The Best and Worst of Magic 2013
- Thread starter Encaen
- Start date
Looks like there's some decent control hitting Standard and a slight move away from super aggro heavy stuff, which is great in my opinion. It's also awesome that they brought back Battle of Wits and Door to Nothingness, I love weird win conditions. Redirect and Reverberate are encouraging more player interaction which is cool. Overall, it seems like a solid set.
I really like the article's observation on blue standard, I'm interested to see how things are going to pan out.
I really like the article's observation on blue standard, I'm interested to see how things are going to pan out.
Thragtusk is this set's Restoration Angel. Ppl are seriously underestimating how this will shift the Standard meta.
It gives NayaPod and Naya Midrange such strong stabilization.
It gives NayaPod and Naya Midrange such strong stabilization.
I'm not sure you realize that you can Show and Tell Omniscience onto the field, right?
And, Talrand is good but Talrand's Invocation is equally good, if not better. Four mana for two 2/2 evasion bodies? Talrand is going to have to do work to be able to beat that.
And, Talrand is good but Talrand's Invocation is equally good, if not better. Four mana for two 2/2 evasion bodies? Talrand is going to have to do work to be able to beat that.
Worldfire is hard to use without a lot of speed setup. The least difficult way is alchemist's refuge and that's not a good answer. Tarland is probably going into a red blue deck with snapcaster mage. Green black is Shimian Specter and Rancor, plus exalted for great evil.
Long time no see! Few small points before some deck talk and making Worldfire work in standardEncaen said:
Rewind is the Cancel replacement for the set as it's unconditional countermagic. Mana leak has been dropped in order to bring Essence Shatter back and have the 2 mana counters be conditional on what sort of spell you need to counter.
Omniscience will work as [card]dreamhalls[/card] does in show and tell adding a little more explosiveness and an additional way to abuse that card.
Now onto the decks. First is U/G tempo that I've been testing that does rather well against the current meta utilising both Talrand and Quirion dryad with the phyrexian mana and other cheap spells. Bonus points for it being relatively cheap outside of the snapcasters.
Creatures (14)
4 Delver of Secrets
4 Quirion Dryad
3 Snapcaster mage
2 Talrand
1 Augur of Bolas
Enchantments (3)
3 Rancor
Instants/sorceries (23)
3 Gut shot
3 Mental Misstep
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Ponder
4 Mana leak
2 Apostle's blessing
2 Think Twice
1 Dismember
1 Dissipate
1 Rewind
Land (20)
4 Hinterland Harbor
11 Island
5 Forest
General plan is just to out-tempo your opponent. A delver with a rancor on it demands an answer or it'll end the game very shortly and the number of cheap cantrip spells allow Talrand+Drad to get large and make lots of flyers. The Mental Missteps are in there along with Apostle's blessings to provide a lot of resiliency to removal and opposing vapor snags while also letting you disrupt an early BOP/Gravecrawler/delver etc.
4 Delver of Secrets
4 Quirion Dryad
3 Snapcaster mage
2 Talrand
1 Augur of Bolas
Enchantments (3)
3 Rancor
Instants/sorceries (23)
3 Gut shot
3 Mental Misstep
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Ponder
4 Mana leak
2 Apostle's blessing
2 Think Twice
1 Dismember
1 Dissipate
1 Rewind
Land (20)
4 Hinterland Harbor
11 Island
5 Forest
General plan is just to out-tempo your opponent. A delver with a rancor on it demands an answer or it'll end the game very shortly and the number of cheap cantrip spells allow Talrand+Drad to get large and make lots of flyers. The Mental Missteps are in there along with Apostle's blessings to provide a lot of resiliency to removal and opposing vapor snags while also letting you disrupt an early BOP/Gravecrawler/delver etc.
For Worldfire (in standard) i'd go with using it as a backup plan for R/G or Naya ramp. Thragtusk's leaves the battlefield ability is what will give you the win after casting it along with oblivion rings on your own creatures. The most win-more thing you could do with it though is using Sudden Disappearance on yourself and then blow the board up
.edit: Completely forgot. The best black cards in the set didn't even get a mention! Mutilate's power level is only slightly below Damnation in terms of black sweepers and Disciple of Bolas is the stone cold nuts in an aggro based format providing card advantage and life to stabilise with.
You're on to something with Thragtusk. Use oblivion ring on a fervor instead, for a 3/3 with haste instead.
