Demand and Remand

Little blog about Magic the Gathering strategy,news and decks from a regular teenager dedicated to the game

[neingel]

One last spin...

As most of you know, it has been a very very rough week in Legacy. Specifically towards the Miracle players, if you’ve been sleeping under a rock...

Sensei’s Divining Top has finally been banned in Legacy.

With Top banned, Miracles is finally dead in Legacy. Where many players would rejoice the passing of an oppressive deck which dominated the format for years, while many would fear that there would be no “true” Control deck to fill the void Miracles has left behind in the format.

Though this article is well passed the ban announcement, I’ll like to discuss further about why it should have been banned and what were the other potential cards Wizards R&D might have banned instead of Top.

Why did Top have to go?

In my opinion, Top was the most important card in the whole deck that would make Miracles function as a top tier deck for years to come. Before Miracles however, the interaction between Top and Counterbalance had not gone unnoticed with many players already tweaking a few interactions with the deck. It was not only until  2013, when Avacyn Restored brought a new mechanic known as Miracles. Where it would involve the player manipulating the top of their decks through shuffling, Brainstorm and most importantly with Top, Miracles was then formed. A UWx Control deck with a very small splash of Red, involving strong Miracle cards such as Terminus and Entreat the Angels. Miracles was a real control deck, utilizing strong control elements and consistent form of answers to most of the other decks in Legacy.

Top brought too much value to Miracles, where it would feel like as if a Miracles player was playing with an additional 3 cards in hand due to Top’s utility. Top was also not favored among players on the receiving end of Miracles, where there were complaints of Top taking up too much playing time in the rounds causing some games to end up in a draw.

What could’ve gone instead of Top?

The Top ban clearly affected the meta, Miracles was now gone and there was no clear deck to keep the other more rampant archetypes in check. Many still believe that Top should not have received the ban hammer. But the supporting cast of cards fueling Miracles such as Counterbalance or Terminus should’ve received the ban instead.

Another speculation circling around the legacy forum on Reddit a week before the ban was that Deathrite Shaman could’ve received the ban. Which is pretty ironic now that Deathrite Shaman is everywhere in the format with the absence of Miracles in the format.

Banning either Counterbalance or Terminus might have kept Miracles in the format, especially Terminus, a card so widely feared by many players for it’s power being casted for 1 White mana at instant speed. Top was really the final option for R&D, and they really did put the nail in the coffin this time round.

 What happens now?

It’s pretty hard to see how the meta would develop in the next few months, but some decks already have an edge now that Miracles is gone. Elves would finally have an ideal field of decks to play against, BUGx archetypes-consisting of True-Name Nemesis, Leovold and most importantly Deathrite Shaman would look to be the new kingpin of the format. Smaller archetypes such as UR Delver, GB Depths, Lands and Aluren will be slightly more prominent in the meta.

 As for the existing Miracle players, whether new or old, it does hurts to see a deck you’ve been playing for a long time getting banned. Miracles was not a cheap deck as well. However, many threads have popped up from existing Stoneblade players to help Miracle players to properly transit to the Stoneblade archetype. Stoneblade has been in Legacy for quite a long time, with different versions such as Bantblade, Deathblade, UWR-Blade and UW Blade. Stoneblade is a good shift for Miracle players as they already own most of the pieces required to build Stoneblade. With an unknown meta ahead, Stoneblade, BUG Midrange and Loam look to be the 3 main contenders to replace Miracle’s throne in the meta.

Will Stoneblade be able to continue Miracle’s glory? Only time will tell.

Ending it off...

It has been a hard week for Legacy, the passing of a great deck goes away once in awhile. It’s pretty hard to predict the meta at the current point of time now, but Legacy is definitely meant to shift constantly with new decks popping up every once in awhile. Though Miracles is gone, it definitely had to go at some point of time.

[neingel]

Amonkhet Commander Review: Part 2

And a warm welcome back to the 2nd part of this Commander review. Amonkhet thus far has been quite an impressive set to me, and in this 2nd part of the article, we’ll be going through the remaining colors: Green,Multicolor, Artifacts and the lands of the set as well.

Green

Vizier of the Menagerie

First card off today’s write-up is the new Vizier. Just looking at that relatively derpy Naga is funny, but many have compared him to cards like Garruk’s Horde or Courser of Kruphix as a strong Green utility card in Commander. Vizier however is a 3/4 for 4, making him easy to cast and with a well-abled body. I would like to see him more in multi-color decks tho, where players with creature heavy decks such as Maelstrom Wanderer would be able to properly utilize him. Strong card overall with powerful potential in the format.

Harvest Season

Harvest Season is potentially powerful in Commander, where ramp effects are plentiful that work with some decks that want to put many lands into play at once or just simply have a ton of mana to cast huge cards from their deck. Harvest Season is very very powerful at 3 mana, providing a tapped basic for each tapped creature you control? Sure thing for almost any Mono-Green deck and bi-colored deck. It does forces you to play aggressively or find some way to tap a good amount of your creatures, something Green excels in Commander. Powerful card overall and definitely will see good amounts of play.

Champion of Rhonas

Champion of Rhonas is another toy Green has to play with, but I foresee it’ll definitely be better when splashed. Due to the fact that having an uncounterable, free creature into play is definitely powerful when it’s a 3/3 for 4, it can carry the game on it’s own if left unanswered. It also acts well with tutors, allowing you to “cheat” 2 times at once, searching for the creature and playing it for free.

Mouth//Feed

Mouth//Feed is definitely a very common effect in Commander, Mouth gives a 3/3 Hippo token early game, while Feed is more likely to be used later in the mid-late game. Feed however, is very low costed for what it does, drawing cards equal to the number of creatures you control. Green has plenty of creature-draw effects but are usually costing in ranges of cmc 5-7. Feed is the same cost as Harmonize, but does much much more to it’s counterpart. This is a fine example of a card I really can’t wait to play soon.

Manglehorn

And the last Green card on the list is actually really good at Uncommon. Manglehorn has been seen by many to be the answer to one of Standard’s biggest problems at the moment, Mardu Vehicles. It is however full of value at a 3 costed creature in Commander, being able to come down early/cheap to destroy any artifact is definitely useful, but the fact that it has a “Blind Obedience” effect specifically for artifacts is something not very common in Green, but many players would see this replacing the more commonly seen artiifact removal. Bye Reclamation Sage and say Hello to Manglehorn :>

Multicolor

Before we go into showing my Top 5 picks for Multicolor, I have to say that there are many powerful Multicolor cards in the set, I would like to mention them all but there simply isn’t a way to go through each and everyone of them. I’ll probably try to squeeze similar ones into a group and try to talk about them as a whole. However, I would include some Legendary creatures in this section.

Nissa, Steward of Elements

The new Nissa does have a slight twist. First off, it’s the first time seeing her in multicolors compared to the regular Nissa we all know staying Mono-Green with the passing of every new set, secondly, this new version of Nissa is also particularly unique as she’s the first Planeswalker with an optional casting cost of X. meaning she’ll be able to come into play with any desired amount of loyalty counters depending on how much the player is willing to cast her for. Abilities aside, it’s typical Nissa with a small hint of Blue(Scry 2) as well as the usual land/creature dig and animation of lands into 5/5s. Many have already noticed how strong she’ll be in the Atraxa Superfriends build, where you can cast her with X on 0 but she’ll come in with an extra loyalty counter instead, keeping her alive and using her abilities straightaway. Definitely a very strong utility Planeswalker guaranteed to see play.

The new Split cards

I’ve only put a few of the new multicolor Split cards here, but the others not mentioned here are still viable in one way or another. Failure//Comply reminds me a lot of Unsubstantiate, except slightly worse with the fact that it can’t return creatures. Comply does feel kinda like Orim’s Chant but not as good as you would think. Not bad overall though. Rags//Riches is probably my favorite among the 3 shown here, Rags is slightly worse when compared to Yahenni’s Expertise but it does get the job done sometimes, while Riches is value late game when creatures are scarce on the board and everyone is out of resources. Lastly, Heaven//Earth is very reminiscent of Firespout, although somewhat similar in dealing with both flying and non-flying creatures, Heaven//Earth is better in Commander due to the fact that any amount of mana can be used on it either mode. Making it a very flexible card. 

Bounty of Luxa

Bounty of Luxa might seem like a huge mouthful of words at first, but it does so much at the cost of 4 mana! When first played, it’ll give you an extra card every alternate turn or give you 3 mana(in Simic colors) every other turn. Meaning if you played it on say..Turn 4, you’ll get the extra draw on Turn 5 and the mana on Turn 6. The cycle would then repeat itself providing both much needed card/mana advantage. I love this card and would like to get it in my Maelstorm Wanderer deck soon.

Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons 

Hapatra is the first Legendary of this whole 2 part article. Hapatra actually caught my attention at first as a general, where she’s low costed and that she required to work with -1/-1 counters. While that seems like a downside, there have been quite a few creatures/card support for -1/-1 counters, combine that with what Amonkhet and possibly Hour of Devastation might offer. Hapatra will probably be on many brewer’s radar for the upcoming months.

Samut, Voice of Dissent

And lastly, we have Samut. Who seems extremely decent on paper with her stars, I mean 5cmc Flasher, with a host of abilities such as Double Strike,Vigilance and Haste! She also is able to untap another creature for a measly cost of 1 White mana. Though being Naya colored normally means big creatures, Samut is able to fit in a Voltron shell perfectly due to the amount of abilities she already has even without equipment/auras on her. A bomb in Limited and sure to see some Commander play as a general or in the 99.

 Artifacts 

Pyramid of the Pantheon

Pyramid was probably one of the first cards that caught my attention during the spoiler season. Easily played on Turn 1, it fixes mana for you while adding brick counters onto itself. The second ability is very reminiscent of Mana Vault or Gilded Lotus, being able to tap for 3 mana of any color at the cost of 1 is extremely powerful ability in Commander. For such a low cost, despite it not being as powerful as Mana Vault/Crypt, it will definitely see play in most decks in time to come.

Throne of the God-Pharaoh

Throne is a good example of the strong, low-costed artifacts in this set. For only 2 mana, Throne could represent a rather speedy clock for your opponents the moment it’s played on Turn 1/2. It leans towards aggressive decks with creatures that want to turn sideways at your opponents or in any creature heavy deck that involves creatures tapping for other purposes such as mana or milling. I can’t wait to try this out when the new tribal commanders release around August :)

Embalmer’s Tools

Embalmer’s Tools might seem underwhelming at first, due to the fact where it would fit in a Zombie deck only. However, it’s first ability is actually very useful especially for graveyard decks, making activated abilities cost 1 less could mean Unearth and other abilities costing slightly lesser-which is pretty nice. Other than that, Zombie decks would love this card, having a somewhat Altar of Dementia effect is nice when you don’t need to sacrifice your own creatures.

The God’s Monuments

This new cycle of artifacts is really really cool, aimed towards mono-colored decks and encouraging the casting of creatures. Each Monument “de-taxes” creature cost, while providing a special effect for casting a creature spell, with each monument having it’s own unique ability. An interesting take by the design team that I’m sure will follow up in Commander as a staple for mono-colored creature decks soon.

Oracle’s Vault

Oracle’s Vault as from what I can recall, gave a bad impression to many players when Wizards announced it was the promo card for Prerelease and Launch Day. While I could understand why it was chosen as the promo card, it doesn’t seem that bad in Commander at all. Especially when it hits 3 brick counters, things could go out of control pretty fast with the help of Paradox Engine. There isn’t a whole lot going for this card but it does show a lot of potential seeing how players could find ways to break this card.

Lands

Aside from the full-art lands in the set, there are a few lands worth noting potential play in Commander.

“Bicycle” Lands

Despite their odd name, the Bicycle lands were a good decision by Wizards to help manabases in Standard. They are pretty useful in Commander too as they are fetchable and have the ability to cycle themselves. Wished the cycle was complete but this is pretty good for what we could’ve asked for.

Cascading Cataracts 

#betterthancrystalquarry

Nothing much to say here...I’ll just leave this picture here:

Conclusion

Amonkhet does seem like a very promising set thus far, though many are slightly disappointed due to it’s lower EV(Expected Value). It’s too early to say much about it, what I do know however is that the cards in here are going to see some good play in Commander and guaranteed much more fun now that Leovold is banned. I hope you’ve enjoyed this 2 part article series so far! As I’m guaranteed to do this for upcoming sets/releases of new products. Stay tuned for the next article, until next time!

[neingel]

Amonkhet Commander Review: Part 1

Hello everyone and welcome back to today’s article. With Amonkhet’s spoiler season over with the set fully spoiled, it is now time to look at what new toys are in store for Commander players and the format as a whole. This 2-part article will go through the top 5 cards in each color for Commander. The first part of these series will go through the colors White, Blue, Black and Red, while the second part of the article will go through the colors Green, Multi-color, Colorless and Lands. Without further ado, prepare to start playing like an Egyptian with your Commander playgroup soon!

Before jumping into the colors, I’ll first like to mention at the release of every new set, the new Legendary creatures that are introduced for General play in Commander. Amonkhet has brought back Gods as the Legendary creature type, though not similar to the Gods of Theros, the Gods of Amonkhet share a small trait with the Theros gods. Having Indestructibility as a Legendary creature is always nice, but the new Gods do come with a slight downside, and that is not being able to attack/block unless a certain condition/criteria is fulfilled.

Also, Cycling has seen a comeback, with new cards for Commander players to experiment with as well as some small form of synergy with counters(*Atraxa players rubbing their hands in glee perhaps*).

Enough rumbling from me then, let’s get started with the first color!

