My plan this week was to regale you with tales of my prerelease weekend, and oh, what a plan it was. There would be defeat, there would be joy, there would be suffering. There might even have been some victory. We could have discussed the cards that over-performed, those that might have been over-hyped, and how ridiculous my 2HG team names were. Alas, winter is a thing. The product my store needed got stuck in transit due to unprecedented freight problems, so I did not get to participate. For a guy who looks forward to these weekends like few others, this was a huge bummer for me. It was made even worse as my son was going to be taking part in his first-ever prerelease weekend.
It’s not all doom and gloom though. He got to do his first-ever Cube draft, we spent some quality time together, and I get to talk about Dragons of Tarkir in Constructed here instead. Which, to be honest, is way more fun anyway. I’m not going to be going through all the cards or even all the good cards… instead I will be talking about cards that speak to me and my style of play and deckbuilding.
White
If we’ve learned anything from cards like Fabled Hero, it’s that a 2/2 double striker for three needs some upside to be playable. The Hero saw some fringe play in the Heroic decks, but it never really had much of an impact on competitive Constructed play. Arashin Foremost might actually be better. Sure, it doesn’t grow, but it has immediate impact on the board and will have that impact every time it attacks. The worst that you get is a 2/2 double striker. OK, the worst is that they remove the creature you target and then kill it too, but why focus on the negative?
There are some pretty powerful Warrior cards that might benefit from some double striking action, foremost among them being Goblin Rabblemaster. If you can follow up a Rabblemaster with Arashin Foremost, your opponent is going to be hard-pressed to ever trade in combat, and if they don’t keep throwing things in the way they take a ton of damage. Archetype of Aggression is not only a Warrior, it also has trample and gives your other creatures trample. Fanatic of Xenagos also has trample and will often be a 4/4. Chief of the Edge is a three-power Warrior in its own right, plus it provides a delicious power buff to all your other Warriors. I think I will be looking to slide the Foremost into a red/white deck very similar to the current aggro decks with a slightly heavier Warrior focus. A light black splash for Chief of the Edge might be too greedy with all the RR and WW cards we are likely to want, but I will probably try it anyway.
Yes, this looks incredibly plain and almost unplayable even in Limited. I can certainly see me casting this on turn one this season, though, followed by a turn-two Assault Formation. Although we have one-drop 0/4s in the format, Sentry has first strike. With minimal effort we can get through X/4s like opposing Coursers, and if they can’t match your development you are going to get in some huge chunks of damage early. In the event that you can’t drop a Formation on turn two – likely, I’ll admit – the Sentry still provides good defense against token strategies and all the one-mana 2/1s in the format. Sure, it’s not going to win any Pro Tours, but I like it.
Where to begin? Do we want to talk about the applications in Modern, where Aang (come on, you know it’s him) teams up with Prince Zuko (Young Pyromancer) and… umm… an older Aang (Monastery Mentor) to give greater redundancy in a cantrip-oriented Jeskai deck? Perhaps we should look at the possibilities of adding Myth Realized to a Blistercoil Weird/Kiln Fiend-style combo deck, and/or a Nivmagus Elemental engine? Do we want to slide it in to the W/R Pillow Prison Enchantment deck?
Creatures (1)
Lands (23)
Spells (36)
Right now this deck is running just the one Nykthos for Heliod activations and giant Zeniths. Adding Myth Realized might be enough to warrant a second Nykthos. The mix of enchantments needs a little work, and it is possible we might want to be running Enduring Ideal. Still, though, this is one of the lists I realized could be good enough after Dragons of Tarkir releases.
I would be a-myth if I didn’t talk about applications in Standard. The Jeskai and R/W Token strategies that are already successful will look to add Myth Realized at the one-drop slot. It’s possible that the control players will even realize that having a one-drop threat isn’t a terrible thing, especially one that is resistant to Wrath effects and can be a mana sink. If you’re facing U/W Control and they have UUW up, are you casting a threat? If you do and they Dissolve, Myth gets a counter. If you don’t, they add a counter anyway. Lovely.
