Restored Spoilers

Hello Everyone!

It's been about a week since I last wrote about spoilers, and there have been a TON of new flashy cards spoiled! I want to cover several shorter ones here, and then go into more detail on a few specific ones in a separate posts that will probably be posted tomorrow (aka, no planeswalkers on this post). So let's jump to some interesting new cards!

Demonic Taskmaster was actually a part of the initial spoilers at PAX East, but at the time, I didn't really know how to utilize him. Obviously a 4/3 flying for 3 mana is undercosted, and as long as the sacrifice ability can be taken care of, you have a very potent threat. I finally thought of a great place for this card: Control! Whether it's UB or something like Burning Vengeance, having access to a cheap undercosted creature that has no downside is something any control player should be very interested in after sideboarding. An opponent will see a lack of creatures and will take out the majority of their removal, and then you get to slam the Taskmaster and start checking off opponents! This is especially good in the mirror when you may wait until turn 10 to play any creature because you don't want to get it countered and then have your opponent respond with their own finisher. If you land Taskmaster turn 3, you don't care if your opponent counters it or not - if they do they have nothing powerful to respond with, if they don't they die!

Here we have another undercosted flying uncommon that has what could be seen as a drawback attached. Anyone who has played for Kor Skyfisher knows though that you can usually turn this into an advantage. Obviously the difference in mana matters, especially when you remember the context of Vengevine. Skyfisher was often played as a 2-of in Vengevine decks to rebuy the vine any time. This time around though, we will have to find a time when we would rather have this over Restoration Angel. The advantage of the Emancipation Angel is that you can bounce any permanent... Maybe resetting a Mox Opal in Tempered Steel? I don't know if this will be played at all, but it may never be more than a 1-of in it's life.

I wanted to get all the mythic rares up, but I doubt any of these will be playable. I can see Bruna seeing play in Modern Mythic Conscription, but aside from that these 2 should be casual-only mythics.

It's the return of Smokestack! Well... not quite... Many of these Avacyn Restored cards have a vary important word that makes them function very differently, and that is "exile". Smokestack is awesome because you can fill your deck with cards like Flagstones of Trokair that you can sacrifice and not lose any board presence. However, this will not be an option with Descend into Madness. Also, I believe the active player has to exile first, which makes the card significantly worse. For example, let's say you played an Elesh Norn, so I Oblivion Ringed it. Then you play another Elesh Norn and I play Descend into Madness. Because I exile first, I can't be tricky and exile my Oblivion Ring to force the Norns to Legend eachother out because you can just exile your first Norn. Obviously after a couple turns with Descend into Madness you would hope to have a greater board presence and exile the bottomless staircase itself, but because you exile instead of sacrifice, we can't load our deck up with pod-type cards like Solemn Simulacrum, Viridian Emissary, and Wurmcoil Engine to accelerate our game plan. That being said, this is a bulk mythic

Now THIS IS EXCITING! This is probably the best drawing land they have ever printed since Arabian Knights! The other lands it has to beat out are Cephalid Coliseum, Grim Backwoods, Horizon Canopy, Mikokoro Center of the Sea, and Seaside Haven. All of those have pretty significant downsides, whether it is losing a permanent or giving your opponent a card, and Desolate Loothouse only costs you a card in hand. Which is discarded. This is a snap inclusion in any sort or URx Control deck like USA or Grixis. In fact, this could be enough to make me want to include blue in my Burning Vengeance deck again as I have been playing RWb since Dark Ascension came out. This land will provide so much value over the long term, it is frankly hard to explain! The most important thing that ties it all together though is that it only takes 3 mana to activate. Stensia Bloodhall is cool and all, but since when did BR ever want to tap 6 lands to do almost nothing? Just a 4 land investment to make use of bluffed mana leak mana to dig a little deeper and actually find that mana leak! I can even see Loothouse beign used in Modern in something like Pyromancer's Ascension where they are mainly playing all instants anyways, and discarding a spell means +1 counter for their namesake card. I can see this doing a lot for a long time!

Om Nom Nom! Peachy... The Anti-Inquisition of Kozelik seems very interesting, though not entirely playable. Hand disruption is mainly used to slow down the opponent so your game plan can take over, however this does do an amazing job holding down the ramp decks. From Huntmaster of the Fells to Primeval Titan to Emrakul, control decks now have a fantastic bullet to put a hole in the ramp player's game plan! This will probably be a sideboard card for now as it hits a grand total of 0 cards in the Delver player's deck, but I expect it to be showing up in sideboards in Modern and Standard. One thing of note is that the card is exiled instead of discarded, which is significantly better against Tron decks because they often only play 1-3 eldrazi period!

Wheel of Fortune? Is that you? This is so miraculous! This is one of the better Miracle cards released thus far because even if it is in your opening hand it isn't completely unplayable *cough* Temporal Mastery *cough*. This is a snap 1-of in standard RDW because 2 mana draw 7 feels a little busted in a burn deck! You never want 2, and you never want it in your opener, and you don't even NEED it to win, so a 1-of it is! With this card, I think it is safe to call the new breed of RDW "Miracle Red", especially with this next card:

At first I saw this card, and I was like "meh". But now I am thinking about it in the sideboard of RDW and it doesn't seem so bad. If a card basically reads Plague Wind, you have to look at it more than once before dismissing it. Even when this card is in your opener, if you are activating it for something small, like 1 or 2, then it really isn't too inefficient. I can forsee myself playing this in Red Deck vs the token decks and the white decks playing Timely Reinforcements. Plague Wind you, ping for 2, swing, go. Sounds like a fine turn to me! Obviously when you Miracle it, it's even better as a huge fireball that happens to also kill everything, so I am actually really excited to put probably 3 in my sideboard!

That's all I have for today! I still have a few more cards to go over like Vexing Devil and the Planeswalkers, so stay tuned! I should have that up tomorrow! Until next time, stay classy!

Ryan Lackie
Ryan.Lackie92@gmail.com
@ThingsILack