White

Anointed Procession

Finally White has a Parallel Lives effect, Anointed Procession will definitely see play in Commander in existing Green/White token strategies, especially for a small handful of players not being to afford Parallel Lives effect, grabbing this would probably save a couple of bucks. Mono-White generals that rely on token strategies such as Brimaz, King of Oskeros or Darien, King of Kjeldor. Overall, not a bad card designed by Wizards to push play for BW Zombies in Standard as well as tokens in Commander.

Gideon’s Intervention

Gideon’s Intervention is a pretty niche card, it might see some fringe sideboard play in Standard, but I believe it’s truth potential lies in Commander. At 4cmc, Gideon’s Intervention seems costly as it’s effect stops 1 card from potentially being cast/dealing damage to you. However, it does seem to fair particularly well after your opponent has tutored for a card or has an infinite damage combo the following turn. It also fairs extremely well against Voltron, being able to halt your opponent’s Voltron plan before they even cast their general.

Approach of the Second Sun

Weird? High costed? Exactly what Commander asks/screams for. On paper, Approach of the Second Sun is a card you would probably find in your best friend’s shoe-box or your store’s 50 cent box of jank rares. However, it’s groundbreaking ability to win off casting a 2nd copy is something many Commander players would try to break in the format. Many have been talking about it’s “value” interaction with Remand, as well as a bunch of decks that abuse copying spells. Weird card, but could see play as a simple/efficient wincon.

Dawn//Dusk

Dawn//Dusk is an interesting card, it does remind me a lot of Austere Command. The first mode is quite powerful at 4 mana, though not on par with Wrath of God or Day of Judgement. The card pays off at the 2nd mode, where decks like Alesha or some form of Aristocrats would love to cast it’s Aftermath effect. Niche cards like these are definitely going to see some good amount of play in Commander.

Regal Caracal 

Ah look! Some Cat tribal support in Amoncat! 

See what I did there? No..? :/

With that lame pun aside, Regal Caracal is actually quite a flavourful inclusion in the set. A 5-drop that’s a 3-for-1, makes 2 other Cat Tokens and acts as a Lord with additional Lifelink. Cats do not have that much of support in Commander, other than Anthem effects in form of Enchantments/Artifacts, but having a Lord now is quite the upgrade for any Cat Tribal deck.

BLUE

As Foretold

We’ll start with the bad stuff. As we all know, As Foretold has been on everyone’s radar recently and many have been trying to experiment with it in many formats. Reason being spells that have a cmc cost of “0” can be casted for free. Such spells include from simple things such as a free Evermind or even worse a free Ancestral Visions, which basically makes As Foretold an extremely powerful card being able to cheat a lot of spells into play. It also can play pretty well with decks such as Jhoria, something that already runs a host of powerful spells with the slight downside of Suspend. Or in an Atraxa deck, with the right curve and counter synergy, can work wonders. Only time will tell how soon someone is to breaking this in Commander.

Vizier of Many Faces

Vizier is just like any other clone effect, 4 costed and having the ability to copy a creature, but it does have Embalm for a slightly higher cost of 5. Meaning even after it has been destroyed, players still have a backup clone effect for only 5 mana. Also, it makes a token after being Embalmed, which could open up some cool and unique token strategies.

New Perspectives

Ah...another one of those really niche cards nobody would ever play anywhere else other than Commander. New Perspectives could actually push Cycling as a serious mechanic, due to the fact that it could potentially make Cycling cost 0. Although Fluctuator already makes Cycling free, some cards still require colored mana in order to Cycle. New Perspectives however, makes all cards regardless of their Cycling cost free to cycle, coming with a slight upside of drawing 3 cards as well. Cards like these in the set might actually push people to experiment more with Cycling in Commander.

Commit//Memory

Commit//Memory might seem costly for what it does at first glance, but many have seen that Commit is already better than Venser, Shaper Savant. While Memory does seem like an overcosted Time Reversal, the card is already has value when you have used Commit or discarded it to use Memory more efficiently. Either way, the card is very versatile for Blue and I can’t wait to have it in my deck.

Glyph Keeper

Now that is my definition of annoying! Glyph Keeper is actually a pretty simple card at first, but very troublesome to deal with. A 5/3 flyer is quite a beater, but combined with the fact it has a small built in protection and Embalm afterwards is good value. Your opponents are guaranteed to waste at least 2 cards getting rid of him, and another 2 after you Embalm it back.

Black

Liliana, Death’s Majesty

Starting off strong in Black is the new Liliana, and many Zombie-Tribal players are already in love with this set. There are so many new toys for Zombies to play with in Commander! Liliana is no exception of course, having the ability to create more Zombies while churning your graveyard, reanimating a big creature to make it a Zombie and of course, a 1-sided boardwipe for anyone not running Zombies. At 5 cmc, she is meant to carry Zombies a long way upwards.

Liliana’s Mastery

If we haven’t got enough of Liliana and Zombies, you better get used to it soon. Black seems to me like full of cards specifically meant to pushing Zombies in Standard. And these cards are definitely going to see play in Commander. Liliana’s Mastery is a 5 costed Enchantment that is essentially a 3-for-1, giving 2 Zombies but acting as a effective anthem effect at the same time? Liliana and her Zombies are really partying good in Amonkhet after all!

Archfiend of Ifnir

Probably one of the few big evil baddies in the set that isn’t a Zombie. Archfiend seems simple at first, but build it around a shell that likes discarding cards? Yep, decks such as Nekusar or Leovold could abuse their “Wheeling” cards and Archfiend to create an artificial but powerful 1-sided boardwipe. Other than that, Archfiend seems like it might stay in Commander for long due to it’s strong potential to easily clear an opponent’s board if he’s left unanswered.

Shadow of the Grave

Now these type of cards are my favorite. Spicy, powerful in the right shell and low costed as always. Shadow of the Grave reminds me a lot of Yawgmoth’s Will, which is seen by many as a potential 10th piece of “Power” in the game, the raw power of playing the same set of cards a 2nd time is always overwhelming. Shadow, unlike Will, requires the player to discard/Cycle cards in order to recast them again, this is pretty easy to accomplish with again..Wheel Effects...being able to cast this, hold priority to discard your current hand, draw your new hand and get all your cards back? Sounds pretty fun to me!

Lord of the Accursed

And surprise surprise! Another Zombie card to round off Black! As if anyone hadn’t knew it yet, Amonkhet is literally filled with strong Zombie cards. Lord of the Accursed is no stranger to round off Black as his childhood colors, at 3 cmc, he’s able to hit the table quickly as a cheap lord. His 2nd ability however can be used to finish someone with a low creature count off. Having another lord in Zombies really isn’t enough when they already have like....I don’t know? 7?!

Red

Glorious End

This card might very well read, “Stop whatever your opponent’s doing, and I’ll need to win the game NOW”. We’ve seen plenty of effects in Red where they do broken things such as Extra Turns, but requiring the player to win the next turn to avoid losing. Such cards include Warrior’s Oath and Final Fortune. It is pretty interesting to see an “End the Turn” effect in Red though, where the only 2 cards possible of doing so are Time Stop and Sundial of the Infinite. Overall, a pretty interesting card I would love to see being abused in Commander together with cards like Hive Mind.

Combat Celebrant

Extra combat phase effects on creatures are always amusing. Combat Celebrant excels here due to the fact he just needs to attack, and activate Exert on him. Meaning even if he’s killed afterwards, you’ll still get the additional combat phase he gave you, even better when after he’s exerted, he need not attack again with the risk of being killed through combat damage. Fun card overall, with many players soon to break it.

Insult//Injury

Insult does a lot for a measly cost of 3 mana, being able to not prevent damage and double your damage from any source this turn? Sign me up! Injury is not really good but can be activated late game to kill off anything small and poke a little at your opponent’s life total. I would love someone to try and play this around Storm, making each Grapeshot hit for a ton of damage :>

Hazoret’s Favor

Hazoret’s Favor is an ideally good card for decks that love placing in big creatures and swinging immediately. I could see this card working better when paired with a 2nd/3rd color, decks such as Xenagos, Omnath, Animar and many others would love to have this. Low costed at 3 mana, generally Commander playable overall.

Harsh Mentor

Many have begun the hype where Harsh Mentor would see play in formats such as Legacy, where it can pick off opponents for numerous strategies/decks. Harsh Mentor isn’t too bad in Commander too, many activated abilites in Commander require tapping,sacrificing creatures or simply paying mana. Harsh Mentor only targets opponents, which is definitely a huge upside considering it’s a 2/2 for 2 mana. Powerful card overall, and I could see many people seeing this as a formidable threat in a few formats soon.

Conclusion

Amonkhet does bring a lot of new toys for Commander players thus far, and I can’t wait for the set release to be able to experiment with some new strategies. That’s all for this week’s article, stay tuned next week for Part 2 of this Commander review-where I go through the remaining colors/cards for: Green,Mulitcolored,Artifacts and the Lands of the set. Until next time, happy brewing with Amonkhet!

[neingel]

Far Wanderings: Legacy’s Allure

Hello and welcome back to another article of Far Wanderings! Today we will go through one of Magic’s oldest and powerful formats:Legacy! Together with it’s variety, certain misconceptions of the format as well as the cost of it as a whole. 

The main reason why Far Wanderings is on the topic of Legacy today is due to the fact I’ve been thinking a lot about Legacy. Many know that Legacy is definitely not a cheap format, and I’ve been itching to get back to a 60 card constructed format for quite a while now. Firstly, I would like to talk about the misconceptions many people have with Legacy

1. Legacy is ridiculously expensive, making it the format for rich peeps/collectors to play in

2. Legacy is an unfair format where combo decks are engineered to kill opponents on Turn 1.

3. People will lose often in Legacy if they don’t play blue, since Legacy is a blue-dominated format and the game’s best Counterspells are legal in Legacy.

First off, Legacy is an expensive, but it’s not ridiculously expensive to the point where that old man who’s been playing for 20 years in your shop being the only person who can afford Legacy. Secondly, Turn-1 kills are a thing in Legacy, but not to the point where it happens everytime. Lastly, not playing Blue is not the end of playing in Legacy, the metagame is very diverse and contains many top tier decks not playing Blue or have many fair decks outside of Blue.

Most people with this mindset of Legacy are not thinking of what Legacy looks like, but more towards Vintage. Where decks cost 5 digits, Turn 1 kills are very common and the entire set of Power 9 are somewhat legal. Also, Blue is very very popular in Vintage due to the fact that Standstill/Gush/Mental Misstep are all legal in Vintage but banned in Legacy.

What is Legacy really like though?

Legacy is often a format questioned by most players by a measure of it’s worth, cost as well as variety of decks played. I’ll admit that Legacy’s meta is quite stale, and rarely changes dramatically with the release of every new set(exceptions such as Delver and Eldrazi). Thus, most players familiar with the format enjoy it due the fact it isn’t as fast-paced as Modern/Standard. They can sit back, slowly construct their deck and be extremely familiar with different matchups. Decks in Legacy are also very well known for not having an expiry date on them, making the format worth the money for many players. 

Despite it’s stale metagame, Legacy is much more diverse than you think. There would normally be a couple of usual suspects in the format, Miracles, Death and Taxes, Storm and Delver variants just to name a few, but Legacy has a habit repeatedly seen in the past where decks not seen very often do well in events. This is due to the fact that a large amount of decks, although not very well known, have the same power level as the Top Tier decks. It’s mostly a matter of being at the right time, attacking the meta when it least expects or prepared for it. 

Legacy also is also home to many many strong Blue cards that people love/hate to play. However, there are many many decks that perform very well despite not having Blue:

A fine example of certain Tier decks not playing Blue:

Death and Taxes

Eldrazi

4C Loam

Elves

Not playing Blue does not necessarily put any player at a disadvantage in Legacy, but more of a good challenge to me :)

Legacy’s cost

I mentioned earlier about Legacy being not as costly as Vintage. It is however very costly for players who don’t have a huge collection or a lot of money. One reason why Legacy is still in the region of 4 digits or high 3 digits to play is due to the Dual Lands. 

Dual Lands are extremely important in Legacy. This is mainly because they are fetchable and unlike Shocklands, they require no life to use straightaway. However, there are a few other lands that really cost you to cut a fair bit of your wallet.

The bad part is that all these lands(small exception for Wasteland) share the same problems with one another, and that is they are all on the Reserved List. They would probably not see a reprint again and when the demand increases on cards with low supply, so does their price tag.

Most of the other staples in the format cost $100 a playset at the most, but lands tend to cost way more than that $100 mark :/

Good tips to get started in Legacy

The following tips are meant for new players tempted to start in Legacy. although I’m not a Legacy player, these are tips that have been passed down for many years are definitely useful for any new player getting into the format today.

1. Save $$$

Now this might sound like something like kid’s advice, but believe me - saving money is a really huge part of getting started in Legacy, a good way to do so would be making a change jar or committing to dip $30-$60 a month into your “Legacy Fund”.Another small piece of advice following this up would be to avoid spending money on cards not related to your “Legacy Fund”, as this delays a lot in your entry into Legacy.

2. Proxy/Playtest online

Decks in Legacy are by no means cheap, but proxying a deck before buying the actual pieces for it in Paper provides valuable understanding of the deck as a whole. The same applies to playtesting a deck on an online platform such as Xmage or Cockatrice. Proxying saves a lot of money and provides invaluable experience for new/experienced players looking to build any Legacy deck.

3. Borrow decks

Borrowing decks is quite a common sight in today’s standards. It provides a hands-on experience for many new players, for those unsure on what deck to play, borrowing decks might be a good idea. Another upside of borrowing decks would be the fact that you have an actual deck to participate at your store’s Legacy tourney, this would give you a better understanding of your store’s metagame as well as the strengths/weaknesses of other decks in the format. It also opens you up to playgroups/communities who enjoy playing Legacy :D

4. Budget Replacements

Although I wouldn’t highly recommend this tip, it does seem to work for different people/decks sometimes. One fine example would be replacing Duals with Shocks. Although not ideal for some decks due to land flexibility or the life loss makes it risky, Shocks do save a lot of money and players can find themselves upgrading to Duals later. 

