Hot damn! Conflux is upon us, and by the time you read this Friday I’ll be gearing up to help the fine folks at Star City Games run one of the “big” Conflux prerelease tournaments. I’ll be working the admin table, so make sure you come on out, take the new cards out for a spin, and come say hello and show me your Conflux goodies. Reading the spoiler is all well and fine, but nothing quite beats actually seeing a brand-spanking new card, artwork and all, for the first time. The Magic experience really is all about the total package – what the card does, what the card looks like, and flavor text.
That said, I certainly have been reading the spoiler, and I thought I’d throw my thoughts on the new set in with all the rest of the guys. While many of the premium crew sift through new sets with the flinty cool eye of a gold prospector, I tend to bubble over and gush about all the brand new creative space being opened up for us, whether it be a Friday Night Magic special, something fun to throw into your EDH deck, or maybe (just maybe) something hot to take to an upcoming Star City $5K Standard Open. Of course, not everything smells like roses, but let’s get it on.
So what’s been tickling my casually competitive radar?
Thornling
When I first ran across this card I literally Laughed Out Loud. After all the complaining I’ve done of late about the state of Green (and don’t worry folks – I’ve got another chapter to add at the end of this column), it’s like Wizards made this card specifically to try and shut people like me up. Look, they virtually said, we made a better Morphling for Green, so stop your whining!!
Of course, my point hasn’t been that Green sucks – I mean, Green still gets handed some really good creatures in every set – but rather that Green needs more clever stuff, more instants and tricks to open up the game space where Green cards are played. Giving Green another great creature is appreciated and all… but it’s not like Green doesn’t get really good creatures in every set.
So yeah – side by side comparison, Thornling kicks Morphling’s ass. It’s got bigger base stats so it can stretch its power larger. Indestructible and trample are wonderful abilities. Yet one of Morphling’s biggest strengths – besides being blue and capable of being pitched to a Force of Will – was its ability to untap and thus be able to play offense and defense (not to mention silly Hermetic Study shenanigans). Was Development that worried about Presence of Gond?
As the lack of untapping kept bugging me (especially the idea of Thornling getting locked down by an Ajani Vengeant), I noticed Thornling’s creature type – Elemental! Then I recalled my recent elemental excursion and suddenly I knew that my Thornlings would be able to both attack and play defense.
Thornamental
4 Flamekin Harbinger
4 Smokebraider
3 Negate
3 Remove Soul
3 Shriekmaw
4 Mulldrifter
1 Wispmare
3 Thousand-Year Elixir
4 Fatestitcher
4 Thornling
2 Reveillark
1 Horde of Notions
4 Primal Beyond
3 Island
2 Mountain
1 Forest
4 Reflecting Pool
2 Karplusan Forest
2 Vivid Creek
2 Vivid Crag
4 Shivan Reef
One thing about my Elixir deck was that I always had tons of mana to work with from the full playset of Smokebraiders, and Thornling is nothing if demanding of lots of mana to do his cool tricks. Fatestitcher proved to be such a great card with an Elixir on the table that he sticks around for this new, Thornling-centric version, giving us 7 ways to untap Thornling, four of which cost zero mana to activate – take that, Morphling!
Charnelhoard Wurm
I know a lot of people will likely dismiss this guy because of his seven mana cost, since you only get a 6/6 critter that can be removed with any number of spells that cost five or six mana less. And yet his special ability commands attention for those with less Spike-vision. Two words for you: Soul’s Fire. Every time you target the Wurm with Soul’s Fire and do 6 damage to your opponent, the Wurm’s ability triggers – so why not get back Soul’s Fire and do it again? For nine mana that’s 18 points of damage!!
At last year’s Champs I played what I thought was a nifty little deck in a side tournament that used Soul’s Fire to combo off Quillspike for infinite damage dealing, with a little Deus of Calamity spice (Soul’s Fire Calamity for six damage and a Stone Rain at instant speed). Would adding Charnelhoard Wurm push this over the top?