Using Show and Tell to play Omniscience is a bad idea, it doesn't actually do anything. I'd rather just Show and Tell a [mtg_card=Griselbrand] or any other card that actually helps me win the game.MrSnugglesworth said:
Omniscience is just a bad [mtg_card=Dream Halls] which does the same exact thing in the formats it's playable in but for half the mana meaning you can actually hard cast it.
Fervor is a pretty useless card by itself though and doesn't really help that much before you worldfire. Using O-ring or Fiend hunter on Blisterstick shaman on the other hand will give you the win right awayvxicepickxv said:
Deck would likely look something like this(Naya-very rough draft)
Creatures (19)
4 Birds Of Paradise
4 Strangleroot Geist
2 Fiend hunter
2 Huntmaster of the Fells
2 Restoration Angel
3 Thragtusk
Enchantments/Artifacts (9)
3 Rancor
3 Oblivion Ring
2 Gilded Lotus
2 Sphere of the Suns
Instants/Sorceries
3 Worldfire
4 Rampant Growth
2 Pillar of Flame
24 Land
Geist allows for instant win after worldfire if put under a ring/hunter. Huntmaster is a win during your next upkeep. Thragtusk is a win during your next attack phase. Hiding any of those let's you win. Otherwise you want to just beatdown with your dudes and rancor.
I played at a local pre-release tournament and someone made a 260 card deck just to use "Battle of Wits". He even won a game with it!
Was a great day.
Was a great day.
I'm a bit shocked that he didn't mention Ajani. In a GW deck he'd be more then capable of dropping on turn 2, ticking up to 5, and then proceeding to pump your army while soaking up damage otherwise ment for you. Yes, he may be somewhat ineffective against Delver strategies that are f!@#ing everywhere these days, but he costs those decks either the time to get rid of him, or the risk of him hitting ultimate.
But since my favorate formats are all limited, I'll talk about some things I noticed at the prereleases I was at (these comments really only only apply to sealed and draft, constructed formats have ways to deal with plenty of these issues that I won't really get into now). Firstly, I'm not all that impressed with Exalted. I played against a BW Exalted deck Day 1 Match 1 with my UB control deck and I found it seriously underwhelming, even when my opponent managed to stick the Angel. Since they only ever attack with a single creature it makes it easy to shut off their offense for an entire turn with a resilient chump blocker or a well timed removal spell. Heck, DOWNPOUR bought me enough time in that match to find answers to pretty much every efficient creature my opponent played. I find that Exalted works better when supporting another strategy, or only if you get you hands on a good ammount of Rings (more on those later).
One thing that I saw was that Blue seemed pretty over powered, at least from a limited prespective. I feel that it combines with every other color in a great way. Talrand has proven to be insane with the right cards to support him, turning every instant and sorcery into at least a 2-for-1. Toss in an Archaeomancer to reuse your spells and you have an effective way to pretty much lock out an opponent (I won a couple of games by recycling Murders this way). I'd also like to give a shout out to mill as an alternate victory condition, or at least a way to make Jace's Phantasm bigger faster. I't fun and gives you a way to break most stalemates. Also Fog Bank... no words, just Fog Bank...
Black is another favorate of mine. My personal favorate has to be old hand Vampire Nighthawk. This little guy is capable of stealing games from the jaws of defeat single handidly. There was one game where I came back from 1 life REPEATEDLY to win all thanks to him. Stick him with a Ring or two and watch as your opponent slowly begins to cry. The assortment of other removal spells, board sweepers, card advantage, deathtouchers, and just a dash of Exalted is enough to seal the deal and I am very much looking forward to trying out some more UB control builds in upcoming drafts.
Red is fun. There's not much else I can say about it. While I preffered it in previous core sets, it still has most everything that mkade it cool with quick effient creatures and copious ammounts of burn, and the return of Mogg Flunkies makes me giggle a bit. The reason I don't enjoy it as much this time around is that a lot of the cards just feel objectivly worse than previous incarnations. Searing Spear is obviously just a downgraded Incinerate, Volcanic Geyser a worse Fireball, and Firewing Phoenix a fatter and less nimble Chandra's Phoenix (I just need to get this out of my system but I LOVED CHANDRA'S PHOENIX!!!!!!! There were games where I could replay her for peanuts compared to Firewing and the Haste was always incredibly relevent. In constructed I was able to return 2-3 Phoenixs to to play every turn in some games. Try getting THAT kind of inevitablity using Firewing "Chicken")... okay I'm done with that tangent.
