I’ve never written a set review before, for the simple reason that I’ve never taken much interest in the things myself. Although I spend a lot of time poring over spoilers, I’m just not the type to scroll through a new set and ask myself the vague question, “How good is this card?” for each new contestant. Instead, I’ve always look for three very specific things in a card:
1) Does this card improve a deficient matchup for an existing archetype?
2) Does this card make an existing archetype more powerful – and thus a stronger contender overall?
3) Does this card allow for the creation of a new archetype?
That’s it. If the card doesn’t do any of these three things, I don’t care how “good” it looks. I’m simply not interested.
I recall hearing a discussion when Time Spiral first came out, in which it was asserted that Avoid Fate might be useful as a sideboard answer to spot removal. Now, while I agree that if some deck were to play it, that’s what it would be used for, it’s not (1) improving any deficient matchups for existing archetypes, it’s not (2) making any existing archetype more powerful, and it’s certainly not (3) creating a new archetype by itself… so I don’t care about it.
This article marks my first-ever set review, and it will be a significant departure from the usual fare.
Instead of going the traditional card-by-card route, I’m going to go deck-by-deck and see which Planar Chaos cards I think might actually make the cut in those archetypes. In this way, you can both see some ideas for your weapon of choice and – perhaps more importantly – take a look at how the other decks in the field might have evolved the next time you run into them. Then, in case you’re not excited enough about the way the existing archetypes might shift, I’ll wrap things up by proposing a brand-new decklist made possible only by the cards in Planar Chaos.
I haven’t played a game of Standard since States – so, trust me, you don’t want my opinion on that format – but I’m fresh off a Top 8 in this Extended PTQ season, and feel more than qualified to talk about that. Therefore, the decks on the menu today are as follows.
Big Mana U/W
Scepter-Chant
Boros
Affinity
Ichorid
Aggro Loam
Flow Deck Wins
U/G Opposition
Trinket Angel
TEPS
Feldman’s Mystery Concoction
First up is the archetype I’m most familiar with.
Big Mana U/W
Contenders:
Porphyry Nodes
Piracy Charm
Sunlance
Magus of the Tabernacle
Big Mana Blue decks have a very specific set of hosers that beat them like nothing else. Some of those cards are called “Destructive Flow.” Others are called “Dwarven Blastminer.” Others are called… well, actually there really aren’t any others. So what can PC do to help Big Mana U/W beat those two cards?
Since the only new Blue or White card that can take out a Destructive Flow is Saltblast (blech), we’re left to scrounging for answers to Blastminer, the other popular Tron-hoser in the format. Blastminer does a good job of defending himself against Wrath – and sometimes even Repeal – simply by pounding on your lands as quickly as you can lay them, so that you’ll never have enough in one turn to remove him. Thus, any one-mana solution to Blastminer becomes immediately attractive.
I mention Piracy Charm for thoroughness, and because it kills Kataki as well, but realistically it’s too narrow a card to actually make the cut in any sideboard I’d endorse. Although it will most likely kill Blastminer before he can get an activation off – unlike Porphyry Nodes – the degree to which Nodes is superior in the event that the opponent doesn’t draw Blastminer or Kataki is absurd. The same downside applies to Sunlance, which will kill Kird Ape and Frogmite but not Kataki (or even Savannah Lions), and which is therefore just as unexciting as the Charm as far as answers to Blastminer go.
In fact, as Big Mana U/W’s worst matchups tend to be in the aggressive end of the spectrum, Porphyry Nodes makes for a very attractive sideboard option in general. So attractive, in fact, that I’d say it might even make the maindeck of certain builds for its attacker-smashing potential alone. If you play out a Nodes and it starts munching on an aggressive opponent’s early drops, he has two choices: either succumb to it and let all his creatures die off so that it will go away, or play out more creatures and attempt to race it.
As the Big Mana player, the first option is gold because it means you paid one mana to clear the opponent’s board. Not only that, but you paid that one mana on turns 1-3, meaning you are still free to cast your big turn 4 draw spell where normally you’d need to Wrath. And if the opponent tries to race the Nodes? Repeal him right out the game, or punish his overextension with an actual Wrath. (“Wrath you; damn, I lost my Nodes. Oh wait, you lost four guys.”) Finally, Nodes provides an answer to the periodically annoying Meddling Mage, who inevitably names Wrath of God and protects himself and his buddies from retribution until you can find a Repeal (or Engineered Explosives, if that’s how you roll). Nodes is one more way to deal with the Meddling Kids and their dog.
