Reviewing Dragon's Maze Part 2: Answers

Welcome back to the second installment of TGZ's review of Dragon's Maze.

This time, we are going to be talking answer cards. Answers stop threats and slow down your opponent's gameplan. This includes removal, counters, disruption, and various protective spells. Good answers are cheap, fast, and versatile. Great answers are all of the above, but with extra value! Let's see if there's any great answers hiding in the maze.

Right off the bat, Renounce the Guilds is a pretty sweet one. Creatures and planeswalkers make up the vast majority of the multicolored permanents that see play in Commander. Such tight restrictions on what gets binned makes it fairly simple to make this as close to targeted as possible. Since most tokens aren't multicolored, this won't get wasted as often as other edict effects. The only real downside is that it is stone dead against monocolored decks and any time they just don't happen to have something to hit with it. This is isn't accurate or reliable enough for my liking. I'd say let your friends try it out first.









I don't really expect this to see any play, but anything with Cipher is good enough for me to mention. Repeatable effects don't need a whole lot of punch to take over the game. The timing of this is what really makes me skeptical. What are you supposed to do with two Twiddles at sorcery speed? Particularly when the recursive effect happens during combat. You can't really lock down their guys. You can reset your two best attackers, but giving two guys Vigilance isn't really that interesting. You need something else to really make this worth it. If you're going to all the trouble of assembling a combo this fragile you might as well win.









I have talked before about how much I like having access to this kind of effect. I am a huge fan of Suffer the Past. When your opponent goes to dig a creature, you can use these instant speed effects to counter their Reanimate and get value. This card can gain you quite a bit of life as well. I don't typically care about life gaining cards until they get into the 10-15 range and I always want them to have some other effect. Denying your opponent a threat, cutting off future access to their graveyard, and gaining a boatload of life is something I am willing to consider.









So I love me some split cards. They are just cards with more flexibility. Genius. I dig the whole Fuse thing. It's hot. I just wish that they didn't overcost every single card. Catch seems fine. No problem there. Release costs about 2 more than it should in my mind. Functionally, it is somewhere in between Decimate and Cataclysm, but I don't play either of those cards really. Maybe not that close to Cataclysm, but you get where I'm going. Fuse for 9 is just not reasonable and if you do that you won't even get to attack with their dude or activate their planeswalker before you dump it.

Flavor judge: the effect of these cards, have NOTHING to do with the name. AT ALL.






Are you starting to see what I am saying about being over costed? On average just about every Fuse card costs 1 more mana than it should per side. Barrin's Spite really isn't that great of a card anyway. How about Damnation for the same cmc?


What exactly is going on in the art of Away? Some dude is just getting eaten by a squid thing. The creative department really needs to draw a more clear line between what destroy effects look like in art and what edict effects look like. Fight is fairly obvious. Burn is pretty obvious. Just be consistent. That's all I'm asking.







Flesh isn't really an answer. Blood technically is, it's just bad. Flesh costs more than I would ever pay for it. Blood costs...ehh more than I'd like, but I'd take it. In terms of the Fusion it is a total rip off. You pay 7 to hopefully pump your guy and burn something, but you must have a sizable dude in the bin and you need all of these targets to stay in place in order for it really have any effect. That is just too fragile. 7 cmc sorceries should win. Especially three-color rare sorceries. This is approximately a million times worse than Violent Ultimatum or Lavalanche as a removal spell. It is probably better than Increasing Savagery as a pump spell, but who cares? No one plays pumps spells. What is this booster draft?






I am digging this card super hard. I only have one copy of Pernicious Deed, but I play the snot out of it. This card is the business. It sweeps the street and cleans house all in one. It kind of sucks that you can't make the colored mana down payment like you could before, but this way they aren't going to see it coming so they will be more likely to commit extra cards to the board. This card has wanted to exist for a long time and I am glad to see that it is finally here.

Flavor question: Can gorgons turn enchantments to stone by looking at them? Why does this kill gargoyles, golems, and walls?








U/G Arrest...why not? Doing nothing important? Pump your guys. If U/G weren't so light on removal in general I would say that this card wouldn't really see much play, but as it stands that just isn't the case. It might not be much, but this will get played. That is not a good thing really.














So, it possibly pumps your squad and protects you from Wrath effects as long as you don't tap out. That is something aggressive decks could be interested in. Does it give you a better shot of beating control decks than just playing a 2 drop beater? Probably not, but who knows. I have a deck with 14 board sweepers. Sometimes, I just don't even bother main decking real removal in EDH.

Flavor gripe: The legion's initiative is apparently to assault Niv-Mizzet. What does that have to do with disappearing and reappearing later? Come on people. Get me a rewrite.









This isn't super flashy and it is pretty expensive, but killing their threat and getting back a threat of your own is powerful 2-for-1 card advantage and decently reliable removal. Providing a large swing in tempo is also a big plus. Regrowing a dude and going upstairs for 6 damage isn't horrible either.


I want to point out that the demon in the art isn't bursting out of a morgue. He is bursting out of a graveyard. Why not call it Zoidberg instead?










Yea, U/G really gets all of my favorite things. Look at this bad boy! This mess is crazy hot. My bar for cmc 4 counterspells is pretty high, but this is getting over it no problems. Having the ability to play things on your turn, but not have to tap out is a huge boost to your tempo. This just plays so well with other counterspells. It is a modern take on a classic Magic card. Hopefully this iteration will be less broken than the original.

Old Nivy really seems to have his hands full in this set. Even the chumpy little new guys are picking on him. I guess dragons just aren't what they used to be. To be fair though, I wouldn't normally think of a dragon breathing fire as being the casting of a spell, but heck, what do I know?






This card has a little bit of spice. It is still horribly over costed, but protection from Wrath is something that G/W needs. Vault of the Archangels has proven the power of Deathtouch and Lifelink for the whole team. I just don't see this being a card that really makes the cut. Maybe in Ghave decks. Maybe. I don't really mess around with that kind of nonsense.

Ready does exactly what you would think a card called ready does. It literally PREPARES your troops for a coming assault. What would a card called Willing do? I don't know exactly, but it's not that.








 This doesn't have much of an application for EDH or Cube and it isn't a common so I probably shouldn't even be talking about it. It is a card that I like though. Lobotomy-style effects are really cool and they have taken some fun new shapes as Magic has grown as a game. They are somewhat rare, which adds to their mystique. This is a well designed card. It shows that there is still plenty of design space left for this type of effect. Power scaling, color shifting, messing around with targeting restrictions; it is exciting and I am looking forward to the next time it comes around.







 


This is in my top 5 favorite cards for this set. I dig it. I dig the design concept of stapling two cards together. I dig Counterspell. I dig Silence. I dig that they are making counter spells more fair by making them more expensive, but still keeping the power balance intact by playing with the details. Changes in rarity and added bonuses help keep formats evolving and give designers room to breathe. It's too bad this card is chock full of meaningless flavor text, but at the very least now I can tell people to talk to the hand again. I had really been missing that.









Finally, we get to see the only Fuse card that I think is properly costed. This perfectly combines Shatter and Demistify. I love me some Hullbreach, but I do think it was undercosted, especially for a common. That's probably why I love it so much in the first place.

Solid removal for junk. In the proper colors for these effects. This is a victory for mechanics and doesn't have any glaring flavor inconsistencies. That is all you can really ask for out of a Magic card.









Well that's all folks. There was some good stuff in there if you ask me. I'll be back to finish the final segment by looking at the utility cards and mana producers. GG.