Conclusion/What I’m building 

That is all for today’s Far Wanderings, Legacy is a very fun, powerful and explosive format. Most experienced players would often describe it as Magic’s greatest format and that it brings a lot of nostalgia to different people. Despite it’s cost and slow movement, Legacy somehow manages to intrigue players both old and new to the format. As for me, I’ve also decided to dive into the format with a more straightforward approach.

Yes..it is Legacy Burn! I can’t really afford the staples in the format as a student, but Burn is a good place to start for anyone on a smaller budget as well as throwing fire at people’s faces :D

Once again, thank you for reading this week’s Far Wanderings, do share what decks you enjoy playing most in Legacy, and I’ll catch you later!

[neingel]

The wrong font, theme and size frames...

Spoiler season for Amonkhet has officially started, which probably brings the speculators, fan-fiction writers and that rookie player who goes to the store every Friday something to look forward to. Spoiler seasons is normally a very busy time for different groups of people, some would pay more particular attention to the spoilers with a varying levels of hype, while others like me are more laidback-not too interested in Standard and slowly sifting through MagicSpoiler.com/MythicSpoiler.com for potential EDH cards. 

For today’s article of Amonkhet however, with the whole set not fully spoiled, I’ll like to talk about Amonkhet’s Expeditions..I mean Inventions...no wait...ahh..they’re called Invocations!

In case you haven’t been catching up with the spoilers, these are the “Masterpiece” series of Amonkhet, otherwise known as Invocations!

Now the first thing that might come to mind after seeing these would be:

Or....

Now before the masses mention how bad they look, the horrible font or the fact that the Masterpieces look like Yugioh trading cards. But aside from the visual aesthetics of the cards, these are still Masterpieces of the set. However, they look bad. Art-wise, 10/10, design-wise? Probably a 2.

Straight off the bat, you might’ve thought that today’s article is about flaming Wizards for their poor choice of design in terms of the visual/readability aspect of Invocations. However, I’ll like to highlight another issue I feel needs to be addressed, and that is the choices of cards being placed as an Invocation

Right now, here is the color pie for all Invocations excluding the 5 new Gods:

In this very simple color pie I’ve made up, there already is an obvious problem..

If your answer was “No Green?”. 10 points to a fellow reader like you! I don’t think that either Expeditions nor Inventions had a biased spread of reprinted cards like these, the only actual Invocation with a green symbol on it is Maelstrom Pulse. Aside from having no Green cards as Invocations, I’ll like to highlight almost half of the cards from this collection is Blue, seriously?

I can see why some people are not happy with the Invocations, it lacks diversity, and most of the chase cards are in Blue. Featuring 2 of the best Counterspells ever made as well as a host of other hard to find/staples in various formats.

Invocations grouped by usability of each format:

Modern Staples: 7

Legacy Staples: 9

EDH Staples: 8

To make things fair, some cards do see popular play in more than 1 format, thus I have added them to 2 formats for same cases.

As you can see, most of the Invocations are slightly leaning towards Legacy, a good attempt by Wizards to attract die-hard collectors to pimp their decks. But when you take a closer look at the “chase” Invocations...

The top 5 most expensive Invocations at the time of this writing

To start off, I might be a big fan of Blue, but what the actual hell. Firstly, more blue cards were printed, to the point where there were no remaining slots for Green. Secondly, again, these blue cards, including those not shown(Counterbalance, Divert, Stifle, Consecrated Sphinx). If you compare to the other colors, it seems Invocations were a straight up Pimp-Reprint for Magic’s best counterspells. 

It’s rather bittersweet for me, seeing that a lot of strong reprints are in Blue, but much of the value has been diluted. I believe this would make belief that most players would want to open a Blue Invocation, meaning a higher chance to open something more valuable when compared to an Invocation of any other color. Of course, I feel this is a design error by Wizards, they could’ve removed 2 Blue cards which I deem unnecessary and probably place 2 Green cards in their place.

Conclusion

I think the Invocations as a small collection deemed premium to players, has received the proper praise/credit it deserves, aside from the argument where the visual aspects were poor and that Wizards were very biased, causing aggressive reprints in Blue. Overall, I do hope Wizards would give the other colors a chance in Hour of Devastation’s Invocations. Until next time, good luck and enjoy your Amonkhet Spoiler Season!

[neingel]

Far Wanderings: Modern Masters 2017, a Critical Review

Well, we’re back with another episode of Far Wanderings! Where I talk about a certain format/topic/deck in the game, this week or two has all been about Modern Masters 2017-which I hoped many of you had the chance to open a box with your friends or just sit down at your local game store for a simple draft.

Well…MM17 was a blast! I wrote a small article back then with a slight tinge of ranting, in which I was disappointed about the lack of good reprints in the set when it is very close to it’s release date. With much fear among stores around the world dumping pre-order boxes of the set. Not only did MM17 prove me and many others wrong, it smashed through everyone’s biggest hopes and dreams, had an awesome draft environment and the box design was ~Amazing~. 

But first, how good was my box?

I did have a good chance to draft MM17, when a fellow lecturer of mine could get a box around SGD250(around USD178), a few of us decided to chip in seeing it was bought at a cheaper price. This was the “notable results” of our box:

The box overall was not as bad as I have though it would be, having hit both Goyf, Lili and Voice aside from the other jank mythics was extreme luck on the box’s part, I also pulled myself a foil Venser which was something I really wanted( besides Snapcaster of course :] ). However, the biggest letdown was 1 Fetch and the fact there were no Damnations, Blood Moons or even Goblin Guides. Considering that we bought the box for cheap, we still broke even and manage to keep the remaining rares, commons and uncommons for free.

Seeing other box openings though, especially on Youtube such as Alpha Investments, Boogie, Tolarian and many others have done. The whole topic on box openings seems to me like a big hit or miss. Some boxes can have 1 or 0 fetches, whereas others have all 5 fetches and 3 solid Mythics. Considering they all of them have opened at MSRP/Net Price, I would consider myself to be very lucky where I had someone who could pre-order for a considerably cheaper price.

The draft environment 

This is what I clearly like about this set, the fact that there is strong support pushing 2, 3 or 4 color draft archetypes. The fact that all 10 Signets, all 10 Guildgates as well as the 5 Tri-Lands from the Shards of Alara clearly is not only helpful support for the draft environment but also provides a strong welcome challenge towards draft, going 3 or more colors. Something which has not been open or encouraged to do in draft, is now possible and could very well be playable.

Some of the archetypes I felt were well supported, often could do better with the addition of a 3rd color, such examples would include:

UW Blink to Bant Blink (Thragtusk and Vital Splicer are strong additions together with Stoic Angel/Rhox War Monk)

BG Sacrifice to Jund Sacrifice (Holy crap Red/Jund offers some really strong value creatures that would LOVE to be sacrificed)

RG Aggro to Naya Aggro (Thornscape Battlemage gives more reach and GW provides all the beatdown any aggro fan would love in draft)

UB Control to Grixis Control (Not sure about you, but if you picked Cruel Ultimatum at any 1 point, changing the deck to Grixis Control is worth the try with access to Terminate, Falkenrath Aristocrat or even Sedraxis Specter)

If you really couldn’t have more fun drafting a strong 2 color archetype, the set is quite forgiving at giving players the reach they need for a 3 color manabase, at the same time providing more powerful options for their 3rd color.

I managed to draft twice, my first time trying out a spicy Jund aggro deck featuring Broodmate Dragon and Desecration Demon, my 2nd attempt however was UW Blink with 2 Vensers, Restoration Angel and Deadeye, together with an unruly crew of creatures having an ETB I could grab at that point.

Let’s talk about Rarity

Many would have known by now, a bunch of cards having their rarity downgraded, most possibly to allow an easier/much forgiving draft environment or to help Pauper out(Pauper players unite!). As me being quite a Pauper man at heart, I was extremely excited to see some cards finally getting a downshift to common. I’ll just make a small section of the top 5 MM17 Pauper Cards here.

#1: Burning-Tree Emissary

Everyone’s dream card that was in Pauper has finally finally printed as a common. Burning-Tree Emissary might finally be the final piece that Pauper Zoo or any RGx Shenanigans need. The 2 drop previously from Gatecrash is a very sick card, effectively a 2/2 for 0 that can follow up with a tempo play. Whether you decide to use the RG it produces for removal or another creature, Burning-Tree Emissary is one of those cards that is sure to shake up the Pauper metagame.

#2: Mortician Beetle

This little beetle got turned from Rare to Common :/ . Not something we see everyday in a reprint set but it seems to be another new toy for Pauper to play with. Pauper already has a BG Aristocrats/Sacrifice deck, that features Carrion Feeder, Bloodthrone Vampire and a bunch of other creatures that produce value when they die, Mortician Beetle not only fits perfectly in that deck, but it is scary with the already favored sac outlet/win-con Carrion Feeder, having 2 one-drops that are sure to grow big when the engine of the deck starts going makes GB  Aristocrats a deck to be reckoned with sometime in the future.

#3: Magma Jet

Magma Jet is probably one of my favorite red instants in the whole game, though cards like Lightning Strike and Searing Spear do 3 damage for the same cost. What has made Magma Jet an Uncommon all this while before MM17 was the fact that it had Scry 2. I could see this played in almost any Aggro shell, Burn or even a spicy UR Tempo build anytime soon. Overall, I’m very impressed with Wizards’s decision to push Magma Jet down to a common.

#4 Augur of Bolas

Augur of Bolas has only been printed 2 times, both at uncommon. With it now at common, control decks in Pauper finally look like they have a solid choice of dig in the form of a 2 drop. Augur will die to a bolt and any other removal, but it does provide a solid body early game. Generating card advantage for 2 mana is quite strong at any stage of the game. Thumbs up to Wizards again :)

#5 Dinvora Horror

Instead of playing the Chittering Rats/Archaeomancer combo in UB control, that deck sure has a new toy to play with. It sure is large and really reminds me of Capsize. Dinvora Horror is more than Capsize though, being a 4/4 for 6 isn’t really amazing but the fact that blinking it multiple times is ridiculously powerful. This might be a very big piece of the UB control deck already smashing results in the Pauper meta or it could also give rise to UBx control decks in the format. I was definitely not expecting this to show up in the set at common but I’m quite happy it is!

There were a bunch of other cards that were downshifted in rarity too, making the draft environment more exciting and the cards themselves easier to get as well as making them legal in certain formats/cubes. A few of the noteworthy ones include:

Placing Obzedat at Rare is pretty rude though >_<

A score for the set?

Every set needs a rating, I really find it hard to put a fair score on MM17 though. I did enjoy the set very much, the reprints and draft environment were very well designed by R&D team, for this, I feel we have to compare this to…

The Original!

Modern Masters 2013 probably has a special place in everyone’s hearts, the set was just sick. Like literally sick, it was filled with raw power at every level of rarity, the reprints were awesome and the set in today’s standards is brimming, if not overflowing with value~.

Modern Masters 2017 was good, wayyy better than 2015′s and slightly edging over Eternal Masters if I say so myself. It was a very special set with meaningful reprints and strong color support in draft. I would say it’s quite close to the original but not really what the original Modern Masters would bring. Overall, it was a solid set that definitely took many people by surprise. We will never know when we will see cards like these getting reprinted again:

I guess the reprints really speak for the set :D

Conclusion

I do believe that MM17 deserves to be one of the higher, more respected Masters sets in time to come, Wizards really put the ace in the hole on this one, fair credit to them. With the increasing prices of cards, I do believe MM17 is helping the playerbase in one way or another, which is clearly what the community wants. If Wizards could keep such a trend with their upcoming sets, I’m sure much good is sure to come for most formats. Until next time! 

[phyrexian-without-a-cause]

A nice concise overview of the set, with some insight into Pauper which I desperately needed to know more about.

[neingel]

@phyrexian-without-a-cause Much thanks dear sir! I'm quite a huge Pauper fan tbh hahas :D Thanks for the follow anyways!! :]

[neingel]

Far Wanderings: Modern Masters 2017, a Critical Review

Well, we’re back with another episode of Far Wanderings! Where I talk about a certain format/topic/deck in the game, this week or two has all been about Modern Masters 2017-which I hoped many of you had the chance to open a box with your friends or just sit down at your local game store for a simple draft.

Well...MM17 was a blast! I wrote a small article back then with a slight tinge of ranting, in which I was disappointed about the lack of good reprints in the set when it is very close to it’s release date. With much fear among stores around the world dumping pre-order boxes of the set. Not only did MM17 prove me and many others wrong, it smashed through everyone’s biggest hopes and dreams, had an awesome draft environment and the box design was ~Amazing~. 

But first, how good was my box?

I did have a good chance to draft MM17, when a fellow lecturer of mine could get a box around SGD250(around USD178), a few of us decided to chip in seeing it was bought at a cheaper price. This was the “notable results” of our box:

The box overall was not as bad as I have though it would be, having hit both Goyf, Lili and Voice aside from the other jank mythics was extreme luck on the box’s part, I also pulled myself a foil Venser which was something I really wanted( besides Snapcaster of course :] ). However, the biggest letdown was 1 Fetch and the fact there were no Damnations, Blood Moons or even Goblin Guides. Considering that we bought the box for cheap, we still broke even and manage to keep the remaining rares, commons and uncommons for free.

Seeing other box openings though, especially on Youtube such as Alpha Investments, Boogie, Tolarian and many others have done. The whole topic on box openings seems to me like a big hit or miss. Some boxes can have 1 or 0 fetches, whereas others have all 5 fetches and 3 solid Mythics. Considering they all of them have opened at MSRP/Net Price, I would consider myself to be very lucky where I had someone who could pre-order for a considerably cheaper price.