Magus of the Tabernacle is another interesting proposition, as he gums up aggressive decks’ mana and is a formidable blocker. He puts U/G Opposition in the unenviable position of deciding between its mana (which it needs to cast Opposition) and its creatures (which it needs to make Opposition any good), but if it happens to have lots of mana out when you play the 2/6, you haven’t accomplished much. And while 2/6 is not insurmountable for Boros at face value – clearly they’ll just battle with Silver Knight, you block, then they Sudden Shock and Firebolt him in the second main phase and Bob’s your uncle. However, keep in mind that the Magus forces them to tap 2-3 mana every upkeep; a 21-land Boros deck is going to be hard-pressed to pay for four additional points worth of burn with that kind of upkeep cost in tow.
Of course, Magus of the Tabernacle isn’t for everyone. (Ask your doctor.) Aggro Loam will probably be more excited that you tapped four mana in your main phase (here come the Dreams!) than they will be fazed that their Birds no longer net them mana. Affinity will be irritated by the loss of random Frogmites and Arcbound Workers but can still beat you handily with 1-2 huge guys. Ichorid might lose some Zombie tokens, and tapping out against Flow Deck Wins doesn’t seem like a winning proposition even if you do disrupt its attack plan in exchange.
In sum, Magus seems strong against Boros, decent against Opposition, and unexciting against the other aggressive strategies. Since Boros is hardly the most popular aggro deck right now, I’d say that takes the 2/6 out of the running.
Final Verdict:
Charm and Sunlance are much less attractive than Nodes, and Magus just doesn’t make the cut. Only Porphyry Nodes seems to be a worthy sideboard card, to the tune of 2-4 copies depending on how much room you have.
Scepter-Chant
Contenders:
Porphyry Nodes
Magus of the Tabernacle
Venarian Glimmer
I chose to do this archetype next because I knew there’d be some overlap. Porphyry Nodes is less valuable in Scepter-Chant (not “NO Stick”, by the way – everyone has a right to name his/her deck, but everyone else has the right to ignore that name if you come up with a dumb one) than it was in Big Mana U/W, simply because Scepter-Chant doesn’t play Signets and is thus less concerned with Kataki, and has plenty of Fire / Ice and Lightning Helix-flavored answers to Dwarven Blastminer as it is. However, the card still looks very appealing as a cheap, brute-force sideboard hoser against aggressive strategies, so I’d consider devoting a couple of Scepter-Chant’s ten (or so) non-Wish sideboard slots to playtest the Nodes.
Magus of the Tabernacle was included here for the same reason he was included in Big Mana’s list: he looks like he has potential. Once again, though, I don’t see him measuring up; the arguments for and against him in Scepter-Chant are relatively unchanged from my thoughts on playing him in Big Mana U/W, above. (I don’t think he makes the cut, on balance.)
Surprisingly, it is Venarian Glimmer that shows the most potential to me. You can play Glimmer with X=3 against Green decks before laying a Scepter, in order to clear out a Krosan Grip if they’ve got one. If they have Ancient Grudge instead of Krosan Grip, it doesn’t quite deal with it entirely – but it does open the Grudge up to being stymied by a single Counterspell or Spell Snare. As those two cards are Scepter-Chant’s most feared adversaries, the four-mana Glimmer becomes interesting enough in my book to warrant testing.
I could see this card making the cut as either a two- or three-of in the board, or simply as a Wish target. It’s definitely on the mana-intensive side when you have to pay for a Cunning Wish beforehand, but if you’re not on much of a clock and need to make sure you don’t fold to one Grudge or Grip, you’ll be glad to have access to one in the board.
Final Verdict:
I’d be interested in trying out 2-3 copies apiece of Porphyry Nodes and Venarian Glimmer for the sideboard, but Scepter-Chant’s sideboard slots are more precious than most because the Wish targets take up so much room. If Glimmer doesn’t work out in multiples, it could still be worth putting one in the board to Wish for. Magus seems just as poor here as he does in Big Mana U/W.
Boros
Contenders:
Mana Tithe
Lavacore Elemental
Seal of Primordium
Mire Boa
Moving on to the beatdown decks, let’s start with a look at the consistently under-performing Boros archetype. There are so many cards that I think might be worthwhile in this archetype, I had to clear the borderline cards off the “Contenders” list altogether and narrow it down to just the ones I really think show potential. Still, I’ll take a moment to skim over the cards that look like they might be worth testing, but which I think fall short of the mark.
