So much Gatecrash!

Hello Everyone!

It's been a while since I have discussed the new spoilers, and a lot has happened in that time! I have a ton of insane cards to talk about today, all of which I am incredibly excited for! This set is turning out to be an absolute A+ for me, and we're hardly half revealed!

Finally we have a creature with Haste and Battalion! Previously the problem with Battalion was that you had to set up your board ready for a Wrath and hope you were allowed to do your thing undisturbed. However, by having Haste as well, Legion Loyalist is significantly more powerful. The first thing to notice when looking at this card is it's a Raging Goblin with upside. Raging Goblin has never been any good, so we have to decide how highly we value First Strike, Trample, and pseudo-unblockability. I think the card this best compares to is Signal Pest - terrible on its own, but with a large enough army it can be insane! With that in mind I think Legion Loyalist will absolutely see play!

I would consider this in an Experiment One deck in standard, probably Dredge-uh-Vine in Modern, and Goblins in Legacy. In Standard, I imagine Experiment One will see a lot of play in Zoo-esque decks with lots of big creatures where the trample will be relevant and can give free wins when your opponent expects their Lingering Souls tokens to give them the turn they need to wrath. In Dredge-uh-Vine, the deck fills the board very quickly, so a card like Legion Loyalist is cheap enough to be a solid second creature for Vengevine, but also high impact enough to force all your creatures through to the opponent. And in Legacy I can see this as a one-of to tutor for with Goblin Matron to help push a board state and close out the game. I think Legion Loyalist will be enough to make Goblin Piledriver playable again since it just was underwhelming for the longest time being chump blocked and easily handled despite being so large, gaining first strike and especially trample is huge!

I'm not sure if this card will be good or not, but I think this may see play in Red Decks. We already want to splash white for Boros Charm, but Spark Trooper is a solid efficient burn spell that also gains you an insane amount of life to make racing nearly impossible for your opponent. Now if you have to race with your Red Deck, instead of using burn on your opponent's creatures to slow down their clock you gain just gain 6 to gain a whole turn on them, and then point the burn at their face.

I have been working on lists for post-gatecrash decks, and one of the important pieces is to find ways to not over extend, and a good way to do that is by having a lot of flash creatures. In addition to helping play around wrath effects by making sure you maximize your damage output, you can also add counters to Evolve creatures at instant speed, messing up combat math for your opponent. This Fish Crab (...?) does it all! I like how it's a 2/1, so almost any creature that would pump a 1/1 evolve will also trigger Shambleshark, but it hits a little harder every turn, doing what you would expect from an aggressive 2 drop.

Now this is an incredible card! Already there has been a lot of talk as to where Duskmantle Seer is best played, but no matter what happens, it's going to be incredibly good! If we're going to play Duskmantle Seer, we have to build our deck with a very low curve so that we never accidently kill ourselves with it. If you have ever played Dark Confidant in the same deck as Tombstalker, I'm sure you learned that lesson the hard way! So with that in mind, I want to play him in an aggressive deck, which probably means Zombies. The fact that the ability is symmetrical is actually a good thing for Zombies since it can act as a burn spell at the same time. I'm sure you don't mind your opponent drawing that Terminus when you're just going to kill them on your turn anyways! We can't reasonably expect to hit a lot of high drops with Duskmantle Seer though, so we need a card to push the balance back in our favor. Thankfully we have access to Rakdos's Return which in addition to cleaning up the opponent's card advantage also deals more damage, making it a perfect pair with Duskmantle Seer!

If you have been reading my blog for a while you will know I really hate mill, and completely ignore it as a strategy 99% of the time. So why am I so excited about this card? For the first time since Altar of Dementia we have a cheap repeatable milling effect which with any sort of recursive effect can quickly burn through an opponent's entire library! Imagine in Modern using Undercity Informer + Bloodghast! Any time you play a land, especially a fetch land, you can drain your opponent of ~5 cards in their library. Obviously thats not too much, but that kind of engine seems robust enough to open up the opportunity for a combo mill deck in Modern or Standard. Of course, mill tends to never stand the test of time, and Undercity Informer will probably have to be satisfied as a high pick uncommon in draft.

Just in time as Daybreak Coronet jumps to $25 and Hexproof Auras dominates a GP we have the semi answer to their plans. If Glaring Spotlight just had the static ability and not the activated ability, I would say it's absolutely terrible. However, as it is, it's actually a very good sideboard card because later in the game after you used up your removal on their dudes, you can turn your entire army into Invisible Stalkers and win the game out of nowhere! Hexproof has been the most aggravating thing players have had to deal with over the past year, and while this isn't an elegant answer to that issue, I'm glad to see we now have a viable way to deal with it.

When I first saw this card, I thought it was a bulk unplayable rare. Just a worse Orb of Dreams, which doesn't even see play, with Extort tacked on to make it less embarrassing. While that may be partially true, after thinking about it more I realized this card is actually much better than it seems! For a control deck, this card deals with Falkenrath Aristocrat, Thundermaw Hellkite, and to an extent Hellrider very well. Those cards are all so good because they play like burn spells. Even if you cast Supreme Verdict every turn for the rest of the game, those creatures would still get their damage in and it will have been worth the card. Blind Obedience changes that. Now your sorcery speed board wipes will also hit those creatures before they can get their card's worth value on you, saving yourself a ton of life in the process. Oh by the way, it also has extort for long term value and life gain for those decks.

