Otherwise, it wins games.
The board has 7 cards for dealing with yard hate; Needles for the popular Crypt, and chains for the occasional Leyline that will still pop up. Thankfully, most people have taken to running Crypt over Leyline, so as long as Ichorid stays under the radar, this will probably remain the same.
Angel, Ghoul, Breath, and Harvest are all for the aggro matchup, and to a lesser extent the combo one; in both matchups, winning quickly is the goal.
The speed element of Ichorid cannot be understated; this is a build that capitalizes on it.
-DL
This deck is so speedy that you must have forgotten deck tags
"Non-legendary creatures you control..."
Or something along those lines. The alternative is to make it a targeted ability as mentioned before. Flavor is an important element in cards, especially a card like this. They will not make a card that makes no sense.
-DL
Any thoughts?
-DL
Tomb was banned in Extended because of its synergy with the newly released Mirrodin block, as well as with this terrible degenerate creature that most kiddies may not have played against: Metalworker. It was used in a format with extremely broken decks. To list a few of these monsters that many of the newcomers to Magic and Standard never had to play:
Oath
Angry Ghoul
Tinker
FCG
SeverenceBelcher
RDW
Alluren
The list goes on. This was a format of nightmares. Everything was just too fast, and a lot of bannings ensued after a particularly nutty Pro Tour New Orleans. Among those banned were Goblin Recruiter, Oath of Druids, Tinker, Hermit Druid, Grim Monolith, and Ancient Tomb.
Will they reprint tomb? One answer is "no," because the pool of cards is not broken enough.
The real answer though is "Yes." Tomb would be a powerful addition to Standard. It would be an absolutely BROKEN addition to Extended. Ancient Tomb, at its height in PT New Orleans, was the most played card of any card other than basic lands. The most played card. It found a place in every deck, regardless of what you were playing. This would totally warp Standard and Extended bringing them to speed levels that the current meta would not be ready for.
-DL
EDIT: to emphasize Tombs power, consider this. Of the top 8 decklists at PT New Orleans, 26 copies of Tomb were run. Every deck save one had at least 3 copies of tomb in their mana base. The one deck that did not was Scepter Tog played by Tomohiro Yokosuka. He went 0-3 in the first round of the T8 to Nassif, piloting his extremely fast Severence Belcher with 4 Ancient Tomb.
Yep. No tomb please.
Quoted for Absolute Wrongness.
Extirpate is amazing. It will go for almost as much as Needle goes for now. It may even surpass Damnation as it has applications in every format.
-DL
The problem is that it warps formats. I put it in a similar category with Aether Vial. Vial was in every deck that used creatures. This will be in every deck that uses black, either boarded or even maindecked.
My biggest problem is it seems too conveniently timed. Right after combo and graveyard based decks survived Crypt they print this. That is what is most frustrating to me.
-DL
-DL
Soul Warden in green is decent, and concetrate is also alright. It seems that this block in general is pushing for mono-colored to balance out the multicolored madness of Ravnica.
-DL
That being said, I really hope they print it.
-DL
Could be big. Needs to find the broken aura's though.
That's disgusting. T2 players rejoice
8Mage
No, it won't happen. WotC isn't stupid.
-DL
It's good in that it allows you to run fewer lands in your deck; I run 14 with 4 Mox, meaning while I don't always have 2 mana to cast Winds, I almost always can discard on turn 1 and then go nuts with Breakthrough on turn 2. Winds is slightly better in terms of explosiveness, but Breakthrough is a card you can consistently cast.
I find that Study is useful and reccomend running some. Ogura at Worlds ran only 1 Winds and 1 Study, which I feel could be overall raised, while his mana count (22) could be lowered. This would raise the speed of the deck significantly, although note that lowering the mana count means you need to decrease your reliance on Tog. It is in these lower mana builds that Return is going to be most important.
Due to running only 18 mana sources total, I cut Tog back to 2 and now run 4 Thugs. Having 12 dredgers greatly increases the chances of dredging early. Furthermore, Thug is quite the useful guy. You can use him to recur Putrid Imp for singular discard, you can use him as a blocker for dangerous critters (Tog and Piledriver come to mind), you can sacrifice him to Therapy AND to Return. Quite a versatile soldier he is. Oh, and he feeds Ichorid. No more reasons are really needed.