Blood Knight, for example, will probably be automatically considered for every Boros list because of his similarities to Silver Knight, but protection from White is hardly relevant these days except in the mirror – which is the least of Boros’s worries at this stage in the season. He’s the first to get voted off the island in my book, but there are plenty on the way out behind him: Keen Sense (Boros doesn’t need that effect), Timbermare (seems less promising than Stonewood Invocation), Simian Spirit Guide (let’s start by playing Chrome Mox for this effect, then if we need more we’ll look at this guy), Boom / Bust (you’d have to contort your mana to break the symmetry, and it would only a marginal improvement over Molten Rain even if you did), Volcano Hellion (usually kills one of your own guys in all the matchups where you’d be comfortable going all-in with him, and still sets you up for a blowout if they can remove him), Kavu Predator (Helix still kills him, and Baloth and Hierarch aren’t all that popular these days), Hedge Troll (too expensive, even if he does resemble a Troll Ascetic without the GG requirement), and Stonecloaker (too clunky for the main and underpowered compared to Tormod’s Crypt in the board).
Mana Tithe is probably the most interesting card on the list of Contenders. Much like Orim’s Chant, the Tithe is an effective way to stave off a turn 4 Wrath of God – if they counter the Chant on upkeep, they won’t have the mana for Wrath – but much unlike Chant, Tithe stops the Wrath altogether if the opponent should be unfortunate enough to walk into it. More importantly, it can also deal with big game from other decks – one mana to shoot down your Arcbound Ravager? Thanks. Is that a Psychatog on the stack, Ichorid? Mana untapped?
It’s not all gravy, though. While Tithe can certainly be an early-game beating for Boros, it can also be a late-game dud. One of the main strengths of the “X Deck Wins” archetype has always been its ability to topdeck into proactive, go-for-the-throat, “Finish Him!”-style cards. Burn, Cursed Scroll, Grim Lavamancer, evasive attackers, and so forth, can put the opponent away even after he’s stabilized the board, as he scrambles to kill you before you can draw one of them.
Tithe, like Orim’s Chant and unlike Molten Rain (the usual replacement), is a generally poor topdeck once you’ve thrown everything you can at the opponent in order to knock him into range of your direct damage utility cards, as it’s… well… not a direct damage utility card. Certainly not all your cards can fit this bill – Kird Ape, Isamaru, and Savannah Lions are hardly any better topdecks in those situations – but it’s important to consider the repercussions of removing direct damage from a deck that so often plays into needing to topdeck some. Finally, even though playing Force Spike over Orim’s Chant takes the TEPS matchup down a few very large notches, I think Tithe is a promising card for Boros overall because of its early game potential against Wrath and other aggro decks, and would recommend giving it a shot.
If you stick a Lavacore Elemental turn 3 against Big Mana U/W, and you’re either on the play holding a shiny new White Force Spike or they simply don’t have the Wrath, you are about to deliver some completely unfair amounts of damage. TEPS is even less prepared to handle this gentleman, and he puts them on a fast enough clock to create a “go off now or die” situation after his first attack. Still, he is quite horrible if you can’t be sure that your early drops will connect, so he must be relegated to the sideboard for sure. I have my doubts, though. “Helps beats Big Mana U/W? If your Boros deck can’t beat that deck, why are you playing it at all? And don’t you have better sideboard options against TEPS than this clunker?” (And yes, I realize I said I’d leave cards I didn’t think were worthwhile off the Contenders list, but this guy looks so appealing, I figured he was worth a full paragraph’s explanation as to why I wouldn’t bother testing him out.)
At face value, Seal of Primordium seems unlikely to take the place of Ancient Grudge in Boros’s sideboard, simply because of that card’s devastating applications against Affinity and Scepter-Chant. It’s also generally worse than Krosan Grip against either of those decks (unless maybe Scepter-Chant starts boarding Venerian Glimmer, in which case sneaking it in when they’re tapped out for Wrath could actually be superior to Grip or Grudge), but it is mainly worth investigating because its applications are so much more diverse. Seal kills Lotus Bloom good and dead without contributing to Storm, it takes out notable enchantments Seismic Assault, Worship, and Armadillo Cloak, and it does so while dodging the Duresses and Cabal Therapies that can protect such enchantments from Krosan Grip. Perhaps more importantly, it provides defense against “Umezawa’s Jitte, equip, attack” and the same from Sword of Fire and Ice, Armadillo Cloak, and Cranial Plating – without asking that you leave mana up every turn to do so. So although it doesn’t offer the brute-force “Improved Rack and Ruin” potential of Grudge, or the split-second deliciousness of Grip, the Seal can still make plays possible that neither of these alternatives can against even their best matchups (Affinity and Scepter-Chant), while generally offering more versatility against other decks as well. A card worthy of playtesting, for sure.
Mire Boa’s stock value continues to rise as the number of Rock decks and midrange Destructive Flow decks increases. Against those decks, Boa can alternately play Soltari Priest on offense or halt even a Troll Ascetic brandishing a Sword (not a Jitte, mind) on defense. If these traits seem desirable, the main question will become whether or not he’s worth cutting something (especially Priest, Knight, or Legionnaire) to make room.
