This is simply a nutty card!!! A regrowth type effect for any color at instant speed is nice, but there are even more things you can do with it, starting with dropping a land on the top of your opponent's deck to time walk them, especially when they need a lucky one off the top to save themselves. Or how about this in a Counterbalance deck? Now you have all the cards in your graveyard as resources for countering spells in addition to your Top and Brainstorm! Imagine getting in a counterspell war where you have a Counterbalance but no top and you have a land on top. You cast a spell tapping yourself out, they Force of Will it, so you Force of Will in response to your Counterbalance trigger, but they Daze your Force of Will. So you let their Daze resolve sending them both to the yard, but then respond to the original Force by Noxious Revivaling your Force and putting it on the top of your deck. The Counterbalance trigger is still on the stack, and you reval your Force of Will that you put there with Noxious Revival, blowing them out by resolving whatever key spell you needed to AND getting to use one of your precious 4 Force of Wills again. Now that specific scenario probably won't happen because they should Daze first instead of Force, but that's the kind of thinking you need to have with this card when it comes to the possibilities with this card. Another random note on this card is that it shows some beef between the green and blue Praetors...
When I first saw this card, I initially dismissed it as some random bulk rare. However, Star City Games sent out a tweet saying that they increased the buy price on both Phyrexian Dreadnaught and Hunted Horror. Those cards plus Stifle could lead to an interesting UB aggro deck. The Phyrexian Dreadnaught/Stifle combo has been used for a long time now, but more recently (as of SCG Boston yesterday) it was used as the finisher in various Countertop decks (2 of which top-8ed SCG Boston). This is the kind of card that you can really profit on! Pick them up off people for a quarter - 50 cents, and if they ask just say it's your anti-Venser tech in Block or anti-Titan tech (both of which are pretty poor), then pawn them off to Legacy speculators or Venders. SCG currently has this card at $4, so you can sell it to a Vender for as much as $2! Besides that, this card actually is a piece of bulk.
Wow! A 5/6 for 2 mana?!?! Colorless mana?!?! It's like a Tarmogoyf for everybody! Wait, what's that clause? It has to be cast by mana from creatures? Dang.... Well we can't get another Goyf for nothing, let's explore some creatures making mana options:
1. Myr. This is what the card is trying to evoke flavorfully, but the cheapest Myr cost 2 mana, so the first would come town turn 2, the second turn 3, and this turn 4. A 5/6 on turn 4 is unimpressive compared to the Titans that typically get dropped by then. However, we can speed this up a turn with another card:
2. Birds of Paradise. Birds is probably going to be in ever deck the Superion is in, as it is the fastest creature accelerant possible besides Llanowar Elves and Arbor Elf (yeah, I'm suggesting this guy in an elves deck)
3. Eldrazi Spawn. The 3 fastest spawn makers are Brood Birthing, Nest Invader, and Spawning Breath. Of those 3, Nest Invader is my choice to help cast the Superion as it lends itself to the aggressive deck we want him in. Also, going T1 Birds, T2 Nest Invader, we can immediatly sac the token and tap the bird to play the Superion.
4. Grand Architect. This puts the Superion out by itself on turn 3, which is something none of the other choices have offered. The only problem with this option is that the Grand Architect decks ramp so fast they are usually dropping 6/6 Wurmcoil Engines turn 3 instead of messing with vanilla 5/6s.
5. Joraga Treespeaker. This is the other card that can play Superion by itself, but this card can do it turn 2, while being a part of the tribe where everyone makes mana.
So after reviewing these options, the clear winner with this card is Elves. Elves is the deck that always has an explosion of mana from all of its creatures, which synergizes all too well with Myr Superion. Also, most Elves decks are playing Genesis Wave, where this guy is always coming down off of. The biggest problem with elves is that it sometimes can't apply enough pressure fast enough, but with Myr Superion in addition to Vengevine (please note Superion's low mana cost makes casting 2 to recur a Vengevine an easy play) can probably push them up to tier 1 status. The bane of elves though is Day of Judgement effects, but Caw-Blade currently doesn't play any. I think this new kid is going to stir up the block
So, continuing our discussion of elves, how great would it be if the control player casts Day of Judgement, and in response you float 4 mana off your Archdruid. Then once the dust has settled, you cast Fresh Meat and now they are staring down a 12 + power board. Go to game 2? This will probably just sit in the sideboard, but it gives Zoo decks serious game against control. Want a goofy combo deck? Make a ton of Eldrazi Spawn tokens, sacrifice them all, pay 4 for Fresh meat, and whatever you have left over for your Furnace Celebration tokens, GG.
Speaking of funny combo decks, we already know Bloodchief Ascension is supidly powerful when it gets active, but if for whatever reason you need to speed the kill up a little bit, just drop this bad boy down, throw a lightning bolt, or even just a Hornet Sting at them, and let the madness take over! They will completely mill themselves to deck and go to -80 life or so in one fell swoop!
