We’ve had a few weeks now to get used to the new realms of Shards of Alara, to learn the names ‘Grixis, Esper, Bant, Naya, Jund’ and figure out which color combinations they each espouse. We’ve seen some previews, but when it comes to playing at the Prerelease you’ll want to have more knowledge than just seeing a few cards (mostly rares) and assuming they define the set. If you don’t want more knowledge than what has been officially previewed, click the leftward-pointing arrow above and I’ll see you in a week, because you won’t be happy with me if you press on from here into the rest of the article.
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There, that should be enough to discourage the generally uninterested, but with a name like “HACKING THE SHARDS PRERELEASE” I’d have assumed the big label that spoilers were contained within would have gotten the point across. It’s Wednesday as I write this, and as of last night the entire set was known barring the last five cards or so, most with visual confirmation from opened product. With so much information known, it’s time to look at the cycles of cards and figure out how this format ticks.
For our first look into Shards Sealed, we’ll be looking at some of the cycles of cards (largely sticking to Commons and Uncommons) and determining how these things should shape Shards sealed deck play. One of the most critical things to figure out about a Sealed Deck pool is how the mana is going to work, figuring out if we live in a world like Shadowmoor that heavily encourages single-color play, a world like the Ravnica Block that encouraged throwing such notions as ‘color discipline’ right out the window, or something in between. Using just basic lands, your average Sealed deck can support two main colors and a light splash with reasonable consistency, usually with a manabase of 7/7/3 as you don’t want to have fewer than seven lands of a main color, nor less than three and still have a reasonable chance of drawing your splash color’s lands before it’s too late. Allow me to introduce to you a few friends:
Obelisk of [You are Here]:
A cycle of five cards, one for each three-color combination — Bant, Naya, Jund, Grixis and Esper, previously Treva, Rith, Darigaaz, Crosis and Dromar in Invasion-speak. A cycle of common artifacts costing three colorless mana, and tapping for your choice of any of the three colors of Magic that plane provides. As commons, you can reasonably expect there to be one of the five in your Sealed Deck pool, and their impact on what colors your Sealed Deck is should be noticeable.
[You are Here] Panorama:
A cycle of five cards, one for each three-color combination. A cycle of common nonbasic lands that tap for colorless mana, or for one mana and their sacrifice can be traded in for any basic land of that shard’s three colors.
[You are Here] Tri-Lands:
A cycle of five cards, one for each three color combination, named Arcane Sanctum (Esper), Seaside Citadel (Bant), Jungle Shrine (Naya), Savage Lands (Jund), and Crumbling Necropolis (Grixis). A cycle of uncommon nonbasic lands that tap for each of the three colors of mana represented by that plane, with their only drawback being that they come into play tapped. Strictly better than Invasion’s tap-lands, which were a great boon to Limited play as-is, and the kind of things that show us just how really, really bad the Homelands lands like Wizard’s School were.
Between the three cycles of cards, we have ten commons and five uncommons, and thus can reasonably expect that colorless mana-fixing is going to be an option. The simple impact this has on the format is this: the default deck design is not going to be the standard ‘two color’ model but instead represent a full three colors, though the better players will still aim to keep this third color to a lessened impact and stagger their manabases accordingly so as to better influence their ability to draw the correct mana for their spells. Given one each of your shard’s Panorama, Obelisk, and tri-land, you could very realistically play those three cards and a manabase of 5/5/5 across your three colors and always draw your mana properly before it’s too late.
But the true effect, in my mind, is more subtle. With the standard model being a two-color deck as a default since time immemorial, the power of mana-fixing in a Sealed Deck pool is the power to get away with splashing more colors at lower risk. Looking at each of the five shards, if you wanted to benefit from Esper color-fixing, your Obelisk, Panorama and tri-land do not care whether you see yourself as UW splash B, BW splash U, or UB splash W. The cards you choose to play would presumably dictate which of these is proper, but to your manabase it’s all the same, just changing around which basic lands represent the main colors and which are the splash. Considering that in many cases your splash cards are going to cost one of each colored mana of your shard, for a Charm or a cool powerful creature like Rhox War Monk, it matters very little if you are an allied-color Esper deck (UW/b or UB/w) or an enemy-colored Esper deck (BW/u). However, add additional mana-fixing and the difference starts to become apparent.