Final Verdict:
Try out Mana Tithe in the Molten Rain / Orim’s Chant Slot, or maybe do a 2/2 split between Chant and Tithe. I wouldn’t bother with Lavacore Elemental, but if you do, make sure he’s kicking ass and taking names against TEPS, Scepter-Chant, and Big Mana U/W; if he can’t even shine in those matchups, get him out the door before you hurt yourself. Give Seal of Primordium a go against Scepter-Chant (playing Venarian Glimmer, let’s say), U/W Big Mana, and Affinity, where it’s expected to be noticeably worse than the Grudges and / or Grips you were playing before. If it proves acceptable in those matchups, it’s probably worth the slot instead of your old standby. Finally, if you’re looking for an edge against Flow and / or Rock, I’d suggest making room for 2-4 copies of Mire Boa somewhere in your list.
Affinity
Contenders:
Piracy Charm
Pongify
Fatal Frenzy
Boros took awhile to go over, so I’m going to follow up with a light one. Affinity is still mostly a Mirrodin Block deck, and that’s not likely to change with the arrival of Planar Chaos.
Yet again, I’m including Piracy Charm as a Contender, and yet again, it’s a pretty big stretch. I bring it up for this deck only because it offers you a non-Red, non-Black answer to Kataki. That allows you to play U/G Affinity or U/W Affinity or even U/G/W Affinity, should your heart so desire, without packing to that (admittedly less and less popular) sideboard hoser. A Blue/White Affinity list playing chiefly Blue spells and Meddling Mage, for example, could perhaps make use of Disrupting Shoal. Is that worthwhile? I’m hardly the guy to ask, as I’ve been firmly entrenched in the 4 Shrapnel Blast camp since Aether Vial was banned. Still, I thought I’d mention the possibility for those more open to creatively modifying this chronically bland archetype.
Pongify has potential as a sideboarded one-mana 3/3, simply because everyone is blowing up your guys when you’re Affinity in game 2. The first Ancient Grudge may go for the Cranial Plating, sure, but the flashback is headed for the Ravager or the Enforcer. A decent measure of counterattack is to let them aim a removal spell at your biggest guy, then Pongify it in response to keep the pressure on rather than letting the wind get knocked out of your sails as you lose your primary source of damage. Granted, Welding Jar has always offered a similar role – while contributing to Affinity for Artifacts, no less – but the Jar does not allow you to upgrade Frogmites and Arcbound Workers that are headed to the grumper anyway, nor can it combat Kataki, which Pongify does effectively – if inefficiently. I’d say the card is just barely worth testing, though I’ll admit I don’t have high hopes.
My teammate JP Smee used to swear up and down by Fling in Affinity when it was Extended-legal. While Fatal Frenzy is one mana more expensive and isn’t nearly as good in the face of removal, it has the potential to do even more damage than Fling did, thanks to trample. I am all about maximizing damage to the opponent’s dome in my Affinity lists, and as such I am more excited about this one contender than I am about any three of Boros’s potential playables combined. Turn 3: equip Plating, bash. Turn 4: Berserk you for twelve and the game? The potential for brokenness is huge.
Final Verdict:
Make room for 2-3 copies of Fatal Frenzy in the maindeck of your normal Affinity list (over Atog, most likely, if you’ve got him), or use Piracy Charm to build a non-Red, non-Black variant that is still resilient to Kataki. In either case, Pongify is a sideboard card worth testing against Ancient Grudge and / or Kataki decks; you’ve probably got time to test it out anyway, as Affinity is never exactly bristling with new and exciting cards to try.
Contenders:
Extirpate
Big Game Hunter
Magus of the Bazaar
I’m unhappy that we’ve reached a Black deck, because now I have to talk about Extirpate. Any deck that plays Duress or Cabal Therapy will inevitably have Extirpate on its Contenders list, simply because of the potential for Duressing, say, a Burning Wish from TEPS and effecting a two-mana Cranial Extraction by Extirpating it. While that’s very cute, I’d like to go on record as saying I don’t see it coming up often enough to be good. I see Extirpate as being a highly effective sideboard card against the card Life from the Loam and, to some extent, Academy Ruins – but I’m not so sure I’d rather have it than Tormod’s Crypt against Aggro Loam anyway. I’d usually rather hose Terravore and cripple Life from the Loam than do a really good job eliminating Loam altogether, but leave the Vore untouched in the process. I’d even rather have Crypt against Ichorid itself – provided I can remove a Pithing Needle – because Extirpate is Cabal Therapy fodder unless the Ichorid player happens to dredge a 3/1 into his graveyard before casting a single Therapy.
