Alara Reborn brings Legacy two exciting and very playable cards — Lorescale Coatl and Mind Funeral. The former augments an already powerful deck type and the latter spawns a new strategy of its own. But that’s not all we’ll be talking about! I’m usually loathe to write set reviews for Legacy unless I’ve got some really juicy cards to talk about (and trust me, these don’t disappoint!) and some extras to throw in as well. I’ve got three more cards that have a lot of potential in Legacy that have been critically underplayed lately. Since so many readers liked my article on unused mana accelerators a few weeks ago, I think you’ll dig these cards as well.
Part I: New Cards
If you have premium, check out Patrick Chapin excellent article about analyzing new cards. It was a revelatory article for me to read and helps put new cards into perspective. The method is, abstractly, that one looks at the card to see if it’s good on its own, then what the card or the format lacks to make it better or worse, then how the card would affect the game, and finally, how the game would have to progress to get our card in play. Let’s start with Lorescale Coatl:
Lorescale Coatl
1GU
Creature – Snake
Whenever you draw a card, you may put a +1/+1 counter on Lorescale Coatl.
2/2
Our straightforward look shows a card that’s easy to cast and has the potential to get really mighty, really quickly. Unlike Forgotten Ancient or Quirion Dryad, this card gets incrementally bigger every turn with no maintenance. It’ll attack as a 3/3 on the first turn and go on from there. The mana cost makes this card potentially a lot stronger than Knight of the Reliquary, another recent huge creature, because it’s very easy to cast in a base-Blue deck. Unlike KOTR, the Lorescale Coatl does not need a Tundra and Tropical Island to come down and affect the board. Further, drawing cards is easy to do in Legacy and this is one of the first cards in a long time that, like Psychatog, can easily convert drawing cards into winning the game.
Now, let’s consider how the card sits in the environment. The Lorescale Coatl dies to absolutely every removal spell in the format. On the upside, its cost makes it immune to Spell Snare and Threads of Disloyalty, but makes it much easier to Daze or have it mired in your hand without the mana to play it, thanks to Sinkhole. Because it can take some time to grow the Coatl, it’s vulnerable to Vedalken Shackles for an appreciable period of time. On the positive side, Coatl has excellent interactions with two of the most powerful cards in the format — Brainstorm and Sensei’s Divining Top. The former acts as a permanent Giant Growth, making the Snake swing in as a 6/6 or larger and offering a really strong combat trick. One Top can make it a 5/5 before it attacks, by drawing with Top during the upkeep, drawing for the turn and then playing and drawing from Top again before attacks. Two Tops, dancing on top of your library, give this card a permanent Blessing. If all we’re looking for is a Big Dumb Beater, then Coatl fits the bill easily. I wonder, though, what decks would want something like this? At three mana, is it better than Trinket Mage (probably) or Vendilion Clique (maybe not)? The colors and easy card interactions scream to put this into a CounterTop shell, in place of Krosan Grips, Trygon Predators, Trinket Mages or Vendilion Cliques. It ends games quickly, which can make the soft-lock nature of Counterbalance + Sensei’s Divining Top a lot stronger.
What would the game look like after we put this guy on the table? Unless we have something else to give us a draw in hand, we probably aren’t going to attack for a turn or even three turns. Holding a Brainstorm when facing down an opponent’s Tarmogoyf can lead to really interesting mind games and combat tricks. If you attack, will they block, knowing they could lose their creature? What if you hold back from attacking with your Coatl if it’s reasonable that you have that Brainstorm? The Coatl, in a UG Tempo/Threshold/Countertop style deck seems like a Kill This Now threat, and the opponent will probably expend a lot of resources to get rid of it. If you’d like to clear out counters or removal, this is a great bait card.
How do we get to the point where Coatl is down and matters? Like I said before, it soaks up all the removal in the world, so it’d be strongest in a deck that had some little “lightning rod” creatures that can take an early Swords to Plowshares or Snuff Out. Noble Hierarch fits the bill nicely for that role. I see the Coatl coming out later, maybe on turn 5 or 6, as it’s not actually a very good turn 3 play due to being so weak in the first two or three turns. I see the player holding onto Coatl until they can pair it with Ponder or a Brainstorm to make it an immediate threat.
Ultimately, I see this as very good in existing UG decks, but nothing that would spawn a new archetype. Cold-Eyed Selkie is an analog and has seen virtually no play in the format. Decks that look to make Selkie strong are the same that would try to exploit Coatl, through things like Rancor or Curiosity. These don’t have any punch without the card that the deck is built around. I reserve the right to be wrong, however, and I’d love to see a new UG deck based around card-drawing creatures and the Coatl!
Next, check out Mind Funeral:
Mind Funeral
1UB
Sorcery
Target opponent reveals cards from the top of his or her library until four land cards are revealed. That player puts all cards revealed this way into his or her graveyard.
On the face of it, this card is going to mill at least 4 cards from the opponent and stops on lands, which means we have the possibility of colorscrewing the opponent. It’s reasonable to cast and is in colors that are typically strong and deep in Legacy. I did a little bit of testing and averaging with it, and you can often hit 8-15 cards with it, depending on the opponent’s deck. That puts it on par with Glimpse the Unthinkable.