Wurmfire
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Devoted Druid
4 Kitchen Finks
4 Soul’s Fire
4 Quillspike
4 Deus of Calamity
4 Charnelhoard Wurm
4 Banefire
4 Treetop Village
4 Karplusan Forest
4 Reflecting Pool
2 Llanowar Wastes
4 Vivid Crag
3 Forest
2 Mountain
1 Swamp
Interlude 1: Path to Exile
Yes, Path to Exile is a ridiculously good card worthy of its hype, and yes I think its existence makes it harder to justify spending mana on higher cost creatures that can just get zapped by a one mana instant. However, I don’t necessarily think the card should scare you away from big beefy creatures altogether; you just need to keep the card in mind when designing your decks. For instance, add some basic lands so that you get some value back. Also, make sure you have enough threat creatures to keep demanding answers. For instance, in the deck above, Quillspike is a threat to go lethal for three mana (though he’s most likely cast on turn 4), and Deus of Calamity isn’t exactly a slouch in the threat department either. Either one of those getting Exiled makes it that much easier to cast your Wurm one turn earlier. Got another Exile, punk? Well, do you?
Meglonoth
You know what this guy is? He’s a Moat that hits your opponent for 6 points of trample damage. Seriously, who wants to send in an army of weenies only to get smacked in the face for six before you even get to deal damage yourself, and then you’ll be losing one creature to a hungry beast.
The problem of course is that your opponent can just sit back and wait to draw into a solution, and if you can’t attack them for profit that’s certainly a problem.
Enter Dramatic Entrance! (Cue the dramatic music…)
Man, have I come around on this card. When Eventide came out I ripped on this card as being awful, but in that time there have certainly been some really good Green creatures that have come out that you’d either love to cheat into play or be tricky about playing them. I’ve even been kicking around Dramatic Entrance with Progenitus… anyway, being able to get ambush value out of Meglonoth at the cost of a dead attacker and six points of damage to the face goes a long way towards justifying the card slot for Dramatic Entrance.
Meglotender
4 Path to Exile
4 Figure of Destiny
4 Bloom Tender
4 Woolly Thoctar
4 Ajani Vengeant
3 Wilt-Leaf Liege
4 Dramatic Entrance
4 Meglonoth
2 Woodfall Primus
3 Banefire
4 Forge[/author]“]Battlefield [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author]
3 Brushland
3 Karplusan Forest
4 Reflecting Pool
3 Vivid Crag
4 Plains
2 Mountain
1 Forest
Dramatic on Wilt-Leaf Liege offers up the potential for combat tricks, and Woodfall Primus is a throwback to the Mono-Green Dramatic Entrance deck from Block Constructed last summer. I’d probably have some number of Realm Razers in the board to torment Five-Color Control.
Knight of the Reliquary
Wow, I totally love this guy, a delicious blend of Crop Rotation and Terravore; whoever designed this card deserves huge props for its elegance! I won Virginia Champs on the back of Crop Rotation, so this card has a special resonance for me. He obviously finds ready home in Extended alongside Loam strategies, but right now I’m more interested in his standard applications, and one thing that comes to mind is Worm Harvest. The Knight can certainly load your graveyard up in a hurry once you add sac-fetchers like Terramorphic Expanse to the mix; sac a Forest or Plains, search up Expanse, crack the Expanse to search up a Forest or Plains, rinse and repeat.
Land Ho!
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Path to Exile
4 Rampant Growth
4 Terror
4 Civic Wayfinder
4 Knight of the Reliquary
3 Oona’s Grace
4 Ajani Vengeant
3 Worm Harvest
2 Obelisk of Alara
4 Terramorphic Expanse
1 Swamp
1 Island
3 Mountain
4 Plains
11 Forest
This deck certainly suffers from being a bit on the threat-light side of the equation, and having your big beefy Knight of the Reliquary Exiled would be a royal pain, but I think once you get four or more lands in your graveyard Worm Harvest becomes a serious threat that can’t be readily answered with creature removal. I’d also like to give Obelisk of Alara a try since, well, why not? This deck should be able to crank out the full domain relatively easy, and once you untap with an Obelisk out even your small critters become threats.