Hello Vesuva! Thespian's Stage obviously compares closely to the clone land, but there are a lot of differences. The first is that it comes into play untapped uncloned meaning you can play it as your first land and play spells at a normal rate. Also, because it clones later, it can copy something that wont come into play for a few turns down the road. In standard and Modern, there's not many exciting things to copy. You can only make it into a Dual land for colors you already have, and in Tron decks you need one of each piece, not a lot of the same kind. However, in Legacy there is a deck called TwelvePost that has been around for a couple years. With Thespian's Stage we can make it 16Post! Well... Actually if this sees play in that deck it will probably be -2 Glimmerpost +2 Thespian's Stage and will remain as TwelvePost. However, this card can be played in all kinds of ways! Another interesting form may be to copy Legendary lands or Wastelands to disrupt the opponent's mana. Maybe getting more copies of your manland is essential? However it happens, this card is sweet and I'm excited for the new angle of deckbuilding!

Six mana wrath effect? Blagh! Well.... not quite. Merciless Eviction is actually insane, and I think it may even be good enough to push Terminus completely out of standard! Exiling all creatures is better than putting them on the bottom of libraries, so Merciless Eviction wins there, but then we look at all our options! Hitting artifacts and enchantments is normal stuff to expect - not remotely exciting, but essential to maintain balance. But then.... exile all planeswalkers?! Talk about Merciless! This card just does it all! At Wednesday Night Magic the other day I was playing against Esper Control (I was on Kibler's GB Ooze deck) and I scooped up game 2 when he had Sorin, Jace, and Tamiyo all in play together and I knew I had no hope. Thinking about that board makes me realize how insane a Planeswalker sweeper is! Normally there is absolutely no coming back from that position, but Merciless Eviction gives us hope now.

So let's go back to Merciless Eviction vs Terminus. Both cost 6. Both cost 2 specific colored mana. Neither actually kill the creature, playing around undying. But Terminus's only bonus from there is you can Miracle it at an uncontrolled moment whereas with Merciless Eviction you have incredible flexibility and raw power. I think it's obvious hands down that Terminus is now unplayable in standard because Merciless Eviction is always going to just be better.

Woah! This charm is insane! Once again we have a charm which has 3 relevant abilities as opposed to charms like Azorious Charm which have abilities you almost never use (Lifelink). Giant Growth/Unsummon/Vines of Vastwood. I have played all three of those spells in my day, but one deck in particular that this seems fantastic in is Modern Infect. Sure, we already have access to Vines of Vastwood, but this is a good second best card for redundancy. Simic Charm protects against targetted removal, sweepers, and can also win the game via the pump, making it the full toolbox. However, it costs 2 mana, which may actually be too expensive for such an explosive deck! Even if it doesn't see play there, this card will be huge in standard for the next two years, and I look forward to playing it in a deck that also has Selesnya Charm! All of the pumps, all of the tricks!

In original Ravnica block, there was a very similar card to Simic Manipulator called Cytoplast Manipulator. While the cards have tons of nuances that make them very different, it's cool to see these kinds of effects designed in such different ways. Simic Manipulator is awesome because you can play him as an attacking creature that evolves up to a relevant body and brings the heat, but then as the game develops you can gain tons of value consuming your opponent's board. It's worth pointing out that even if Manipulator dies, you don't lose control of the creatures you stole. I think this type of card may actually be playable in standard given the proper shell as a card to dominate the creatures mirror. Just 2 activations on decent creatures is already enough value to call it a day, and when there is nothing to steal, swinging for 2 is always a well liked option.

Rounding thing out for today we have an absolutely jaw dropping mythic! Sure, it's just a Giant Spider, but I think Master Biomancer may be enough to make Elves a relevant tribe in standard! Relevant Elf cards in standard right now are Deathrite Shaman, Arbor Elf, Elvish Archdruid, Elvish Visionary, Gyre Sage, and Zameck Guildmage. This is a perfect storm waiting for the right cards to put it over the edge, and Master Biomancer may be that card. All the elves can ramp up to things like Craterhoof Behemoth all well and good, but adding Master Biomancer to the picture means just bringing in the beats and turning dudes sideways is also a very viable option as well putting the opponent under significant pressure to react or else become overwhelmed. Even outside the realm of tribal, this is just a great value card to make the rest of your army more terrifying and completely dominate the board.

I get the feeling this is the infinite article I have written looking at Gatecrash cards (actually I think this is the seventh?) but Gatecrash looks absolutely insane, and we're only half spoiled! Gatecrash has already earned its title as an all-star set with tons of exciting cards and mechanics, so I am absolutely looking forward to the prerelease! I think the exciting cards are coming to a close from Gatecrash, so I should be posting up a TON of decklists across the entire rainbow and back again over the next week preparing for new standard!

That's all I have for today! Until next time, stay classy!

Ryan Lackie

Ryan.Lackie92@gmail.com

@ThingsILack