Planar Chaos: First Impressions!

I could say something clever here. Or I
could tell you what I learned about the cards I played with, and against,
this weekend. So rather than bore you, I’ll just say that I went 4-1 (losing
my sole round thanks to me not following my own damn advice from last
week’s article), won nine packs*, and had a lot of fun.

Here’s the fruit of my first touch of Planar
Chaos, baby. Impressions, tourney results, and actual Sealed Card pools
will arrive next week.

Crovax,
Ascendant Hero
I gotta say: for six mana, he’s
a little pricey, but considering that he pretty much decimates a Black and
Green board — bye bye, you little Saprolings and you x/1 regenerators! —
I consider him to be a kind of modified board sweeper spell. Kind of like
an expensive Engineered Plague that leaves a wall behind.

Because you know, you are not attacking
with him. Not if you have any significant White guys on board at all. He
has no evasion, and though he can protect himself, the whole point of the
Crovax is that he beefs your other guys. A Crovax launching himself back
to your hand in mid-combat, with damage on the stack, can leave all of
your other White dudes eating dust.

The old Crovax flew. I liked that. This
Crovax? Pretty darned cool. Very
potent at stabilizing leaking boards, where you’re almost good
enough to block but not quite. But a force
of damage? No.

Dust
Elemental, Stonecloaker, Whitemane Lion
I had all three in my deck, and the rare occasions I lost were pretty much
caused by me having too many bouncy-bouncy critters stuck in my hand while
I had a single non-bouncy guy to work with.

That sucked, but that’s the sort of thing
that’s really only going to happen at a Prerelease event with its attendant
three packs of Planar Chaos, so let’s talk about them individually.

Stonecloaker is the awesome one out of the
three. It’s fairly priced, it can yank a guy out of combat to save it
or remove it in response to a Strangling Soot, and it removes cards in
the graveyard. The only issue — and this is something I’m a little leery
on — is whether you must target a card in a graveyard when it comes into
play. I’m pretty sure, given the wording on the card, that you cannot
cast it unless there’s a card to target, but two judges at the Prerelease
told me otherwise. If they’re right, this card is an awesome house, because
you can go to it any time you darned well please. If not, then this card
becomes a lot more awkward.

Unfortunately, since there’s no pre-tourney
Judge FAQ for me to consult, I can’t say. More on this
next week, when I know more.

The Whitemane Lion, however, was purely a
defensive spell. Generally by the time I was ready and able to use him,
the tempo loss of exchanging a valid critter to put a vanilla 2/2 on the
board was crippling. Thus, he got used as a cheap yoink! spell to
save my guys whenever my opponents got mean, with the consolation prize
of a fresh 2/2 attacker ready to go the next turn.

The Dust Elemental? Returning
three guys is a lot to ask, but the price is right and the 6/6 damage
to the face is quite nice. I did it once at EOT against an R/G/w player,
who was really helpless against it, but a Black or Blue player might have
made me pay significantly for putting all my eggs in one basket. It’s
a great card in some circumstances (and it gets better with Saprolings,
making it great in W/G Sealed builds), but more testing is definitely needed
to see how often this guy sticks the field.

Still. A fun card to cast
in response to Damnation. “Oh,
I’ll just put my best cards back in my hand…”

Mycologist
I had two of ‘em. I’m not sure if they’re playable, because the last
time I saw this card in its original form was before the whole idea of
“Limited Play” was even a glimmer in the mind of some greedy Wizards sales
exec.

That said, it’s
a cheap way of producing Saprolings and a reasonably decent usage for them
once you’ve sent them into combat. I like lifegain a lot, especially if
said lifegain comes when I’m saving myself a turn of damage via chump-blocking
(or, more ideally, when I’m sallying forth with my Salad Army).

But is it worth a card? Especially
in the two-slot? This format’s reasonably slow, but an 0/2 wall that takes three turns to get going? I don’t
know. I guess it depends how many Thallids you have.

Voidstone Gargoyle
This, however, was totally awesome. It could get
killed, of course — what couldn’t? — but given that
its coming into play usually neutralized my opponent’s worst threat, that
was a risk I was willing to take. That Magus
of the Arena? Now it’s just a 5/5. That Pyrohemia? Now
it’s useless. That Mire
Boa that’s hitting you in the face? Well, now you can kill it, because
it can’t regenerate.

That’d all be nice, but Voidstone Gargoyle
comes with the lovely bonus of “being in a color that’s now dedicated to
flashing things in and out,” so with Momentary Blink you can immediately
reset your Gargoyle at will, or — more slowly — trump some larger and more
recent threat by yoinking it back into your hand with a Whitemane Lion. Nice.