Interlude 2: Yes, a “Green Rant”
Okay, normally new set reviews are times for me to be in full-on love mode, basking in the radiance of new cards and new deck ideas. But something Mark Rosewater wrote this week really got under my skin.
From When Worlds Collide, Part II, talking about spreading manafixing across all the colors:
“To cut off a response I expect to get, yes this does infringe a bit on Green’s color pie. The reason we okayed it was that we’ve decided that color fixing is something we have to let bleed in multicolor blocks. We bleed a little every year as we push towards the block’s themes (for instance, Blue and Red don’t normally get a lot of graveyard-interacting cards, but they did during Odyssey block) and mana is one of the things that we are more willing to allow all the colors access to. Green is still best at this, and in most sets, the other colors will not have such efficient means to fix their colors, but for right here and right now, we’ve made the conscious decision to allow everyone to have the tools necessary to play in the sandbox we’ve created.”
Now I know Mark Rosewater is a writer who happens to design games, rather than a game designer who happens to write, so I find some of the words he specifically chose here curious. He leads this paragraph with “to cut off a response I expect to get,” which suggests a mind’s made up, no need to talk about it attitude that’s a bit disconcerting. It makes me wonder if there were some serious, ego-bruising arguments along this vein within the halls at Renton already and Rosewater just doesn’t want to revisit that again. That’s a shame, because easy mana-fixing is an important element of Magic that warrants discussion and needs to be settled properly, especially when it comes to infringing on Green’s color pie. Declaring “Green is still best at this” feels like a total cop-out. Let’s flip it around – what if they made a block that it “made sense” that every color gets easy countermagic, but Blue was still the best at it? That may sound silly, but my point is this – in effect, the color pie gives you reasons to play each color, whether it be mechanics, themes, or flavor. If you want to access to counterspells you play Blue (and now maybe a little White). Used to be, you wanted to fix your mana beyond 2-3 colors, you played Green. In effect, Wizards has taken away a major reason to play Green without adding anything comparable back.
I can understand their reasoning in doing this; the themes of a multicolor block demand that color-fixing be widely available. Fine. But give Green some compensation here, add something new and exciting to Green’s color pie, give players a new reason to want to play Green cards.
Cliffrunner Behemoth
God bless you Evan; I know from first hand experience, when you get the honor of being given a preview card from Wizards, you do your best to sell the card, but I just can’t get behind this guy. Would it have seriously made this card way too good to give it four toughness? Who wants their four mana Green fattie to die to Firespout along with the White and Red weenies you had to play prior to maximize his effect?
Paleoloth
Okay, crazy Deathrender/Paleoloth/Nantuko Husk shenanigans aside, I can’t help but wonder if playing a couple of these at the top of your curve wouldn’t be a bad idea. Once you draw your second one, you pretty much have a never-ending stream of 5/5s; once the first one dies, you play your second, get back your first… deploying the old Wakefield motto, the last fattie with will kill you. Sure, it’s just a vanilla 5/5, but that’s plenty big for the most part.
Scattershot Archer
Oh yeah, I do so heart this guy, so lovingly crafted to take aim at the hateful, mean blue bullies of Standard and Extended, those nasty Faeries. Of course if they really wanted to make a silver bullet, it would have a four toughness, can’t be countered, shroud elf with that tap ability for three mana. Yeah, that’s the ticket! Still, for one mana you really can’t complain.
Shard Convergence
Even though you’re only getting basic land, you’re still getting four cards for one, so that’s intriguing. Then I think back to Seek the Horizon, from Saviors of Kamigawa. That was a three-for-one, and yet I bet a good number of you had to click on the link because nobody played it. Convergence costs the same, gives you an extra land but is narrower by specifying the lands you can fetch. We do have Retrace now, so the extra lands can be cashed in for extra spells… My hunch is that this won’t cut the mustard, but I’ve got my eye on it.
