Warning! Contains Spoilers.
So, this week was supposed to be a preview card for you fine readers, but it appears as if our friends over at MTGSalvation.com have managed to spoil the party (pun intended). The M10 set has been fully revealed as of Tuesday night, leaving me with less shock and awe for you today than I would have liked. But, since the card image itself hasn’t been leaked, let me at least give you a card image. We’ll chat a bit about it, and then move on, savvy?
Let’s examine the card from top to bottom. The name is fine, very evocative, and descriptive of exactly what the card is supposed to do. At converted mana cost 2, it’s a decently solid Limited card, playable often enough, and low enough cost to buy you the one or two turns you may need. The artwork is nice. I like that only the creature is frozen, instead of the whole landscape, and that they didn’t try to make a prison with bars out of ice to hold the creature. This looks much better. At Common, it’s going to be something you’ll see enough that you’ll want to be aware of it in your drafts, and if it’s tabling or not.
Okay, let’s move on to the actual meat of the card, the rules text. No attacking or blocking: good. No activated abilities: better. However, the drawback isn’t as bad as it seems at first glance, and actually works to your benefit somewhat. Seeing as how you have no reason to target the creature now, they will have to target their own creature with one of their spells or abilities to get rid of Ice Cage. More importantly, if they want to use it in combat, they have to do it before they declare attackers, or you’ve just gotten another turn of use out of your Enchantment. Most targeted abilities and spells in Limited are going to be combat tricks, (which they have to use inefficiently, i.e. before blockers, which is good for you) damage dealing abilities, (damaging their own creatures, good for you) or ability granting abilities (think Jump) which they probably use before blockers anyway. As you can see, often it’s a boon for you. So, overall I think the card is playable, but probably not first pick, obviously. It works less as removal, and more like a bounce spell. It doesn’t stop the problem most of the time, but it does buy you time to get to your stage three.
Moving on, now that we have all of M10 at our fingertips (as perfectly as can be expected) I want to take a look at a beloved archetype and see what sort of deck we can build in our old favorite, Red Deck Wins. Lightning Bolt is back now, and that’s enough for me to take a look at running a Mono-Red beast for Standard. Back in March, I showed you a Mono-Red deck I built for my newly-returned-to-Magic friend for FNM, Red Rover
Red Rover
4 Spark Elemental
4 Hellspark Elemental
4 Figure of Destiny
4 Hell’s Thunder
4 Mogg Fanatic
4 Flame Javelin
4 Volcanic Fallout
4 Incinerate
4 Shard Volley
2 Banefire
4 Ghitu Encampment
18 Mountain
Obviously, as with any Red deck, the idea is to throw as much as possible at the opponent, and finish with burn, typically either Shard Volley or Banefire. Let’s see if we can make a similar style deck with M10, with more power! (cue Tim Allen grunting noises.)
As a base, we’ll start with the tried and true 20-20-20 model. 20 spells, 20 creatures, and 20 lands. For land, it’s most likely 20 mountains. I don’t want anything that comes into play tapped just yet, although Spinerock Knoll is a potential land to keep in mind. I also want to keep the Converted Mana cost at 3 or less, unless there’s a really good reason not to. All right, let’s get started.
Pretty easy first pick here. One of the best burn spells in the history of the game, and the whole driving force behind this idea in the first place. It’s a pretty easy auto-include.
Since we want to start jumping at the word go, Figure of Destiny is another good choice for the deck. We can cast it on the first turn, and grow it easily out of Volcanic Fallout range by the third turn, either our own if we play it, or opposing ones. If we’re on the play, it can become very difficult to handle.
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Figure of Destiny
Two cards to consider are Mudbutton Clanger and Tattermunge Maniac (if we lean towards Goblins). Neither is quite what we want in a one-drop, but it’s not a perfect world, so we’ll keep them in mind. I also want to consider adding Jackal Familiar. As a 2/2, he’s a very good value, but we’ll have to make sure we have some haste critters at the two-drop. He may also force us to be a little more creature heavy.
Speaking of two-drops, let’s make sure and add Hellspark Elemental. Fantastic value for the price, very tempo-oriented, and the option to rebuy gives us a form of card-advantage as our resources start to dwindle.
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Figure of Destiny
4 Hellspark Elemental
Let’s keep on that thought and add in Ball Lightning. A good addition to the team, when dropped on the third turn, he’s pretty easily able to get in for 4 damage, if not more. He provides an excellent level of reach, and makes for tough decisions on the part of your opponent.
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Figure of Destiny
4 Hellspark Elemental
4 Ball Lightning
Looking at the list of two-drops, there are quite a few goblins that would look very nice together in a deck, although we would probably have to splash Black, which would be rather easy with Auntie’s Hovel and Graven Cairns. However, for now we’ll stay pure red, and make the goblin deck later. The next card to add is Flame Javelin. It’s a reliable burn spell that can clear the way for lethal attackers, or go straight to the dome.
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Figure of Destiny
4 Hellspark Elemental
4 Ball Lightning
4 Flame Javelin
There aren’t really any good two-drop burn spells right now, as Lightning Bolt has made Incinerate completely obsolete, so we’ll add a few more one-drop spells. The first one I like is Shard Volley. Shard Volley is basically Lightning Bolts 5-8 if you have more than 4 lands in play, and gives you excellent reach in the end game. We’ll also add Magma Spray, to combat the rising level of Kitchen Finks. If you have low levels of Finkage in your area, Tarfire isn’t a bad substitute.