The draft environment 

This is what I clearly like about this set, the fact that there is strong support pushing 2, 3 or 4 color draft archetypes. The fact that all 10 Signets, all 10 Guildgates as well as the 5 Tri-Lands from the Shards of Alara clearly is not only helpful support for the draft environment but also provides a strong welcome challenge towards draft, going 3 or more colors. Something which has not been open or encouraged to do in draft, is now possible and could very well be playable.

Some of the archetypes I felt were well supported, often could do better with the addition of a 3rd color, such examples would include:

UW Blink to Bant Blink (Thragtusk and Vital Splicer are strong additions together with Stoic Angel/Rhox War Monk)

BG Sacrifice to Jund Sacrifice (Holy crap Red/Jund offers some really strong value creatures that would LOVE to be sacrificed)

RG Aggro to Naya Aggro (Thornscape Battlemage gives more reach and GW provides all the beatdown any aggro fan would love in draft)

UB Control to Grixis Control (Not sure about you, but if you picked Cruel Ultimatum at any 1 point, changing the deck to Grixis Control is worth the try with access to Terminate, Falkenrath Aristocrat or even Sedraxis Specter)

If you really couldn’t have more fun drafting a strong 2 color archetype, the set is quite forgiving at giving players the reach they need for a 3 color manabase, at the same time providing more powerful options for their 3rd color.

I managed to draft twice, my first time trying out a spicy Jund aggro deck featuring Broodmate Dragon and Desecration Demon, my 2nd attempt however was UW Blink with 2 Vensers, Restoration Angel and Deadeye, together with an unruly crew of creatures having an ETB I could grab at that point.

Let’s talk about Rarity

Many would have known by now, a bunch of cards having their rarity downgraded, most possibly to allow an easier/much forgiving draft environment or to help Pauper out(Pauper players unite!). As me being quite a Pauper man at heart, I was extremely excited to see some cards finally getting a downshift to common. I’ll just make a small section of the top 5 MM17 Pauper Cards here.

#1: Burning-Tree Emissary

Everyone’s dream card that was in Pauper has finally finally printed as a common. Burning-Tree Emissary might finally be the final piece that Pauper Zoo or any RGx Shenanigans need. The 2 drop previously from Gatecrash is a very sick card, effectively a 2/2 for 0 that can follow up with a tempo play. Whether you decide to use the RG it produces for removal or another creature, Burning-Tree Emissary is one of those cards that is sure to shake up the Pauper metagame.

#2: Mortician Beetle

This little beetle got turned from Rare to Common :/ . Not something we see everyday in a reprint set but it seems to be another new toy for Pauper to play with. Pauper already has a BG Aristocrats/Sacrifice deck, that features Carrion Feeder, Bloodthrone Vampire and a bunch of other creatures that produce value when they die, Mortician Beetle not only fits perfectly in that deck, but it is scary with the already favored sac outlet/win-con Carrion Feeder, having 2 one-drops that are sure to grow big when the engine of the deck starts going makes GB  Aristocrats a deck to be reckoned with sometime in the future.

#3: Magma Jet

Magma Jet is probably one of my favorite red instants in the whole game, though cards like Lightning Strike and Searing Spear do 3 damage for the same cost. What has made Magma Jet an Uncommon all this while before MM17 was the fact that it had Scry 2. I could see this played in almost any Aggro shell, Burn or even a spicy UR Tempo build anytime soon. Overall, I’m very impressed with Wizards’s decision to push Magma Jet down to a common.

#4 Augur of Bolas

Augur of Bolas has only been printed 2 times, both at uncommon. With it now at common, control decks in Pauper finally look like they have a solid choice of dig in the form of a 2 drop. Augur will die to a bolt and any other removal, but it does provide a solid body early game. Generating card advantage for 2 mana is quite strong at any stage of the game. Thumbs up to Wizards again :)

#5 Dinvora Horror

Instead of playing the Chittering Rats/Archaeomancer combo in UB control, that deck sure has a new toy to play with. It sure is large and really reminds me of Capsize. Dinvora Horror is more than Capsize though, being a 4/4 for 6 isn’t really amazing but the fact that blinking it multiple times is ridiculously powerful. This might be a very big piece of the UB control deck already smashing results in the Pauper meta or it could also give rise to UBx control decks in the format. I was definitely not expecting this to show up in the set at common but I’m quite happy it is!

There were a bunch of other cards that were downshifted in rarity too, making the draft environment more exciting and the cards themselves easier to get as well as making them legal in certain formats/cubes. A few of the noteworthy ones include:

Placing Obzedat at Rare is pretty rude though >_<

A score for the set?

Every set needs a rating, I really find it hard to put a fair score on MM17 though. I did enjoy the set very much, the reprints and draft environment were very well designed by R&D team, for this, I feel we have to compare this to...

The Original!

Modern Masters 2013 probably has a special place in everyone’s hearts, the set was just sick. Like literally sick, it was filled with raw power at every level of rarity, the reprints were awesome and the set in today’s standards is brimming, if not overflowing with value~.

Modern Masters 2017 was good, wayyy better than 2015′s and slightly edging over Eternal Masters if I say so myself. It was a very special set with meaningful reprints and strong color support in draft. I would say it’s quite close to the original but not really what the original Modern Masters would bring. Overall, it was a solid set that definitely took many people by surprise. We will never know when we will see cards like these getting reprinted again:

I guess the reprints really speak for the set :D

Conclusion

I do believe that MM17 deserves to be one of the higher, more respected Masters sets in time to come, Wizards really put the ace in the hole on this one, fair credit to them. With the increasing prices of cards, I do believe MM17 is helping the playerbase in one way or another, which is clearly what the community wants. If Wizards could keep such a trend with their upcoming sets, I’m sure much good is sure to come for most formats. Until next time! 

[neingel]

Should’ve or Shouldn’t?

Welcome back everybody. It has been a busy week for me due to my exams and for many others as well. But currently, it’s my short study break and that means time for me to start picking up on the blog again. Well, with that out of the way lets jump right in!

Today’s article would be none other than the recent ban announcements, while they were no changes to any format in Wizard’s focus, I would like to highlight and do a small review on each format’s state as of now, and what Wizards should’ve or shouldn’t ban.

STANDARD

I’ll jump right to the topic which everyone on the internet is buzzing about right now-Standard. Now Standard has not been very well received for quite a few months now, starting from the release of Aether Revolt, through the Pro Tour and now after a somewhat redundant ban announcement. I believe the main problem started with the spoiler season during Aether Revolt, where people actually realized an incarnation of Splinter Twin was already in the format:

The combo/deck is still legal due to the “no-changes” ban announcement(admit it, most of you are already used to it). But what seems to frustrate the playerbase/community the most is the fact that this archetype is clearly not very healthy for the metagame or for new players to go up against. The aftermentioned 2 points is what I and probably many Standard players believe is bad for Standard as a whole.

The next point I would like to emphasize would be Vehicles, or more specifically-the current reigning deck in Standard. Pre PT Aether Revolt, many thought that vehicles would never make the cut to the top tier in the upcoming Pro Tour, this was mainly due to the banning of Smuggler’s Copter which was a major backbone for the deck and the introduction of rather “unexciting” and mainly underwhelmed new Vehicle cards. However, many of the others, who were well ahead of their competitive scene decided to work on Vehicles’s unpopularity and somehow turned it to be the top deck that would go down winning the entire competition.

As you can see, the winning deck/archetype ran a interesting selection of cards, cheap threats such as Toolcraft Exemplar/Inventor’s Apprentice as well as “value” creatures Thalia/Scrounger/Inspector. What really pushed it’s power level was the 2 new vehicles-Heart of Kiran and Aethersphere Harvester. Both somewhat seemed to be the better versions of the previously banned Copter.

Vehicles have been ever rampant in the meta and competitive scene after the Pro Tour. Which led to many players speculating a 2nd consecutive Standard banning in a very short period of time. To me, it’s quite obvious that the power level of these 2 cards are indeed quite strong when played around the right shell, but it didn’t bring the same amount of “disgusting value” Smuggler’s Copter had when it was still legal. Furthermore, Copy-Cat was the more likely target of getting banned anyways.

Other individuals bans many have predicted included these:

Modern

Modern Masters 2017 is just right around the corner for release, and what a surprise/shocker it would be if they banned a certain card that was already in MM17? It’s actually no suprise though, where they banned Twin a few months after the release of MM2015 2 years ago. Many have started speculating a few cards being banned the next announcement, but would Wizards actually have a smiliar Splinter Twin scenario again. Chances are, quite possibly.

And here is my top pick.

Now before a horde of angry Suicide Zoo players came destroying my room. I feel that Death’s Shadow is quite the speedy unfair deck, somewhat reminiscent of the old days of Modern where there would be fast decks that would define the format as “the Turn 4 format”. Death’s Shadow however, unlike Goyf is a card that scales from a simple creature to a gamechanger, by using the player’s life total as a tool, it doesn’t hurt to have a low life total when Death’s Shadow is most probably going to swing for lethal possibly on turn 3. Put Death’s Shadow into a good shell consisting easy access to life loss, Goyf shenanigans as well as cards that cycle effectively to find pieces. Suicide Zoo does effectively hold itself as a fast combo deck given the right situations as well as a strong, consistent aggro deck in some grindier matchups.

My 2nd pick

No I’m not insane, I know my picks are getting crazy or retarded, but Mox Opal recently has been creeping up on a lot of people’s radar nowadays. The powerful 0 cmc artifact has seen play for as long as Modern’s inception, but recently has been showing up in Cheerios. Where many have seen a portion of it’s raw power and efficiency. Mox Opal might deserve a ban, but doing so will immensely lower down the power level of many decks, but particularly Affinity-where many players have a long love-hate relationship with the deck for a very long time. This could overall help slightly with a shift of the metagame enabling a small change of taste in Modern.

My 3rd pick

If Death’s Shadow wasn’t banned yet, I think the next card to go will be this important piece of the puzzle running the whole deck. Bauble at 0 cmc does offer a lot of card advantage as early as Turn 1. Being able to gain information off the top of an opponent’s library, combined with the free card draw the next upkeep as well as the fact it can be activated at instant speed is just additional icing on the cake. Bauble does seem to give too much card advantage at 0 cmc, something Wizards have paid particular attention to especially when they have banned Gitaxian Probe.

EDH

EDH is mainly a format full of variety, volatility and a crazy blend of cards you would often find in your shoebox of unwanted cards. Bannings for EDH in the past have been quite sensible and have kept the format in balance(Let’s be honest, there’s a long list of cards/combos/generals you hate a lot :/). Thus, I’ll try to be fair/reasonable in my pickings for cards that should’ve been banned in this section.

The Main Course

Paradox Engine is the new, awesome, must-have Christmas toy every EDH player is buzzing about. Released recently in Aether Revolt, Paradox Engine spells disaster for the whole board. Being able to play mana rocks/dorks, Phenax shenanigans or sinking yourself in a vast amount of card advantage…

This card basically can fit into any shell/deck, but make it much better as a whole overall. I could see this getting banned soon if the need arises.

The Potato side

Let’s be honest here, Mana Drain has lurked around in EDH for far too long, many have asked for a ban, but none has come by for quite a few years now. Having the same cmc as a regular Counterspell, Mana Drain has the ability to provide maximum tempo at any given rate. One good example is to counter an opponent’s Eldrazi Titan and then casting your own Eldrazi Titan next turn.

The new thing

There has been quite the influx of opinions from the playerbase, where Atraxa deserves to be banned due to the sheer power of her strategy in multiple decks(Superfriends,Infect,any counter strategy,etc). Though I see it being very unlikely as she just got released in Commander 2016, and the fact there are many other stronger generals out there.

Conclusion

That’s it for today’s article, the announcement was probably a letdown for most players, but majority of the playerbase agreed that Wizards really needed to fix some formats fast. However, from this example, it is sure to see the next set of cards that could probably be banned. As for now, players can hope to grab on to their precious formats and hope for the best. I hope you have enjoyed today’s articles and please do follow up with any upcoming articles. See you soon!

[neingel]

A short notice...

For many wondering when the next article will arrive, I have slightly bad news. I’m currently quite busy with projects and presentations in school and I have an important major exam this upcoming Friday, articles soon to resume next weekend. Have a great week ahead

Much thanks and love                                                                                           -Nigel (Neingel)

[neingel]

Far Wanderings: Pauper

Hello again fellow readers! I have decided to make a new series of articles for the blog starting from today, as you can see from the title - Far Wanderings would be a new series of articles where I go talking about a certain format/deck/topic about the game. No competition/banning reports in this series, it’ll just be a very specific somewhat narrow view of the selected topic I have chosen to write about.

So as for the very first article of this series, the topic I would like to rumble on today, well the name was already given away in the title, it’s Pauper! Pauper is quite a well-known format in today’s day and age, it’s the format where only commons are allowed as well as some cards that have had their rarity downgraded to common. Pauper is usually more popular on Magic Online, where there are daily regular events/leagues, with a good amount of participants as well.

“Pauper isn’t exciting right? It’s just commons....”

On that note you’re definitely wrong. Pauper isn’t just a format where people play under-powered commons, Pauper has been referred to many older players to be a “lite”  version of Legacy. The fact that it has a large pool of cards to play with, a fair banlist and it’s an eternal format does give it a lot to talk about. 