Soul’s Majesty
I’m really torn about this too. I can see why some folks are calling this a green Tidings, but I hate the idea that you’ve got to have a decent sized creature in play in order for this to be worth the mana and the sorcery speed. I mean sure, you could live the dream of flashing out Cloudthresher, untap and cast Soul’s Majesty for seven cards…
Okay, yeah – that’s a damn fine dream. You gotta have dreams.
Sylvan Bounty
Let me use this card to tie into my second Interlude/Green rant above. Remember, Rosewater said that, in order for all the colors to play in the sandbox they were creating, they had to step on Green’s manafixing themes, but that was okay because Green still does it better. But just take a look at this new basic landcycling cycle:
Gleam of Resistance (5 mana, instant)
Traumatic Visions (5 mana, instant)
Absorb Vis (7 mana, sorcery)
Fiery Fall (6 mana, instant)
Sylvan Bounty (6 mana, instant)
Okay, I’m assuming that for some odd reason R&D decided this new twist on cycling would only be used in Limited, so I’m keeping power level in mind for that format. I’m trying to grok the reasoning behind the “full-effect” abilities, the mana costs and speeds. The White one is like an Alarum for your team, with basic land cycling tacked on. Not unreasonably priced at five mana, and combat tricks are welcome. The Blue one is a Cancel (with Cancel already in Shards) with the cycling tacked on; again, not unreasonable, and the ability to just say no is certainly one of the most powerful effects in the game.
Absorb Vis is a Soul Feast with land cycling tacked on, and a 33% improvement in its effect. Assuming adding basic landcycling “costs” two extra mana, this does not look unreasonably costed but damn – seven mana? Does anyone even play Soul Feast in Limited?
For Red, it’s like a Lightning Axe without pitching a card, so you’re basically getting the cycling for free. It is creature removal, and it is big creature removal, and it is instant big creature removal, so it’s welcome on multiple fronts.
For Green we get a Natural Spring, and for one more mana it’s got cycling and instant speed – what a deal, right? Wait, who plays Natural Spring? I mean, Wizards pushed lifegain to the point of 7 life for 2 mana at instant speed (Hero’s Reunion, Invasion) and that wasn’t even played in Limited.
Now, I realize that likely all the basic landcycling cards will be played as mana fixing, but if we rank these cards in terms of cards you wouldn’t mind ripping off the top toward the late game when you’ve got more than enough mana, I think it’s pretty obvious that the Black and Green one are bottom of the barrel, but at least the Black one can actually win the game!
“…mana is one of the things that we are more willing to allow all the colors access to. Green is still best at this…”
O RLY?
Tom Lapille, dude… I know you just got there, and I know you weren’t exactly known for playing Green as a serious Spike, but c’mon man, you and Forsythe need to shake some cages!
Exploding Borders
Once I realized this thing can nuke Planeswalkers I started liking it a bit more, and I like that at four mana it could very well be used to get you the final fifth piece of your Domain. Right now I’m not seeing a critical mass of good Domain stuff to warrant going in that direction, but maybe Alara Reborn will bring something to the party.
Scarland Thrinax
As a big fan of the Aggro Token deck my friend Michael Rooks developed for last year’s Champs, this seems like a perfect fit. In fact, it likely shoves Nantuko Husk over to second string, playing copies 5 and 6 of Scarland Thrinax. It also nicely munches evoked guys like Shriekmaw, slurp!
Okay, that’s it for this week; don’t worry, I don’t plan on doing 4-5 more columns on Conflux – I will wrap up my overview of the new set next week, it’s just the Green cards of the new set always make up a larger portion of my creative energies so I thought the color warranted it’s own focus. I hope I may have helped share some of the excitement and anticipation I’ve got built up for Conflux, and if you can make it to a prerelease this weekend, make sure to have fun and give new stuff a try.
Take care!
Bennie
starcitygeezer AT gmail DOT com
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