For further reference, consider looking at Day One and Day Two before reading this, if you haven’t already.
Before we examine today’s card pool, let’s take a look at how one of the rules of Limited has shifted.
One of the great things about Ravnica is that the Legends return to being fairly priced. Unlike Kamigawa block, where five mana got you Meloku the Clouded Mirror, you now are paying eight mana for Razia, the Fabulous Gorgon Girls, or Chorus of the Conclave. This is a long way from paying six mana for Cabal Patriarch, Silvos, Rogue Elemental, or Visara the Dreadful. It’s even a stretch from recruiting Glissa Sunseeker. Poor Glissa. She died more often than Kenny.
When it rotates out, we’re going to miss Kamigawa block. Because Legends are completely crazy powerful. Kamigawa is to creatures what Urza Block was to artifacts.
Let’s compare two Legends that work similarly. Don Pardo?
Don Pardo: “He’s the newest guy on the block. Hailing from the Tenth District of lovely downtown Burbank, it’s Agrus Kos, Wojek Veteran! Let’s give him a big welcome!”
*crowd goes wild*
Don Pardo: “And let’s bring back our reigning Champion of Kamigawa, he’s one super shogun, Nagao, Bound by Honor!”
*crowd goes wild with exactly the same amount of gusto, leaving the impression that the applause must be canned*
Thanks, Don. Game show music from the 1970s still works. Ready to play Who’s The Better Card?
Both Kos and Nagao are heavy hitters. Nagao is 4/4 on defense. Kos is 3/3. On offense, Nagao is 4/4, going up to 5/5 if blocked. He gives similar bonuses to fellow attacking Samurai. On offense, Kos is 5/5. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. (Unless your opponent uses a crafty Quickchange.) He gives similar bonuses to fellow attacking Red and/or White creatures.
In a battle, Captain Nagao wasn’t always followed to the field by enough Samurai. He wasn’t a great leader, he just gave his own boys a knowing wink and nod and they followed gladly. He was occasionally fickle, deciding to just quit the field if he was facing loyalty problems. (Silly legend rule.) He was one baaad Hill Giant.
Agrus Kos, on the other hand, is a much more cheerful and affable guy. He gives bigger bonuses to more attackers. And he hits for five on the attack. He’s not nearly as capable as Nagao as a blocker. He also costs one more mana, and requires two colors of mana to boot. He’s far less likely to die to the Legend rule, however.
I give the nod to Nagao by a miniscule fraction. If you disagree, bring it to the forum.
That’s one tough comparison. Compare Razia, Boros Archangel to the last block’s best White flyers, Hikari, Twilight Guardian or Yosei, the Morning Star. Razia fares unfavorably. Eight mana? Four of it colored? And she dies to Last Gasp? Not my idea of a good time. By the time Razia hits the table, Hikari would have attacked at least three times. That’s a much easier call than Agrus Kos or Nagao.
Now is the time on Sprockets vhen ve build!
Boros Garrison
Boros Recruit
2 Boros Signet
Flame-Kin Zealot
Skyknight Legionnaire
Thundersong Trumpeter
Loxodon Hierarch
Seeds of Strength
Selesnya Guildmage
Selesnya Signet
Watchwolf
Gaze of the Gorgon
Golgari Rotfarm
Golgari Signet
Overgrown Tomb
Woodwraith Strangler
Clutch of the Undercity
Dimir Signet
2 Lurking Informant
Perplex
Twisted Justice
Barbarian Riftcutter
Coalhauler Swine
Dogpile
Flash Conscription
Galvanic Arc
Goblin Fire Fiend
Instill Furor
Molten Sentry
Sell-Sword Brute
Smash
Sparkmage Apprentice
Surge of Zeal
Torpid Moloch
Courier Hawk
2 Gate Hound
Light of Sanction
Nightguard Patrol
Sandsower
Veteran Armorer
Votary of the Conclave
Civic Wayfinder
Gather Courage
Golgari Brownscale
Golgari Grave-Troll
Nullmage Shepherd
Overwhelm
Perilous Forays
Siege Wurm
Sundering Vitae
Brainspoil
Clinging Darkness
Dimir Machinations
Disembowel
Mausoleum Turnkey
Mortipede
Necromantic Thirst
Sewerdreg
Strands of Undeath
Convolute
2 Drift of Phantasms
Flow of Ideas
Induce Paranoia
Lore Broker
Mneumonic Nexus
Peel from Reality
Vedalken Dismisser
Vedalken Entrancer
Zephyr Spirit
2 Terrarion
(White Space Provided by Acme White Paint)
Gold cards give you the most bang for your buck. Examining them first will provide a guide to how we’ll look at the regular colored cards.