I love this card, but I don’t expect it to see a lot of play. There’s always one mythic per set that looks exceedingly powerful on the face of things but never really finds the home that people expected of it. I think this is the perfect exemplar of that theory. A 4/4 for four at one point in Magic’s history would have been broken. Now it’s actually a little bit below rate for a tournament-level creature. Yes, it has upsides, but those upsides require another card and more mana to come into effect, and even then it’s not getting any bigger. Someone might bust this in half still, but really it’s just a collection of OK abilities on an OK body that don’t really do enough to make me want to play it.
I loved Obzedat’s Aid. Absolutely adored it. Being able to reanimate Obzedat, Ashen Rider or (at the time) Elspeth, Sun’s Champion was some pretty sweet versatility. We now have Garruk, Apex Predator and Ugin, The Spirit Dragon as juicy targets, but does that justify a huge jump in mana cost? And how useful is it that we get this again next turn for free?
Well, I plan to find out. We’ll be able to bring back Whip of Erebos and Garruk, as an example. Or Ugin and Garruk. Elspeth is still a viable target. Satyr Wayfinder decks are all the rage right now, with one of the scary things about the card being the possibility of milling your win conditions. Drawing a late-game Journey can have a profound effect on your chances to win that game, bringing back at least one potential game-winning threat and telling your opponent that their first removal spell is not going to get the job done. My gut feeling is that this is one mana too expensive to see play, especially with Disdainful Stroke in the format, but don’t stop believing just yet.
It’s not hard to see this card being good. An instant-speed token maker with an X in the cost is reminiscent of White Sun’s Zenith, even without the shuffle-back clause and the tokens being 2/2s. Warriors are a relevant creature type of course, and even one Chief of the Edge can do wonders for, increasing the power of this card. Yes, there’s an interaction with Mardu Woe-Reaper against graveyard decks but that’s a fringe plan at best. We may even be looking at a finisher for U/W or Esper Control in matches where the opponent has sided out Bile Blight, Drown in Sorrow and so on.
Where I am really excited by this card is in Soul Sisters. I’ve been looking for ways to make that deck competitive against some of the controlling strategies in Modern and have been coming up woefully short, but now we might just have secured a way to win that matchup. Either you cast it with three or four Sisters in play for four or five creatures and gain a buttload of life, or you cast it after they remove your Sisters and start beating down. More than once I have gone to thirty life, attacked with a Serra Ascendant and been Bolted down just enough so they could block the Ascendant. With any Sisters out at all, I can avoid that waste of resources.
If we’re playing the Norin the Wary version with Purphoros, God of the Forge… well, that line writes itself.
The first time I read this card, I was sad. How could they make a 5-drop that gets scorched by Lightning Strike? Well, it turns out that they didn’t. Not only did they not, they made one that gets bigger as your opponent tries to find answers, develops their board or even tries to remove it. If you ever have a way to protect your Regent from their first piece of removal, we’re far out into positive territory.
I’ve said it of a few cards already but this may be the sort of thing a control deck uses as a finisher. Yes, it dies to removal, but if you can counter that removal not only does it not die, it shortens the clock. Countermagic is the obvious way to do that, but we might also want to look at a white deck that plays protection spells like Feat of Resistance to keep our Dragon alive. W/U Heroic might do this better, but it has its weaknesses and there might be a deck with a similar principle but better cards. If the white Regent sees any play, that’s my guess for where it will be.
Blue
Impulse was one of the cards I hated most when learning to play Magic, because I didn’t understand how to make it good. You don’t need me to reiterate what countless pros have said about this card, so I will instead say how sad I am that we can’t put cards from our hand back into our library with this card. I just want a See Beyond variant back! Is that so wrong? Really?
Ever since I watched LSV and Martin Mueller combo-kill their opponents on camera in Limited, I have been trying to replicate it in Constructed. Surely if we can kill someone from eighteen in one turn with singleton copies of our combo cards in draft, we can do it when we have four copies of Shu Yun and Temur Battle Rage? Alas, this sort of finish has thus far been elusive, partly due to Standard having better removal and partly due to pesky things like blocking creatures. Stupid opponents, always trying to stop me from winning.