This is part of a Shrine Cycle, but this is really the only good one. I will play this in every deck I draft, even if its infect, because getting an endless army of 1/1 dudes isn't bad. The only thing that sucks about this card is that it's the worst topdeck in the world during the lategame. At 5 mana for casting and activating, you're going to want this at 5 charge counters or higher to get good value for your mana. An important thing to note is that this shrine gets counters on it each time you cast a white spell in addition to yoru upkeep, so if you draft a heavy white deck, you can drop this turn 2, then play your game as normal, only popping when you run out of other plays and get greeted by 10 1/1s that will happily kill your opponent.
This is a fantastic recursive token maker, which simply gets nuttier with a couple proliferations. With so many artifacts in this block, it will be hard to not play this card in your draft deck.
This is very clearly a casual card, and I think this is one of the finest political card out there. Pissing everyone off? I will pay a ton of life to cast phyrexian mana spells, then pass the bill to you. You can pass around that brink of death feeling every turn with this card, which will make you think twice about going red aggro all over the place! I don't think it has to be mentioned that this will never see play in constructed or limited.
Wow! This is another insane reason to go metalcraft! This card features everything Mirran in one nice smooth package. With the boros colors, the combat-oriented First Strike ability, and a very aggressive metalcraft ability (which buffs himself too up to an 8/4 first strike), this is another huge player in a possible metalcraft deck. I will delve more into the deck by the time of release, but I think this could be the top of the curve for such a deck!
Cuz baby I know! The first cut is the deepest... If cards like that counterspell and the proliferate ability aren't enough to convince you that gettign that first poison counter is the most dangerous mistake to make, then maybe facing an endless insect horde is. The more you're infected, the less time you have to live. By the time you get to 3 poison counters, the infect player has lethal on board just from this card alone! This is a bomb among men in draft, and this is another card to make Virulent Wound even more dangerous!
This card has been getting the most hype of almost all the cards in the set as the most powerful tool for any green mage. This is a straight up Vindicate as long as you can deal with the token (Jace -1, Skinrender, x/4 creatures...). One deck that I have been thinking about recently is a GW Walls ramp deck that closes with Eldrazi and Iona. Just buy time by blocking with Walls until you can make a ton of mana with Overgrown Battlement, and drop a major fattie. This is the kinda card that deck is dying for. With all the x/4 walls, the token is completely irrelivant, while vindicating a Sword or planeswalker is backbreaking. If your opponent is mana-skrewed, you can stone rain them to oblivion. The uses for this card are endless!
This card has gotten Brian Kibler a little frustrated, but I like the appeal of a seemingly locked board suddenly turn around because the mono-black deck just cast a Giant Growth effect! This card can even see play in an infect deck if you want to go for the mono-Giant Growth type deck, as it is another spell you can throw on your creature to add up to 10
Man, as if infect needed to get any better! This guy is already a huge hard to manage infect dude, but being able to force through damage is something simply scary. If your playing Infect but haven't been able to push through any damage to proliferate, Spinebiter comes through in a pinch. This is yet another infect bomb that really pushes the power of drafting infect (but remember, there is less and less poison per set as you go through each pack in the draft...)
Talk about a boros slayer! Not only does your guy get protection from the deck, but you gain a coupe of life with each swing, buyng yourself additional turns to stabelize! This is the card that had the most hype before anything was spoiled, and while the abilities are lackluster, that doesn't even matter. Protection from red and white is amazingly powerful as people have said time and time again. That being said, I still feel Feast and Famine is better in control decks like Caw-Blade while this will be better in decks like Bant Aggro, where an equipped Mirran Crusader is nearly unstoppable! This is the real deal, but in an inglorious fashion
This guy has the same exact firebreathing/Hatred ability as Moltensteel Dragon, but I wanted to pull it up because it can be played in any deck without having to pay 4 life to play it initially. An important thing to be aware of is that this doesn't boost toughness, so it is easy to get blown out by Galvanic Blast or Instill Infection when going for the kill
I think this card is overrated. Yes it is good, but no it is not $25 good. With Stoneforge Mystic, this card is stupidly overpowered by being able to bounce and replay it to dodge removal like Shatter and Divine Offering. However, after Stoneforge rotates out of standard, I don't think this card will be a dominating player any more. Since I don't have any Stoneforges, by personal plan with this card is sell sell sell.
This is exactly what infect decks have been dying for! Frankly this isn't even an unreasonable card to make. It's basically a 2/1 for 1 mana, like Elite Vanguard. I believe this card will be a staple in a BG infect beatdown deck by starting the curve off very nicely. Patrick Chapin has even started posting lists on facebook for legacy infect, and they all include 4x Glistener Elf. Thankfully this is a common, so be sure to put aside 4 for future decks
Come on, you know you just want to play this in a Sensei's Divining Top deck, right?
This is probably the scariest and most dangerous card in the set for infect decks! Giving mass trample on infectors is scarily backbreaking. This won't see any play in constructed, as the important word in this card is gives infect, but in limited you can now get blown out by a wave of poison counters at any moment. Swinging out never looked like a worse option...
This has actually been a suprisingly long last section, but I guess that's thanks to this being the artifact block. But that's all for now, soon I will come back to these and talk about various cards in more detail, new decks, and yes I will give my report on SCG Boston. Until next time, stay classy!
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