So yes, I know that while I call these set reviews “The Obligatory…”, I didn’t do one for Betrayers. Betrayers really didn’t seem very interesting and it was really hard trying to justify an entire article when the only card that I thought that would see play was Ninja of Deep Hours. In the end, I think that Umezawa’s Jitte is really the only other card from that set that is seeing play, unlike Champions where more and more cards are seeing play as time goes on. Saviors, on the other hand, looks packed with cards that appear to be both powerful, interesting, or both.
Lastly, before we start the set review, I found this interesting:
Epic
A few things about Epic. First off, the only one that seems like it could be remotely playable in Type One is Neverending Torment. While it does cost six mana, you do have Mana Drain and Boseiju around, so the actual problem to get around is simply what to do if your opponent has one of their victory conditions in hand. The first activation should be enough by itself to strip all of the victory conditions out of a control or combo deck.
Next up, when I was playing with some of these in Type 4, I noticed that these might be some of the first cards that I’ve played with that are simultaneously cool and unfun. The idea of a spell that’s so powerful that it expends you is awesome from a flavor standpoint, but really boring in execution. Since they don’t actually win the game the moment you cast them, you still need to keep playing for a few more turns at a minimum, but by playing I mean you just flip the top card of your deck over and look at the casting cost or count the cards in your hand and then attack before you then pass the turn to your opponent.
Lastly, I forget what message board I read this on, but right after Enduring Ideal was previewed, the first non-Honden-related post there read something like “You could splash this card into Suicide Black to get your copy of Necropotence!”
Kataki, War’s Wage
Poor White. It finally starts getting useful abilities, but then it gets them in a form that ends up being less useful than it probably should be. Kataki isn’t a bad card by any means, it just isn’t as easy to fit into decks as it probably could be. It should be a perfect fit for aggro-control. It’s got two power for two mana combined with a very useful special ability.
Unfortunately, it comes out at a time when aggro-control decks are leaning more on artifacts of their own than ever before. Rather than some Null Rods and a Mox, many aggro-control decks these days are tossing in Aether Vial, Chalice of the Void, Umezawa’s Jitte, Sword of Fire and Ice, and in all likelihood, Pithing Needle. When you have a Pithing Needle and Null Rod, both of which you want to keep in play, you are left with the choice of crippling your mana or of having to hold back Kataki. It’s quite likely that I could be very wrong here, but just seems like Kataki is in the right place but at the wrong time.
Reverance
I admit that the double White mana in the casting cost is really rough, but this card is capable of shutting down nearly every single creature in Fish. Off the top of my head, the only ones that can get through this are Mishra’s Factory (when pumped prior to the attack), Dan-Dan, Wild Mongrel, Basking Rootwalla, and a creature pumped by Umezawa’s Jitte or Sword of Fire and Ice.
Erayo, Soratami Ascendant
It’s pretty easy to flip this guy. You can just save up spells and play him as spell #3 and then flip him with a Brainstorm or Mox, or you can cast him as spell #1 and hope that your opponent counters, you then counter back, and then he flips when you play a cheap spell after he resolves.
The difficult part here is figuring out just exactly what deck he should go in. It’s probably easiest to flip him in a control deck, but he probably seems the least abusable there. He might be most abusable in an aggro-control deck, but it’s a lot harder to flip him there if your opponent doesn’t initiate a counter war or if you have to Aether Vial him out and thus lose the opportunity to count him as the first spell for the turn.
In the end, it’s a powerful card that rewards careful deckbuilding. R&D++
Ideas Unbound
Along with Twincast and Erayo, this seems to be the card that has generated the most buzz, with opinions on whether it’s good or not diverging wildly. There are about as many people calling it restriction worthy as there are people who claim that it’s garbage and will see zero play.
Also like Erayo, this card is going to require a lot of effort in order to make the most out of it. The first thought that many people had was to play it in a Storm combo deck, since you will probably never have to discard. The tough part there is being able to come up with the double Blue, since Black is really the only color that combo decks are able to produce in bulk. The other option would be a base-Blue combo deck like Sensei, but that deck already has plenty of draw and it is going to have to work hard enough as it is to come up with the triple Blue for Future Sight. This isn’t getting cast in combo unless they’ve got Tolarian Academy in play.
