I spent both days of the weekend up in Denver, playing in various ways, shapes, and forms at Front Range Magic’s big Reborn-a-palooza Prerelease events. Played in the main Sealed Deck pod on Saturday, then played in a couple of drafts on Sunday. A lot of fun, and I will give you some quick hit thoughts as I recall them.
1. The colored equipment is pretty good. I was expecting Behemoth Sledge to be nutty, but Mage Masher and even Mask of Riddles was seeing play and providing good value.
2. The Borderposts (as well as the equipment) make Naturalize practically maindeckable – if it wasn’t before thanks to Esper’s creatures. I lost an evil game 2 because I went turn 1 land, Borderpost, and my opponent played a turn 2 Naturalize to destroy it. Set me back too far to catch up.
3. The basic-land-cycler cycle is perfectly reasonable for Limited. Don’t know if I’d play them outside of it, but they were ridiculously helpful all day.
4. The gunslingers are one of the most-fun additions to “big” Prereleases in recent memory. Brian Kowal played in Denver, and was jovial and good-spirited the entire weekend. Although I don’t think he was giving up many of those packs. I saw on Sunday that he had old Championship packaged decks, as well as Jace versus Chandra and Elves versus Goblins, to gunsling with if you didn’t have a Standard deck with you. (And if your Prerelease deck stunk.)
5. If you’re going to hate-draft Behemoth Sledge in pack 2, don’t let the GW player to your right know – because it increases the likelihood that he will hate-draft the Broodmother Dragon he opens in pack 3. Increased Difficulty: There was a Behemoth Sledge in THAT pack also. For Crying Out Loud: You drafted a 15th-pick Crucible of Fire in pack 1.
(Yes, I hate-drafted that one too.)
Double-Action Cascade (Now With Reborn POWER!)
Having spent the weekend experiencing the new Alara Reborn mechanic, Cascade, in its various forms and functions, I can now say, with conviction, that Cascade is one of the most wide-swinging mechanics the game has ever produced.
And one of the most fun.
It’s especially evident in Limited. You never know what you’re going to get for your free spell. You might cast a Bloodbraid Elf and get a Borderpost. (Great Cascade card, awful free spell.) Heck, you might cast Bloodbraid Elf and get a Colossal Might with no creatures on the board – that happened to me on Saturday. On the flip side, you might cast Captured Sunlight (awful Cascade spell that you’re only playing for the free spell) and Cascade into a Behemoth Sledge. That happened to my opponent on Saturday.
The mechanic can be really hit-or-miss… which is part of what makes it so interesting.
You Just. Never. Know.
I think the mechanic, more than almost any specific card, has dominated the conversation between the local people here in Colorado Springs. It ranges from strong things (how to maximize Bloodbraid Elf’s effectiveness, including whether you run Puncture Blast over Flame Javelin) to ridiculous things (using Enduring Ideal to fetch Maelstrom Nexus as your first enchantment… yes, we figured out it doesn’t work). But the real question remains: how do you maximize the effect and limit the randomness?
1. Redundancy
Recent articles, in the Premium section even, have used “redundancy” as an explanation for random one-ofs that show up in decks. They run four Path to Exile and a Terror, for instance, to have an early out against Figure of Destiny. Similarly, you can use redundancy to limit the random effect of Cascade – as long as you can be guaranteed to hit a certain effect, it doesn’t matter which of the nine spells you hit, so long as you get the effect.
Bloodbraid Elf is a perfect example of this. Ideally suited for an aggressive deck, you will want to maximize the chances that you will Cascade into something that keeps up the pressure. In most cases, you won’t care too much whether it’s a good aggro creature or a burn spell, so long as you hit one or the other. And since red-green has access to a number of hasty creatures, you can work the deck to ensure that your Cascaded effect will be doing damage directly to your opponent.
A quick search of Cascadable spells for a Red-Green aggro turns up things like Hellspark Elemental, Boggart Ram-Gang, Spark Elemental, and Rip-Clan Crasher. Even cards like Inner-Flame Acolyte can be considered here, as a 4/2 haste attacker doesn’t vary widely from a 3/3 or a 3/1 haste attacker.