Despite having a decent selection, Boros’s cards lack punch. The newest Ravnica mook rates Boros Recruit as deserving only one star out of four. He’s hard to use, but not completely pointless. If you’re packing multiple pump effects with Radiance, like Rally the Righteous, the Recruit will increase your chances of boosting your army. He also kills Saprolings, so he’s not a total waste of time. We also have two Signets, but the idea Boros curve doesn’t have a lot of use for the Signets. Flame-Kin Zealot, Skyknight Legionaire, and Thundersong Trumpeter are all fine creatures, particularly the Legionnaire.
Like the funkateers Zapp, Selesnya drops some bombs on me. A pair of two superlative two drops, Watchwolf and Selesnya Guildmage. Selesnya Guildmage gets my pick as the best uncommon in Ravnica. You can make Saproling tokens and attack with them and the rest of your men the next turn and make them bigger. Watchwolf merely turns sideways, but in such a fashion so as to disappoint no one. Couple these two with a versatile and powerful beater, Loxodon Hierarch. Top it off with a Signet and Seeds of Strength, which should read “Win target combat.” These Green/White cards are awesome.
Golgari doesn’t offer us much more than mana. Gaze of the Gorgon shows up yet again. Like an incessant courter, its persistent advances frighten me, tempting me to push it away again and again. Last time out, I broke down and let it into my deck. Will it repeat? The Rot Farm, Signet, and Overgrown Tomb are nice. Woodwraith Strangler would be fine and dandy if it was a 3/3 instead of a 2/2. Instead it reeks of mediocrity.
There’s only one card I like in Dimir’s selection, and that’s Clutch of the Undercity. Putting your opponent back by at turn is always decent, and the life loss adds zest. (Clutch ain’t very good at saving your own cards, but the possibility exists.) Twisted Justice may be a six-mana cantrip that kills a one-mana creature, but at least it gives us a handy easy signal in the art. You too can play at home by giving this card a thumbs down! Signets are convenient mana accelerants, so if we have any good blue or black cards we can at least consider it.
It took me a long time, but I’ve figured out the proper use for Lurking Informant. It helps support newspaper at the bottom of a bird cage. Perplex has Transmute, so it’s rarely a dead card. I’d only run Perplex if I had a three mana game winner. And there aren’t too many of those in Ravnica at the moment.
At first glance, The Blue actually boasts cards we may consider playing today. Two Drift of Phantasms makes defensive decks nice, but we’ve got no flyers on offense. So why play defense? We could sit back and do milling games with Vedalken Entrancer and Lore Broker. Convolute is reasonably priced, if you have nothing better to do on turn three.
Ahem. Are you ready for one of the most tired cliches of a Limited article? Not one but two arise in the following paragraph.
Peel from Reality is solid, if unremarkable. It keeps your guy alive while forcing your opponent to replay his most expensive creature. I’ll play with it, but I’m not happy about it. (If I was Knut, I’d demand that each writer pay him a dime for each time they use these phrases.)