What can I say about Green that hasn't already been said? Yeah, Thragtusk is incredible and Rancor is a never ending stream of PAIN. I'd be lying if I said that I don't have a soft spot for the big knuckleheads in this color, but I'm just a bit burned out from hearing about it all the time. Limited wise I like Green. It's going to be very hard for me to not go into the color if I get passed a decent Rare or Uncommon. There are a great ammount very efficient creatures, some awesome interactions with Roaring Primadox, and what can only be described as a stupid ammount of card advantage (Elvish Visionary, Garruk's Packleader, Groundseal, Garruk himself... WTF?????). One thing that I want to point out here is the contiuation of a powerful theme that has hung around drafts since at least Innistrad and was even the inspiration for one of the most succesful decks of Pro Tour Avacyn Restored: Unblockable Hexproof creatures. Innistrad had Invisible Stalker, AR gave us the combination of Latch Seeker and Elgaud Shieldmate, and now we can get another potent mix by sticking Tricks of the trade onto a Primal Huntbeast. I think that this is probably the most ballenced this strategy has ever been, it doesn't have the abusive speed of the Stalker+Anything combination, but it's a bit more powerful and resilient then the Shieldmate combo. There are very few things that can stand in the way of this kind of clock, but the drawback of having to wait until turn 5 as well as enchantment removal helps make this itteration just a bit more "fair".
I said I'd cover the Ring cycle, so I will. They are wonderful. I saw many people leaving them in sideboards with the excuse of "I'm not in the right color", but that really doesn't apply. You might not get the gradual pump in an off-collor deck, but the other abilities granted are all incredibly relevent. Giving a deathtoucher Vigilence can be a great way to sneak in damage while keeping up a defense, and who doesn't love Hexproof, aside from your opponent. Other than the rings, the one artifact I really enjoyed using was Staff of Nin. While expensive, the ability to provide both incrimental burn as well as card advantage that can be played in ANY color combination is often too good to pass up.
Yeah, thems my thoughts. Was it worth the hour I spent writing it? Who knows.
But since my favorate formats are all limited, I'll talk about some things I noticed at the prereleases I was at (these comments really only only apply to sealed and draft, constructed formats have ways to deal with plenty of these issues that I won't really get into now). Firstly, I'm not all that impressed with Exalted. I played against a BW Exalted deck Day 1 Match 1 with my UB control deck and I found it seriously underwhelming, even when my opponent managed to stick the Angel. Since they only ever attack with a single creature it makes it easy to shut off their offense for an entire turn with a resilient chump blocker or a well timed removal spell. Heck, DOWNPOUR bought me enough time in that match to find answers to pretty much every efficient creature my opponent played. I find that Exalted works better when supporting another strategy, or only if you get you hands on a good ammount of Rings (more on those later).
One thing that I saw was that Blue seemed pretty over powered, at least from a limited prespective. I feel that it combines with every other color in a great way. Talrand has proven to be insane with the right cards to support him, turning every instant and sorcery into at least a 2-for-1. Toss in an Archaeomancer to reuse your spells and you have an effective way to pretty much lock out an opponent (I won a couple of games by recycling Murders this way). I'd also like to give a shout out to mill as an alternate victory condition, or at least a way to make Jace's Phantasm bigger faster. I't fun and gives you a way to break most stalemates. Also Fog Bank... no words, just Fog Bank...
Black is another favorate of mine. My personal favorate has to be old hand Vampire Nighthawk. This little guy is capable of stealing games from the jaws of defeat single handidly. There was one game where I came back from 1 life REPEATEDLY to win all thanks to him. Stick him with a Ring or two and watch as your opponent slowly begins to cry. The assortment of other removal spells, board sweepers, card advantage, deathtouchers, and just a dash of Exalted is enough to seal the deal and I am very much looking forward to trying out some more UB control builds in upcoming drafts.
Red is fun. There's not much else I can say about it. While I preffered it in previous core sets, it still has most everything that mkade it cool with quick effient creatures and copious ammounts of burn, and the return of Mogg Flunkies makes me giggle a bit. The reason I don't enjoy it as much this time around is that a lot of the cards just feel objectivly worse than previous incarnations. Searing Spear is obviously just a downgraded Incinerate, Volcanic Geyser a worse Fireball, and Firewing Phoenix a fatter and less nimble Chandra's Phoenix (I just need to get this out of my system but I LOVED CHANDRA'S PHOENIX!!!!!!! There were games where I could replay her for peanuts compared to Firewing and the Haste was always incredibly relevent. In constructed I was able to return 2-3 Phoenixs to to play every turn in some games. Try getting THAT kind of inevitablity using Firewing "Chicken")... okay I'm done with that tangent.