As far as playing the card in Ichorid goes, as that’s the deck in the spotlight right now, the issue is largely moot because Ichorid doesn’t actually draw cards all that often, and Coffin Purge doesn’t mind if you dredge into it. It’s the same problem Ichorid has always had with playing Pithing Needle as an answer to Tormod’s Crypt: if you don’t have one in your opening hand, your chances of topdecking it are extremely poor because all your topdecks with that seem to yield, for some reason, Golgari Grave-Trolls and Stinkweed Imps.
Big Game Hunter earns mention because he effects a Reprisal for one mana, while feeding Ichorids as a Black creature. That’s two different kinds of efficient, and while his effect is admittedly narrow in this environment, it’s also somewhat tutorable (once you dredge into Golgari Thug), meaning you could get away with 1-2 copies in the board if all you needed to do was to, say, kill a Platinum Angel or Crovax that was impeding your path to victory. So while I wouldn’t play him right now – who plays Platinum Angel (besides me) or Crovax? – I would keep him on standby as a highly synergistic and efficient answer to a specific set of creatures, in the event that it becomes important for you to remove one of said creatures post-board.
I’ve saved the best for last; Magus of the Bazaar seems to be the most Ichorid-friendly card in all of Planar Chaos. Unless you have a Psychatog or Zombie Infestation in play, you could care less about the size of your hand; all you want to do is Draw A Card so that you can replace the act of putting something into your hand with putting several somethings into your graveyard. In that sense, Magus is essentially a free Deep Analysis every turn that doesn’t cost you mana or three life, and puts the dredgers in your hand back in the bin for you when he’s done. God forbid you should hit a Deep Analysis with the Magus activation and dredge five times in one turn…
The huge downsides to this guy are his frail 0/1 body – which dies to everything from Darkblast to Fire / Ice to a stiff breeze — and his summoning sickness. Granted, Big Mana U/W can only Repeal or Wrath him in game 1, modern Aggro Loam (with Black instead of White and hand disruption instead of burn) has a very scant selection of answers to him, and Opposition has pretty much nothing… but all the other decks in my list can handily dispatch him with an otherwise unexciting Lightning Helix, Fire / Ice, or what-have-you, both before and after sideboarding. Still, there’s always the hope that he can be protected by Cabal Therapy, and his effect is extremely powerful, so I would try him out in Masahiko Mihara’s list from Worlds (as reported here) as a four-of, removing the two Wild Mongrels and the pair of Tolarian Winds. If his fragility doesn’t prove too much of a problem (nothing sucks more than having your only discard outlet suffer from summoning sickness, then die to Fire / Ice and having no other way to discard even your first dredger) his potential for consecutive broken turns is so great that I think he still merits testing.
Final Verdict:
Magus seems extremely powerful, but there’s a good chance he will die too easily to ever realize that potential. Extirpate is most likely worse than Coffin Purge for this deck, and Big Game Hunter should be kept in mind for future sideboards as a special-purpose card.
Aggro Loam
Contenders:
Mana Tithe
Extirpate
Mire Boa
Seal of Primordium
Harmonize
Although it started out as R/G with a White splash, Aggro Loam decks of late have turned to a black splash for Duress and Cabal Therapy instead. Benjamin Peebles-Mundy talked about a White version of the deck which still posted unexciting results against aggressive decks, so I am left to wonder – being an admittedly infrequent pilot of this particular archetype – how the Black versions will fare if last week’s PTQ results are an indicator of things to come, and Affinity and Flow Deck Wins are indeed on the rise.
Simply put, Mana Tithe allows you to play White for Hierarch and Confinement, while retaining a degree of disruption against non-aggro decks. Force Spike is a paltry disruption card compared to the likes of Duress and Cabal Therapy, but it can still snag Signets from Big Mana decks and counter Spell Snares when Scepter-Chant left only one mana open to stop your Devastating Dreams. I’ll be the first to admit that this plan is a long shot, but if you need to play White or else lose to the aggro decks, some degree of disruption against the rest of the field is better than nothing at all.
Extirpate is much more enticing for the Black versions of this deck than it was in Ichorid. Aggro Loam is so good at filling up its hand with Life from the Loam, it can fight protracted attrition wars against control decks in which the defender is trying to stave off Devastating Dreams and the Loam player is drawing cards, casting hand disruption, and playing test spells. If Extirpate removes a Wrath somewhere along the line, or a Tormod’s Crypt that threatens to be recurred via Academy Ruins, the Loam player gets a big leg up. Its applications in the mirror are also self-evident, as its ability to Lobotomize opposing Life from the Loams for one mana is strong. Is it better than Tormod’s Crypt? In this particular case, it might just be.