-DL
Turn 1: Play Imp
Turn 2: Dredge, Swing (18)
Turn 3: Recur Ichorid, Dredge, Swing (13)
Turn 4: Recur Ichorid x2, Dredge, Swing (5)
This scenario is statistically quite probable, especially in tandem with DA, Study, Breakthrough, Winds, Coliseum, or whatever you use to fuel dredge. This puts the opponent in lethal Champion range, essentially winning the game right there. This is absolutely critical against decks like BDW, Goblins, RG Aggro, and others that put you on a clock; same for combo decks like TEPS, Eggs, etc. The ability to win on that critical turn 4 (the turn most decks like to win nowadays) is absolutely invaluable.
For those that do not believe, another example to illustrate a worse case scenario.
Turn 1: Imp
Turn 2: Dredge, Swing (18)
Turn 3: Dredge, Swing (16)
Turn 4: Recur Ichorid x2, Swing (8)
In this situation, you do not see Ichorids at all until turn 4. However, between Imp and Ichorid you put them at 8. Not lethal Champ range, but what if they played a dual, as most aggro decks are liable to do? That brings them conveniently to 6 and to a matchloss.
I urge all of you to test out Champion. The big advantage he has over Akroma, Strossus, and Ghoul is simple; he can be recurred after you attack. This is absolutely huge. Furthermore, unlike Ghoul, he only takes up 1 slot, whereas the other black creature requires 3 (Itself, Breath, fatty).
-DL
-1 DA
+1 Harvest
This virtually gaurantees that you have enough creatures to get a turn 3 or 4 ghoul out to destroy your opponenet.
As to the board, the only card that you mentioned which is important for Ichorid could be Coffin Purge, if for nothing else that it stops the brutal Moment's Peace, as well as cards like Wonder which slow you down. Seal stops nothing that Needle cannot handle on its own and with more efficiency. The same goes for Darkblast, although perhaps 1 copy would assist against Lavamancers and the like.
-DL
The latter two card choices may seem odd. However, both of them, while seemingly less useful than other cards, have numerous applications in a non-goldfish scenario. Pede has 3 things going for it. a) It feeds Ghoul, the primary reason to play it, b) It is a fine Return target against decks with tons of targeted removal but minimal mass removal and creatures, and c) it allows you to get cards from your hand into your yard if you lack a discard outlet.
Shell also feeds Ghoul, but it additionally feeds Ichorid. Its dredge is nothing to sneer at, as abundant dredgers are quite helpful to this deck.
The list I have been running is below:
EDIT: haha i won't outrun them again.
4 Polluted Delta
3 Watery Grave
1 Swamp
1 Island
2 Cephalid Colliseum
2 Riftstone Portal
Creatures: 25
4 Ichorid
4 GGT
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Psychatog
2 Wonder
1 Sutured Ghoul
4 Shambling Shell
2 Gigapede
4 Careful Study
4 Cabal Therapy
2 Tolarian Winds
4 Chrome Mox
3 Zombie Infestation
3 Deep Analysis
2 Dread Return
1 Dragon Breath
4 Firemane Angel
1 Dragon Breath
1 Sutured Ghoul
4 Pithing Needle
3 Chain of Vapor
2 Acorn Harvest
The deck wins through traditional Ichorid/Imp beatdown, Tog, GGT, Ghoul, or Infestation. Removing Infestation from the maindeck has in testing proved to be a large mistake; it provides such explosiveness against many decks. As Ogura ran at worlds, Winds is a powerful card that should be capitalized upon. Against yard hate, board it out. Otherwise, it wins games.
The board has 7 cards for dealing with yard hate; Needles for the popular Crypt, and chains for the occasional Leyline that will still pop up. Thankfully, most people have taken to running Crypt over Leyline, so as long as Ichorid stays under the radar, this will probably remain the same.
Angel, Ghoul, Breath, and Harvest are all for the aggro matchup, and to a lesser extent the combo one; in both matchups, winning quickly is the goal.
The speed element of Ichorid cannot be understated; this is a build that capitalizes on it.
-DL
This deck is so speedy that you must have forgotten deck tags