Induce Paranoia demands two Blue mana. If you use Black to pay for it, you may end up giving your opponent access to Dredge spells. That’s risky. It looks better in draft than sealed, where you have a good chance to concoct a milling deck. Mnemonic Nexus goes against the grain in Blue, but can be sideboarded in against mill decks. Vedalken Dismisser is prohibitively expensive, but if you have a milling effect handy, it can dispose of your opponent’s best creature. That looks like too much work for me, though.
Six fine Black cards will go into any deck that can support them. Mortipede costs a lot, but you get a lot of utility for the price you pay. Sewerdreg has quality evasion, so he gets a thumbs up for me. Mausoleum Turnkey has good stats and brings a dead creature back to your hand. That’s always good. Brainspoil, Disembowel, and Strands of Undeath provide sufficient support. With the abundance of mana fixers, it looks like playing cards with double Black costs won’t be an issue.
One of the key differences between Dimir and Golgari is that Dimir often doesn’t care about the state of the board, but rather the state of the opponent’s library. Golgari only wants to care about the board state. Dimir Machinations is near useless in most Golgari builds. But it has Transmute. That’s the only reason I would consider Dimir Machinations today.
Green has reasonable tools. Civic Wayfinder fixes mana par excellence. Nullmage Shepherd plays good defense and can destroy two to four permanents in the average sealed deck, if you’ve got the team to support her. Siege Wurm smashes through enemy lines, and Golgari Grave-Troll will usually show up as a 4/4 or 5/5, though you need to pay his mana cost twice. I’m not completely sold on him, though. Gather Courage always gets the nod in my playbook.
Overwhelm looks great in a deck with lots of tokens, but do we have enough creatures to play it honestly? Golgari Brownscale sits there like a bump on a log most of the time, though he can work nicely against Boros aggression. Perilous Forays only works as a deck thinner with token heavy decks. (The Elf Babe on the art looks like Veronica from the Archie comics, except with pointy ears.) It won’t get commissioned for this army. The Nullmage Shepherd crowds out the Sundering Vitae, but at least we have sideboard options for redundancy.
The mono-colored White cards look scrawny in comparison to their golden compatriots. Courier Hawk usually pings for two or three if it shows up on the first turn, and it supplements Convoke cards well. Nightguard Patrol and Veteran Armorer are reasonable additions to any army. Sandsower cries for Saproling buddies, but in their absence he is still playable.
There isn’t much more to say about the White. Gate Hound is the world’s worst Rabid Wombat. Votary of the Conclave demands that you set him up with nubile flight attendants before he can be bothered to regenerate. And getting those girls’ phone numbers isn’t easy. Thomas Rosholm would be hard pressed to get the right combination of digits.
Spice is nice, and Ravnica’s Red just doesn’t have enough. (That inspires me to head to CoCo Ichiban tonight.) Galvanic Arc and Flash Conscription are two quality spells. The rest don’t seem to be enough for my liking. Coalhauler Swine is a deceptively sneaky tool for a big, inefficient beast. He can end the game rapidly, and if you’ve been playing spells like Faith’s Fetters or Lightning Helix, the chances of you being ahead on life are very good. You need to find a way to increase his toughness to optimize the man.
Goblin Fire Fiend requires a steep investment to kill off a big blocker. He never, ever wants to be blocked by a Saproling. I don’t like him, though some do. Molten Sentry is undercosted if you want an aggressive attacker, but it only works half the time. I’d consider him playable if he was 3/4 on defense and 4/3 on offense, but you take what you get.
See previous articles for my thoughts concerning the rest of Red.
I’m feeling like poor Johnny One Note. I can’t help but fall into the same color combination, three builds in a row. Whiskey Foxtrot Tango? There’s got to be more to life than this. Green, White, and Black combine to form tedium. Whatever happened to opening three Snapping Drakes, like I did at my first Prerelease?
The deck’s choices look like this.