Mire Boa is worth examining for the sole reason that he is an efficient two-drop that survives Devastating Dreams. Werebear, Wild Mongrel, and Vinelasher Kudzu have all seen play on these grounds, and while those creatures also have the potential to deal an unfair amount of damage, they are also substantially worse than a 2/1 regenerator when things aren’t going well. Besides Kudzu, only Mire Boa can effectively play defense against Troll Ascetics and 4/4s like Baloth, Hierarch, and Myr Enforcer when you’re on your heels and need to stabilize, and Kudzu has his own problem of being a pitiful late-game topdeck across the board. Werebear shrinks to a vanilla 1/1 if you have been Crypted, and none of the other creatures can sneak damage past a Troll Ascetic parked on defense. Are these situational upsides enough to justify Boa over his potentially more broken brethren? The answer to that question isn’t immediately clear to me, which means he has enough going for him to merit testing.
I don’t like Seal of Primordium for this deck nearly as much as I do for Boros – largely because Krosan Grip is so much better against careless PTQers’ Crypts – but all the other costs and benefits associated with playing this card over Grudge or Grip, which I discussed in the Boros section, apply here just as well. It’s also worth quickly mentioning that Seal is a somewhat stronger answer to Destructive Flow than is Krosan Grip, because of the opposition’s potential to remove the latter with Duress and Cabal Therapy. (Life from the Loam, unfortunately, is only a good answer to that card if you’ve already gotten a decent number of lands in play, as that’s the number you’ll be capped at until the Flow is dealt with.)
Finally, Harmonize both seems like a potential sideboard-worthy card against control decks. Though pricey by Extended standards, it should be both a fine test spell against countermagic, and quick way to refill after having been attacked by Duress and Therapy from Rock-style decks.
Final Verdict:
If you need White to beat aggressive strategies, try out Mana Tithe as a way to retain a degree of disruption against the non-aggro decks in the format. Extirpate makes sense here over Tormod’s Crypt, although Seal of Primordium is likely worse than Krosan Grip. Mire Boa is worth testing in place of other two-drops such as Mongrel, Werebear, and Kudzu, as he offers consistency and superior defensive options over higher damage potential. If those benefits prove more valuable these days than simply going straight for the throat, he may yet make the cut. Finally, Harmonize presents a solid sideboard option for attrition wars against Rock-style decks and countermagic-oriented archetypes.
Flow Deck Wins
Contenders:
Simian Spirit Guide
Mire Boa
Extirpate
Spirit Guide has automatic potential in a deck like this because he can be pitched to enable a turn 1 or turn 2 Destructive Flow, and even as a random Gray Ogre dork, he’s just fine at holding something sharp or flashing back a Cabal Therapy. While the one-shot Lotus Petal effect is not desirable for most archetypes, Flow is so powerful when slipped in a turn early, anything that allows it to do so must be considered for Constructed play. The fact that he has alternate – if inefficient – applications beyond the first two turns of the game make him instantly playtest-worthy in my book.
Speaking of equipment-holders, Mire Boa is an excellent man at doing just that, and provides evasion in the mirror match to help punch through with Sword of Fire and Ice when the ground has been stalled. He’s only a minor upgrade over Wild Mongrel in the mirror match, though, and potentially worse in matchups where dealing damage is critical (especially TEPS and Ichorid), so I would only recommend giving him a shot if you consider the mirror match an important one to win.
As with Ichorid, I also don’t like Extirpate for this deck. Unlike with Aggro Loam, Flow Deck games tend not to drag out into attrition wars, so the potential for nailing non-graveyard bombs, Cranial Extraction-style, is decreased considerably. Moreover, because Flow’s games tend not to drag on as long, the value of an Extraction-type effect is also lessened. Tormod’s Crypt is cheaper, more resilient to hand disruption, and more effective at muting Terravores and Werebears, so in this case the incumbent gets the nod over the challenger.
Final Verdict:
Extirpate seems worse than Crypt here, and Mire Boa would be a narrow upgrade over Wild Mongrel even if the situations where he is superior come up a lot. Only Simian Spirit Guide offers real promise, and he certainly seems worthy of playtesting because of his interaction with the format’s most broadly devastating hoser.
U/G Opposition
Contenders:
Gaea’s Anthem
Life and Limb
Essence Warden
Pongify
Gaea’s Anthem bears mentioning in any deck playing Beacon of Creation, but I frankly don’t think it’s worth it in this particular strategy. If you don’t have the Beacon, turning your two or three 1/1 dorks into 2/2 dorks is not going to be a substantial enough upgrade to be worth the investment of mana and a card, and on these grounds I’m relegating the Anthem to the “Win More” pile unless Crovax starts to see play.
Life and Limb does a decent, if scary, Beacon of Creation impression. However, unless there is some kind of Forest-Saproling interaction I am missing out on (aside from the super-cute Beacon-then-Life-and-Limb-then-Beacon sequence), opening yourself up to Armageddon seems too risky in too many matchups. Even TEPS can Burning Wish for a Pyroclasm effect, and I’m not excited by the prospects of turning my opponent’s Firebolts into Stone Rains, either.
