Time Walk. As the flavor text says so eloquently - Time is in fact a marvelous plaything! The card that everyone is blowing their minds over? Personal Tutor. If you view the completed eBay listings, it's hilarious to look at the prices sold compared to the date. April 8th, the day before Temporal Mastery was released, they are being sold for $15-20 (and there was a very suspicious flood of them on ebay ending within the last 3 hours of the day... conspiracy time!), however within 45 minutes the price jumps 14% and by 8am it's up to $35! Star City Games and ChannelFireball both have them at $40.
But as I said before, I pity the fool. What does gaining an extra turn give you exactly? Another attack with your creatures? If that is so good, than how come World at War, Aggravated Assault, Finest Hour, Fury of the Horde, Hellkite Charger, Relentless Assault, Savage Beating, Seize the Day, and Waves of Aggression are all unplayable and are worth less than $1? You can play an extra land? Sick Rampant Growth bro. Draw a card too? Oh man, that looks like an Explore to me!
If you really want to gain an advantage, then you need to be using planeswalkers. And while getting bonus uses of your planeswalkers is good, it's not insane. What people don't realize is that you can't control when you're going to topdeck this card. How bad would you feel if you were on the play, and turn 2 you topdecked this? The way Miracle works is you have to cast it right there immediately or else you lose the free discount. Sure you can set it up later with a brainstorm, but it's like topdecking an Emrakul in Mesmeric Orb Combo, basically the worst feeling in the world because you can't use it until you blow a brainstorm on it.
If that's not enough, while everyone is screaming "Personal Tutor!" I'm whispering "Predict." Predict is already played as a 2-of or so in a couple decks, and now it just pwnd a n00b! If you're not into Predict (though I find it to be great against Enlightened Tutor and alongside Jace TMS and Brainstorm) There is also Thought Scour to mill your opponent's library.
Long story short - I really hope I open a bunch of these at the prerelease so I can trade them for cards that actually do something useful, or at the very least sell them and get a free prerelease! I will NOT be sleeving up this card for a long time as far as I can tell.
Also from yesterday, we have Avacyn's and Liliana's enemy #1. It's kinda sad to already know that Liliana kills Griselbrand, it takes a lot of the storyline out of the sails. But flavor aside, this card is actually pretty awesome! A flying Necropotence that feeds you back the life you lost? I can't see how it is possible to lose if you hit your opponent just once with this guy! In fact, you don't even need to hit the opponent, you just need the 7 life for a free grip! Move over Drogskol Reaver, there's a new epic fatty in town! I will absolutely have a control list up with Griselbrand, but some other applications for him are absolutely Frites, Heartless Summoning, and Solar Flare! Now there is a hilarious combo you must know about - Griselbrand + Venser's Journal! With the 2 in play, in response to the Journal trigger you can draw 14 or so cards and then immediately gain it all back in addition to a life per card you had beforehand! No maximum hand size means you will have your whole deck at your disposal is just 2 or 3 turns!
Now for some cards released today! Druid's Repository came from Gavin Verhey's new column on the mothership, and while I initially don't like this card very much, I'm not giving up on it yet... As Gavin mentioned in his article, it does take care of all your Gavony Township or Vault of the Archangel needs by itself with just a Lingering Souls. I feel that is the best use for it, not stocking up the mana to ramp up to fast titans. This way you can still play threats while utilizing your action lands to put your opponent on their back foot. Like I said, I'm not too hopeful for this card, but it is definitely worth taking a second look at before dismissing for the token decks.
Next up we have the Serious Fun preview card. Normally I can't stand Adam's column because I am not a Timmy (I am a Johnny-Spike), but I felt obliged to check just in case there was something I cared about. I looked, said "meh" and went to sleep. The next morning I checked Twitter before leaving for work (finally back on twitter after giving it up for lent) and someone asked if it is a good Natural Order target to make all your durdle guys into actual threats an win immediately as opposed to Progenitus which is beatable (believe it or not). A couple pros dismissed it because one of the allures of NO is that you can have nothing but some lands on board and then you can either cast Noble Hierarch and use it to make a Progenitus or Misty -> Dryad Arbor for the same result. Behemoth is pretty boring by himself - a 6/6 trample haste... cool? Over the course of work today though, I started thinking about it and I realized it may actually be playable in Elves! I have absolutely 0 testing with it, but it seems like it has the sweet spot at the crossroads of "counter me or else you immediately die" and "castable without being required to combo off". Assuming I play Legacy this weekend, I will be playing 1 in my deck to see how it goes! An interesting thing to point is how this could be part of a Mythic cycle. We have Avacyn and Griselbrand that also cost 8 mana including at least 3 being color-specific. Maybe there will be a blue and red mythic too?
Patrick Chapin unveiled this card on SCG today, and i was a little disappointed in his analysis... He spend a majority of the time on the "other nonblack creatures you control get +1/+1" part of this Angel, which isn't all that new or unique. The part that I find very interesting is the "Players can't pay life or sacrifice creatures to cast spells or activate abilities" line. While at work today, I made a list of every card I could think of that sees play that this would effect off the top of my head:
Standard
Buried Ruin
Gitaxian Probe
Gut Shot
Porcelain Legionnaire
Phyrexian Metamorph
Fume Spitter
Evolving Wilds
Mortarpod
Griselbrand
Shrine of Burning Rage
Birthing Pod
Spellbombs
Eternal
Fetchlands
Necropotence
Sylvok Safekeeper
Knight of the Reliquary
Qasali Pridemage
Slivers
Alluren (Cavern Harpy)
Fireblast
Force of Will
Greater Gargantuan
Tinker
Black Lotus/LED/Lotus Bloom
Lotus Petal
Wasteland/Strip Mine/Tectonic Edge
Viscera Seer
Cabal Therapy
Dread Return
Sterling Grove
Pernicious Deed
Engineered Explosives
Cephalid Colliseum
Thopter Foundry
Vampire Hexmage (Dark Depths)
Natural Order
Now there are obviously many more (not that I expect that anyone actually read that list), but those cover almost every archaetype out there! Angel of Jubilation is interesting because it also prevents you from sacrificing and paying life, so you would have to actually build your deck around her. Maybe this card is playable in a Death & Taxes type deck? I honestly don't know where this would go best... In standard I can see it replacing Hellrider right off the bat in tokens, but I don't know where it's going to go from there... This is definitely an interesting one, worth keeping an eye on.
Last but not least we have the top 8 card for the Game Day - Killing Wave! This card seems like it would be the natural replacement for Black Sun's Zenith after it rotates out, but I'm not too sure... This card gives the decision to your opponent, which is a staple of cards that seem awesome but never actually do anything. Unless if you were winning anyways, your opponent can do whatever hurts them less, and then proceed to kill you through it anyways. Cool card idea, nice artwork, not playable.
Wow! That was a lot to cover! There was also that equipment that is the pre-release card, but it's just a bulk limited rare, so I'm not going to say more! That's all I have for today! Until next time, stay classy!
Ryan Lackie
Ryan.Lackie92@gmail.com
@ThingsILack
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