Like many of you, last weekend marked the first time I got my hands on any M11 cards. Thanks to the fact that I had spent the previous week at an island fishing camp my family runs in Georgian Bay in Canada (where I spent more time playing Settlers of Catan than actually fishing — what can I say, I’m a gamer, not an outdoorsman!), I hadn’t had the chance to check out the visual spoiler before diving into the prerelease, so I went in largely blind. This proved to be an interesting experience, since I got to look at a lot of cards for the first time either in my hand or across the table from me and exclaim “What the hell?” Today I’m going to look at some things that stood out for me at the prerelease, for good or ill, as well as some impressions of cards I’ve learned about since.
My sealed deck pool was pretty straightforward to build, without nearly enough creatures in either Black, Red, or Green for any of them to be a core color. I had a plethora of quality fliers in White and Blue, along with a pair of Aether Adepts that seemed like they might be good to help my air force race fat ground creatures. I also had a pair of Gargoyle Sentinels, which struck me as good blockers early that could start attacking in the air when the game stalled out; they seemed to fit my deck well. I continued my streak of never in my life winning a prerelease, starting 4-0 before losing the next two, but had a great time playing with the new cards and felt like I learned a decent amount about the format.
It may have been due to my particular card pool, but it felt like M11 Limited is much faster than M10. There were still games that stalled out with neither player able to profitably attack, but they seemed to no longer be the rule. Well-built aggressive decks seem to have a better chance to combat bombs, especially bomb creatures, since cards like Aether Adept and Chandra’s Outrage can help the aggressive player push a Serra Angel or the like out of the way while generating some kind of tempo.
Some other minor changes to the card pool seem intended to speed up the games. The change from Drudge Skeleton to Reassembling Skeleton makes locking down ground creatures more expensive for Black, and Yavimaya Wurm at common makes trying to do so much harder against fat Green creatures where before it was nearly trivial. Evasion effects are more common across the board, with Volcanic Strength and Shiv’s Embrace giving even Red the ability to get around blockers consistently, while previously it had almost solely Panic Attack to break games open. Harbor Serpent is a big improvement over the X/X Serpent from M10, since it can both more consistently provide a solid defensive body when you need it and isn’t just a wall against non-Blue decks. It’s still better against Blue because it can attack faster and has Islandwalk, however, so that flavor remains.
To touch on some specific cards:
Aether Adept: It’s no Man-o’-War, but it’s still good. It’s much harder to play correctly than Man-o’-War was, but that’s because in Visions you almost always just wanted to bounce whatever your opponent’s first creature was no matter what. It’s often correct to hold Aether Adept for an opponent’s blocker before a turn when you want to make a big attack, or to save it to use as enchantment removal on a Shiv’s Embrace or a Pacifism on your own creature.
Excommunicate: I think this card is much better than it was in M10 because aggressive decks are much more effective. It’s likely that it will go late in drafts for a while because it was perceived as weak in the old Core Set format, but I expect that it will become more popular as the set is drafted more often.
Mana Leak: Similarly, while this card is good in pretty much any deck, it’s particularly strong in aggressive decks where you can use it to stop a large blocker after establishing a board presence. It’s worse at stopping removal or small creatures, but it’s great at stopping big creatures and expensive bombs. Point to beatdown.
Roc Egg: A solid card for U/W, but be prepared to sideboard it out in matchups in which your opponent isn’t trying to get through on the ground, because it can become dead very quickly in a battle of fliers.
Stormfront Pegasus: This card was one of my favorite White commons in M10, and with the improvements for aggressive decks in M11, it gets that much better. My guess is that it’s the third best White common, behind Pacifism and Blinding Mage.
Diminish: I’m surprised this is a Core Set common because of how it interacts with power/toughness increasing effects under the latest rules changes to how layers work. Diminish will never shrink a pumped Bloodthrone Vampire, an enchanted creature, an equipped creature, or a Mighty Leaped creature. These are all very important to remember when playing with (or against) this card, and greatly diminish its value… GET IT?!
Inferno Titan: Gross as advertised. I played a ton of games against my friend’s B/R deck with Inferno Titan, Magma Phoenix, and Royal Assassin, with only bounce spells and Condemn that could really deal with any of them, and Titan was by far the biggest problem. Bouncing it gives them another Arc Lightning when it enters the battlefield, and they still get two triggers by the time you can Condemn it. While the format isn’t as focused on bombs as it was before since aggressive decks can win more quickly, there are still bombs that can win games singlehandedly, and this is one of them.