Creatures (15)
2cc: Courier Hawk, Watchwolf, Veteran Armorer, Selesnya Guildmage
3cc: Nightguard Patrol, Civic Wayfinder, Golgari Brownscale
4cc: Sandsower, Loxodon Hierarch, Mausoleum Turnkey, Mortipede, Nullmage Shepherd
5cc: Golgari Grave-Troll, Sewerdreg
7cc: Siege Wurm
Spells and Mana Fixers (8,6)
Lands: Golgari Rot Farm, Overgrown Tomb
1cc: 2 Terrarion, Gather Courage
2cc: Seeds of Strength, Clinging Darkness, Selesnya Signet, Golgari Signet
4cc: Strands of Undeath, Gaze of the Gorgon
5cc: Brainspoil, Disembowel (using X = 4 as a benchmark)
7cc: Overwhelm
Overwhelm can win the game, but it’s just too hard to play without having multiple token producers. Out it goes. That leaves us twenty-two business spells. Terrarion’s cantrip ability lets us approach a more reasonable curve, but I don’t want to cut any spells to make room for them, and if I’m playing with two Signets, I want to run 16 land so I can reliably cast them. So no Terrarions today. I like the fact that my minor color, black, has no early game spells. If you’re going to splash, your splash color usually comes later in the game anyway.
The final deck looks like this.
1cc: Gather Courage
2cc: Courier Hawk, Selesnya Guildmage, Veteran Armorer, Watchwolf, Seeds of Strength, Clinging Darkness, Golgari Signet, Selesnya Signet
3cc: Civic Wayfinder, Golgari Brownscale, Nightguard Patrol
4cc: Sandsower, Loxodon Hierarch, Mausoleum Turnkey, Mortipede, Nullmage Shepherd, Gaze of the Gorgon, Strands of Undeath
5cc: Golgari Grave-Troll, Sewerdreg, Brainspoil, Disembowel
7cc: Siege Wurm
7 Plains
6 Forest
1 Overgrown Tomb
1 Golgari Rotfarm
1 Swamp
Visual mana curve:
1 S
2 CCCCSSSS
3 CCC
4 CCCCCSS
5 CCSS
7 C
The deck has a fair amount of combat tricks and removal. The major downside of this deck is that aside from a tiny Courier Hawk, it has few tools to handle flyers. Blue decks with four or five flyers may be able to stall you if your ground forces don’t show up in time, however. I like all the two mana action, and I don’t mind in the slightest the jump from two to four or five mana that the Signets can provide.
As always, bring the noise and bring the funk in the forums. Just keep your funk clean and civil, if you wouldn’t mind.
Eli Kaplan
[email protected]
gaijineli on efnet
BONUS SECTION: Ten Actual Working Video Game Titles at Tokyo Game Show 2005
10. My Own Dead Lock, produced by Climax. I’m not sure how you can get yourself into a dead lock, but apparently they did.
9. Fighting for ONE PIECE, produced by Bandai. This title conjures up two burly men engaged in a bout of fisticuffs, over acquisition of a woman’s swimsuit. I hope the winner isn’t planning to wear it himself.
8. Every Extend Extra, produced by Bandai. I suppose this is going to be a long game.
7. Where Do Babies Come From? II, produced by Sega. People, I swear, I can’t make this stuff up. (Come to think of it, Japan produces many games on this subject every year.) Actually, this is a sequel, so you would have thought that they’d remember, considering that they pulled it off before. But no, they have to ask the question again. You’d think they’d be paying attention the first time around.
6. Small Star Thing, produced by Japan Electronics College. Can we be a bit more abstract? Then again, I’m the world’s biggest fan of Katamari Damacy.
5. Bleach, produced by Sega. Stain Stick, eat your heart out, we’ve got a game! And you don’t! Ha ha ha!
4. BASTARD! Online, produced by Tecmo. So I see PTR’s finally gotten around to getting his own web page.
3. Keep A Memory Green, produced by Sega. Hmm. And if I’m lazy about it, what happens then? What are you going to do, Sega? Come beat down my door?
2. Fist Groove, produced by Interactive Brains. I hope this is a typo. I really hope it is.
1. Yogurting, produced by GungHo. That is not a verb!