What can I say about Green that hasn't already been said? Yeah, Thragtusk is incredible and Rancor is a never ending stream of PAIN. I'd be lying if I said that I don't have a soft spot for the big knuckleheads in this color, but I'm just a bit burned out from hearing about it all the time. Limited wise I like Green. It's going to be very hard for me to not go into the color if I get passed a decent Rare or Uncommon. There are a great ammount very efficient creatures, some awesome interactions with Roaring Primadox, and what can only be described as a stupid ammount of card advantage (Elvish Visionary, Garruk's Packleader, Groundseal, Garruk himself... WTF?????). One thing that I want to point out here is the contiuation of a powerful theme that has hung around drafts since at least Innistrad and was even the inspiration for one of the most succesful decks of Pro Tour Avacyn Restored: Unblockable Hexproof creatures. Innistrad had Invisible Stalker, AR gave us the combination of Latch Seeker and Elgaud Shieldmate, and now we can get another potent mix by sticking Tricks of the trade onto a Primal Huntbeast. I think that this is probably the most ballenced this strategy has ever been, it doesn't have the abusive speed of the Stalker+Anything combination, but it's a bit more powerful and resilient then the Shieldmate combo. There are very few things that can stand in the way of this kind of clock, but the drawback of having to wait until turn 5 as well as enchantment removal helps make this itteration just a bit more "fair".
I said I'd cover the Ring cycle, so I will. They are wonderful. I saw many people leaving them in sideboards with the excuse of "I'm not in the right color", but that really doesn't apply. You might not get the gradual pump in an off-collor deck, but the other abilities granted are all incredibly relevent. Giving a deathtoucher Vigilence can be a great way to sneak in damage while keeping up a defense, and who doesn't love Hexproof, aside from your opponent. Other than the rings, the one artifact I really enjoyed using was Staff of Nin. While expensive, the ability to provide both incrimental burn as well as card advantage that can be played in ANY color combination is often too good to pass up.
Yeah, thems my thoughts. Was it worth the hour I spent writing it? Who knows.
That's a fair point. I suppose [mtg_card=Rewind] does seem a more fitting replacement for [mtg_card=Cancel] than [mtg_card=Mana Leak], though I really hate to see only conditional counters at 2 mana. Bring back [mtg_card=Counterspell]!TheGuy(wantstobe) said:Rewind is the Cancel replacement for the set as it's unconditional countermagic. Mana leak has been dropped in order to bring Essence Shatter back and have the 2 mana counters be conditional on what sort of spell you need to counter.
Omniscience will work as [card]dreamhalls[/card] does in show and tell adding a little more explosiveness and an additional way to abuse that card.
Now onto the decks. First is U/G tempo that I've been testing that does rather well against the current meta utilising both Talrand and Quirion dryad with the phyrexian mana and other cheap spells. Bonus points for it being relatively cheap outside of the snapcasters.
Creatures (14)
4 Delver of Secrets
4 Quirion Dryad
3 Snapcaster mage
2 Talrand
1 Augur of Bolas
Enchantments (3)
3 Rancor
Instants/sorceries (23)
3 Gut shot
3 Mental Misstep
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Ponder
4 Mana leak
2 Apostle's blessing
2 Think Twice
1 Dismember
1 Dissipate
1 Rewind
Land (20)
4 Hinterland Harbor
11 Island
5 Forest
General plan is just to out-tempo your opponent. A delver with a rancor on it demands an answer or it'll end the game very shortly and the number of cheap cantrip spells allow Talrand+Drad to get large and make lots of flyers. The Mental Missteps are in there along with Apostle's blessings to provide a lot of resiliency to removal and opposing vapor snags while also letting you disrupt an early BOP/Gravecrawler/delver etc.
For Worldfire (in standard) i'd go with using it as a backup plan for R/G or Naya ramp. Thragtusk's leaves the battlefield ability is what will give you the win after casting it along with oblivion rings on your own creatures. The most win-more thing you could do with it though is using Sudden Disappearance on yourself and then blow the board up
edit: Completely forgot. The best black cards in the set didn't even get a mention! Mutilate's power level is only slightly below Damnation in terms of black sweepers and Disciple of Bolas is the stone cold nuts in an aggro based format providing card advantage and life to stabilise with.