Essence Warden is the first card on my Contenders list here to show promise. Sure, she’s Lavamancer bait against Boros, but Ichorid and Affinity have limited options (2-3 copies of sideboarded Darkblast being the most likely from either deck) for removing her, and in the meantime she can turn a damage race around. Even if you don’t have the “Trophy Me” draw of Warden into Beacon, you can expect a creature a turn from Affinity and yourself, making her a bit like a one-mana Sun Droplet that plays well with Opposition in that matchup. Against Ichorid, forget about it – you’ll be gaining upwards of three life on each of the opponent’s upkeeps as the 3/1s hit the table, and the Warden should be worth her weight in gold. If there’s room in your U/G deck’s sideboard for an efficient damage mitigation effect against Affinity and Ichorid, this is likely one of the best available.
Being limited to two removal-light colors makes it difficult for Opposition to deal with utility creatures like Grim Lavamancer, Dark Confidant, and (theoretically) Goblin Sharpshooter, as well as discard outlets from Ichorid like Putrid Imp and Psychatog. Pongify remedies that deficiency in exchange for a point of card advantage and a 3/3 body for the opponent, which can easily be managed via Opposition or a Call of the Herd token. Pongify can also take out an attacker brandishing a Jitte, a card which can be devastating against this deck if it connects even once. If there is to be a home for the new Simian Swords to Plowshares in Extended, I’ll bet U/G is it.
Final Verdict:
Pongify shows the most potential overall, though Warden seems very strong at the one very specific task of turning damage races around against Affinity and Ichorid. Life and Limb is too risky at a glance, though if it could be comboed with some Saproling-related card, it might be worth playing. Gaea’s Anthem has all the trappings of the archetypical Win More card, and is likely not worth testing at all.
Trinket Angel
Contenders:
Revered Dead
Lavacore Elemental
Revered Dead is a joke. It’s actually a reference that only those who participated in the Ogre’s Cards forums and know of the secret brokenness of Drudge Skeletons are likely to get. Please don’t actually playtest with this card.
By far, Trinket Angel is the deck least impacted by Planar Chaos. Even the one actual contender I could scrounge together, Lavacore Elemental, is very narrow. In the specific matchups of TEPS and Big Mana U/W, he has the potential to seal games quickly — but only if he can be backed up by additional disruption (Meddling Mage or Stifle) against TEPS, and only against Big Mana U/W if he isn’t Wrathed away immediately.
Final Verdict:
Might as well try out Lavacore Elemental – it’s not like you’re getting anything else from Planar Chaos.
TEPS
Contenders:
Porphyry Nodes
Simian Spirit Guide
Seal of Primordium
Null Profusion
Again, Nodes comes to save the day against Dwarven Blastminer. Being a five-color deck, TEPS already has access to many different answers to that card; Nodes, however, is the only one that comes with built-in disruption against the rest of the opponent’s offense (including Meddling Mage), and that upgrade may make it worth boarding by itself.
Simian Spirit Guide is unfortunate for this deck in that he’s useless when revealed by Mind’s Desire except for generating an extra point of Storm. I think the rest of the deck is Ritual-tastic enough without him as it is, so I don’t think he quite makes the playtest list for now.
Seal of Primordium is a fine sideboard answer to Destructive Flow that cannot be as easily Duressed as Krosan Grip, but if that card is your only worry, Ray of Revelation gets the job done even if it is Duressed. Seal does take out Chalice of the Void and Isochron Scepter as well, though, so it may be worth testing despite the fact that it is worse than Ray at taking out Flow and worse than Grip at taking out Chalice and Scepter.
TEPS gets a very exciting new PC addition in Null Profusion. To be clear, I have no intention of ever playing this card and passing the turn; rather, I want to Ritual it out and then start going off. It will probably take a two or three rituals to get the Profusion in play, so you should be low on those kinds of effects once it does hit the table, but from there on out you are juiced up. Play a Chrome Mox, draw a card. Play Rite of Flame, draw a card. Play Chromatic Star, draw a card. The -6 hit to your mana is a hurdle, to be sure, but I’m thinking the number of cards you’ll chain-draw would have a decent chance of providing you with enough Rituals to achieve Mind’s Desire mana, while serving up a Desire itself (if you didn’t have one already) and tall, frosty Storm count to top it off. Hitting a Null Profusion off a Mind’s Desire would probably be similar to Sins of the Past as well, as you’d play it first and then start cantripping through the remaining Desired free cards with reckless abandon.