Cancel: As was the case in M10, many of those bombs are creatures, so removal is at a particular premium, and Cancel is especially good. I can’t tell you how many times I sat with Negate in hand and mana open and got blown out by the Titan.
Serene Offering: There are a lot of good artifacts and enchantments in M11, and a lot of them are cards that you really want to kill. I maindecked Serene Offering at my pre-release and was rarely unhappy to draw it. I killed a Brittle Effigy when my opponent tapped low on mana, a Pacifism, a Quag Sickness that my opponent played hoping to draw a Swamp the next turn, and any number of artifact creatures, from Juggernaut to Triskelion. Naturalize is likely even better because it can kill creature enchantments during the attack step to two-for-one your opponent. My experience may have been an outlier, but it seems like it’s worth it to maindeck one of these in sealed deck, at least.
Crystal Ball: Speaking of good artifacts that you really want to kill, Crystal Ball is downright awesome. Yes, M11 is looking faster than M10, but Merfolk Looter was one of the best cards in M10, and a card with a similar effect in terms of ensuring your card quality is higher than your opponent’s that can fit into any deck and is much harder to kill — sign me up. My instinct is that this is first pick quality, and likely better than anything but a flat out bomb.
Conundrum Sphinx: A 4/4 flier for four mana is obviously good, but I just wanted to comment on the use of the Sphinx’s ability. Generally, in the early game I’d name whatever land I had the most of left in my deck, but once I no longer had use for extra land, I’d generally start naming cards that I wanted to draw. Because the Sphinx ships the card to the bottom if you miss, you’re more likely to draw a card if you name it than if you don’t. I can sense the math fight in the forums already! Oh, and this is a really awkward card to have in play against an opponent with Crystal Ball.
Enough about Limited. While I’m sure many of you will be playing M11 draft at your local game store, I’m sure far more of you are wondering what cards from M11 you should pick up for Standard or Extended in the not-so-distant future. I talked at length in my last article about the Titans, and I maintain that Primeval Titan and Grave Titan top the charts, though some new cards I’ve seen since then have led me to wonder if Inferno Titan may not deserve more recognition than he’s been getting.
The big one? Destructive Force. How this card has not gotten more attention is beyond me. Don’t people remember Wildfire? This is Wilderfire, and interestingly deals just enough damage to wipe the board clean of Baneslayers while keeping Inferno Titan around for more. A lot of people have tried to make Red ramp style decks work over the years, and this is the sort of cards that makes that happen. Everflowing Chalice is no Grim Monolith, but dipping into Green for Rampant Growth, Cultivate, and Garruk Wildspeaker can accelerate you to big creatures and big spells in no time.
Speaking of Garruk, it’s worth noting that Destructive Force works remarkably well with any planeswalkers. You don’t have to have some kind of Titan in play to make wiping the board profitable for you, you can just have Garruk, or Elspeth, or anything that can continue to generate an advantage on the battlefield while everything else is dead. That said, it also means that Destructive Force alone is rather weak against those same cards — which is, of course, where the Titans come in. Titans smash!
Another card that hasn’t gotten much attention but seems very powerful to me is Cyclops Gladiator. Remember Contested Cliffs? This is a Contested Cliffs glued to a Ravenous Baloth for the same cost as the latter. The Gladiator can mow down mana creatures, walls, Sea Gate Oracles, Sprouting Thrinaxes, Bloodbraid Elves — the list goes on — all while bashing your opponent for four a turn. I think the big hurdle here is the triple Red mana cost, which makes it difficult to play the Gladiator in anything but a Mono Red deck, but this is the sort of card that is very difficult for a lot of decks to deal with. I expect it to see action in the future.
Last but certainly not least is Fauna Shaman. Fauna Shaman certainly isn’t a card that has flown under the radar by any means. Its similarity to longtime favorite Survival of the Fittest alone would see to that, even if it weren’t in the same format as Vengevine. While there are a lot of cards in M11 that fit well into particular archetypes, like Cultivate in Turboland, or serve as foils for existing decks, like Obstinate Baloth against Jund or Red, Fauna Shaman is one of those cards that has the potential to generate new archetypes all by itself.
So far I’ve been thinking about how to fit Fauna Shaman into an NLB-style shell, but abusing Vengevine is only the beginning. What about Fauna Shaman and Unearth creatures? Fauna Shaman and a Survival-esque silver bullet creature base? The implications of this little 2/2 are huge, and it has the potential to be truly format warping. I haven’t had a chance to play any with her yet, but just thinking about the possibilities makes my head spin. Keep an eye on this one — she may very well be defining Standard for the year to come.
Until next time…