Saviors is here, and it brings a lot of potential to redefine the metagame. The set contains some cards that could force some changes. It’s too soon to know how strong their impact will be – we won’t actually know that until after Regionals, but it’s not too early to speculate. It’s also worth considering whether some old cards might be reinvigorated by the changes.
Pithing Needle
Let’s start with the obvious: it’s a cheap artifact that shuts down the activated abilities of particular cards. It has real potential, but the main question is whether any deck needs this enough to find room for it. I expect that Red decks will, but I’m not sure about any others.
Against Tooth and Nail, it can shut down Kiki-Jiki. This means that the deck cannot completely cripple an opponent’s mana by Toothing for Kiki and Sundering Titan – at least not immediately. Having a Pithing Needle in play means that the first Tooth is probably for the Viridian Shaman and a Witness, so this only buys one turn, but that might be all you need.
Pithing Needle can also shut down Jittes or Swords, but you have to choose which to nail. Decks like White Weenie with Glorious Anthem instead of equipment might prefer Damping Matrix as the answer to equipment, since it shuts down multiple effects with a single card. Against MGA, for example, Damping Matrix shuts down any equipment as well as Viridian Zealots and Troll Ascetic regeneration. Versatility is good. However, if Damping Matrix is not seeing play in these decks, don’t expect Pithing Needle to be any more popular.
Against MUC, Needle shuts down Shackles or Meloku, at least until it gets bounced and countered on the way back down. Even if it doesn’t get countered, bounce will still let the MUC player use the Shackles once, or build up a pile of Meloku tokens. It can be good, but I can’t think of why an aggro deck would want to replace threats with something this narrow.
The decks that should really like Pithing Needle will be Red. Right now, Ponza decks have serious trouble with Green decks, but a turn one Needle naming Sakura-Tribe Elder can make LD a whole lot stronger – and Divining Top a whole lot weaker. In the later game, once its usefulness is over, the Needle can be sacrificed to Shrapnel Blast. (Yes, Red decks are once again running Shrapnel Blast – take a peak at Osyp’s standard deck at the Invitational.) More importantly, the Needle can stop sweepers like Oblivion Stone and Engineered Explosives, and sideboard cards like Circle of Protection: Red. Stopping CoP is significant – at least, against decks like WW. The question is whether WW is significant.
Hidetsugu’s Second Rite
Speaking of Osyp’s burn-heavy Red deck, Hidetsugu’s Second Rite makes that whole concept even more worrying. Osyp didn’t have a good method of dealing single points of damage (except for Blinkmoth Nexus), but decks with Vulshok Sorcerers can certainly ping you to exactly 10 without too much effort. Second Rite is not always amazing, and it can often become a dead card, but its mere existence can alter games. For example, if you are at 12 life, would you consider mana burning, especially if your opponent sends a Magma Jet at your head EoT? If your opponent has Second Rite, that makes sense. If not, you just threw away one tenth of your life total against a Red deck. How smart is that?
Regionals is one of those tournaments where you have to play against people playing cards they consider “tech.” That should make guessing about Second Rite even more fun – not only do you have to decide if the card is good enough, but also figure out whether the eight year old across the table reached the same conclusion.
So whadda ya think? If you guess wrong, you’re dead.
Arashi, the Sky Asunder
This is a decent creature – a 5/5 for five mana. However, it is the second ability that makes it interesting. My first thought, like many other people’s, was that this is the card that lets MGA stomp all over MUC. The invitational decks used Thieving Magpie and Meloku, and MUC sometimes uses Spire Golems against Troll Ascetics. Channeling Arashi means that MGA can kill all of those, and MUC cannot counter the ability unless they run Squelch. Who runs Squelch? Even if they did want to sideboard it, what gets cut? Spectral Shift? Hibernation? I don’t think so either.
Time Stop can also solve the problem, but if Blue has enough mana to drop Meloku, and still cast Time Stop before the next untap, it has already won.
Then I thought a little more. What card will a MUC deck bring in – or maindeck – against a Green deck? Yeah, Bribery. So, which is more likely, that MUC will cast fliers and lose them to a channeled Arashi, or that the blue deck will steal it and beat MGA to death with the 5/5 Legend?
If Bribery is not reprinted in 9th Edition, this will see play in Standard. With Bribery still around, this is chancy.
Kataki, War’s Wage
Yes, yes, Affinity, too late, yada, yada, yada. It could have an impact in Online Extended, but the question is whether it will have an effect in standard. White weenie may be playable – it got some gifts in Saviors. Kataki will favor those decks that take the no artifacts / Glorious Anthem route, especially against the Jitte/Swords gang. In those games, relative speed matters, and even if all this does is tap an enemy land or two a turn, that is huge. Kataki also shuts down Moxen, at least until Red finds a burn spell, or MBC finds it’s own removal. However, beyond its affect on the viability of the different flavors of white weenie, I’m not sure how much impact this will have. White has lots of good two drops – this is far down the list.
Should have been in Champions, though. Or Darksteel.