Let us presume that you have some very nice Esper cards, and some nice Esper mana-fixing You also have a Naya Panorama and a Grixis card that is very powerful. With this arrangement, there is a difference, because a core UB deck splashing white for Esper cards that require all three colors of mana will also allow you to stretch just that little extra bit further if you want to include a Grixis card that already favors UB (your main colors) but asks you to include a Mountain in your deck to cast it… which lets you use Naya Panorama as a mana-fixer for both your splash colors, Red for Grixis spells and White for Esper spells.
While the ‘standard issue’ deck will likely be a two-color combination splashing a third for cards from its most powerful Shard, a deck that opens a reasonable amount of mana-fixing can capitalize on pretty much any Panorama opened by using it to smooth its mana draw, and even just a one-Shard deck can readily capitalize on three of the five Panoramas for its mana fixing… one at maximum strength, matching its shard directly, and two at lesser strength, still fetching two of the three colors of that deck.
Just looking at this all from a manabase perspective, since almost any mana-fixer is good enough for every deck and the mana fixers are reasonably plentiful, it should be relatively painless to assemble a consistent three-color deck and thus capitalize on your best Shard’s spells at minimal risk. Your three-color Esper deck, even without knowing what spells you intend to play, can get at least some good use out of Obelisks, Panoramas, and tri-lands from Grixis, Esper and Bant, so I would expect every manabase to be seventeen lands plus one Obelisk, and each and every deck using no fewer than two nonbasic lands to ease things from there. With the right Obelisk and nonbasics, that ‘standard issue’ manabase of 7/7/3 would instead be 6/6/3/2. With each land able to find two if not all three colors of your deck, this gives us at least as good mana for the main colors as our previous default decks in past formats, and may even give us super-consistent mana that plays more like a 7/7/5 or even 8/8/5 manabase for finding the right colors if both those nonbasics match your Shard completely.
“What this means,” to me, is that three colors will be the minimum standard for Shards sealed deck play, and careful cost-benefit analysis of what you can get out of your manabase should dictate how you stagger your colors, or even if you still need to even pretend to have color discipline, instead of just playing an even mix of all three colors of your shard. It also means to me that while you will have the right three colors of mana on a reasonable timeline, “by turn 3” is not likely, and you can’t even guarantee you’ll draw just the right colors of mana by turn 2 for a two-color card… there’s a reasonable chance of drawing the ‘wrong’ land as your second land, or needing to use a Panorama on turn 2 to get the land you desire but not cast a double-colored bear turn 2.
With some of the best aggressive cards in the set costing CD or CDE exactly, that means that most people will come to the conclusion that Shards of Alara Sealed Deck play is a “play” format, where you specifically want to go first to gain the maximum tempo advantage. While there are certainly decks that will want to play first, those will largely be the ones with worse mana fixing and thus restricted by their designers to the two-color-plus-splash model of previous formats. Of the two-drops that are known so far, nine cost two colored mana and thirteen cost one colored mana and a colorless… and more than half of those thirteen have a single power to their name, being either unplayable dreck or utility creatures that have some additional functionality (but do not specialize in beating down mercilessly). This is not Shadowmoor with its host of playable two-drops you can expect to encounter game after game, instead this is a world where not drawing the right mana in a timely fashion can mean death…
… So, draw first. It’s right.
Continuing to look at the epi-cycle of how these things are going to play out, there are a lot of bombs that cost seven or eight mana, with each shard getting a rare ‘God’-type creature that costs 4CDDE and an ‘Ultimatum’ that should have devastating effect that costs CCDDDEE. Because of their inflexibility in what mana they can work with, the Ultimatums can’t even guarantee they can be played for seven mana, unless you have had the ability to preferentially select which mana you search for later in the game with Panoramas or have drawn an Obelisk or tri-land to ease the harshness of its over-specific requirements. With powerful bombs at the top of the curve, we see another reason to draw first… playing first will have you be the first to play spells, but drawing first will have you be the one who gets above the six-mana mark first for your potent bomby spells, because that extra card greatly increases your chances of being the first one to draw sufficient mana for such expensive spells.
Expensive rares can’t be all your Sealed Deck is made of, you’d die before you could cast even a single one, but there is a small cycle of five commons, one for each color, that cycle for eight mana and generate a doubled effect when played that way. Sure, getting to eight mana for your Godsire might not be what every Sealed Deck wants to do… but getting to eight mana to maximize these cards, which produce a doubled effect if you wait that long and become uncounterable and draw a card besides, should be fairly typical for Sealed Deck play.