Unfortunately, Mind Funeral does nothing on its own. It doesn’t win the game or really hamper an opponent unless they run a deck that’s light on win conditions and you happen to hit one. What I propose, instead, is an entirely new deck for this card. Legacy has milling decks, like the Grindstone/Painter’s Servant combo and Brain Freeze/High Tide decks, but they require vulnerable cards in the case of the former or chaining spells together in the case of the latter. Mind Funeral and Glimpse the Unthinkable add up to a critical 8 cards that can fuel one of the most devastating cards in Legacy: Haunting Echoes.
How does the game progress after we’ve cast Mind Funeral? On the next turn, maybe we cast a Damnation or Ensnaring Bridge to stop lifeloss, or if we aren’t under any pressure, we can rattle off an Extirpate on something juicy like Tropical Island, Tombstalker, Goblin Ringleader or Mishra’s Factory. Soon, the opponent has about two dozen cards in their graveyard and we have forced through a Haunting Echoes, which takes all but their basic lands and the contents of their hand. The opponent might have only seven or eight cards left in their library and will die very soon. All of this happens with no vulnerability to removal or creature-kill, which gives it a nod over Grindstone strategies.
I’m unsure of how we get to casting Mind Funeral and having it matter, though. It either goes into a base-blue deck that wants to Spell Snare, Force of Will and Brainstorm its way to a lethal Echoes, or it fits into a monoblack shell that splashes a little bit of blue. In either case, we’d want something like Damnation, Evacuation or Ensnaring Bridge to stall for time. The deck would only win when the opponent failed to draw, so it’d have to be very resilient against faster strategies because it has to take out 60 cards instead of 20 life. The deck might have a backup plan like Morphling, Jace Beleren or Meloku The Clouded Mirror. It might adopt the old Owling Mine approach and use Gigadrowse and Exhaustion to slow things down to a crawl.
I am very excited to start working on UB Milling decks with Mind Funeral and its friends. The card plays nicely with Twincast and seems like a resilient strategy in general.
Part II: Older Cards
Like I promised, I’ve got 3 cards up my sleeve for discussion today that we’ve had access to for years and might become much better in the coming environment.
First, let’s look at Submerge. It’s seen play on UG sideboards forever, popping in and out with Mind Harness and Threads of Disloyalty for the creature-removal spell on the sideboard. Submerge hits just about every popular deck except Merfolk and Goblins, foiling Counterbalances and being especially nasty in response to an opponent’s cracked fetchland. Decks relying on tempo and undercosted creatures, like the UG variants and Merfolk, would do well to run Submerge if Lorescale Coatl sees a lot of play. The net effect of the snake is to make games end much faster, and Submerge offers a way to continue advancing your board position while slowing the opponent down for free. It’s unexpected and it dodges Counterbalance like a champ, so I’m inclined to try playing 2 maindeck in a deck like Merfolk or CounterTop. Whereas before, I felt that Submerge wasn’t worth a sideboard spot because there were better plays like Threads of Disloyalty, it’s rising in stock because it hits cards like Tombstalker and Lorescale Coatl that the Threads miss.
Second, take some time to think about Winter Orb. It’s an unused and deadly foil to decks that rely on Sensei’s Divining Top to control card quality and power up that blue enchantment we see all the time. I am really tempted to put it in an old school UG Threshold list, Merfolk or something like the BG Disruption decks we’ve been seeing on the upswing. Combined with cheap threats, Winter Orb is backbreaking and more versatile than Choke, another commonly played sideboard card. The frosty ball has the advantage of being maindeckable, and I am going to be seriously considering what else I can cram it into. The original Miracle Gro decks used Winter Orb in conjunction with Daze and Gush to hamstring opponents on mana while maintaining a steady flow of land drops, and I think a similar plan would hold water in Legacy as well.
Finally, consider Annul as a new sideboard card for the Countertop mirror. Stopping Sensei’s Divining Top is absolutely essential, and Annul couples with Daze and Force of Will to provide another answer to the annoying artifact. It also hits Counterbalance, obviously, and buys a lot of time against tougher matchups like Enchantress. Annul isn’t a game-breaking card, but it slows down the opponent in a way that makes your own Counterbalances much more effective. It’s a cheap stopper to Blood Moon, Painter’s Servant, Isochron Scepter, Engineered Explosives and plenty more pesky cards that can catch a CounterTop deck off guard. I see it as a cheaper Krosan Grip for the sideboard and a great, efficient card in general. It’ll be best with 3-4 copies on hand, though, so one needs to consider seriously whether they can dedicate their sideboard space to something that’ll catch Vedalken Shackles, Choke, Runed Halo, Aether Vial and more.
Thanks for following me this week and enjoy cracking open some Alara Reborn packs! If you have any comments or suggestions on card applications discussed in this article or just want to drop me a line, post in the forums or send me an email at the address below! Until next week…
legacysallure at gmail dawt com