Looting Faith

Hello Everybody! Dark Ascension is still 2 months away, but today we got our first preview card from WotC! Its a common, but it is going to be a staple in every format! I present Faithless Looting:

Does card seem familiar to you? It's an almost strictly better version of Careful Study, with the only downside being the color shift. However, that's not really a downside because the only format Careful Study is legal in is Legacy, where you can play any colors you want, and players like Caleb Durward play Wild Nacatl and Jace, the Mind Sculptor in the same deck!

In fact, the deck that best abuses Careful Study is Dredge, which already plays 5 colors with its City of Brass, Undiscovered Paradise, and Gemstone Mine (If you are playing Tarnished Citadel in your dredge deck, come over here so I can smack you). An opening hand with Careful Study and a Dredger was good enough by itself because of the sheer power of the Dredge engine, but adding Flashback to it is nuts!!!! I can think of tons of games playing Dredge where I get flooded and have 3 or 4 lands in play. In those situations, flashing back a Faithless Looting can be completely game breaking! By the way.... you can dredge into more of them! What if you don't have 3 lands in play, and never will? Then you have a red Careful Study in your graveyard..... Same exact value that Careful Study was previously providing. Normally with a new card I would post a sample decklist, but all you have to do to update Dredge is: -4 Careful Study, +4 Faithless Looting. Another deck to note that plays Careful Study is Reanimator, which I can see having them add in 1 Volcanic Island and 1 Mountain and cutting the Careful Studys for Faithless Looting.

So that's legacy in a wrap: this card is strictly better so replace them 1-for-1, but where can this go in Standard? It is incredibly important to note the difference between this card and Desperate Raving:

Desperate Ravings:
7 cards in hand
cast Desperate Ravings
6 cards in hand
Draw 2 cards
8 cards in hand
Discard 1
7 cards in hand
Net: 0

Faithless Looting:
7 cards in hand
cast Faithless Looting
6 cards in hand
Draw 2 cards
8 cards in hand
Discard 2 cards
6 cards in hand
Net: -1

By casting Faithless Looting, we go down a card in hand, but we get to chose what we discard, which makes for some interesting decisions. What is also important to note, however is that Desperate Raving nets +1 card when flashed back, and Faithless Looting produces net 0. Naturally, the first deck that came to my mind for this card was Burning Vengeance. Imagine:

T1: Faithless Looting
T2: Mana Leak
T3: Burning Vengeance

With Faithless Looting, we're probably discarding things like Think Twice and keeping cards like Snapcaster Mage and Doom Blade in hand. I feel that any control deck playing red will want this card, but no deck will splash red for it. However, another thought is that RDW may pick up this card card and want it really bad as a 2-of. The worst thing that happens to a Red Deck player is flooding or simply topdecking cards that suck late-game like Shrine of Burning Rage. Playing a Faithless Looting could draw them into the lethal Incinerate and pitch crap like.... basic Mountain. In fact, as I mentioned on Facebook, you can play all basic mountains alongside Bump In the Night and never have any problems! Obviously we would play Blackcleave Cliffs and Dragonskull Summit, but it's good to think about. Maybe we have a deck like this:

4x Goblin Fireslinger
4x Stromkirk Noble
4x Grim Lavamancer
4x Stormblood Berserker
3x Chandra's Phoenix


2x Faithless Looting

4x Shrine of Burning Rage
4x Galvanic Blast
4x Bump in the Night
4x Incinerate
3x Brimstone Volley


4x Dragonskull Summit
4x Blackcleave Cliffs
12x Mountain


This is a very burn-heavy style of Red Deck, but Grim Lavamancer seems WAY too good with Faithless Looting, as even dumping 2 lands is equivilent to another shock. Furnace Scamp is a card I was considering for the deck, along with Arc Trail. Depending on how things go when Dark Ascension rolls around, maybe a "mono-Bolt" style deck will be viable, where the goal of each card is simply to deal 3 or more damage. The inherent problem with those decks is that they don't interact with the board, but then again, they do suck to fight against as they get tons of free wins.


That's all I have for today! This innocuous common is secretly a bomb to be had from Dark Ascension, and I'm already excited! Until next time, stay classy!


Ryan Lackie
Ryan.Lackie92@gmail.com
@ThingsILack