As for [mtg_card=Omniscience], I have to agree with Fanklok above on this one. I'd rather be winning with what I play off of [mtg_card=Show and Tell]. Cheating Omniscience into play I see more as turning a 2-card combo into a 3-card combo, no?
[mtg_card=Worldfire] plus [mtg_card=Thragtusk] is hilarious, I'll give you that.
You can also stack a [mtg_card=Shock] and flash in Worldfire with [mtg_card=Leyline of Anticipation] or other such effects, now that I think more about it. I'm still not convinced, though I have to say that your Worldfire decklist does look pretty schnazzy. And your UG tempo... swinging for 5 in the air on turn 2 just seems wrong to me somehow. I don't ever want to be on the receiving end of that draw.
I do like the inclusion of [mtg_card=Quirion Dryad] here. Getting that and Talrand out at the same time gets you a lot of value out of phyrexian mana spells. Finally, as to [mtg_card=Mutilate], you're right, it deserves at least a mention, but you have to admit, as vxicepickxv mentions above, [mtg_card=Shimian Specter] plus [mtg_card=Rancor]is going to be awesome!
Cannot agree with bringing back Counterspell enough. I miss the ole UU "Nope".Encaen said:
With Show being one of the most popular Legacy decks at the moment i'm running into alot more people running sideboard tech for it such as [mtg_card=Sower of Temptation] or [mtg_card=Gaddock Teeg]. Omniscience get's around that while also letting you use the "take an extra turn" from Emrakul or letting you play removal on Gaddock before making massive dudes.
edit: There's also that it provides insurance against [mtg_card=Karakas] which is never a fun thing to see when you show Emrakul into play lol.
The worldfire deck is strictly a casual thing. Something i'd take to an FNM and expect to go 2-2 with[mtg_card=Worldfire] plus [mtg_card=Thragtusk] is hilarious, I'll give you that.
. Though I do really want to build it and keep it for fun haha .If it's wrong then why does it feel so gooooood?And your UG tempo... swinging for 5 in the air on turn 2 just seems wrong to me somehow. I don't ever want to be on the receiving end of that draw.
Sean Connery will see some play and the decks it's in will be pretty fun
. Powerlevel though it's about the same as Smaug (Slumbering Dragon)
Can you explain why it doesn't do anything? Reading the card it seems like it would do a lot.fanklok said:
It doesn't actually effect the board state. Casting things for free is a trap, decks that want to cast lots of spells in one turn already have access to enough mana to do so, decks that want to cheat things into play already have cards that do it more efficiently, and the two biggest counter spells, Daze and Force are already free. So all Omniscience does is waste deck slots and Show and Tells.MrSnugglesworth said:
Yesterday I read a nice little combo involving Worldfire. Use [mtg_card=Oblivion Ring] on your own [mtg_card=Near-Death Experience], then cast Worldfire to destroy everything and bring back the exiled enchantment. Of course, it's pretty mana-heavy, so it might take a few turns to set up, unless you're running some sort of super-ramping Naya build which will give you 17 mana to play with in a single turn.
As much as I dislike the card Omniscience, I think it could possibly maaaybe replace dream halls in the Legacy Dream Halls combo decks that look to use dream halls as a way to cast multiple confluxes in a turn that leads to a kill by False Cure / Beacon of Immortality.
Worldfire works really well with Spell Weaver Helix and any burn spell, In addition to suspend. Also, having an Oblivion ring with something under it that deals damage on entering the battlefield, and you have another recipe for success.
Worldfire works really well with Spell Weaver Helix and any burn spell, In addition to suspend. Also, having an Oblivion ring with something under it that deals damage on entering the battlefield, and you have another recipe for success.
Me too. Unfortunately, Wizards hates countermagic and will never allow an unconditional two mana counter to be reprinted again. Apparently, it scares away and frustrates new players.TheGuy(wantstobe) said:
http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/ld/191
That is right. Mana Leak is overpowered. *holds back a laugh*
Snappy is primarily flashing back Ponder, Vapor Snag, or Gitaxian Probe, anyway. The article is kind of a fail all round. Sure, Mana Leak is more splashable than Counterspell, but it is utterly useless in the late game. Counterspell? No such draw back. So going by that article, the days of the two mana counterspell are over.
