Yesterday, I presented the bag of tricks that your erstwhile opponents will be fishing into for this coming weekend’s prerelease. Today, we’ll look at the morph cards, and more importantly, whom could it be with their face pressed into the table, pretending with all their might to be a "Grey Ogre.”
I assume by now you’ve read all about morph in some way or another, so I’ll skip past the nitty-gritty rules bits, and get right into how morph will influence your prerelease weekend.
First of all, morph allows you to make a playable Sealed deck out of a pile. Find whatever bombs you may have, and add all the morph creatures from every color you can find. The only time these li’l morphers will turn face-up is when they die, they’re bounced back to your hand, or the game ends. In the past, people have whined about not opening enough creatures for their deck, or that their best color has no bears to back it. Well, no more! While a "Grey Ogre" is nothing to write home about, playing one is, at very least, what you want to play on turns 3 and 4. Failure to do so will often spell doom against a speedier deck.
Now, of course, you can almost play as many 2/2s for three as you like, because there are eighteen different common morph creatures, another eighteen uncommon – and ten rare ones, too.
Unfortunately, not all of these little guys are gonna stay face-down; in fact, your opponent has vested interest in flipping some of them over at just the wrong time for you, so you’d better have a good idea of what lies in wait for you. It’s all about what mana your opponent has available. Obviously, without the right amount or color of mana, they can’t reveal it at all, so you should be safe from some, but wary of others. Remember, of course, the odds of the unmorphed critter being a common are much higher than it being an uncommon, and the rares shouldn’t give you much bother at all, but are included just in case.
If they are only showing one mana for some reason, it can only turn out to be one of the following – or it stays a 2/2 until next turn.
Note: The mana cost shown is the creature’s morph cost, not what it costs to play it without morph.
1 Mana:
Common:
U | 1/1 | |
G | 1/1 | |
R | 1/1 | |
W | 1/2 | |
W | 1/1 |
Uncommon:
B | 1/1 | |
U | 1/2 | |
R | 1/1 | |
W | 2/2 |
Rare:
U | 2/1 |
As you can see, for one mana, they aren’t going to get any bigger than they were when they were upside down. The Disruptive Pitmage, the Daru Healer, and the Aphetto Alchemist can all flip over and play their ability as long as they’re not sick – so look out for their corresponding mana costs accordingly.
2 Mana:
Common:
1B | 2/2 | |
1W | 1/3 |
Uncommon:
1W | 2/2 |
Rare:
UU | 1/1 | |
RR | 7/1 |
There aren’t many that flip for two, but they’re all a little dangerous. The Haunted Cadaver will take a bite out of your hand, and the Dawning Purist, an enchantment. The Gravel Slinger can throw one damage into combat, and can increase its toughness to three. The rares are nasty, but at least they’re rare.
Note: The Purist and the Cadaver can wait until damage is on the stack, and then flip over and their ability will still trigger.
3 Mana:
Common:
2B | 3/1 | |
2U | 3/2 | |
2U | 1/1 | |
1GG | 3/3 | |
1RR | 3/1 | |
2R | 2/1 |
Uncommon:
2B | 1/1 | |
1BB | 4/4 | |
2U | */* | |
2G | 1/1 | |
1GG | 2/3 |
Rare:
1GG | 3/4 |
This is where things start to get hairy. Some of these creatures actually get bigger, and the Skirk Commando might manage to mash a healer after it’s tried to prevent damage to something else.
4 Mana:
Common:
2WW | 3/4 |
Uncommon:
3W | 2/4 |
Rare:
2BB | 6/6 | |
2WW | 4/5 |
These are all trouble when they flip over; the Ironfist Crusher can quite happily nullify an alpha strike by itself. Thankfully, there’s not very many of these guys – so if they’re showing four mana for no good reason and they have an unmorphed critter, hope it’s because they have a fist full of land.
5 Mana:
Common:
4B | 4/2 | |
4G | 3/4 | |
4R | 4/3 |
Uncommon:
3BB | 2/2 | |
3UU | 3/3 | |
3GG | 5/5 | |
4W | 4/5 |
Rare:
3BB | 1/1 | |
3BB | 4/4 | |
4U | 5/5 |
From here on, it’s pretty straightforward, because it could be almost anyone from above. Morph is basically used as an echo/reduced cost thing now.
6+ Mana:
Common:
5G | 5/4 |
Uncommon:
5R | 5/5 | |
4RR | 3/3 | |
6G | 7/6 |
Rare:
6GG | 9/9 |
There are two more things to be aware of around morph cards, and that’s Backslide and Break Open. These instants flip morph creatures one way or another:
Backslide 1U
Turn target creature with morph face down.
Cycling U
Break Open 1R
Turn target face-down creature an opponent controls face up.
I believe the blue one to be very playable, due to it having cycling, and being a way of dealing with fat, morphed creatures in combat – barring them flipping it back over anyway. The red one is not so hot, because what if they’re playing some random fat thing as an Ogre? And you can’t cycle it if it proves to be useless.
Time to sum up, I guess. If they don’t have much mana available, there’s not much chance you’ll be punished. If they do, what are you going to do? Not block? I suppose it’s better that you know what’s available at any rate. Here’s a list again of all of the morph creatures in the set.
Good luck this weekend. Here’s to you opening a bunch of broken rares, so you don’t have to worry about what could be face-down in front of you.
Ray
(beep)