In General: Fate Reforged Pauper Cube Update

I will start out by discussing my expansion slots. I am constantly trying to keep the cube fit and trim, so as to keep the format consistent. I allow myself to add cards to the cube two at a time when a new set is released to limit the growth and force me to use discipline in making cuts. I reserve the right to occasionally trim out any number of cards when I make an update so as to facilitate a new theme, but can't make additions at will.

I cut no cards in this update, but did use both of my expansion slots.

In: Soul Summons

A 2/2 for two is fine, but unexciting. Normally, I would not consider this a good card in my cube format, but I want to make a point of pushing Manifest. This powerful new mechanic creates very interesting gameplay situations and tests player's knowledge of the format, while adding variance.

The fact that this can almost always trade with another Morph or generic two toughness Creature means that card will never be dead, and it may result in significant upside.



In: Sultai Emissary

I was immediately excited by this card when it was spoiled. There are plenty of ways to get value in my cube, but getting value off of your two mana play is a choice moment indeed. There are still plenty of one toughness Creatures in this format and opponent's are not going to want to trade off when you get to replace it with a potentially much higher impact card.

This can be a real game changer when you are behind as well. If you are in a chump blocking situation and get to trade up for a 2/2 you are already doing very well on your investment, but if you ever flip up a Creature off this you are going to eat their attacker for sure. A near-certain 2-for-1 is excellent, but adding the possibility of a 3-for-1 is enough to get me to draft this every time.



In: Formless Nurturing
Out: Sandstorm

This should be pretty clear. If I am moving away from aggressive decks towards midrange, I don't need a card that hoses aggressive decks. 1/1 tokens will naturally be much worse because of the glut of 2/2 Creatures, so Sandstorm is unnecessary. That being said, I think that Formless Nurturing is the worst of the Manifest cards and I can't imagine it staying in the cube for very long. Creatures with three power and/or toughness are easy to come by and at cheaper costs. Hill Giant isn't really a playable card in my cube.

In: Ethereal Ambush
Out: Shambleshark

Shambleshark has been a strong role-player for some time in the cube, so I was hesitant to cut it, but I don't want to have too many U/G Flash Creatures because I want to keep the complexity down. Ethereal Ambush is more expensive and harder to see coming, but it also gives more value. I expect Shambleshark to come back at some point in the future, but for now I want to play with the shiny new card.





In: Write into Being
Out: Font of Fortunes

Font of Fortunes has under-performed my expectations. There are better card draw spells available and it just isn't that hard to pick up quality 2-for-1's. I am also moving the focus of the cube to midrange, Creature-heavy decks with this update, so I don't mind shaving a card draw spell. When you are battling it out with nearly equivalent 2/2's, having more is better. Write into Being will hopefully decide games with subtle edges, rather than raw card advantage.

This decision really wasn't difficult because I only have one 'flex slot' to work with in Blue; I wouldn't consider touching the other cards. I am glad that I didn't have to use one of my expansion slots in this color, that allowed me to use them for other colors that actually need some support. I don't expect Write into Being to stay around for very long, but I want to push Manifest.


In: Gurmag Angler
Out: Dimir House Guard

Dimir House Guard is great and it will be back. Unfortunately, a regenerating 2/3 matches up so well against Morphs that I had to take it out in order to push the theme I want to try out. On a board full of of 2/2's House Guard goes from a role-player to an all-star and that isn't something that I wanted to happen. In the previous edition, Black had no cards that were above cmc 5 so I am happy to add a beefy finisher to this color.

Also, I have two cards that I want to get into Black, so saving an expansion slot for this color is crucial.




In: Lightning Shrieker
Out: Act of Treason

Without support from Dimir House Guard, the Act + sacrifice combo can't happen. So this was a natural cut. Lightning Shrieker will still end most games where Act would be good, but you don't have to give anything back to your opponent at the end of the turn. A 5/5 Flyer is going to be the biggest thing in the sky by far, so I am excited to see this card's potential in action.

