Chalice of the Void. Possibly the best card introduced to the Vintage fold out of Mirrodin (though there are those who will argue for Chrome Mox, but they’re probably wrong). Some see a powerful lock card. Some see a powerful hoser. But what does the reigning Vintage World Champion when he looks at Chalice?
There are lots of potentially great cards in Mirrodin, and it’s been a long time since I remember having such a long list of cards which I’m curious to find out whether they were as strong or weak as initially predicted. Out of all of them, Solemn Simulacrum interests me the most. This card fascinates me deeply. It’s not flashy, it’s not going to win games on its own by any stretch of the imagination, but it is powerful. Most of the other writers and players I respect who’ve discussed this card seem to see it as just”okay.” So far, I find it to be much stronger than that, and I’m eager to find out who turns out to be right.
Be warned: This article will not make you a better player. It will not tell you what to pick in Mirrodin Limited or how Block Constructed is going to shape up. It contains no theory, no playtesting, nothing useful in anyway. No, let’s let our inner casual players loose and talk about something else entirely. Let’s talk about flavor, world building, and why the hell that guy is standing so close to Triskelion in the first place.
States is coming. The decks are being built and the gauntlet has been thrown. And now a gauntlet needs to be devised. I think that there are many possible control decks that can be built to take advantage of the new metagame – but the standouts are Mono-Red Control, B/G Control, U/W Control, and W/G Control.
Now, I am sure that they didn’t look at Tombstone Stairwell when they printed Dross Harvester… But with the Dross Harvester, obscene things can be done. The Harvester has a lot going for it. While the Stairwell is a four-drop, the Harvester comes down on turn 3. That means its ability will occur as soon as the Stairwell begins… But the real talent in the Harvester lies in its ability to gain two life per creature that dies. Simply put, Dross Harvester breaks the symmetry of Tombstone Stairwell.
In the beginning, it was supposed to be just Gary and myself taking a one-week trip to Pittsburgh, right? Well, when the dust settled, we had a monster road trip on our hands, all the way to Boston. The first leg of the trip was Toronto to Pittsburgh, with a one-week stop at Turian’s house – and I took photos to take you inside the world of Team CMU, to show you what it’s like to live with these men who get the trophies.
It’s 3:30 am and deathly quiet. Gary and Paul have gone to sleep, as have Josh and Eugene. Mike is staying at Rachel’s house. I’m sitting at the glass table in what might be called the dining room – it is adjacent to the kitchen, and surely would serve that function in any traditional dwelling. The laptop is fighting for surface space with the usual assortment of food fallout and draft droppings. I’m a king holding court before the residuals of a fun day, and surely mine is the kingdom where napkins, electronics and weathered copies of Spark Spray can coexist peaceably. I am glad that my rule has fostered such prosperity.
Mesmeric Orb has a cool and unique effect, it’s well priced, and it takes some very serious planning and understanding to use to advantage. Okay, so I like it from a design standpoint; next is how usable this actually is. Plan A is to build a deck completely around the Orb and challenge your opponent to live in that environment better than you can by either making yourself proof against decking or just making sure your opponent will run out of cards first. Plan B is to use the Orb in a deck that just looks to capitalize off having a fat graveyard. Plan C is to use this as an ambush from the sideboard for archetypes that rely on killing you over a more extended period of time than this card might otherwise allow.
Chalice represents a fundamental change in Type One that few cards have ever made. No single card that I have seen since I started playing again, not even Fact or Fiction, have had this sort of impact. This card is going to enter the format in way that will shape deck building for years to come, much like the cycle of Onslaught fetchlands. But unlike the fetchlands, Chalice forces decks that don’t use it to adapt. Moreover, this card affects Type One at every level and in every archetype. Combo, Aggro, Prison, all forms of Control and everything in between will undergo a huge transformation as a result of Chalice. But what will that transformation look like?
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The ability to drop the Lightning Greaves out and then give a new creature haste each turn is quite good (and it’s not just for combat; try these with mana creatures!) and in many cases the untargetability will also be highly useful. The problems come up when other equipment starts showing up and you can’t get the Greaves off so that you can put the other Equipment on (let’s face it, monsters have a scary tendency to die in Standard), not to mention the bigger concern – namely, that the Greaves are outstanding when the first copy hits, and you do want it early, but that second copy is a whole lot less sexy than your second Bonesplitter or Plate.
Last week, Jim showed you his gauntlet for Standard, which he’s using to prepare for Champs. This week, he updates you on how his gauntlet has altered in the course of playtesting… And brings in a new deck to test against it! How will Mono Red Land Destruction fare against The Gauntlet?
Like anyone else I’ve been testing and making new decks. Of course by new decks, I mean I’m putting old cards backwards in cases and then scribbling (in my terrible hand writing) words like”extraplanar” and”chrome” on small pieces of paper and then slipping them in. This, combined with a testing partner, results in testing out new decklists… Which I will now give to you, my readers. Then I will talk about the decklists. Which were tested and observed, under fire from other decks. Deck that might also be terrible. I think this is the real fun of new format testing: All of your decks are garbage, but you don’t know that yet.
Last week, I said three artifacts stand out in Mirrodin: Chrome Mox should be restricted on principle because of the inherent danger of free artifact mana that evades the land drop restrictions. Chalice of the Void deserves to be banned (note, not necessarily”should be”) because of how it cuts off entire decktypes or forces them to radically change their spell mix all by itself, irrespective of the deck that slips it in-or the intelligence of the player who does. Isochron Scepter? Well, that’s a tougher nut to crack.
Auriok Bladewarden is one of the many new temptations printed to make sure you really give Equipment a good look. The problem with these creatures in my mind is that they work against the main things I like about Equipment. Instead of just playing good guys and using Equipment to improve both their influence and staying power, including guys like this means you have to invest so many turns (and permanents) into your development that you have to question whether you’re really playing the kind of game a creature-based attack needs to be looking for.