Celestial Kirin
Here’s a powerful card for a possible aggro-control deck. It is a 3/3 flier for four that gives a White spirit deck a lot of board control. While this makes more sense in Block, since you would have to combine this with something like counterspells or discard to beat Tooth decks, it does have the potential to beat up on many of the other decks. For example, I play a lot of MGA, and don’t like the idea of this on turn 4, then silliness like Nikko-Onna (slaughtering my Swords and forcing me to spend mana regenerating my Trolls), then Spiritual Visit to bounce Nikko (after blockers) and kill off all my attacking one-drops on my turn. And Nikko one more time on their turn, all while a 3/3 flier slaps me about the head. Of course it’s screwy, but Regionals will have its share of random decks, and this is random enough to at least think about. All kinds of interesting cards are also spirits – Kataki, for example.
It is possible, of course, that such a deck might destroy it’s own creatures. With Promise of Bunrei around, that would not necessarily be a bad thing.
This needs a lot of work, but Celestial Kirin has a powerful effect that can hurt a number of tier one decks. It looks better in block – for example, consider a B/W spiritcraft deck with both Kirins – but someone could bring the idea to Regionals as well.
Ideas Unbound
This card is nothing special in the MUC control decks, but it does raise the possibility of powering a speedy fliers deck or enabling a Reanimator deck. The fast fliers deck seems unlikely, but the concept of emptying your hand of evasion creatures, then drawing and playing more seems not completely infeasible. At present, it would probably only work in something like a Broodstar Affinity deck – but it could almost find a home there. Reanimator decks seem more likely, but those decks already have Thirst for Knowledge. My early testing seems to indicate that Ideas Unbound only moves it from Tier 2.1 to Tier 1.9, but I’m not that much of a Reanimator player.
However, Reanimator gets a boost from Kagemaro, First to Suffer, which is a Legend (so it works with Goryo’s Vengeance) and which can clear the board, even when that board includes Troll Ascetics.
The combination may be enough to get some people playing Reanimator at Regionals.
Thoughts of Ruin
It isn’t Armageddon, but this card should have a serious impact. It sounds good when you think of Mox, Slith Firewalker on turn 1, Seething Song, Slogger turn 2, and then this on turn 3, until you realize that you will have no cards in hand at that point. However, the card does have the ability to knock a couple lands for both players in the midgame. I don’t really see the card as Armageddon – more as a double or triple Raze. That can be pretty good in Ponza, which has probably already killed a couple lands, but might be better as a sideboard card against Tooth and the 5-color control decks floating around. Plow Under is already a standard answer to Tooth, and killing the lands, instead of just hiding them, is even better. However, I seem to recall people talking about how a sorcery costing 2RR was the end of Urzatron Tooth in the past, but Sowing Salts never did kill the archetype.
This might be better in G/R decks with Birds and maybe Talismans. It would be the return of Fattie-Geddon. Maybe.
I also considered whether this could be playable in 5color Green as an answer to other control decks. Just get ahead, then Geddon. Again, maybe, but Thoughts of Ruin looks to be a good method of trashing 5color Green. It doesn’t like a lot of LD – but it is usually bothered by Ponza-style aggression with LD as a means of preventing the opponent from answering. That type of aggression rarely leave you the cards in hand to make this work.
I obviously need to test more.
Pure Intentions
When I first saw this on a spoiler, it was listed as an enchantment. That would have been beyond good, and would have nerfed a couple of my favorite decks. However, as an instant, it just isn’t quite enough. It does stop one discard effect per turn – and will shut down the first Nezumi Shortfang or a Honden of Night’s Reach. However, that just means that the second Shortfang will be the one to flip. It is very good at what it does, but I don’t know that what it does is enough to justify sideboard slots. I have a Rat/discard deck that is fun to play, but not tier one. No other discard decks I know of are Tier 1, which means no one will waste sideboard space on it.
The Wildebeests
Stampeding Wildebeest was once the center of Stupid Green deck. That deck returned Wall of Blossoms, Wall of Roots, Spike Feeder, Spike Weaver and others. The cards provided combat tricks, card drawing, perpetual Fog and mana acceleration, and the Wildebeests were bigger than almost anything around. The deck was good because the 187 creatures* were good. We now have wildebeests in every color, but we don’t have the creatures to go with them. Sure, Eternal Witness is good, but the rest is dreck. Would you really want to bounce Elvish Pioneers or Wood Elves? Maybe Elvish Pioneers and Elder Pine of Jukai, but while you’re busy thawing lands, I’ll just kill you. Haru-Onna shows just how bad the support cards are: Haru-Onna also bounces to draw cards, but it costs twice as much as Wall of Blossoms, and it can’t block anything twice. Stampeding Serow might be willing, but the rest of the deck just isn’t there.
The Wildebeests in three of the other colors have the same problem – lack of 187 cards. The exception might be Black. At the invitational, Tsuyoshi Fujita ran a deck that locked the opponent by bouncing Rats and using Aether Vial to mess up the opponent’s draw. He was using Aether Spellbomb and Crystal Shard to return the rats to hand, and the Black wildebeest could do that just as well. Even without the Vial lock, bouncing Ravenous and Chittering Rats makes for good times.
