Taking a break from Extended for the week while the results from Grand Prix: LA settle and the metagame adjusts, I’ll be looking at the exciting follow-up to Shards of Alara, Conflux, and its potential applications for the Standard metagame. Personally, I think this set is a big bust for any non-Standard format, but it absolutely reshapes the landscape of the current Standard metagame with a variety of hosers, unique playables, and niche cards that could power up unutilized archetypes.
Before we begin, note that I’ll only be listing the card text for a few of the cards due to the amount I’ll be talking about. In addition, these are all taken from our friends at MTGSalvation and the Mothership, so if there are any errors in the current spoilers, or if I’ve misread a card, I apologize in advance. Onto the show!
Court Homunculus may not look like much from an efficiency standpoint, being merely a conditional 2/2 for W and even more vulnerable to removal due to the Artifact status attached to him. However, if you look deeper, you can see some potential for an Affinity or Esper archetype with the addition of this guy. The same can be said for Darklit Gargoyle and Vedalken Outlander, which aren’t spectacular, but solid enough creatures.
The key is that they help curve out while providing a decent body for a low mana cost. My main issue with any sort of artifact-based deck from just Shards was the lack of a suitable curve to really sustain the deck. It had fine three- and four-drops, but nearly no acceleration or relevant early creatures, other than Tidehollow Sculler. Now you have legitimate options to build an aggro curve, for reference:
1-Drop: Court Homunculus, Noble Hierarch
2-Drop: Tidehollow Sculler, Darklit Gargoyle, Vedalken Outlander, Etherium Sculptor
3-Drop: Master of Etherium, Esperzoa
4-Drop: Tower Gargoyle, Sludge Strider, Sanctum Gargoyle
As you can see, there are a notable number of additions to a would-be Esper deck from Conflux. You could go with purely artifact creatures to maximize the side-bonuses of certain creatures, Sludge Strider being the standout of the group. In essence, a resolved Strider is a ‘fixed’ Disciple of the Vault, by being four mana and forcing you to pay mana for its Drain Life effect. Of course, this is somewhat offset by being a true Drain Life, and also triggering when you play artifacts as well as when they die.
Regardless if you find the new Disciple useful enough to play, the Esper colors now have enough aggressive drops to potentially become a variation of Faeries pre-Bitterblossom, actual aggro-control instead of largely just control. Esperzoa in particular seems tailor-made to go with something like Bone Saw or Sigil of Distinction, which are easily replayable and can provide an immediate effect powering up the 4/3 flyer even moreso. Glaze Fiend and Sanctum Gargoyle can also benefit from the bounce effect while being useful on their own, although the bounce effect is obviously harder to handle in Standard than, say, Legacy.
Point is, you can run 20-24 guys with decent stats and some pretty nice effects along with easy access to Esper Charm, a host of removal, Thoughtseize, and quite a large chunk of the counterspells in Standard. Maybe nothing will come from it, but at least now the cards exist to make something happen.
Noble Hierarch is one of the most obvious power cards in the set; one which some say will surpass Birds of Paradise given time. Obviously the card is very strong, and I expect to see it played in a number of midrange aggro decks and possibly even Mana Ramp. A mana producer that hasn’t been talked about is Knotvine Mystic.
Knotvine Mystic
RGW
Creature – Elf Druid
1, T: Add RGW to your mana pool.
2/2
Three mana for just a plain mana producer is a large investment for what amounts to a +2 from the card per turn, so there isn’t a huge value involved with this, unlike say, Bloom Tender. But so many of this set’s power cards come from having large quantities of mana available, not to mention the already existing strategy of powering out Planeswalkers and Realm Razer on opponents. Normally a card like this wouldn’t see a second glance, but with Banefire, Martial Coup, Fusion Elemental, Child of Alara, and a host of other huge spells, this type of acceleration could become useful enough to see non-Limited play.