A small example of signature cards in Magic’s history that are common and see tons of play in Pauper

Due to Pauper having a huge card pool, a lot of iconic/familiar cards see actual play in Pauper. Such examples include:

Ponder

Preordain

Daze

Gush

Hydro/Pyro-blast

All 3 Tron lands

All original Mirrodin artifact lands

Atog

Mulldrifter

Capsize

Chromatic Star/Sphere

Ancient Stirrings

Expedition Map

Mystical Teachings

Rancor

Nettle Sentinel

Quirion Ranger

Vines of Vastwood

Slippery Boggle

Armadillo Cloak

Chainer’s Edict

Gitaxian Probe

Ancestral Mask

Doom Blade

Kiln Fiend

Chain Lightning

Rift Bolt

Lava Spike

Searing Blaze

Fireblast

Priest of Titania 

I mean..that’s a lot of good cards that have seen play in larger eternal formats, I don’t see why Pauper is being labelled as an “underpowered” format by a few. 

“Blue seems powerful in this format -  is the meta solved?”

A very frequently asked but simple question: to start it off, I’ll show a sample Delver list - which is probably Pauper’s oldest and best blue deck.

As you can see, the deck itself is strong, having a slight resemblance to a mono-blue Legacy Delver build. However, despite this being the most popular deck(probably in Pauper’s history), there are many decks which produce solid results, which I’ll show a few below.

Mono-Green Stompy

Murasa/Temur Tron

Affinity

Kiln Fiend Combo

As you can see through the decklists, all of the decks are very well designed. But what if I told you that many decks of different archetypes achieve a 5-0 on Magic Online everyday/week? Now that will probably take a lot of people aback.

As you can see, within 24 hours, 7 different decks end up with a 5-0 on a Magic Online league, with many and much more ending up being not so lucky with a 4-1. However, this clearly proves my point that Pauper is not like Legacy, in which it is not a blue-dominated format and it has a good, balanced spread of archetypes in the metagame.

So what’s Pauper’s biggest selling point?

One problem that runs in many formats of today is money. I mean some formats require a lot of money and commitment, something which I and majority of many other players have very little of. Pauper, running completely on commons is the perfect format to get into around with a small budget, yet being able to play powerful commons and build a top tier deck in a format all without the hassle of money

As you can see from this metagame screenshot, the cost of Pauper’s high tier decks are dirt cheap when compared to Standard’s,Modern’s and Legacy’s.

 When I mean Pauper is cheap, I mean you can build a top tier Affinity deck in Pauper including Atog and original artifact lands - being 15 times cheaper than it’s Modern counterpart. 15 times!! This also encourages many players who have played Modern or Legacy to dive into Pauper, as building a “common” version of their deck in Modern/Legacy is seen as a challenge in Pauper. Pauper is also an excellent format for any new players trying to dive into an eternal format without spending too much money in it, it teaches them the power level of cheap commons and brings them to a metagame where the power levels of most decks are very very close when compared to each other.

“Is Pauper being played actively in Paper?”

If you asked me that a few years ago, I would say no. But the community of the format has grown together with it’s popularity, now there are quite a lot of LGSs hosting Pauper events(not sanctioned of course due to Wizards seeing it as an “online” only format). With the biggest Pauper event being Card Kingdom’s Rags to Riches, combined with it’s large playerbase on Reddit, Pauper is continually being talked about almost everyday! It is definitely a unique take on eternal formats in today’s age, it might look small to a few for now, but it could prove it’s weight in the future with the current potential it shows today.

Conclusion

Pauper is still a growing format, but it is already attracting the attention of many players with it’s unique playstyle, strong metagame and cheap price. I do enjoy playing Pauper, however there aren’t too many stores in Singapore that would agree to host them. The future is looking very bright for Pauper though! All in all, I hope this was a good read and I’ll be looking forward to writing more Far Wanderings preferably one article every 1-2 weeks. Closing it off, follow the blog, check out more if you’ve missed them and flip those Delvers with Brainstorm! See ya!

[neingel]

Modern Masters 2017?  The dead hype train?

Woah Woah Woah! 2 articles in 3 days? Flippin bananas what is exactly going on?!

Before we all go too crazy, I’ll like to mention this is a quick article from me, as I’m writing this there is a small but marginally growing problem I feel that I wanted to talk about. And that is Modern Masters 2017.

Straight into the issue

At the time of me writing this article, it is exactly 28 days to the release of Modern Masters 2017.

I shall mention this with a very heavy heart: “I have never seen so little hype for any Masters set”. Period. The hype for Modern Masters 2017 is so bad, a lot of things are happening around us that players do not normally see. You might ask, “What exactly is wrong with this set? The cards have not been spoiled.” - exactly! We are just under a month away to the actual launch of a Masters Set, a one and only unique, premium, posh, high-standards and high hopes set, that finds a place into most player’s wishlist and no cards have been spoiled/announced by Wizards for the set.

It is disappointing really. No, I’m not disappointed because there are no spoiled cards, but the secondary market is not reacting the way it should be. After some quick reads on Reddit. Many stores across the USA are dumping preorder boxes of Modern Masters 2017, yes you heard it right, stores are dumping boxes of Modern Masters 2017, for 10-15% of original MSRP pricing set by Wizards! This is probably the only time I’ve heard such a case has happened for any sort of Masters set. Back in 2013, when the original Modern Masters came out, boxes were healthy in terms of pricing, around low $200s which maintained it’s pricing despite Wizards releasing another small wave of them to the market. 2 years later, Wizards released Modern Masters 2015, placed the set alongside a couple of huge Modern GP’s alongside it just to made sure it would sell out, the set would later release criticism, on it’s atrociously bad Rare, Uncommon and Common slots as well as the disastrous pack material that was used to “save the environment” somehow managed to scam many many people’s money, by just selling them “searched” packs. 

State of Modern

Not exactly the actual state of Modern’s meta-game, but the state where how the market will react to the release of the set. I’ll also break down the state of Modern’s playability after that release of that Modern Masters set as well as the cards included, sealed environment, Wizards’s marketing, etc...

Modern Masters 2013

Hailed as probably the best Masters set of all time. The very inception of Masters set itself was at a time where Wizards wanted to promote Modern as a new, safe and strong eternal format. All at the same time being a good alternative for Legacy. The set was filled with an outrageous, and I mean holy cow! The mythic slots were crazy, the rares were what people wanted, the commons and uncommons were flipping people off. It seemed like a set that just wanted to focus on value, both from a playability and monetary standpoint. Wizards did feed the market and the playerbase well with this set, the original pricing and quantity was reasonable enough for many players to get their hands on a box or even a couple of packs for draft. Even a few months later after the release of the set, Wizards printed a 2nd wave, smaller than the 1st wave of boxes but was much appreciated by most of the market and the playerbase alike. Today, box prices are high due to the amount of power and staples included in the set, cards of all rarities are sought after in the set as well as players cracking open a box or too for it’s flavorful, simple yet powerful draft environment. Rating: 9/10

Modern Masters 2015

Many players have a complicated love-hate relationship with this set, Modern Masters 2015 was released for what I believed was the time when Modern was at it’s very zenith. Players were enjoying having Modern in Pro Tours, more players were investing into the format, prices were still quite stable at that time. When the set was officially released, Wizards hosted 3 GP’s dedicated to Modern and the set’s sealed events. Many players were thrilled and it just took off from there on to be honest. Prices were stable and though some slots for rares, uncommons and commons seemed like an oddity, the set still sold well to the playerbase and secondary market. It was only just a few months later, a turning point in which I felt changed Modern forever. Splinter Twin, one of Modern’s biggest decks got banned from the format, an announcement from Wizards that shook the Modern community and took them by surprise. The meta-game changed to aggro’s favor and then came the Eldrazi Winter, which crushed Pro Tour Oath of the Gatewatch and again left Modern in a state of shock. Shortly after, Wizards officially decided to push Modern out of the Pro Tour, indicating a sign that the format was no longer in Wizard’s fullest attention. All of this happened in a flash, nobody expected a rising format to crush so soon, Modern will then go into a “slumber” and would now be seen as a solved format to a few. In terms of sealed, Modern Masters 2015 did quite well, it’s biggest letdown however was the inclusion of a few “oddities”, causing it to lose out to the original Modern Masters. Rating:5/10

How bad it seems

So bad, a box theme/design has not even been spoiled. Guess we’ll stick to an actual black box.

In terms of the spread of sets included in Modern Masters 2017, the picture above mentions: “Representing everything from 8th Edition through Magic 2014–including trips through Innistrad and Return to Ravnica” Now here are the possible predictions many have been speaking of:

No Shocklands - the market will go tank-town 

Lili and Snap at Mythic

Usual Goyf/Clique/Bob/Cryptic reprint 

Comet Storm will be reprinted in the jank mythic slot (no one can take Lord Comet Storm’s place)

Pushing that out of the way is the biggest, burning question in my mind - “Can Wizards really really really make Modern Masters great again?”. Answer is, it’s gonna be pretty hard to do so.

I don’t think the 5 cards mentioned above will be guaranteed reprints, I’m not even talking about the Zendikar fetchlands here, just showing examples of staples in Modern. To go on with this rant of mine, I’ll just make a list of cards I feel needs reprinting

Arcbound Ravager

Mox Opal

Steel Overseer

Glimmervoid

Inkmoth Nexus

Blood Moon

Path to Exile

Thoughtseize

Voice of Resurgence 

Fulminator Mage

Stony Silence

Lightning Bolt

Goblin Guide

Tron Lands

Karn

Ugin

Mishra’s Bauble

Kitchen Finks

Scapeshift

Through the Breach

Goryo’s Vengeance

Ancestral Vision

Pact of Negation

Bloodghast

Celestial Colonnade 

Auriok Champion

Remand 

Surgical Extraction

Ancient Stirrings

You see what I mean?

It is a guarantee that Wizards cannot make everyone happy, but desperate times really call for desperate measures. I feel it’s time for Wizards to get their act together and try to make Modern Masters 2017 just like the very first one. One that many players remember and have high respect for even today, the state of Modern in terms of playability and monetary value is just too high for many players to afford, combine that with the fact it’s rather “solved” is really a shame.

Writing it off dreadfully...

All we can pretty much do is hope Wizards will learn their mistakes from Modern Masters 2015 and the small print run of Eternal Masters. The spoilers have not rolled in yet, but there is a small talk going round the community this is the set in which Wizards will save Modern from falling into it’s bigger brother Legacy. Until next time, do keep following up on the articles, follow the blog and keep up with the spoilers! Goodbye and have a great weekend ahead!

[neingel]

*Beep Beep!*

Welcome back everyone! It’s that time of the year again, everyone is excited for the results/standings of the Pro Tour! 

The Copy Cat

Pro Tour Aether Revolt has been quite interesting so far, many have thought a few decks will rise to the stop spot...such as:

The latest addition to Standard, the Cat Lady combo featured a similar resemblance to the original Spinter Twin combo. Though Saheeli Jeskai was the most played deck in Standard before the Pro Tour and many had expected it to be the most played deck in the entire competition, the deck took many by surprise. It was actively bad throughout the competition, It started off poorly, putting just 36% of its players into day two (more than 25% below average), and it followed this up by performing below average at every point on day two as well. Things are looking better for players who called for a preemptive ban of the combo as the set was released, as the results clearly shows that the combo isn’t as dreadful or format-warping as many have predicted. 

This also proves a theory in which, Jeskai Saheeli suffered the same fate as the original Splinter Twin combo back in Standard, being a deck with strong combo potential but not viable in Standard. 

On to the main event...

No not the actual vehicles you see here, but the popular subtype of Vehicles in Standard that we know of. But today, the main point of this article is breaking down how a once Control-dominated Standard changed completely within the introduction of Aether Revolt.

Nobody expected Control to go over the top in Pro Tour Kaladesh. With the final 2 decks being Grixis and Jeskai Control. With Shoota Yasooka, a Control pioneer winning with the Grixis build over Carlos Romao.

One Pro Tour ago, Standard looked like a format with full of promising decks. Aetherworks, Energy, Vehicles and Delirium. However, many were shocked to see the least popular of archetypes, being Control. Had made the final 2 places in the Top 8 and one of those decks had won the entire competition.

However with the introduction of new cards in Aether Revolt, many had expected Control to have more tools to utilize, Aetherworks was stripped of it’s power level due to the Emrakul ban and a nasty Splinter Twin piece was posing a threat to the entire format. Vehicles did seemed like the underdog, it was a popular and powerful back in Kaladesh, but not as good when compared to some other archetypes. Aether Revolt however, brought in “showroom automobiles”.

The new engines showed Vehicles were meant to steamroll over everyone at Pro Tour Aether Revolt.

Pro Tour Aether Revolt caught everyone by surprise, Saheeli Jeskai failed to impress despite the hype, and Control was somewhat non-existent. The Top 8 had 6 out of 8 decks that were Vehicles. It was clear that the Smuggler’s Copter ban did not weaken Vehicles as a whole, but somehow made it much stronger than before. Both Heart of Kiran and Aethersphere Harvester pushed Vehicles to an absurd amount of power in Standard. With Harvester being a versatile blocker with value and a cheap crew cost, and many claiming Heart of Kiran as the “balanced” version of Smuggler’s Copter. The deck functioned as a quick aggro deck with low-costed creatures that benefited strongly with artifact synergy, had cards like Gideon and Thalia to slow down opponents, it also featured strong damage instants such as Unlicensed Integration and old school Shock. It changed the deck to a reminiscent Affinity, low cost creatures backed up by speedy play and solid artifacts.

Onto the unhealthy part...

Many players have complained about Vehicles not receiving enough support in Kaladesh, however, with the banning of Smuggler’s Copter. Many thought Wizards were pushing Vehicles back as it felt it was too strong with Copter. How wrong they were! The power level of Vehicles now is definitely unquestionable, having 6 out of 8 decks in the Pro Tour clearly reminds me of Modern, during the dreadful Eldrazi Winter which demolished the format altogether. Wizards did banned Copter for a good reason, but the ban has clearly not affected Vehicles in any major way, instead, Wizards are printing stronger cards for Vehicles in Aether Revolt. It feels that Wizards was trying to fix the Vehicle problem but eventually screwed it up in the end.