Reverence
Ha, Ha – my Reverence / Sunweb / Rolling Stones deck cannot be beaten! Actually, the card is powerful, but it doesn’t do that much more than Thunderstaff, which has seen only limited sideboard use to date. The effect is powerful, but without the other half of the equation – Humility – this may not be enough. It does shut down Meloku and her spawn, and Beacon tokens, and I could see it in a white or U/W control deck alongside Wrath of God and so forth, but I don’t know if this is enough.
It does make you wonder if Wizards R&D were thinking about Rude Awakening when they created this card.
Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
A land that taps to draw everyone a card. For two mana. That is nice, but in anything but a turbofog or Arcane Labs / Millstone deck it can come back to bite you. What you really need is some method of ensuring that your opponent gets less advantage from the card than you do. It would fit nicely into the Land Destruction / Uba Mask deck I wrote about a few weeks ago, and that is not a serious deck. However, this type of symmetrical effect might work best in red decks that are counting on drawing either another LD spell, or the final burn spell.
Erayo, Soratami Ascendant
The counterspell decks are always the hardest to work through, since you have to have a decent feel for everything else first, but this does not look unlikely. It would be easy to flip in something like a blue red deck, where you could play it, then a couple Shocks, and a Chrome Mox or Top, possibly as early as turn 3 or 4. It could also be good in a deck with a lot of smaller, cheaper counters (e.g. Mana Leak) that stop an early rush, but are weaker later.
This is another card that would combo quite well with Uba Mask. Again, I haven’t built a deck I like, yet, around these cards, but I’m reasonably certain it could be done. If nothing else, it is probably something to think about when you are preparing for Regionals.
Mariki Gusari
A cheap, splashable, semi-useful method of killing the Jitte. Nice. I’m not sure how strong it will actually be. It is not as narrow as Unforge (which is annoying as hell against my MGA deck with Trolls and Swords), but it is not amazing, either. I do expect it will see play – there is nothing wrong with making Eternal Witness into a Trained Armodon, if there is nothing worth destroying in view. It seems to be yet another argument against the WW/equip deck – or maybe one in favor of the Steelshaper’s Gift versions.
The other piece of equipment might also see play. O-Naginata is probably only useful in midsized MGA decks, or possibly in something running Red or Blue Genjus, but it is a new version of Rancor. It seems fine – and once the Swords leave the environment, they should see even more play. Trample is huge, especially given all the decks that try to chump with itsy-bitsy tokens.
Millstone Decks:
The first duplicate Saviors rare I got was a Cloudhoof Kirin. Even with four, though, it isn’t enough to make a milling deck from. However, it has friends. Millstone is still around, as are a lot of comparable cards, but I don’t see Millstone decks being better than Tier 2.3 or so. I have tried a lot of options, and the closest I can come is a U/B deck with Millstone, Soratami Mindsweeper (blocker, miller, hand filler), various Black removal cards, Night of Soul’s Betrayal, Howling Mine and Neverending Torment. It can get lucky on occasion, but I don’t know that it is good enough. Of course, that won’t stop some people from bringing Millstone decks to Regionals, and you may face one in the early rounds. If they face unprepared people in the early rounds, you could face them in the later rounds as well. Think about it.
That’s the whole point, after all. You need to think about the whole set, not just what the pros played at a different type of tournament with a different card set. Regionals has, if not a clear slate, at least some room to write new decklists.
Let’s finish with a quick rundown on the current decks.
Tooth
It doesn’t appear to gain much, but doesn’t lose all that much. Pithing Needle is the best option, since it can shut down both the Sakura-Tribe Elder / Divining Top silliness and Kiki-Jiki tricks, but just one or the other. The other card that might hurt is Thoughts of Ruin, but only testing will tell if it is enough. Still, Pithing Needle might give Ponza enough answer to shut down Tooth decks.
Red Decks
Pithing Needle shuts down CoP: Red. It also stops Sakura-Tribe Elder, possibly making Ponza a more viable. Red gets some new toys (Mikokoro, Second Rite, Adamaro) to play around with. Nothing seriously hurts Red, although the increase in Red’s popularity might get people to start playing Sacred Ground again. All in all, Red looks fine.
MUC
MUC has to be careful – there are some new problems, like Arashi, to worry about, but careful play should get around those. Pithing Needle on Shackles might be a bigger concern, as is the fact that Red and White both have better toys. Playtest a lot, Blue mages.
White Weenie
Equipment may be a more high-risk, high reward option nowadays, but Pithing Needle and War’s Wages are probably not enough. White has a lot of new tricks as well, including Promise of Brunei and sweep effects. White weenie, no equipment, is better and faster. It is probably closer to being tier one than ever.
MGA / Aggro-Green
Close to mono green doesn’t get much. At best it gets O-Naginata, but the deck already has lots of fine equipment choices. It also gets another trick against blue decks that can backfire badly – like the whole Choke / Spectral Shift issue. That uncertainty will make sideboarding in the MGA / MUC matchup interesting.
Regionals is about a week away. Stop reading and start playing. [No no, do both! – Knut]