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Figure of Destiny
4 Hellspark Elemental
4 Ball Lightning
4 Flame Javelin
4 Shard Volley
4 Magma Spray
We need another good one-drop creature, but I’m not really happy with any of the options. We’ll go with the Tattermunge Maniac for now, but I’m really missing Mogg Fanatic. Even without his stack shenanigans, he would have still been very valuable right now.
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Figure of Destiny
4 Hellspark Elemental
4 Ball Lightning
4 Flame Javelin
4 Shard Volley
4 Magma Spray
4 Tattermunge Maniac
Okay, one more spell, and one more creature. For the creature, I’m pretty sold on Boggart Ram-Gang, although Hell’s Thunder is tempting me as well. In the end, though, Wither and not sacking immediately is better than flying. There are enough Faerie and Spirit Tokens to make Hell’s Thunder easily chumpable.
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Figure of Destiny
4 Hellspark Elemental
4 Ball Lightning
4 Flame Javelin
4 Shard Volley
4 Magma Spray
4 Tattermunge Maniac
4 Boggart Ram-Gang
Now we need one last burn spell. I’m going to split this into a 2/2. I want 2 Banefire as an uncounterable endgame against Control (mostly Faeries), and I want some sort of way to deal with Kithkin, which is rising in prevalence, and gets a decent boost in M10. Firespout is one option, as it will still kill with an anthem effect on the board (Honor of the Pure now), which they can do on turn two now instead of Wizened Cenn. However, unless I dip into Fire-lit thicket, I’ll never get their little spirits, too. Volcanic Fallout gets some consideration for its utility against faeries, and as a burn spell to the dome to boot. Earthquake is a hybrid of the two, having Firespout’s post-Anthem kick and Fallout’s to-the-dome capability, but is slightly more mana intensive. Pyroclasm was briefly considered, but does nothing I want short of only costing 2, which isn’t as important. In the end, I’ve decided on Earthquake, for its flexibility, with a note to try out the others both in the main and the sideboard.
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Figure of Destiny
4 Hellspark Elemental
4 Ball Lightning
4 Flame Javelin
4 Shard Volley
4 Magma Spray
4 Tattermunge Maniac
4 Bogart Ram-Gang
2 Earthquake
2 Banefire
Looking at the curve, I’m going to start the deck with 2 Spinerock Knolls, but I’ll watch heavily during testing to see if this number needs adjusted. I can see occasions where the deck might be able to sacrifice tempo for an endgame finishing move all at once, but I’m a little skeptical still. With only 20 lands, we may need every one we get as soon as possible. Again, testing should help us out here.
M10 Deck Wins
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Figure of Destiny
4 Hellspark Elemental
4 Ball Lightning
4 Flame Javelin
4 Shard Volley
4 Magma Spray
4 Tattermunge Maniac
4 Bogart Ram-Gang
2 Earthquake
2 Banefire
2 Spinerock Knoll
18 Mountain
As for sideboard ideas, I’m thinking that Stigma Lasher could be useful as a two-drop, and shutting down opposing life-gain if Finks or War Monks become an issue, and I’ll want to try both Volcanic Fallout and Firespout in various matchups to see if they are as beneficial as I hope. Guttural Response may be good, but Faeries should already be a good matchup, so we’ll keep it on the watch list and see how testing goes. If you have any cards you think might work well, feel free to throw them out in the forums!
Now, let’s throw together a quick and dirty R/B Goblin list. I think that with Jund Hackblade and Blightning, we could definitely make a try of it.
4 Tattermunge Maniac
4 Figure of Destiny
4 Jund Hackblade
2 Goblin Deathraiders
4 Jackal Familiar
4 Tarfire
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Boggart Ram-Gang
4 Hellspark Elemental
4 Blightning
4 Veinfire Borderpost
4 Graven Cairns
4 Auntie’s Hovel
10 Mountain
This initial list looks strong on a nut draw (Tattermunge into Hackblade into Ram-Gang) but feels a little clunky. At first glance, it doesn’t appear to have the power or consistency of the Mono-Red deck. I’d probably goldfish this a few times, and if it didn’t come out as consistent or powerful, I’d probably broom it pretty quickly. The new Goblin Lord is also a possibility, giving you a bit more reach into the midgame, so we’d probably try him out as well for underperforming cards in testing.
I wanted to try a Base Black Zombie deck with the new Zombie Lord, Tidehollow Sculler, Anathemancer, and Stillmoon Cavalier, but I haven’t had the time to put anything together on it yet. Maybe next week, depending on how much sleep I get this week.
Oh right, a lot of you probably haven’t heard. My daughter was born last Friday. Her name is Liliana Kae, and she already made Riki Hayashi discard a card. Sorry Riki.
One last thing I want to talk about is the reprints that aren’t reprints. You know what I’m talking about, I hope. Grizzly Bears that aren’t grizzly, Nantuko Husks without husks, and Remove Souls that that scatter essences.
I’m not sure why Wizards has done this. It doesn’t help new players, as they don’t really care. Many of the flavor aspects aren’t really affected. Although Remove Soul does seem more Black-sounding, it’s always going to be a Blue card, and this won’t open up the name or design space for Black.
The only reasons I can see that this was done is to:
A) Push up the numbers on the “new” cards in the set, as they promised 1/2 new cards, if I recall correctly, and
B) make existing players buy more of the new set.
Yes, you had Remove Soul, but now you need Essence Scatter. No, Savannah Lions won’t do, you need Elite Vanguard now. (Although it is easier, as it’s uncommon) If anyone has any other ideas on why they might have done this, feel free to pipe up, because I can’t seem to think of any.
Until next time, this is Jeff Phillips, reminding you: Don’t make the Loser Choice.