I’ll discuss the usual threats in Onslaught block in order to get you ready for Saturday’s Game: Instants that can ruin your day,”falters,” and things that will downright wreck you if you’re not careful. In fact, I’ll even give you a chart that shows you what combat tricks they’re likely to have, based on the mana they have open!
Every time a new set shows up, we get a slew of”the new Standard” articles, telling us how a whole host of new decks based around unlikely card combos will be wrecking Standard in a months time. If a deck has been eating up tournaments for a year, and it’s left intact by a rotation, why should it stop winning? Jim looks at the current top decks to see who comes out unscathed.
All right, so we forgot to put up Michael’s effort to be daily yesterday. Would it help if we put up not one, but TWO articles at once? We thought so!
Now, my first impulse when looking over the Onslaught spoiler and casually observing the available Goblins was,”Nice try, Wizards, but…” But Steven’s deck made me take another look. I may not be King of Beatdown, but it seems to me that a red goblin deck can really dish out some major damage.
Okay; Grand Prix Cleveland is long gone. This article, however, is not about the new Type Two, or a card-by-card analysis of the newest set. This is an article telling you why Team Academy was right:
I’m s**t.
It just occurred to me: I hope this card has Morph. Because if I was ever forced to use it as my 23rd card in Sealed, I could play it face-down, and never activate its Morph ability, and NEVER HAVE TO LOOK AT THE GOD-AWFUL ART ON THIS CARD. Gah.
There are two basic sideboarding options for an aggro deck. First, it can add threats and speed up; second, it can add control elements, moving towards aggro/control. The first option seems to be the most intuitive, but it’s actually the most difficult to pull off.
The first thing to mention about upcoming Standard is that, unless things changed dramatically, we’re going to be looking at a lot of U/G for at least the first month or two, unless I’m really missing something. The second thing to mention is that the resulting Tier One control deck will either remain U/B Tog, or be Upheaval based, or be U/W based.
For multiplayer, I see a lot of interesting cards, although I am depressed about Insurrection. Altar of Dementia and Reins of Power was a powerful, but reasonable, deck. Altar of Dementia and Insurrection is pretty awful – it just wins in way too big a style. A few other cards have similar impacts – and I hate to see any simple combo that just wins too easily.
Mistform Mask
This will be great at the kitchen table in multiplayer games. See, you can get twenty or thirty of these and put them under that leg that’s short and that causes the table to wobble. This prevents spillage of beer and chips onto the playing surface, thus keeping your Child of Gaea and Teeka’s Dragon safe and clean.
Hey – in a unique and definitely nonreplicable experiment, I’m going to be looking at a different piece of Onslaught art every day for a week! I chose to address Snapping Thragg first because I find it very refreshing in is execution; its primary strength is in its loose and casual approach.
Assuming that Weathered Wayfarer works for any land, as it currently reads, then this is a recurring tutor every turn for any land, and that is quite powerful in 250. If it reads like this at the Pre-release, then I will personally recommend that it be placed on the October Ballot for restriction.
While that powerhouse engine let you draw cards of the type of your choice, the Sylvan/Words Of Worship engine has you gaining massive life every turn – ten per turn, per Sylvan. Add to that the fact that you can turn your normal cantrips into lifegain cards, and you’ve got some serious potential.
I’m sick of hearing people say that R&D has castrated white in Extended – get over Swords to Plowshares, people! In the meantime, I’m willing to ante up 181 cards that will see play at PT: Houston – and if I’m wrong, I may wind up writing sixty-four pages of crow.
Like I said before, I think that the Cycling mechanic is a very interesting one and will definitely interact well with existing mechanics such as threshold. Like Madness, though, it appears that Cycling has a few bombs and a few duds. I’ll be taking a look at what I consider to be the best or most interesting cycling card in each color.