Chronozoa
I was not impressed when I saw the card. This is because I misread it casually
and thought that it merely put 3/3 tokens into play. Putting 3/3 copies
of itself into play, however, is completely over-the-top — it replicates,
splitting and dividing into new and ever-growing armies every damn time,
which for four mana is pretty damned awesome.

This wins for “Most Flavorful Card In
The Set.”

That said, the nice
thing is that almost every color can do something about it except for,
as usual, Green and White. Blue can bounce it, Red can kill it, and Black
can destroy it. But if you have some way to protect it, it’s a beautiful,
mana-free victory condition that’s a very strong card.

I mean, I’d pay money for a generic 3/3
flier for 4. One that will replicate? Sign
me the heck up.

Erratic
Mutation
Considering that most Sealed games involve a mana
curve that starts at two and winds upwards, barring the odd Misery
Charm or Chromatic Star, this is pretty much guaranteed to kill at least
an x/2. Not bad for three mana, and it’s in a color that needs it.

Jodah’s
Avenger
This is, as they say, expensive but stupid good. I
wish I had something clever to say about it, but the two times I had it played
on me it just dominated the table. Of course, I was playing Red against
it, which makes me a little more hateful of it, but for
six mana you could do worse.

It’s no Dragon auto-win. But it’s solid
enough that it’ll make it into my deck every time.

Reality
Acid
If I were a really good player, I guess I’d have a firm opinion on this. I
don’t think it’s particularly good, being both slow and expensive, but sometimes
Blue needs an answer to something and this will kill it in a few turns. It
was a real hassle when I had it played upon me, slowing me down.

Thus, the question of “Is this good?” may
depend upon your deck. If you think you have the kind of slow deck that
gets into ground stalls — in other words, a deck that’s pretty much not
Blue — then you may want this if Blue’s your splash color. But if you
have a quick deck that really wants to blitz on tempo, this is gonna be
a handicap. Yet it is a slow out.

All right, what do you think?

Cradle
to Grave
Speaking of “What you think,” here is what I suspect will be one of the most
closely-analyzed cards in the set (for Limited play, anyway), because it’s
just such a weird card.

Assassinate was widely criticized for being
too slow. You had to take the hit, and it was three mana, and then it
was a sorcery. Now we have a two-mana instant
that can hit any non-black creature, but you have a one-turn window to
use it before it’s completely useless.

Is it any good?

The answer is that right now, I like it. In
the course of five rounds, I played it maindeck just to see (and because,
hey, removal), and I had two spots where the card shone:

1) After a slow draw, when I was waiting
until turn 4 to start churning out my real offensive, an early third-turn
Cradle to Grave often robbed my opponent of tempo and let me recover long
enough to start turning the tide my way.
2) The late game, when I was holding on to a tenuous lead, and my opponent
cast something that would have stopped me dead (or close to it), but whoops! Cradle
to Grave!

That said, there
were three places where the card sucked:

1) When my opponent was playing heavy Black. And
this is Sealed, where you usually don’t get a
choice of the removal you open, so you tend to see Black a little more
heavily than you do in Draft.

2) When my opponent was in the lead, and
I had this useless spell in my hand and I could do nothing to stop him
because his guy came into play two turns ago when I had tapped out.

3) In the mid-game, when I was using up
all of my mana to cast my three- to five-mana spells so I could build up
a board presence, and my opponent’s three- to five-mana spells were clearly
superior to mine.

It’s hard to say whether the card is flat-out
capital-“G” good, because a card that almost by definition is going to
get stranded in your hand a lot of the time isn’t a card you want to run
all the time. And it’s also not a card you want to save mana for
— because unless you know that your opponent is going to dominate you the
next turn with something huge and splashy, you generally want to cast your
best card, not hold back your mana in an attempt to neutralize a power
play that may never come.

So is it good? It’s not bad. But I think
in the end we’ll come to accept it as a late-game card that may not save
you when it needs to. It’s insurance. And some decks want that,
and others do not.

Mirri
the Cursed
OH MY GOD, I LOVE THIS CARD.

For the record: Despite a lot of games for
fun, I ran into an astounding no dragons at the Prerelease. And
I also ran an amazingly-abnormal B/W deck, meaning that I had D’Avenant
Healer to pretty much trump every Errant Ephemeron that got in my way.

But in the deck I had? Well, nobody ever
expected to see Mirri on turn 4, so she was like a mini-Lightning Bolt. And
then, given that I had some nice White bouncy-cards (see earlier), I often
had the turn 5 play of “Attack with Mirri again, end of your turn play
Stonecloaker to bounce her, recast her, attack for six
damage in the air on turn 6.”

GG, guys, GG.

I only triggered her vampire ability once,
and that was when I was in the lead and my opponent was chump-blocking. I
don’t think we’ll be seeing a lot of massively inflated Mirrae in the air
any time soon. But for what she is, she’s a house.