Not Eldrazi everywhere is quite the blessing.

But Standard right now does seem very competitive after this meta-game check, almost all of the top tier decks are very close in terms of power level, each having it’s own unique strengths and weaknesses. Even if Vehicles fill the largest part of the meta-game due to the Pro Tour standings, there are many other decks that could fill that spot in other upcoming competitions. This is a case where I felt Wizards printed certain cards to see how Vehicles would perform in the competitive environment, it did over-impressed everyone, but looking at the other decks, many of them still stand a solid chance when up against vehicles.

Still, I feel this does come with an upside and a downside. Aether Revolt has clearly given a good amount of powerful cards in Standard, but Vehicles was way too dominant in the Pro Tour. It was there for everyone to see in awe, however, there are many other decks outside of Vehicles that are doing well in Online Leagues, Opens as well as tourneys at LGS’s. The set has hyped up Vehicles as a whole but has increased the overall power level of Standard as well.

Would Wizards actually ban a key piece of Vehicles again?

Honestly, I’m pretty unsure about this topic. It has been talked a lot just after the Pro Tour ended - but really though? Just 2 months after the Copter ban, another ban for Vehicles? I’m not saying it’s possible but Wizards have never been that aggressive with Standard bannings, this is due to the assurance that Standard should and never will have format-warping cards printed in it. Yet Wizards had to make 3 bans a few months back. The idea of frequent bannings in Standard over a couple of results is just plain crazy, my take on it is that Wizards should never ban Standard cards at all. But when thinking of doing so, compare the power level of that card/deck to a good example during Zendikar block’s Caw Blade -  which eventually led to Stoneforge Mystic and Jace the Mind Sculptor banned.

Conclusion

It’s been a busy week for Standard thus far, as many still continue this hot topic of the results. But not to worry or be disheartened, this is just proof of Standard’s power and how the future sets could bring new exciting additions to the format. Well until next time, I’ll see you in the next article. Thanks for reading and do be sure to catch the next article. *Flies away in Smuggler’s Copter*

*Or you could drive away in a Fleetwheel Cruiser*

[neingel]

Real Steel

Foreword

Well welcome back everybody! I decided to do something slightly different today, with me rumbling on some of the bigger topics recently, I figured out it was alright to start writing a couple of articles that were my daily thoughts and ponderings about the game. I would try to provide at least 1 of these articles every week and probably make it a series as well (it needs a name too).

We’re going over an archetype/group of cards I rarely play in Magic, and that is Artifacts. I’ve never been that big a fan of artifacts in most formats, with the exception of artifact decks in Commander. I do like them as some artifacts are extremely powerful and iconic throughout Magic’s history.

A few noteworthy artifacts outside of the other more powerful ones restricted/banned in many other formats

Many who have played for a long time will agree that Antiquities is the original Godfather of artifacts in the game’s history. While I do agree to a certain extent, newer players are often uninterested in older blocks/sets. Enjoying the new artifact block of Kaladesh with vehicles and energy shenanigans.Together with it’s glorious collection of Masterpieces. Whereas others claimed that Scars of Mirrodin had artifacts and strong cards that contributed mostly to the development of formats such as Modern. However, I would like to backtrack and see into older sets. One most people have high respect for in Commander and Legacy. That significant artifact block is original Mirrodin.

Many players of today might not have played back in the original Mirrodin. Many who do back then did not enjoy the format. It was 2004 and Wizards released an “Expert” set containing a very artifact-heavy theme. Many felt that this was a letdown following up from the previous Onslaught block, where many decks were not heavily-based on artifacts and were based on a multitude of strategies such as: Tribal, Morphs as well as Storm. Mirrodin was a set that caught everyone off guard at that point of time. But today it is remembered as somewhat a updated version of the old Antiquities.

Before we go in, I’ll be going through each set in the entire block, reviewing it’s background as well as the notable cards in the set. I’ll also give a small review at the end. Alright, enough rumbling from me. Let’s jump right in!

Mirrodin

Let’s start off with the block I feel that started it all - the original Mirrodin block. Which featured: Mirrodin, Darksteel and Fifth Dawn. First released in 2003, the block had released a new subtype for artifacts: Equipment, which would eventually be a common cycle of artifacts, in which some printed later proved to be one of the best cards ever made in the game’s history.

Many artifacts in Mirrodin despite those not featured above still see a reasonable amount of play in many formats to date.

Darksteel

Darksteel was released in the same year as Mirrodin. However, the power level in Darksteel is known to be very notorious even till today. The set mainly focused on the ability “indestructible” as the developers wanted to follow up on the storyline. In the tournament scene however, Darksteel had cards that were deemed to be a bit too powerful. Skullclamp was banned in Standard at that time for being too overpowered in aggro decks, it was also banned in Extended together with Aether Vial. Elsewhere, Trinisphere was doing crazy things in Vintage as early as Turn 1, which caused it to be restricted. This was not helped much as the 5 artifact lands were legal and the introduction of Arcbound Ravager was turning the Standard of that time to a close resemblance of the 1996 and 1998 Combo Winter. However, Darksteel remains to many as one of the most memorable sets filled with raw power in the cards, the original 2 swords of Mirrodin were also printed in this set, Memnarch as well as unique mechanics such as Modular were in this set

Probably the most broken set of 3 in the entire block. These 4 cards together with a handful of other cards explain why.

Fifth Dawn was release the next year in 2005, being the last set in the entire block, Fifth Dawn had an interesting storyline as well as a strong pool of cards in the set -  but not as overpowered as it’s previous counterpart Darksteel. However, Fifth Dawn is probably the set in which most Commander players would remember the most, as I feel that it’s strong cards are favored by many players today.

Is Mirrodin too powerful for current formats today?

Mirrodin does seem to be an odd block when placed in comparison with many others to this date. Many would agree that most cards in the block are too powerful and that the development team at that time did not foresee the block’s power level and how it would affect future gameplay. But many today are most grateful for how it has shaped other artifact blocks like Scars and Kaladesh. For me, Mirrodin will always be the real Antiquities.

Conclusion

I might be writing more off-topic articles like these, when I do think of a certain theme to write about. But in the meantime, much feedback would be required on what I’m supposed to be writing about. Until next time!

[neingel]

A critical review of the Frontier format Part:2

And we’re back at it again! Welcome to the second article of this 2 part series where I will review Magic’s latest format, Frontier! If you missed the first article. You can check it out here. Moving on, this article will be focusing on what I feel are Frontier’s weaknesses. And how these weaknesses might make Frontier fail like many other formats have over the years. Without further ado, let’s dive right in!

There’s no banlist

Yes..starting it off with a bang and straight to the point. Frontier has been a few months old and yet no banlist has been created by it’s founders or the community. This looks like the format might crash at any given moment. Considering the amount of pressure being mounted to format with every new set. Frontier has to have a banlist ASAP. If not, the consequences would be devastating. The secondary market following this newborn format would crash, collector’s would see their collections plummet and new players would find it difficult to play in a format full of uncertainty - no control over the top decks, and a “solved” meta. That is certainly not what we want to happen for Frontier.

Could you imagine any non-rotating format without a banlist? Yes, Frontier could go down a very nasty route..

Tier 0 decks?

Now for a lot of people, Tier 0 is a very very rare occurrence. So much only a few decks were Tier 0 at one point of time. Such as examples were: 1996 Necropotence, 2004 Affinity, Combo Winter 1998. Though Frontier does not match the power level of any of the decks mentioned above, there are complaints of certain decks/archetypes being somewhat unbeatable. Such examples include Rally and Jeskai Black, both decks have been so powerful that it is already drawing massive amount of hate/counters from sideboards and even more surprisingly mainboard! Some Abzan lists run 4 Anafenza’s mainboard, Jeskai Tempo/Aggro list running full of counters specifically for instants in their side and many decks that could run white have 2-3 Hallowed Moonlights in their side among other threats. All of this is actually causing a sideboard war in the format. Which I feel generally leads to an unhealthy meta in which lower-tier/equal tier decks are meant to run hate for 1-2 specific broken decks in the entire format. This might lead to bannings of a few archetypes but at the very least it ensures some variety and playability for new and experienced players alike.

Flashbacks...literally

Frontier is filled with full of things that people hate to see. Well if you haven’t played Standard in the past..well here’s what I mean.

Yeah...people used to have bad experiences with these specific cards and many others back in Standard. And getting to see them again in Frontier is the last thing they would want. Sadly, with no banlist, these cards/decks are free to fit into any deck that would support their overall strategy and playability. This is often quite serious for many experienced players, even more so worse for new players. As they would see how old decks operated at such a level back then in Standard are somehow legal in Frontier. Don’t get me wrong, but some of these cards should never be in Frontier.

“It’ll never be like Modern”

This is sadly true to some extent. When Modern was created, it allowed cards from 8th Edition onwards to be played in the format, Frontier being newer only allowed cards from M15 and onwards. Though many might argue the format is new and thus has a smaller timeline of decks, Modern actually has a large pool of cards to play with while Frontier doesn’t. Thus, this could lead to players being uninterested in the format as the speed of growth is slow. Players won’t want to play a waiting game in which they wait for every new set, in hopes of watching it’s meta grow. If Frontier were to be a successful and consistent format like it’s bigger brother Modern, Wizards would need to put themselves in the driver’s seat and change the entire policy of the format.

My opinion?

Being someone who played Modern and realizing I couldn’t afford it’s increasing cost and competitiveness, I always look forward to something that could bring me a game of 60 card constructed and wouldn’t cost me a bomb. So far I like to refer to Pauper as my alternative to Modern, but Frontier does give me some hope. Where it would be like Modern’s earlier days where the variety of decks were wide, there was no known top tier deck and there was room for homebrews. However, Frontier does come with it’s own dangers and challenges in the future. Which also makes me nervous to properly invest into a format, such an example would be Tiny Leaders, one of the biggest reasons for it’s failure was due to the secondary market taking advantage of the format. Where there would be buyouts of cards that were only good in Tiny Leaders causing a lot of confusion in the market. Frontier might actually fail due to the same reason, greedy investors buying out a couple of cards that are only good in Frontier. This would cause a lot of players feeling that Frontier is only a cash-grab just like Tiny Leaders, which would eventually make it fall out of popularity and it would slowly die out.

Overall Rating of Frontier:4/10

I believe this is a fair rating for Frontier as it isn’t fully established format. It does has it’s strengths but at the same time, it has some alarming issues that need to be solved immediately to prevent the fall of the format. I would advise players to not yet invest into it yet, but instead watch and observe it’s progression with the release of new sets, until a banlist is enlisted or Wizards making a major change to the format is announced. Other than that, I do hope this has been a good read for the viewers. Do stay tuned for the next article and goodbye!

[neingel]

A critical review of the Frontier format Part:1

As most of u know by now, Frontier is the new kid on the block when it comes to formats in Magic the Gathering. Originally developed by Hareruya Games, more so formally known as the Star City Games of Japan. They are well known for making interesting decks in Modern and Standard that produce noteworthy results in both GPs and various SCG tourneys. Although this time round Hareruya has came up with something unique, by inventing a new format with their own rules - otherwise known as Frontier. Now in this series of a 2 Part article, I will be focusing on the strengths of Frontier in this article, then on to it's weaknesses in the next. Now before we go in I know you might have a burning inquiry... "WHAT IS FRONTIER?"

First off, Frontier is a solution as a post-Modern eternal format that only allows cards from M15 and onward to be played in this format. Thus, Frontier allows players to play their previous Standard decks in Frontier. Frontier is also still very new, thus it will find itself improving with new decks and archetypes for every new set being released.

In this article, I’ll be going through the strengths of Frontier and why you should be wanting to play Frontier, for the weaknesses of Frontier, I’ll be going through them in the 2nd part of this article. But for the main point of both articles, I will compare Frontier to it’s bigger brother Modern and other eternal formats such as Pauper and Commander.

Frontier is cheap!

Well, it’s no surprise that Frontier is actually quite a cheap format, now this is true for 2 reasons. One would be that the most of the cards that are legal in Frontier have already rotated out of Standard and are very low costed. Another reason is due to the decks that people keep even after they have rotated out of Standard, many popular or powerful archetypes in Frontier are the predecessors of their previous Standard forms, decks such as Abzan, Jeskai, Rally, as well as Atarka Red. Thus, many who wish to build into Frontier can do so at a very low cost. 

Frontier is somehow a good alternative to Modern

Now many would agree that Modern has actually hit it’s peak, and it has somewhat looked “solved” by many players alike. Also, with a handful of decks dominating Modern and it’s high driving cost, most new players would not want to be building into Modern as an eternal format at a time like this. Thus, a new option opens up in the form of Frontier. Frontier might have a small pool of cards which limits the variety of decks in the format, however it is due to grow and expand with the release of every new set. Many would argue now that it is not worth it and it would end up like Modern, but that will happen after a couple of years and the establishment of a ban-list.

Modern isn’t a very friendly place now for new players, from a monetary and power-level standpoint :/

Frontier allows players both new and old to play a “powered” version of their previous Standard decks.

As many players have played certain variants of decks in Standard before, they often look at newer, released sets and many wished they coud fit aew cards into their decks(which by the time, they ave been rotated out of Standard). Thus, Frontier would somehow solve this problem. For example if a player was playing Abzan back in the Khans block era, they would have access to powerful cards in Shadows over Innistrad/Eldritch Moon. Now you might deem the changes to the deck being relatively minor, but do note, cards such as Liliana, the Last Hope, Grim Flayer, Smuggler's Copter, Sorin, Solemn Visitor and many more cards as well. So you can see why Frontier has been getting quite an amount of attention lately, it is a format that breathes creativity and life into many former existing archetypes, and is sure to continue this trend as new sets are being released.