Banefire is probably the best card in the set for Standard play. It beats the hell out of Faeries and Five-Color Control players and only happens to be just good everywhere else. It’ll be an auto include into the Vengeant Weenie / RW Lark aggressive decks running around, and I can’t imagine Red decks not running sets if they run enough mana to consistently cast Demigod of Revenge. There are a few other decks for which Banefire is an easy inclusion, and generally the decks that can’t effectively run it are going to be the ones most hurt by it.
Knight of the Reliquary is an adorable niche card; it’ll find its home somewhere and probably be quite good in its limited role. However, it has some substantial drawbacks which will keep it out of the mainstream decks and disallow it from easily being adapted. Such low toughness when it first hits play, even when taking some precautions by having a land in the grave to start with and the lack of evasion or trample really makes it all-in on a complex type of midrange card. Knight is high maintenance and sometimes will just spit in your face for having the gall to cast it and expecting it to actually impact the board in some fashion within the next two turns. However, if you can get into a situation where you have a few free turns to get to work with it, the card not only becomes a significant threat itself, but turns all your otherwise normal lands into an army.
I had mentioned Martial Coup earlier in the article, but hadn’t really given any context to where it could establish itself. I imagine the most common idea of where the card will be played is in Five-Color Control or some sort of Mono White slow control deck as a variant of Decree of Justice. Rather than those traditional slow decks, I think the best usage for it will be in a deck like Bloom-Razer or a WGx Ramp deck. Something that can legitimately use the Wrath of God to clear a room while gaining five tokens, rather than running the card as a one or two-of back-up sweeper / finisher. Even if you use creature cards to essentially Ritual it out, getting a Wrath effect and five power for your trouble is just going to give you a huge edge against many strategies. One possible variant could look something like this:
4 Figure of Destiny
4 Bloom Tender
4 Knotvine Mystic
4 Kitchen Finks
4 Realm Razer
4 Garruk Wildspeaker
4 Martial Coup
4 Banefire
3 Path to Exile
25 Lands
Obviously this is a very rough list, hence all the four-ofs and not quite enough defense. However, I wanted to get a feel for how the deck would benefit from having a guy like Mystic around, and I was very impressed with the turn 4 plays it typically allowed. If Faeries sees a decline, big spell decks will return with a vengeance, so it seems best to see what big spells we want to be playing exactly.
Elemental-wise there are a few goodies, but the most overlooked will likely be Brackwater Elemental. Essentially this creature is a Fog Elemental, but given a slightly less painful drawback and Unearth for an easy four damage. Lasting until end of turn and not end of combat is pretty fun if you want to use any Devour guys or sacrifice it to, say… Tar Fiend. The main comparison is probably to a Blue Hell’s Thunder.
Hell’s Thunder was largely unplayable due to how easy it was to block via the Faerie hordes or Spectral Procession tokens, which is a death knell for a card that can only be used aggressively. You give up Haste, but you get a cheaper Unearth cost and you can use it as a defensive threat against Green or Demigod of Revenge. Plus with the number of cheap, hard-to-beat sweepers that kill 1/1 fliers coming from Conflux, perhaps these kinds of cards can see play again.
Hellspark Elemental is an Elemental I like a lot, despite my disdain for the cheaper cousin, Spark Elemental. Having the potential for six damage from one card, spread out over two mana chunks, is a very enticing proposition. You still get your traditional one-drop, and then get in for the easy three on turn two. After that, though, it just patiently waits to come back and get in for another three when running low on gas, or just to get maximum damage with your mana every turn. Unearth also turns this guy from a terrible topdecked burn spell to one with useful implications, as now any old Mulldrifter, Mogg Fanatic, or Mutavault can’t just step in the way once and get your opponent into the clear.
Thornling is a creature that is borderline playable. I can imagine some games it just comes down and takes over as a very difficult-to-stop beatstick against control. On the other hand, as Patrick Chapin pointed out earlier this week, Thornling dies or gets removed far more often than one would think considering it comes with an indestructible clause. Against aggro, without an untap feature, he’s just like any other big dumb monster sitting there waiting to try to take out the biggest non-evasion guy on the table. Although it’ll likely see some play in some Mana Ramp variants, you can probably do better for the huge amount of mana you’ll have to invest in this guy to make him truly worthwhile.