Rathi
Trapper
Every bit as annoying as you’d think. The “Pay B to tap” is a bit of a pain
in a color that wants you to use a lot of Swamps for everything you play,
but hey. I like it.

And, may I note, it’s a Rebel. Search ‘em
if you got ‘em, fellas.

Akroma,
Angel of Fury
I would just like to register my complaint that a Red creature that is supposedly
an Angel of Fury does not have haste. She’s apparently very angry, but not
enough to get to work on the turn you pay eight damn mana for
her. This, to me, makes her significantly worse than her white brethen.

In other news, at the Prerelease there was
a girl who had angel wings tattooed on her back, glistening with the fresh
sheen of a new tat, with the word “Akroma” hanging between them. Now that’s hardcore.

Magus
of the Arena
This card caused more headaches
than any other card that I saw, and again the judges seemed a little more
uncertain than they should have been. The two questions that continually
arose were these:

Can you tap the Magus of the Arena to put it into the
battlefield against the creature of your opponent’s choice? After all,
a 5/5 is likely the beefiest thing you have on the board….
My answer: Yes. The wording on Magus says, “3, Tap: Tap target creature
you control…” Because the “Tap target creature you control” part is after
the colon, not before it, it is not a cost but an effect. You can tap an
already-tapped creature, if you want, so sure. Send it in.

This confused a lot of people, though, so
perhaps reminder text might have been an order. And again, if I’m wrong,
I’ll clarify next week.

Can you respond to the damage done by Magus of the Arena?
My answer: No. Like Contested Cliffs — a card that won the award
for “Most commonly-asked Judge question” back when
it was legal — the damage does not stack.

The issue is that the damage done isn’t part
of a spell; it’s part of the resolution of a spell. The whole “Choose
a target, the creatures do damage to each other” all happens as part of
one seamless package, where you do not get priority in the middle to intercede
to save your guy; the target’s chosen, the damage is done, and state-based
effects will whisk your guy off to the graveyard before you have so much
as a by-your-leave. By the time you have the input to cast, say, a Healing
Leaves, you guy has taken fatal damage and is already off the table.

In other words, if you say, “I choose this
guy” as the Magus of the Arena’s effect, they’re already in the battlefield. You
have to make sure any healing effects/regeneration shields/pump effects
resolve before you choose your target guy.

The same applies for bounce spells. If you
say, “I choose my Crovax and then bounce him,” you don’t get the chance
to bounce him “in response” to the damage. He’s dead. You can bounce
Crovax before you choose targets, but since Crovax won’t be in play you’ll
have to choose another creature in play to face the Magus.

Now, I could be wrong. I don’t think I am,
but again — that whole “lack of a Prerelease FAQ” issue is troublesome,
so I must rely on my past (non-Judgely) knowledge to guess. If you’re
curious, I’m sure a judge will back or correct me in the forums, and if
I am wrong expect a correction next week.

Simian
Spirit Guide
This dude has the best flavor text ever. But unfortunately, I won’t
have it in the system until later today (I have to manually input the cards
from Wizards information once the set is officially released), so you’ll
have to look at the card for your reading pleasure.

Stingscourger
Dammit, people, this guy is not a turn 2 play. He is a turn 4 or
5 play, when you’re clearing the way for last turn’s beef to strike your
opponent straight to the face.

He is very very nice. But I’m still not
sure when I should pay the echo.

Kavu
Predator
This was a very, very funny card to cast on my turn
2 in response to my opponent’s turn 1 Essence
Warden. Followed by a Healing
Leaves to my opponent’s face.

Truthfully, I would not recommend this strategy
to all people, but I had a sucktacular draft deck. And it was hysterical
to see them being pounded by their own lifegain.

Necrotic
Sliver
Combine with Pulmonic Sliver for an endless string of Vindicates.

Home on the
Strange
Yes, my webcomic! If you haven’t been reading, the storyline is such: Izzy,
the troubled-but-conflicted semi-girlfriend of too-nice-guy Tanner, has been
invited to Seth’s house. Seth is a sleazy GM who only invited her there
to seduce her… And he offered to introduce her around to the local art critics
in exchange for being by his side. Hmm.

Izzy refused. But Seth showed her the deep,
dark secret — literally — in the basement of his house. And this week,
she has to wonder what sort of man Seth really is….

Signing off,
The Ferrett
TheFerrett@StarCityGames.com
The Here Edits This Site Here Guy

* – Yes, I can play. I checked with Scott
Johns, and because I saw only the same preview cards that you did, I wasn’t
disqualified from prerelease play. I could have seen the whole set, probably,
if I’d asked, but I really hate that so I didn’t.