The other option is aggro-control, since it has decent potential to be able to play out its entire hand and thus have nothing to discard. If the aggro-control deck has three cards in hand and three mana in play, it could play Ideas Unbound to go up to five cards in hand, and then play a land, Aether Vial out a creature, maybe cast a Standstill, but then at the end of the turn it needs to discard the other land sitting in hand along with the Stifle that wasn’t getting cast. That series of plays hasn’t actually netted you any cards, though, so the aggro-control deck would probably need to have one fewer card in hand and hopefully the ability to play one more card.
Of course, then there’s the question as to whether between Standstill, Ninja of Deep Hours, and possibly Curiosity or Swords of Fire and Ice, that aggro-control actually needs more draw.
Murmurs from Beyond
Personally, I think that this is a good draw spell. Unfortunately, it just has too much competition right now in Thirst for Knowledge, Skeletal Scrying, and Intuition and friends. That said, this is also one of the only Arcane spells that I could actually see myself playing in Type 1. I wish that there were more, because there are quite a few Splice spells that I couldn’t mind fetching with Cunning Wish and then Splicing onto my cards.
Sakashima the Imposter
I’m just throwing this one out there because it retains its name. In practical terms, this means that you can copy Legends like Akroma with it without triggering the Legend Rule.
Twincast
Why is Fork bad in Type 1? Because it’s not blue and thus uncastable. Twincast nicely cleans that up and the fact in a way, it’s a returning classic, has gotten a lot of people excited. The effect is undeniably powerful and there are always worthwhile spells to copy, so now two questions arise: is there a way to set up combos with it and just how many copies should I run seeing how it’s a situational card. With regards to combos, I haven’t thought of one yet, but I’m assuming that there is probably some card that this combos with when tutored for with Gifts Ungiven. In terms of how many to run, it seems like there are probably a few ways to approach this. You could run it purely as a Cunning Wish target, in which case it might be good to fetch it early as a default target. You could run just a few copies and bank on its surprise value to throw off opponents. Lastly, you could run it as a four-of and hope that it doesn’t clog your hand* and try to use them really aggressively, for instance using it on whatever spell your opponent tries to play, which can create a premature counter war and in a way, also lets you use your Twincast like a Duress as a way to testing the waters with your opponent. They try to cast say, Thirst for Knowledge and you Twincast it. Since Thirst is the kind of spell that most people try to stop, if they don’t counter it not only did you get to draw three cards, but now you know that your opponent probably has a weak hand and that the counter that you just drew will probably go through.
*Well, it is Blue after all, so you can always pitch it to Force of Will if need be.
Ghost-Lit Stalker
I do realize that this is extremely expensive and has to be played at sorcery speed, but the card has easily the most powerful, useful Channel ability out of all the creatures. An uncounterable Mind Twist is definitely something worth considering. I can also see how it could also be annoying since it is technically a creature, which cuts down your tutoring possibilities (e.g. Mystical Tutor or Burning Wish).
One With Nothing
At the prerelease, I was discussing this card with Sheldon Mennery, Pete Hoeffling, and Knut, and we had a lot of trouble figuring out what you are supposed to do with this card, which I suppose is what is supposed to be fun about bad rares like this one. At first, we thought of Madness but you have Wild Mongrel and even if you want to stay in Black, you still have Putrid Imp. Eventually, the only remotely possible use we could see for this card is if you are trying to make some kind of reanimator deck in Standard, where you could combine it with Sensei’s Divining Top to keep the Zombify or something on top of your deck.
Pithing Needle
At first, the buzz on this card was positive, but pretty mild. It was kind of like a splashable Meddling Mage, just that you couldn’t name Tinker or Yawgmoth’s Will with it. Then people realized that you could name lands with it, so then it also became useful for stopping Bazaar of Baghdad. Eventually, people then realized that you can use this as pseudo-land destruction by naming fetchlands. There are a ton of possibilities with this card, making it a great maindeck choice in aggro-control and prison or possibly a candidate in control sideboards.
Miren, the Moaning Well
During the car ride home after the prerelease, it was decided that this was the best card in the set for answering the question “Your mom is what card from Saviors of Kamigawa?” For the entire block though, it does not beat He Who Hungers.
Oboro, Palace in the Clouds
The bounce ability on this card helps to weaken the “but you can Wasteland it!” argument here. There are bunch of cool little tricks with this card. For example, you can use it as a third “Island” if you want to cast Gifts Ungiven for mana or bounce it back to your hand in order to power up your Library of Alexandria-and seeing how one of the themes in Saviors is hand size, this time you are actually using a card in Type 1 in the way that it was meant to be used!
–JP Meyer
jpmeyer at gmail dot com