Volcanic Fallout
1RR
Instant
Volcanic Fallout can’t be countered.
Volcanic Fallout deals 2 damage to each creature and each player.
Scattershot Archer
G
Creature – Elf Archer
T: Scattershot Archer deals 1 damage to each creature with flying
1/2
Celestial Purge
1W
Instant
Remove target red or black permanent from the game.
These cards… to quote Kyle Broflovski, “Really?” I mean, you put Banefire in the set, but just too really make sure Faeries gets hit hard, we’ll add not one, but multiple sweepers and Bitterblossom removal that are all difficult to deal with. Volcanic Blowout basically says any time you think you might be winning with a creature swarm, you aren’t. Scattershot Archer is a reusable Faerie wrecking machine which no activation cost other than tapping. Sure, both of these cards can be dealt with, the former with Thoughtseize and Vendilion Clique, the Elf with Agony Warp and Terror, and Purge can be Seized or countered, but Fae needs its own answer cards or you just get worked over. Plus, with the pressing need to stop these guys, you have to ignore the other devastating plays the opponent might have.
Celestial Purge in particular makes the best play Faeries has into a rather miserable one-for-one trade on turn 2. Sure, Purge is just about dead if you don’t have the Bitterblossom, but your entire deck is magnitudes more manageable without the dreaded turn 2 Bitterblossom-Go start sequence. Oh, and it crushes a huge number of playable monsters in other decks without the drawback of Path to Exile accelerating the opponent or fixing his mana
For the lands, the most intriguing one is Ancient Ziggurat:
Ancient Ziggurat
Land
T: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool. Spend this mana only to play a creature spell.
A new deck would likely have to be made for it to see significant play. The mana fixing for, say, a 28-creature deck would simply be amazing, allowing you to cast guys like Doran, The Siege Tower and Woolly Thoctar in the same deck without too many comes-into-play-tapped lands. Or you could go the greedy route and use it to help cast cards like Fusion Elemental and Demigod of Revenge in the same deck, and simply overpower opponents with giants that would normally be uncastable from a single deck. This land will require some ingenuity to use, as you’d have to lower your spell count drastically to get full value from it, but it has the highest amount of potential from any of the lands in the set.
The last cards I want to discuss are two of the Domain cards I think have a real chance at seeing play: Worldly Counsel and Exploding Borders. Worldly Counsel’s effect, a variable Impulse, is definitely good enough to see play if a Blue deck is available that runs at least three basic land types and can hit them consistently. Remember, Impulse was not a big turn 2 play back in the day; rather, it was a card that could either give you an answer to a threat that instant, or one you used it to fetch up the final piece of the puzzle for your hand. Counsel in a Bant deck makes the most sense to me, as it plays enough of a control game to utilize multiple basics and take full advantage of the fixed Impulse.
On the other side, we have the aggressive Domain card, Exploding Borders, which is a Tribal Flames and Rampant Growth duct-taped together. Set at 2RG, Borders mana cost is definitely correct; it’s simply a matter of how valuable fetching a land and dealing 3-5 damage is. Naya Aggro is the most likely landing spot for this card, since an Exploding Borders for four, plus a follow-up Banefire for five negates half the opponent’s life. The idea is that you not only grab a random basic land to deal extra damage with the card, but you get to accelerate one closer to Banefire, multiple attacking manlands, Realm Razer, etc. Strictly looked at as a sorcery speed burn spell, even in Standard it isn’t good enough, but when you also get a land out of it, that can be a great deal from one card.
Remember that cards like Beacon of Destruction used to see play and dealt five damage for five mana, Flame Javelin is perfectly playable at 2RR for four damage, and Banefire is always one damage less than the mana invested into it before dismissing it out of hand for being an overcosted burn spell. There may not be a home for this card in Standard, but I imagine that would largely be because people don’t want to play the numbers of basics to make Domain worthwhile.
For those attending the prerelease this weekend, best of luck to you, and may Conflux make Standard interesting again!
Josh Silvestri
Team Reflection
Email me at: joshDOTsilvestriATgmailDOTcom
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