More Theros Stuff: Gods and Monsters, for Scrying out loud!

Zoners, Planeswalkers, whatever you consider yourself, welcome to yet another Theros article.

Good(?) Gods, It's Time to Scry

So GG has talked a lot about the Theros set and UL mentioned a whole lot of legendary stuff, so Thassa's already been talked about quite a bit.

Still, she strikes my fancy. I know she's not the most blue card out there, but I like what she bring to the table though. I've had many a deck focused around library manipulation in order to get the most out of cards like Djinn of Wishes, Conundrum Sphinx, and Future Sight.

Planning future plays is helpful and a big part of my style as a Blue player. In a "God" creature type, I expect some foresight and mystical fortune-teller-esque abilities. Thassa delivers.

Scry 1 doesn't sound like much, but it can prevent an annoying land to get in the way of that crucial part of your combo, or get an annoying non-land out of the way so you can get another land drop in.

Other cards in this set that make me happy:

This soldier is a 2/2 for two, already a good start. I mentioned last time that I wasn't all that impressed with Heroic, but then I saw this card.

I'm still not going to say that I like Heroic, but in terms of this card, it kind of makes sense. The more spells cast on him, the stronger he gets and the more cards you get to preview/stack in your favor. His trigger makes him a hero in my book.




Now here's a little something nice. Control with a touch of control.

Counter spells have seemed to get better (for the most part) in recent MTG sets. Render Silent was my favorite from Ravnica, but Syncopate was another good one from that block, and who could forget the ubiquitous Dissipate reprint from Innistrad.

Now, Dissolve here isn't as powerful of a counter spell, but it does two things that I like, and at not much of an extra cost. Why Cancel when you can counter and look ahead at your own deck?

For fans of Condescend, this card may be laughable, but I say that it's worth putting in a deck alongside the beloved Condescend. Don't settle on one over the other I say; have your cake and slightly less appealing sweet bread with it.




This card will conclude my ramblings about the benefits of the Scry mechanic.

What I see in this card is a less powerful, but cheaper and easily repeatable Sphinx of Uthuun. The purpose of Fact or Fiction is to get card advantage and choice. The purpose of this is to stack the library so that future card draws are more fruitful. It is loosely comparable.

What makes this click for me is the beauty of Scrying each attack. High toughness and evasion will let it attack as much as possible.

The card's first ability is also a point of interest. Discarding a card to give it Hexproof until end of turn seems like a great idea, but tap it as well? Maybe not the best choice that Wizards has made, but balance is necessary for limited so trade-offs are inevitable.

"Ooooh... Look at that Big Scary Monster"

Monstrosity is a new keyword which has caught some attention. There's even a duel deck Heroes vs. Monsters out, which, you guessed it, features a preview of Heroic and Monstrosity as new mechanics.

This mechanic is almost more confusing than Heroic to me, though, so I'm uneasy about what types of shenanigans this will bring to MTG. I have to ask myself: What exactly makes a creature Monstrous? Is it the fact that it gets X counters on it? What if it loses the counters? Will it function in a similar manner to Undying if it does lose Monstrous along with the counters? Why does it cost so damn much? You get the gist of my concerns.

As expected with anything dealing with classical Greek literature, these monsters have a nice mythological flavor to them (in name only at least).

Here, we have a new kraken to add to the Blue late-game beat-down cards. It's like a more powerful Dungeon Geists without flying. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Turn 6 it can come out, and two turns later you could theoretically have a 10/10.

That may be cool, but you're still spending a lot of mana on it. 14 mana to be exact, for those who, like me, aren't the best at arithmetic.

Is it worth it? For me, that's hard to answer. I can't justify this card until I see it in use, but based on how it works, it will have all the faults that Dungeon Geists or any of those other "tap creature as long as you control ________" cards. It's too easy to get around. And without Islandwalk, Unblockable, or any other offensive boost, it's a rather poor excuse for a kraken creature.

If I'm spending 14 mana on a sea monster, I want it to be totally awesome, which means it could at least have Shroud so no one can blow it up with a kill spell or Trample so that it can still deal damage against puny blockers.

But anyway, what do I know about monsters?

Until next time Planeswalkers, just keep playing and whenever someone drops a monstrosity, just kick it in the nards.

-VJ