Wizards has somewhat given the green light for Frontier

Now, Wizards doesn’t officially give their full commitment towards formats outside of Standard, Modern and Legacy. Thus, you would find it rather common to see formats such as Pauper and Commander not having official sanctioned events at your local game store. However, Wizards does seem to have been paying particular attention to Frontier. Various Channel Fireball Grand Prix have offered Frontier as a side event. Now side events aren’t that big and all, but not only does Frontier feature in a GP as a form of a side event, many will tend to forget, side events also provide Planeswalker Points to players who participate as well. So, despite Frontier being younger than Pauper and Commander, Wizards does seem to be paying close attention to it and making it feature in side events does mean Frontier does have an edge closer to becoming the next Modern. But during this period of time...

Will Frontier really be a new hope for Modern and the future of eternal formats?

For what we know, nope it’s not going to be the next Star Wars thriller but it definitely raises some amount of attention. Eternal formats such as Modern and Legacy currently are stale in the their meta-game as well as flow of new decks. Both formats are also under immense pressure of god-tier decks, in which a handful of decks are extremely hard to beat and other decks have difficulty beating them. Frontier does give some hope of a fresh new eternal format, what many have described and predicted to be what Modern was when it first came out. A format full of exciting new decks, creativity and room for awesome homebrews. Though it might grow to be like it’s elder brothers, Frontier for now does show some potential. 

Well if so, do stay tuned in the next few days for the 2nd part of this article of Frontier, where I will analyze the few weaknesses of Frontier, as well as come to a conclusion of whether I feel Frontier is a format worth investing into, and how it’s inclusion into the game will affect Magic in the near future.

[neingel]

Complete review of Aether Revolt cards for Commander!

Well as the spoiler season ends as a new set prepares to be released. Aether Revolt does look to me one of the most exciting sets Wizards have made in a long while. Many new toys for Standard as well as minor tweaks for various decks in Modern to enjoy. However I myself am a Commander player and today I’ll be looking as well as handpicking a group of cards. Yes but not only any ordinary group of cards, but more specifically cards to a format I call home, yes that’s right! It’s time for a good breakdown of the potential cards in Aether Revolt that could see play in Commander!

Starting off, it’s no surprise that with every new set, everyone is excited with what new Legendary Creatures are in the set as they could make strong generals in the Future. I must say among the 5 all of them are very unique and have strong abilities. Sram falls perfectly into decks that already run Equipment, Auras and even recently printed Vehicles (Yes I’m looking at you Depala), while Baral features a Goblin Electromancer v2.0 with extra cycling effects, though not as good as a general but very promising in the 99. Yaheeni does seem to me my favorite pick for this entire lot, she’s low costed,able to protect herself and fits perfectly with popular graveyard strategies in EDH . Kari Zev does admittedly look the weakest among the 5 but who knows what build she might fit in. Last but not the least Rishkar can either be an excellent General fr a new build or give decks that play around with +1/+1 counters a unique “Cryptolith Rite”-like ability. Overall, I feel that the Legendary Creatures in this set has been of great success!

Again, a new set comes with a new cycle of special spells to play with. Not only are these spells pretty flavorful when it comes to the storyline, but they are all very powerful for what they do at their cost, getting a sweet effect and being able to cast a card for free from your hand is always nice. As for Commander I’m generally in favor of both Yaheeni’s and Rishkar’s Expertise, reason being Yaheeni’s is a mini board wipe early game which would result you in placing a reasonable 3 drop afterwards, while Rishkar allows you to draw a lot of cards and being able to not worry about mana and place a 5 drop from what you’ve drawn. However what I like most about them is despite each having the same “free cast” effect, each of them are still very unique in their own way and would definitely find a home in many decks.

WHITE  

Do note, I might include the previously mentioned Expertises and Legendaries in these lists. Well in no order or ranking whatsoever, we shall start off the 5 best cards for each color in Commander!. 

Consulate Crackdown

Now Consulate Crackdown is an interesting card that caught my attention when it first got spoiled, it was not only expected to be quite strong in Standard but also in EDH. White has gotten a unique way to get rid of pesky, troublesome artifacts (yes Darksteel Forge is definitely something this loves looking at) without actually having trouble blowing them up, resulting in all artifacts being reanimated through something like Scrap Mastery. Also this card works insanely well with Myconsynth Lattice, serving as another combo piece for the artifact that is well dreaded in Commander, this neat little trick causes you to exile each and every one of your opponent’s permanents, leaving them with nothing but your board in play. Insane boardwipe for artifact themed decks and it also serves as a powerful artifact removal for others.

Exquisite Archangel

Well about this card..yes it isn’t very good on paper as they are more reliable cards that prevent you from losing the game, cards like Platinium Angel and Phyrexian Unlife are both excellent in Commander. However do keep in mind, this card is just another one of those ways to prevent you from losing the game. Especially when it’s a long game, everyone has either ran out of answers or resources. Your opponents would most likely not want to see this being played. Also, this could fit in some neat Angel Tribal theme or some deck that aims to recur it’s creatures for their powerful effects.

Call for Unity

Ah yes..a White Coat of Arms! Being in White has never been better when you can run 2 Coat of Arms! Call for Unity does stand out a little bit from Coat of Arms though, it does not require a tribe to be played and it’s an enchantment. White in Commander is well known for some of it’s aggressive synergies, in particular creatures and their enchantments. This card’s strength is no stranger to many players. However, with it’s Revolt ability, a lot and I mean a lot of decks that play around flickering their own creatures/permanents will adore this card. It will be interesting to see how players will build around this card and how it might grow to be the next Coat of Arms.

Sram, Senior Edificer 

Sram is a very interesting card. He could play effectively as a general but I feel he would be much better being in the 99 for decks playing Auras and Equipments, and boy there are a lot of generals that would love him in their deck! Zur, Kemba, Bruna Light of Alabaster, Krond, Aurelia, Jor Kadeen...the list just goes on! He is perfectly costed and acts as a very powerful draw engine for these decks.

Sram’s Expertise

Ah..token decks players are probably rubbing their hands in glee. Sram’s Expertise is literally a 4 for 1. Netting 3 tokens which make excellent blockers or simply piling them up to your already growing token army. The free cast for a ≤ 3 cmc card from your hand is just icing on the cake. Many token decks like Trostani, Rhys the Redeemed, Teysa Orzhov Scion and many more would have this auto-included.

BLUE

Mechanized Production

For players outside of Commander, seeing this Mythic might leave them a bad taste in their mouth. It does look quite horrible at times but Commander’s specialty is turning bulk rares into rock stars. This is just one of those fun cards Wizards prints once in awhile, Mechanized Production does remind me of Biovisionary but somehow easier to pull off due to it’s synergy with artifacts. You don’t necessarily need to copy a big fatty, but what you could do is to place it on “artifact tokens”. Thopters, Myrs, Golems...the list is endless, this card has quite the chance to shine in most artifact decks being a cheap and reliable copy generator or just simply a win-con in decks that produce a lot of tokens!

Whir of Invention

I clearly remembered when this got spoiled, I just started sharing with my friends about this “artifact chord”. While Improvise is slightly worse than chord, it does give artifact decks a strong instant speed tutor for any artifact in their deck. Also cmc isn’t really an issue with the amount of mana rocks artifact decks run, they can just improvise away~. Overall, solid card, not too over or under powered.

Disallow

As a control player and someone who adores counterspells...FINALLY! Like..it’s hard to put it but Disallow is literally the blue Voidslime. Heck, it’s an even better Voidslime for the ability to splash with colors outside of Green. It’s the same mana as Cancel but strictly, no I mean really - many blue players have wanted a Voidslime outside of Simic colors, and we finally got one! *Fist pumps like crazy* 

Trophy Mage

Is that you Trinket Mage? Oh no? Oh but you do have better stats! Yes, it is Trophy Mage whom supposedly is the cousin of Trinket Mage except she is from Kaladesh. Anyways, Trophy Mage is just like Trinket Mage except she searches for only cmc of 3. But in Commander, cmc 3 often means Chromatic Lantern, Static Orb, Phyrexian Altar, Thousand-Year Elxir....the list is endless and you can see why this card makes it to this list.

Baral, Chief of Compliance

Well well well, I spy with my little eye a new addition to my Melek spellslingers deck as well as a potential powerful general. Yes, Baral is probably the card Goblin Electromancer should be. He is just strictly better than Electromancer, they both have the same effect, but he has looting and he’s not restricted to Izzet colors. I see him being a powerful addition to any spellslingers deck and he would make a good rival to the next mono-blue spellslingers general: Talrand.

Black

Herald of Anguish

This is probably one of the best demons I’ve seen printed in a Standard set in a long time, don’t get me wrong, Demon of the Dark Schemes back in Kaladesh was an all round solid card. But Herald of Anguish is a really powerful card. Improvise makes this potentially an unexpected early drop for your opponents, the discard ability is very relevant in black and it also has reliable removal that require some artifact synergy. I would love to see how artifact decks play around this card as it simply is a value-bomb.

Yahenni, Undying Partisan

Yahenni is pretty much what everyone is hyping about right now. She works too well with reanimation/sacrifice synergies in Commander. The fact she is almost a nightmare to deal with when combined with Grave Pact/Dictate of Erebos, she can buff herself and she can make herself immune to boardwipes is ridiculous. She is pretty solid in the 99 but I feel even more powerful as a Voltron general. Overall the best legendary in this set so far!

Yahenni’s Expertise

One of my personal favorite cards in this set that i expect to see Modern play, Yahenni’s Expertise is still quite strong in Commander. It does set itself up as an early boardwipe in Black following up with a creature or..Demonic Tutor :P it also gets rid of pesky, small hexproof/indestructible creatures. And for it’s cost, it’s normally alot of creatures and a free spell for 1. 

Gonti’s Machinations

This is actually a very unique card in a unique spot. For just 1 mana, Gonti’s Machinations can be quite the trouble for opponents from the very moment it’s been cast. Black does have ways to lose life easily, 2 simple examples include Phyrexian Arena and Necropotence. Also it is easy to regain back the life lost since Commander is a multiplayer format, a simple activation of this in a 4 player game means you gaining back 9 life with just this cheap and simple enchantment. Overall, its a very unique and cool card I want to see being played.

Battle at the Bridge

I honestly wasn’t really excited for this card when it was spoiled, but then again I realized that again artifact decks in EDH can simply pay 1 Black to kill a fatty if they had enough artifacts. Sure it’s a sorcery but the life gain here is quite the bonus. Imagine over-tapping your artifacts to help cast this card help you stay in the game. This card is pretty underlooked but I’m sure it’ll have a few decks running it.

RED

Indomitable Creativity

Now, it is not the first time seeing a red “poly-morph” effect but this card can be used to yourself. You could basically set your deck up with Selective Memory/Doomsday, this card could basically be a card to set up the win with lesser mana than required. It could also mean a “Chaos Warp”-ish boardwipe for your opponent. Overall Vandalblast would be better but this is here for it’s combo potential.

Release the Gremlins

Despite it’s funny name, this card is actually pretty funny when played against your opponents. It is especially more hilarious when you already have some form of infinite mana combo together with Myconsyth Lattice and you basically wipe out your opponent’s board and leaving you a massive amount of Gremlins. +1 for flavor and name!

Pia’s Revolution

Now again for all the artifact lovers, I can imagine this card being in a mono-red artifact deck like...Daretti of all generals. Where he doesn’t really cares where the cards go to and opponents would definitely not want certain artifacts to be in the graveyard, in this case they would normally take the 3 damage. Another one worth mentioning is when Breya starts activating her ability for damage, this might actually push 4 damage to 10 out of nowhere.

Freejam Regent

Again, another solid bomb for artifact decks imo, a less than 6 cmc for 4/4 with flying and fire-breathing makes it a solid finisher. Other than that, this card is quite the value it speaks err as it breathes I suppose. Although many might disagree this card getting this spot as it is competing with other red dragons such as Hoard-Smelter Dragon, Hellkite Igniter and the biggest daddy of them all Hellkite Tyrant. But I still feel this card has a certain place for some decks in Commander.

Lightning Runner

A potential combo breaking card that could basically mean the win for you. Lightning runner does require a steep energy cost, but this might be the card that could break energy into Commander. 8 energy might be slightly hard to pull off whenever this attacks but some builds have started to show up building around generating massive/infinite energy. We will have to wait and see how strong energy will perform now with the addition of this sweet thing.

Green

Aetherwind Basker

And now as you can see, Elfball decks have a new toy to meddle around with. Aetherwind Basker can be quite a terrifying creature to drop earlier than usual due to ramp in Green. This gigantic lizard is a close mimic to other big finishers such as Craterhoof Behemoth as well as Decimator of Provinces, though not as powerful as the latter two,Basker does work terrifyingly well when either is cast. Basker does reward players when casting him on a board full of your creatures. Add in a Lightning Greaves/Concordant Crossroads and he is guaranteed to get in there for a lot of damage.

Rishkar’s Expertise 

Rishkar’s Expertise does feel a lot like Soul’s Majesty, Momentous Fall or Regal Force. However, almost any green card with the ability like this all suffer the same weakness. Which is the case after you draw, you would normally not have the mana to play almost anything you drawn. Rishkar’s Expertise however allows you to play a reasonably “big” card at 5 cmc! And while you compare Rishkar’s Expertise to other Green cards that draw a massive amount of cards, Rishka Expertise is probably the best for it’s cost. That free cast for a cmc 5 card is just too good. I personally feel this has a slight edge over my other favorite Expertise, Yahenni’s.

Heroic Intervention

Everything about this card is awesome, the art, the fact Ajani is in it, the cost and most importantly the ability to basically counter a boardwipe/mass targeted removal. More importantly for 2 cmc and at instant speed? That is just absolutely bonkers when you think about it. Definitely will see play with the high amount of threats to permanents in Commander.