With my new friend Lucy the Spellfist around, we might have ourselves a friend for Shu Yun who isn’t getting blocked. We can play stuff like Feat of Resistance and Ajani’s Presence to protect him and enable the double strike and make it unblockable at the same time, hopefully getting to the point where we can kill our opponent in one shot. Add in some stuff like Anticipate and Treasure Cruise to fuel us up and find the combo and we have ourselves a deck!
Unlike the white Regent, Icefall does die to Lightning Strike if you want to pay 3R for it. One small thing here: if your opponent targets this with Stoke the Flames, they can just tap two additional creatures to pay the additional two, unlike Frost Titan who counters the spell unless two is paid. This could well be relevant.
I want to try playing Icefall Regent in a couple of places. Aside from a curve-topper for Mono-Blue Devotion, I like this in a Temur Midrange list that is heavy on Dragons and makes use of both Sarkhan Unbroken and Haven of the Spirit Dragon. There are enough powerful Dragons that I think this could be a viable strategy, providing we are able to fill the rest of the deck with quality cards that take advantage of the Dragon density (which absolutely needs to be a thing). It’s likely no more than a two-of, but locking down an opposing threat while also being a real clock is a solid combination.
Admit it, you read this card and you laughed. A lot. It’s flavorful, it’s a smooth design and it can do some pretty ridiculous things. In Standard alone, we can reliably make this an 8/8 and occasionally an 11/11. The great thing about sacrificing to cast the exiled card is that your instant or sorcery then goes to the graveyard where it can once again be exiled by a Living Lore. Unless of course you cast a Temporal Trespass, but in that case you dealt eleven damage and take an extra turn.
Well okay then!
Whipping Living Lore back doesn’t seem terrible, and the Sultai Reanimator decks already run some number of Dig Through Time and/or Treasure Cruise. If you then manage to draw into a second Living Lore? Looking good! Sure, it just dies to removal, but then the exiled spell is merely in exile and you haven’t actually lost that much since you just milled it (or cast it!) in the first place.
I love the feel of this card. It’s clearly blue because of the bounce aspect, but black’s recent trend towards higher toughness along with the sacrifice component of Exploit really put it into Silumgar’s corner beautifully. Despite its fairly tame appearance, I think we might actually be looking at a real player here. Green Devotion decks will hate to see this following up something like a Nyx-Fleece Ram, Courser of Kruphix or even an Orator of Ojutai, not to mention the filth that comes with sacrificing a Wall of Frost for this effect.
Yes, I know nobody plays Wall of Frost… yet.
Mass bounce is something blue already has a lot of, but with Profaner having a body attached and coming down a turn before the other sweepers in the format would and the fact that it screws up their side of the table while leaving your board untouched, it’s possible a blue-based tempo deck could make use of the ability. Even the Jeskai Midrange decks that sideboard into a controlling strategy could use this as a setup for End Hostilities or to buy time to find one. Big fan of this card.
It’s no secret: I am going to be playing this card in Blue Devotion. I have been trying to make devotion work in every color but green, and blue is my next stop. I still don’t know the best way to build the deck, but with three blue pips and a relevant creature type, this thing is crashing into every one of my builds for shore. He looks like a three-drop but really isn’t, and I can’t ever see a time I want to cast it face-down in a devotion deck, but the flexibility is there.
I don’t think we can overlook the possibility that perhaps Shorecrasher is not a devotion card but instead a finisher in something like Temur Control. Maybe then we do play it face-down and flip it up when we are ready for the beats. While face-down it dodges Ugin and Ultimate Price, after all. Could we really play Whisperwood Elemental and Master of Waves in the same deck with this?
No. No we can’t. But it was fun to think about!
Two colors in and already way too many words. For a set that many have dismissed as all sizzle and no steak, I seem to have found a fair few cards that set my brew-brain churning. Next time out I will get through a bunch more of the set, perhaps even with
Until then my friends… Brew on!