In addition to learning whether it is correct to play or draw in the format, or perhaps more importantly “what the rule is and when it’s okay to break it”, it’s also critical to know what removal your opponent might have access to, and what tricks their untapped mana represents. Here we’ll be looking at mana by color, so we’ll start with the mono-colored cards before we get more complicated and look at things by color groupings.
White:
Removal:
Dispeller’s Capsule — An artifact-or-enchantment destruction spell, which only rates mention because there is a reasonable chance of having at least some artifact creatures in your deck… whatever your three-color combination is, at least one of those colors overlaps with the colors of Esper’s artifact creatures.
Excommunicate — In true Planar Chaos fashion, Time Ebb is now timeshifted to White. 2W for a sorcery that bounces a creature to the top of the deck.
Oblivion Ring — High quality removal that answers any nonland problem with ruthless efficiency.
Resounding Silence — This set’s Neck Snap variant. Removes an attacking creature from the game as a 3W Instant; cycles and hits two instead for five colorless and one Bant (5GWU)
Tricks:
Angelsong — A cycling version of Holy Day; do try to be careful not to lose to a Fog.
Leaving the commons behind, there is a Wrath variant in the set as well: a 3WW Nevinyrral’s Disk-type artifact that can tap and sacrifice during your upkeep to destroy all nonland, nonartifact permanents.
Blue:
Removal:
Call of Heel — 1U for an Unsummon that draws the creatures’ controller a card. An awful bounce spell to have to use on your opponent’s creature, because they get to draw a card, but if that unsummon effect is killer the card will hardly matter.
Cancel — Does what it says it does. 1UU can equal counterspell mana up, in a format that might readily be decided by six-plus mana bomb spells and creatures.
Coma Veil — A five-mana spell that holds down an artifact or creature so it doesn’t untap. Expensive, but so might be the nasty monster it is holding down… it doesn’t have to be very good to be playable, just removal.
Esper Battlemage — As an Uncommon, a 2U 2/2 that for black mana can pass around -1/-1 effects… Blue’s Prodigal Sorcerer effect for this set.
Resounding Wave — 2U for a bounce spell that can target any permanent. For 5 and an Esper it bounces two permanents instead.
Tricks:
Call of Heel – 1U for an Unsummon that draws the creatures’ controller a card. Awesome for saving your own creature with value.
Tortoise Formation — 3U to give your creatures Shroud for a turn… an awfully expensive way to save a creature from dying, but it’s better to know about it and dismiss it because the card is bad than it is to not know about it and lose to a small child who doesn’t know not to play it.
Black:
Removal:
Blister Beetle — Bad as a two-drop, but as a small removal spell he’s okay. A 1B 1/1 that is an Afflict that leaves a 1/1 instead of drawing a card. I know which I’d rather have (… okay, unfair way to put it… I’d rather have the Instant…) but it is what it is, and what it is counts as playable to at least some degree.
Bone Splinters — A one-mana Black sorcery that destroys any creature, without restrictions… but with a cost of sacrificing one of your own creatures. Think of it as a targeted Innocent Blood and you’ll be happy; the price is right and the effect is nice, just make sure you have some disposable cannon fodder to hand when you play this card in your deck.
Executioner’s Capsule — A Dark Banishing in artifact form; 1BB (potentially spent over multiple turns) destroys any nonblack creature.
Fleshbag Marauder — An Uncommon that is an Innocent Blood with legs. Three mana gets you a 3/1 that casts Innocent Blood when he comes into play, and gives you a body to fuel it. Effectively a Cruel Edict, except that you can sacrifice a creature that is worse than it or has been Unearthed in order to trade up to a 3/1 body.
Infest — Another Uncommon, and another reprint. Death to small creatures en masse… leaves more room for the big ones to fight in.
As a Rare you get Vein Drinker, a stupidly-powerful Sengir Vampire that gets to say “fight me right now!” with access to Red mana. Stupidly powerful bomb creatures are sort of the norm for this set if you can get up to six mana and above.
Tricks:
None. Black kills things, but doesn’t have any combat maneuver-type stuff other than, well, killing things.