4 Bloodbraid Elf
4 Boggart Ram-Gang
4 Hellspark Elemental
4 Spark Elemental
4 Rip-Clan Crasher
3 Inner-Flame Acolyte
3 Mogg Fanatic
4 Incinerate
4 Puncture Blast
4 Tarfire
4 Savage Lands
4 Terramorphic Expanse
3 Forest
11 Mountain
A fairly straightforward aggro deck that maximizes the Cascade of the Bloodbraid Elf by oversaturation of hasty creatures and burn spells. Every turn 4 Bloodbraid Elf will come up with SOMETHING that will do damage to your opponent, be it via a hasty creature or a burn spell.
Rares You Could Add, If You Had ‘Em: Hell’s Thunder is another great aggro option, 4 points of offense that Cascades off of the Bloody-Haired One. And of course, any of the Red-Green lands that help to smooth out your mana (and evince a turn 1 play) are more than welcome. But I don’t think the deck necessarily needs big flashy hybrid one-drops, as that breaks down the redundancy that we’re working to maximize.
2. Predictability
On the flip side, it’s a lot easier to Cascade when you already know what you’re going to Cascade into. I bet you could put something together in Legacy that used the old Visions-style tutors that put cards on top of your library to good effect; some sort of toolbox-style deck that used Worldly Tutor or Vampiric Tutor to set that card, and then play it for free with a Cascade spell. It would be more like getting exactly what you need, with the Cascading spell tacked on for free.
The Harbingers are another way that you could use Cascade reliably. I don’t know if Treefolk Harbinger and Capture Sunlight are worth a free Doran, the Siege Tower, but I do know that that works.
I personally would love to see Cascade make an entry into Legacy Enchantress, where you can fetch up enchantments to the top of your deck with Sterling Grove, and then Cascade into it with Ardent Plea.
Cards like Discombobulate, long glossed over in favor of other four-casting-cost counters, now might have some relevance. Being able to structure the next four turns and always knowing what you’ll Cascade into may have some good uses. Ponder also works the same way in setting up future Cascades, although you will probably want to wait to use it if the Cascade spell is one of the 5- or 6-mana beasties.
4 Ponder
4 Discombobulate
1 Cumber Stone
4 Dreamborn Muse
4 Deny Reality
1 Hoarder’s Greed
1 Memory Plunder
4 Sanity Grinding
4 Mind Funeral
4 Cancel
4 Memory Erosion
4 Faerie Conclave
4 Arcane Sanctum
4 Mistvein Borderpost
2 Swamp
9 Island
Rare cost summary:
Dreamborn Muse ($0.75 x 4 = $3.00)
Memory Plunder ($2.00 x 1 = $2.00)
Sanity Grinding ($2.50 x 4 = $10.00)
Memory Erosion ($2.00 x 4 = $8.00)
I like the idea of free Dreamborn Muse or Sanity Grinding. The Muse matches up especially well since you’re increasing the number of cards it mills. And this gets another Alara Reborn card, Mistvein Borderpost, because it has one more blue mana symbol than a regular land. *laugh* Yes, yes, I know that I seem to be trying to push the value of Crag Puca up as here I am including him in Yet Another Deck, but he’s a decent defensive value (2/4 for 3, which holds off a lot of stuff and kills a bunch outright) and has the right casting cost for a Chroma-based deck.
Rares You Could Add, If You Had ‘Em: In my original article on Sanity Grinding, of course I mentioned the ubiquitous Cryptic Command, as well as Arcanis, the Omnipotent ($2.50). He’s still decent value, so you could squeeze him into that list with little impact.
Interesting cost note: Now that Sanity Grinding is getting a little press, its cost has gone up from $1.50 in my original Chroma article (#38) to $2.50. Get them while they’re still reasonable, I guess!
Cascade Towards Regionals
Another part of the reason that Cascade is so front-and-center in my mind is because I’d like to play something that takes advantage of this unique mechanic in the upcoming Regionals. They’re less than three weeks away for all of you in the U.S., so now is the time to start putting together test decks and trying to figure out what the metagame looks like.
Right now, it seems like the Blightning deck got a fair amount of new toys; I mentioned Terminate and Bit-Blast and Thought Hemorrhage a few weeks ago, and now there’s also Anathemancer to add to that.
The Blightning deck takes advantage of the Cascade mechanic (if it runs it) by using the Redundancy Method. On the flip side, I’m also looking at using the Predictability method with Bit-Blast, using a more controlling style of deck with Liliana Vess to set that top card of the deck. So maybe next week we’ll take a look at some Bit-Blast decks, since I’m probably going one of those directions for Regionals.
Until next week…
Dave
dave dot massive at gmail and facebook and twitter