Final Verdict:
I would definitely try removing, say, 1-2 Sins of the Past and maybe a Channel the Suns for a few Null Profusions, and see how they work out. (Sins is definitely better when played off a Desire, but almost certainly worse when you don’t have a Desire in the ‘yard and still need to combo out.) Porphyry Nodes should be tried out in the board against Blastminer, and Seal of Primordium bears testing over Krosan Grip, if it was in there before. Simian Spirit Guide simply doesn’t make the cut.
Feldman’s Mystery Concoction
And now, for something completely different!
Remember how I said that something I look for in new cards is the ability to create new archetypes?
One thing I observed about Groundbreaker and Timbermare is that they are extremely good at connecting for damage. Barring Silver Knight and Psychatog, practically no early blockers in Extended can plan to step in front of Groundbreaker without dying and letting through some trample damage. Timbermare, on the other hand, just gets damage in.
However, each of these cards has the downside of dying after they get their one hit in (’cause who can afford six mana for TLM’s Echo?), so I began to look for ways to minimize that downside.
I came up with two answers. One is equipment; Timbermare equipped with Sword of Fire and Ice screams “Nine you!” and draws a card, while Groundbreaker becomes a healthy 8/3 trample that is all but guaranteed to trample some damage over to the opponent for the extra two damage and a card. I liked these plans on principle, but couldn’t see myself consistently affording five mana for Groundbreaker plus Equip, much less six for Timbermare plus Equip.
Enter Grafted Wargear. Sure, it kills whatever it’s equipped to when that guy bites the bullet, but that guy was probably on the way out anyway in the case of Timbermare and Groundbreaker. Plus, in long games, I can set up stupidity like “Topdeck Timbermare, attack for eleven.”
What about removal? No, not mine – theirs. I need a way to keep my Wargears clear of Putrefy, Groundbreakers free of Fire / Ice, and Timbermares free of Shrapnel Blast. Any suggestions? Oh right, Duress and Therapy. Cabal Therapy has some “interesting” synergy with creatures headed for the graveyard at end of turn, for the record; just ask Ichorid.
After weighing Blue’s potential contributions (notably Psionic Blast and Stifle), I decided to stick with G/B so that I could play double-Black alongside triple-Green and try out Nether Traitor, who seemed to fit perfectly into this deck. That also afforded me a good deal of resilience to Destructive Flow and Dwarven Blastminer, which is becoming more and more important these days.
Here’s the untuned, unrefined, unrated, and uncensored first draft.
Creatures (24)
Lands (19)
Spells (17)
Sideboard
The sideboard assumes the deck will be vulnerable to Ancient Grudge post-board (because, I mean, Grafted Wargear), so I’ve proposed an experimental transformation into an odd Rock deck (with Baloths and Deeds) that goes for the quick finish via haste creatures rather than inevitability with card advantage dudes in the event of Duress-proof artifact destruction.
Is this list poised to break the format in half? Of course not – it’s a concept sketch, and nothing more. If she piques your interest, though, mise well take her out for a spin and see if you like her enough to let things get serious, amiright? (I’m looking at you, Jamie Wakefield.)
The Top Ten Planar Chaos Cards for Extended
Now before I give you my top ten picks for Planar Chaos, I should tell you something about myself. See, I look at Constructed Magic as problems, solutions, and opportunities to make problems for my opponents. I don’t really think about what a card does “in a vacuum”, or how it stacks up “in a vacuum” against other cards “in a vacuum.” To be frank, I view the process of coming up with detailed rankings of cards (in Constructed, that is) as largely a waste of time, and once sent Mike Flores an email criticizing him for spending “a comparable amount of time ranking the top 10 most powerful cards in Format X as Frank Karsten does straight-up playtesting Format X.”
However, I do think it’s worth taking a few seconds to come up with a rough list of the most influential cards in a format, as it can put into perspective which cards people will be prepared for, which cards may be overplayed, and which dark horse cards or strategies may be able to take the format by surprise because they so effectively foil the strategies being played by (or against) the format’s top-tier cards.
With that long-winded disclaimer in mind, here is the rough list I came up with of the top ten most influential Planar Chaos cards for Extended.
1) Porphyry Nodes
2) Damnation (I have no idea how people will use this yet, but rest assured – it will be influential.)
3) Fatal Frenzy
4) Groundbreaker
5) Simian Spirit Guide
6) Seal of Primordium
7) Extirpate
8) Null Profusion
9) Mana Tithe
10) Pongify
(I have no interest in arguing any of these rankings; if you think I’m off, let’s just assume you’re right and move on.)
So there you have it: Planar Chaos in Extended. Join us again next week, when I’ll present conclusive evidence that Tim Galbiati is actually thirty feet tall, and Superman in disguise. Should be a good time.
See you then!
Richard Feldman
Team Check Minus
[email protected]