Red:
Removal:
Bloodpyre Elemental — A pricey five-mana 4/1 that, at sorcery speed, deals four damage to a creature of your choice. Think of it as a sorcery-speed burn spell… let’s say the playable Consuming Bonfire… that sometimes just sometimes gets to be a creature spell.
Magma Spray — This set’s Shock variant; you get to remove the creature from the game if it dies, at the cost of not being able to ever target a player. I’m sure you’ll never even notice you gave up something of value if you are Hall of Famer Gary Wise.
Resounding Thunder — This set’s Carbonize; three mana for three damage as an Instant. For eight mana, five colorless and a Jund, it instead deals six and draws a card.
Skeletonize — As an Uncommon, you can spend five for your Carbonize effect, and claim the bonus of getting a Drudge Skeleton on your side if the creature does in fact die.
Soul’s Fire — 2R for an instant that is functionally a Fling that doesn’t cost you your creature… and contrary to some beliefs, killing the creature in response doesn’t counter the spell, it just uses last-known information to figure out how much damage would be dealt.
Vithian Stinger — Prodigal Pyromancer here to stay, and as an 0/1 so you never incorrectly attack with it… oh, and it has Unearth, so you can use it that one last time after it dies.
Volcanic Subversion — Pillage for 4R, but with Cycling: 2. A piss-poor land destruction spell and a too-expensive artifact destruction spell… can still destroy any creature from Esper for 4R at sorcery speed, and cycles away the rest of the time so it’s never a dead card. Chances are this is an automatic main-deck playable unless you have something really good, because in this format even paying five to Stone Rain someone might completely disrupt their game thanks to the whole “three color” thing. Laugh at it all you want, but the truth is that its Urza’s Saga / Onslaught cousin was not just playable but actually good at four mana for a Stone Rain and only a Stone Rain.
And another rare bomb creature: Flameblast Dragon. A 5/5 flier for 4RR wasn’t enough, this one casts Blaze whenever you attack. Not going to lie, I’m pretty sure this will never target a creature with its “when attacking” triggered effect.
A less-bomby Rare: Where Ancients Tread. Each fattie you put into play throws a Lava Axe at a person or animal… hard to use effectively, maybe not worth including all the time, but 5/5 Flametongue Kavus might be worth the extra investment of mana and a card in Sealed.
Tricks:
Scourge Devil: As an Uncommon, this should not be underestimated… a creature with Unearth that can pump the team for a lethal swing back. While it’s not an Instant-speed trick and thus not something you consider when you’re in the middle of an attack, its existence should at least somewhat affect your combat math when you decide to race.
Green:
Removal:
Naturalize — Good enough to kill men from Esper and solve random utility problems.
Naya Battlemage — As an Uncommon, this gives G/W a 2G 2/2 tapper.
And that’s a bit stretching, but also all you get, Green.
Tricks:
Resounding Roar — Two mana for a Giant Growth. Five and a Naya for twice the Growth plus your card back.
Soul’s Might — Sorcery-speed permanent creature enhancer that gives a creature a +1/+1 counter for each point of power it possesses with no other hoops to jump through. Again, a card to at least be aware of when you’re racing, despite being terrible overall.
Having covered the monocolored tricks, now we’ll look at the gold cards and break down the tricks by shard. But since the most confusing of all the cards when you try and figure out just what your opponent can do are going to be the Charms, here’s what the five Charms do:
Bant: Destroy target artifact; or put target creature on the bottom of its owner’s library; or counter target instant spell.
Esper: Destroy target enchantment; or target player draws two cards; or target player discards two cards
Grixis: Return target permanent to its owner’s hand; or target creature gets -4/-4 until end of turn; or creatures you control get +2/+0 until end of turn.
Jund: Remove target player’s graveyard from the game; or Jund Charm deals 2 damage to each creature; or put two +1/+1 counters on target creature
Naya: Naya Charm deals 3 damage to target creature; return target card in a graveyard to its owner’s hand; or tap all creatures target player controls
Bant
Removal:
Bant Charm. Remove any creature from play, destroy any artifact, or counter an instant spell.
Tricks:
Hindering Light. A counterspell that costs UW and can only target spells that target you or a creature you control, but draws you a card as well.
Sigil Blessing. A powerful common Giant Growth that costs GW to give one creature +3/+3… and the rest of your team +1/+1 as well.
Esper
Removal:
Agony Warp. -3/-0 to one creature, -0/-3 to another (or the same) creature.
