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.
“I wonder,” said The Ferrett, ruminating on the uncanny amount of potheads who play Magic,”Whether playing stoned makes it easier or worse. I mean, it’d be more complicated… But on the other hand, everything might fall together. Either way, it’d make a hell of a tourney report.”
I did not know what a madman Ted Knutson is.
Even though The Holy Kanoot had never smoked before, he may (or may not) have actually performed the experiment, ingesting illicit drugs that StarCity does not condone in order to see whether it helps both your play AND your astigmatism. You may not agree with what he did… But after a man makes a sacrifice like that, how can I not publish his findings?
I know, I know. Everybody is going to be doing a set review –
and eventually, you’ll want to swear off reading set reviews altogether. I feel your pain, I really do. Just… Trust me on this one. Before you get burned out on set reviews and Onslaught discussion, try to give me a chance.
Chris Romeo is back… And he’s WRITING FOR STARCITY AT LAST! (Well, after that brief dalliance with MagicCan, but we’ve forgiven him.) If you’ve never read Chris, all we can say is that his set review is more amusing than most. As witness:
Battlefield Medic
There’s a guy like this in every block. And in every block, I use him as a proxy for the really good cards until I can afford them.
There must be a card that changes all creature types. Yup – Standardize. Let’s see – I have more creatures than anyone else. I have six mana, three of it blue. I have Force of Will backup. Standardize, Peer Pressure… I now own all creatures in play, permanently. Want to concede now?
Now, if my last card is anything but Krosan Reclamation, the board will be my 4/4 and 2/2 against his 2/2 potential first striker and 4/4 first striking land, with his Glory in the graveyard. With Joe at twelve life and yours truly at seven, he could race with no problem. Topdeck or no?
Gigapede is perhaps one of the best cards in the set given it’s innate comboliciousness with Violent Eruption, but the card represents a clear sign that Wizards intends for Green to have access to graveyard recursion, at least for now. Genesisseemed a little out of flavour, but was fine due to the whole”Judgement Incarnation” factor. Gigapede, on the other hand, feels like a black card.
Most games involve a lot of swinging with tight men. You know how this deck works: Get threshold, beat face, end game. Sideboard. Repeat. It’s rock-solid, and all you need is one island and one forest. It’s great against other U/G decks because it’s faster, and it’s great against Monoblack because of the sideboard and the fact that it can take Game 1 on a semi-regular basis.
I witnessed a match where one player had a Nantuko Shade and enough mana to attack and finish off his opponent; said opponent was tapped out and had no blockers left on the board after an Edict. The name pro did not attack for the win, instead keeping two mana open in case of an Aether Burst that could not be cast. And yet his play is a lesson to all of us wannabes.