 Rishkar, Peema Renegade

Rishkar is rounding out the last of the best Legendary Creatures in the set (Sorry Kari Zev :/). Rishkar does bring an interesting inclusion to generals playing around the +1/+1 counters mechanic. He does come in helping out 2 other creaures, for a 3 cmc 2/2, that is already quite good. But the real fun begins when most of your creatures with counters get to produce mana on their own. He is a great boost to many existing builds but also quite independent and strong on his own as a general.

Lifecrafter’s Bestiary

Now I know this isn’t an entirely Mono-Green card but we’re still in Mono Green and all of the cards mentioned here are still splashable in Gx colored decks. Anyways Lifecrafter’s Bestiary does look like a card many creature based decks would want to put in. A low costed artifact with a free scry every upkeep does sound interesting, but it acts as a earlier game Zendikar Resurgent that requires 1 green mana per draw activation. Overall, it’s low costed, packed full with value. Solid card just for Commander play.

Multicolored

Ajani Unyielding

Though Ajani has received some criticism around his speed and playability, I personally feel that he is actually good enough for Commander. He has the ability to get multiple cards into your hand fast, get rid of annoying creatures and his ultimate if you do get to a stage to use it, is literally a steroid pump to both your creatures and planeswalkers. All round very solid and I feel his abilities go very well along with his colors. Especially for the super-friends builds like Atraxa.

Tezzeret, Master of Metal and Tezzeret the Schemer

Now, I actually had a hard time choosing which of these 2 were going to take this spot, but I figured out that both were very powerful. Even if they aren’t as good as the original Agent of Bolas, both are still very solid in Commander. Let’s start off with the “heavy metal” version of Tezzeret, it does have a strong digging ability which is quite relevant in Commander, his 2nd skill can act as a way to ward off opponents or host a major lethal damage threat late game. Whereas his ultimate is very devastating, being able to take someone’s best creatures and artifacts is no laughing matter at all. Now onwards to the “scheming” version of Tezzeret, he does not provide any form of digging but he does produce an extra artifact that acts like a Lotus Petal. He has strong, solid and reliable creature removal while his ultimate though not as terrifying as the heavy metal version, does quicken your clock fast by turning any artifact you control during combat on your turn into a 5/5 creature. A time bomb ticking for your opponents if you will, sweet effect nonetheless. Tezzeret does have a thing for turning artifacts into 5/5s...why doesn’t he just make them slightly bigger?

Dark Imitations

A tuned-down version of Cruel-Ultimatum that targets each opponent, but does come with the added ability of returning either a creature or Planeswalker from your graveyard to your hand. What’s interesting is the synergy with the “Bolas” Planeswalker spell, this not only helps decks that already run the Nicol Bolas Planeswalker card but it also does give clues to the next set Amonkhet, the home plane of Nicol Bolas whom might have recruited other Planewalkers for his evil plans. All these hinting at more Planeswalkers printed with the “Bolas” keyword in their Planeswalker type. Overall, this card might be bound to seeing more improvements and playability.

Oath of Ajani

Well if Wizards was trying to push Planeswalkers in Standard, they forgotten that Atraxa Super-friends IS a very powerful deck in Commander. But outside of that particular topic, Oath of Ajani is the dream card for many Super-friends decks. It’s low costed, gives early buffs to a few creatures, reasonable when played mid-game. Again another solid card in this set overall.

Winding Constrictor

If you thought the invasion of cards having synergy with counters wasn’t enough in Aether Revolt, this little angry noodle does stand out a slight bit from it’s other counterparts in the set. The fact that it does give extra counters on both creatures and artifacts alike is very unique, it also has a 2nd ability which allows you as the controller to receive an extra counter of any type. I can certainly see this being placed in a very wide variety of decks. From +1/+1 counters to charge counters and loyalty points on Planeswalkers. This danger noodle will be guaranteed to be seen in decks far and wide.

Colorless

Metallic Mimic

Ah finally! I have no idea how long it has been where Wizards finally print a form of global tribe support. Metallic Mimic does seem to to be the new kid on the block, matching Adaptive Automaton’s popularity. Mimic does have a few differences from Automaton, it cost 1 less than its fellow robotic cousin and it also buffs your chosen creature type with counters. This means even if your Mimic dies, your creatures are sure to remain buffed with a counter.

Crackdown Construct

Ah.every once in a while a new awesome combo piece Wizards prints comes out of literally nowhere. While this awesome robot won’t be seeing much play in Standard. It will see immense amount of play in Commander. If you were wondering why this card is so hyped up for do take note. The equip rule states you can use an equipment to equip to the same creature as many times as possible so long as you can pay it’s equip cost. This means if u equip Lightning Greaves to Crackdown Construct, and naming an infinite amount of times equipping to it, you’ll have an infinite power and toughness robot flying at your opponent.

Inspiring Statuary 

Well another interesting and potentially powerful piece of artifact that could bust Commander. Inspiring Statuary basically makes artifact decks have the confidence to run a bit more non-artifact cards. Simply because it would be much easier casting them with this card on the field with full of artifacts. It’s reasonably costed and I can see this card enjoying a good amount of play in Commander.

Paradox Engine

Probably the most ground-breaking, nerve-wrecking card in the entire set *hands down*, many are already comparing this to staples in Commander like Doubling Season, Seedborn Muse and somewhat a close resemblance to Prophet of Kruphix. I can guarantee almost any decks playing a untap/tap synergy such as Phenax,Ezuri Elves and Azami would go bonkers with this card. Sitting at 5 cmc which I feel is very low for a card with such a high power level. This card will change Commander as a whole, it’s effect is really too significant to ignore and when I mean too significant. When this hits the table...

Like literally man!

Land

As for lands goes, unfortunately only one card makes this list and that’s the new rainbow land in the entire set 

Spire of Industry 

Another card for artifact decks yet again! They finally have a City of Brass/Mana Confluence just for themselves. Spire does remind many of a less harsh Glimmervoid. But even though there are many rainbow lands available for artifact synergies in Commander. This is one good inclusion for many of them alike.

Conclusion

Aether Revolt is one of the most exciting sets we’ve stumbled across in a very long time! With powerful and unique “build-around-me” cards popping up, it is no surprise quite a number have made it into this list. The power level of Commander is certain to be on the rise as the player-base brews new strategies for each individual card in different decks or will we see a new archetype coming out on it’s own? It is still unknown but just look at the set so far! Despite the overwhelming amount of Artifact/Planes-walker/Counters support, many cards have been printed in good measure to bring new toys for a wide variety to play with.

If so, that’s all of the time I have for you today, be sure to follow the blog for more updates and such. And stay tuned for the next article as well, I’m hoping to see you there!

[neingel]

Wizards showing us who really means business and what it really means.

Foreword

So at the time I’m writing this, a little too late. Most of you should know by now of the recent banning announcement. Wizards officially banned Gitaxian Probe and Golgari Grave-Troll in modern while Standard has it’s first ban since 2011, Where Jace the Mind Sculptor as well as Stoneforge Mystic were deemed to be too powerful for Standard at that time.

Now the modern bans were of course treated quite seriously, but the community was furious with the decision towards the banning of certain cards in Standard: Emrakul the Promised End, Smuggler’s Copter and Reflector Mage. Since the last Standard banning was over 6 years ago, it was quite an abrupt decision made by Wizards to ban 3 cards in Standard out of nowhere. But to further understand why these 3 cards were banned, we must first analyze the actual reasons Wizards gave for banning these cards in their respective formats.

Modern

So Grave-Troll and Gitaxian Probe were banned in modern. Both saw successive runs in certain top tier decks (Probe saw play in Infect,Suicide Zoo variants while Grave-Troll sky-rocketed Dredge to be a fearsome deck to deal with in the post Splinter Twin modern metagame).

In the explanation provided here by Wizards for the banning of Grace-Troll. It is clear that Wizards is clear that there is a problem going on in Modern, Dredge was way too unhealthy which caused a influx in the increase of hate for it in many decks’s sideboards. However, do note the phrase “the real offender has been the dredge mechanic itself.” Let’s face it, Grave-Troll is probably the best “dredger” in terms of value,power level and playability. None of the other Dredgers come quite close to Grave-Troll. In fact, to nerf/balance Dredge, you would have to get rid of the most powerful card it runs, in this case Grave-Troll. However, this does not downright mean Dredge will shift down a tier, it will simply be slightly slower but no stranger to it’s former power pre-ban. 

And now..for the infamous Gitaxian Probe. Ever since Modern took off from it’s post-twin meta, Aggro did once again have a voice and say in Modern. And it did so in a very vibrant way of the Suicide Zoo variant, in which the deck revolves around the player taking as much self damage as possible in order to cast an extremely powerful Death’s Shadow for only 1 mana! Various archetypes of Suicide Zoo have popped up over time but Gitaxian Probe did too much to contribute to this powerhouse of a deck. It was also contributing a major part of Infect’s “engine”, which is now a top tier deck feared by many. But this Gitaxian Probe banning made me recall 2 very similar cards that are already banned in Modern…

Ah yes…the 2 of the best cantrips ever made in Magic’s history, being deemed too powerful for Modern as it mainly pushed non-creature strategies to insane levels. But what do these 2 have in common with Probe?

Well if you mentioned it does “too much” for 1 mana…

In fact Gitaxian Probe theoretically cost 0 mana! So Modern is basically stripped of all it’s “value” cantrips leaving behind Serum Visions as it’s top candidate :/

Shocking isn’t it?

Standard

Now onto the main course and it’s glorious, spongy potato salad crest atop it. The Standard bans ladies and gentlemen..

Well hold on there..! Everyone still has their toes hot on this topic even though it’s more than a week after the announcement but I’ll try to analyze what was right and wrong to each banning.

Let’s start off small with Reflector Mage:

Now, Reflector Mage wasn’t a card that made huge impact in Standard, but this ban report claims that Reflector Mage was simply making the UW Flash deck too powerful, the ban report also states Reflector Mage had been “quite strong” in the day of Collected Company Standard. For me, Reflector Mage is indeed quite an annoying card, but it’s power level isn’t something so serious that it needed to be banned. Yeah, you could say whatever you want on how a major piece it was in Collected Company and UW Flash decks, but that doesn’t justify that decks entirely revolved around it.

Next up is the sneaky Copter

Before you all go over how powerful Smuggler’s Copter is, let this slowly sink in for you: “Kaladesh was released on 30th September 2016″, which means Smuggler’s Copter’s time in Standard was only around 3 months. Now..the card is ridiculously strong. A potential 3/3 for 2 is already value, consider also it’s low crew cost and it’s looting effect that could be used offensively and defensively for card advantage. The card overall was solid, but the real question is…

“Why would Wizards print an extremely powerful card, let it stay in Standard for 3 months and ban it?”

Exactly! Wizards knew Smuggler’s Copter was going to be a very powerful card in Standard, yet they still let it sink into the metagame for a while, saw their predictions come true then ban it! It’s not as if “Oh..there’s probably other vehicles to replace it”. No, people have actually spent a lot of money building up the deck, and Smuggler’s Copter isn’t a cheap card either. Standard also isn’t a format in which the banhammer always pays particular attention to, this will affect the future of Standard - in a way that new players would be afraid into certain decks over a fear that their cards would be banned.

And finally the biggest, baddest, strongest and possibly fattest Eldrazi of them all…there can only be one!

Now on the topic of Emrakul, this version had to be tuned down from the previous version of herself for her to even be playable.

Yes…thank god the Promised End wasn’t as terrifying as this when this absolute monster was printed 6 years ago

But still, Promised End was still one hell of a force to be reckoned with. It’s cmc reduction, ability to use your opponent’s best cards against them, resulting in a more favored board position for yourself - all these were nothing but a small resemblance to her former self printed 6 years ago. Nonetheless, I felt she was still a card that was perfectly balanced in Standard, where it saw play in Aetherworks Marvel. Which I once again felt the deck did seem menacing being able to find Emrakul off Aetherworks, but this wasn’t a deck that had all the strengths and none of the flaws. In fact this doesn’t change much where there are other Eldrazi Titans such as Ulamog that are extremely powerful and have devastating effects when played.

But more importantly, if the slightly under-powered version of Emrakul is banned from Standard, why is the the original Titan still legal in Modern? Where it’s a more explosive format and there are multiple easy ways to cheat it into play?

Now you might tell me “Oh..it’s Modern and the answers there are more reliable towards decks playing these..” , well you are half-right but like I mentioned earlier. There are answers to the Aetherworks Marvel deck! Wizards should have thought about the Modern example of decks cheating Emrakul, the Aeons Torn into play before deciding whether to ban it’s newer form in Standard!

What Standard might look like in the future..

Now most of you have probably heard Standard has a potential new meta-breaking deck..what? No? Alright…here it is.

With Aether Revolt coming up, Standard is about to receive a literal Splinter Twin combo. While not as powerful as the original Splinter Twin combo, it does win on turn 4. While most players are extremely displeased with Wizards printing a pair of cards within the same block, then announcing the bans above. I would like to raise some motivation: the original Splinter Twin combo with Deceiver Exarch actually were playable in Standard, but even at that time it wasn’t even a top tier deck! To add on, this combo isn’t even as reliable or powerful as the original(Saheeli can be removed before Felidar is played,the combo can be shut down by Authority of the Consuls,if u arrange removal on the stack the combo can be disrupted). So do not be disheartened, we never know that this would dominate Standard, it might just be anyone’s game after all.

Orrrrrrrr maybe not, who knows?

Conclusion

Thus, it’s been a wild week for both Standard and Modern players alike, as well for many collectors and investors. For Standard, it does seem interesting to watch how the meta and other decks will perform with some decks getting nerfed after the bannings. On a good note, do have fun, embrace whatever your playing and I’ll see you soon!