Tricks:
Agony Warp. -3/-0 to one creature, -0/-3 to another (or the same) creature.
Hindering Light. A counterspell that costs UW and can only target spells that target you or a creature you control, but draws you a card as well.
Punish Ignorance. A rare Counterspell costing BUUW that is Absorb and Undermine combined.
Grixis
Removal:
Grixis Charm. Bounce any permanent, -4/-4 to a creature, +2/+0 to your creatures this turn.
Agony Warp. -3/-0 to one creature, -0/-3 to another (or the same) creature.
Blood Cultist. A Red/Black pinger that can only hit creatures, but gets a +1/+1 counter for each one it kills.
Cruel Ultimatum. A powerful Rare sorcery that says you win the game.
Tricks:
Grixis Charm. Bounce any permanent, -4/-4 to a creature, +2/+0 to your creatures this turn.
Agony Warp. -3/-0 to one creature, -0/-3 to another (or the same) creature.
Swerve. As an Uncommon, Deflection for one Red and one Blue mana.
Jund
Removal:
Jund Charm. Remove a graveyard from the game, Pyroclasm, put two +1/+1 counters on a creature.
Blood Cultist. A Red/Black pinger that can only hit creatures, but gets a +1/+1 counter for each one it kills.
Branching Bolt. A “do one or both” spell that deals three damage to a flier, three damage to a nonflier, or both at once for 1RG.
Violent Ultimatum. A powerful Rare sorcery that says you win the game.
Tricks:
Jund Charm. Remove a graveyard from the game, Pyroclasm, put two +1/+1 counters on a creature.)
Sangrite Surge. An uncommon Sorcery that gives a creature +3/+3 and Double Strike for the turn for the low, low price of only six mana and a card.
Removal:
Naya Charm. Deal 3 to a creature, resurrect a dead creature, tap all creatures a player controls.
Ajani Vengeant. A planeswalker that casts Lightning Helix or taps down permanents.
Branching Bolt. A “do one or both” spell that deals three damage to a flier, three damage to a nonflier, or both at once for 1RG.
Tricks:
Naya Charm. Deal 3 to a creature, resurrect a dead creature, tap all creatures a player controls.
Sangrite Surge. An uncommon Sorcery that gives a creature +3/+3 and Double Strike for the turn for the low, low price of only six mana and a card.
Sigil Blessing. A powerful common Giant Growth that costs GW to give one creature +3/+3… and the rest of your team +1/+1 as well.
Titanic Ultimatum. A powerful Rare sorcery that says you win the game.
This all combines to give us a pretty good idea of what the colors can do… and, as expected, Green can’t kill creatures, Black does nothing but, and Blue makes everything ‘trickier.’ For example, Blue lets Green kill things (Bant Charm) and turns this set’s Last Breath / Nameless Inversion variant into a monster of a common, the combat-warping Agony Warp that kills one guy and castrates another so you can block and kill it with ease. While Giant Growths abound with Green or especially Green and White mana, it’s this Blue/Black spell that is the best ‘Giant Growth’ in the set by far, when it comes to combat tricks. Four out of five charms have a creature-removal mode, and the fifth merely draws two cards because that is what Blue likes to do and should be awesome in Constructed.
But it’s pretty clear that the gold spells will be driving your color choices, which again points out to me that a two-color combination that is solidly in two colors and has mana-fixing can easily double-splash for two shards worth of gold spells instead of one, often using off-Shard mana fixing to find one or even both splash colors on demand. And these tricks-and-removal are what you need to know about the format in a nutshell, what the colors can do as far as removal and altering combat math. Poring over the spoiler will let you see every card, sure, but here’s the “For Dummies” version of what you need to know for the pre-release, what kind of removal spells your opponent might have and what combat tricks are in the format before you go attacking into them willy-nilly.
So remember… unless your deck is quite fast or quite slow, the default setting should be ‘draw first,’ and look over the list of what untapped mana might mean what spells from your opponent if you’re going to be going to the Prerelease tomorrow. I for one will be helping to run the Shards of Alara pre-release at Kings Games in Brooklyn tomorrow, and at Neutral Ground for the second day of pre-release action on Sunday. I’ll try to remember to have fun somewhere in there, and you shouldn’t need a reminder from me telling you to have fun at your Prerelease this weekend… they do tend to be pretty awesome after all!
Sean McKeown
s_mckeown @ hotmail.com