Speaking of House Guard and being a 2/3: I considered cutting Flurry of Horns for the same reason, being that 2/3's will become much more powerful in this update. My logic for leaving it is that I am much more comfortable boosting Red's power level than I am Black's. Red has struggled to make good late game decks in my cube and I hope that this change, as well as the next card, will make the color competitive in longer games.


In: Fierce Invocation
Out: Pharagax Giant

I thought long and hard about what to cut for this card. Eventually I settled on Pharagax Giant because there was too much overlap. They are both trying to the same thing and are likely to be good/bad in similar situations. If Manifest plays out to be less fun, and I end up changing the cube dramatically after Dragons of Tarkir is released, expect Giant to come back.

The fully updated list is available HERE. See you next week Zoners.
-GG

Better Deckbuilding: Titania, Protector of Argoth

After about 3-4 games playtesting this Titania brew, I texted Grandpa Growth something to the effect of, "You remember those Green Loam decks we were trying to play three years ago? Titania was the General we were looking for, and it's just too damn good."

Of course, Gramps doesn't get out of bed for anything less than Emrakul unbannings and/or the reprint of Strip Mine, so he gave me his typical, "You need to hold your horses/I have to see this with my own two eyes/Why do you overexaggerate about nonsense all the time?" response, and I brought my exaggerations down to earth, and that was that. In all fairness, the last time I talked like this, the debate was about Ruric Thar, which wasn't earth shattering, but also not as overwhelming as I'd anticipated.

All of this was some time in December, post-C14 release, and so I kept my mouth shut, tested this deck, and held it over as the first Better Deckbuilding of 2015 so I could research and test and tweak and prove that Titania is every bit the unstoppable force I thought she was.

So I'm beyond stoked to talk about Titania today (say that five times fast), not only because this deck is straight up OP, but because I get to talk about value, token-beatdowns, and my absolute favorite part of any Magic deck I've ever made- The Got-Damn Land.

WHY TITANIA? 

I wasn't going to build this deck. My playgroup actually has a pretty traditional precedent set where we make conscious efforts not to override someone else's Legendary Creature as a Commander, and that's what I thought was going to happen. Whenever there's a new product coming, we tend to call "dibs," which is silly, but we do try to be gentlemanly (I would've been more gender neutral, but we're all dudes these days) about it. Another guy did, and though I was chomping at the bit, I had no problem with this. I tend to give my group the first crack at new cards. Decks fall in and out of favor all the time with us, so there is some inheritance of a Commander when another player decides to retire decks.

Right before the release of C14, I'd begun to assemble a Loam deck with Xira Arien, based on a list I'd found scrolling through rogue decks in MTG Salvation. Once I'd gotten that silly-looking little bug in the mail though, I wasn't really feeling the deck design at all. 

This happens a lot more than I admit, but it's not that I'm unwilling to talk about it- there's just not much to say when I scrap a design. I find zero shame in shelving a deck that you aren't consciously and continuously motivated to play and re-tool throughout the deckbuilding process and its ensuing sleeved-up career, so I went back to the drawing board.

Then, I was getting ready to go play some 1v1 and I decided, "Screw it. I'm gonna play Titania with this Loam stuff and see what's up. If I have to take it apart, I will, but I can't help myself." Although the pieces to a Jund Loam deck were together, building around Titania at the helm was probably one of the quickest, most natural decks I've ever assembled. That's what will happen when cards and combos are floating around in the ol' noggin. It was literally world-record timing for me. From choices to fully sleeved, it was less than 40 minutes. That even included a couple Magic Solitaire/Goldfish tests.

So I played it with the idea that if it was any good, I'd be a sport and ask if it was okay.

Sure enough, it was all these things, my courteous takeover was fine, and my badass beatdown Titania deck was born. 

THE STRATEGY

Lands. Lands are our strategy- playing multiple lands per turn, playing a bunch of non-basics for utility- and then of course, making sure they end up in the graveyard with Titania out so we can beat down with 5/3 Elementals. 

I like to categorize my decks, and I think the best phrase for it is "Aggro-Loam Token Engine." With the extra value Titania generates, we are able to increase the value of the Tec Edge/Wasteland/Ghost Quarter/Strip Mine/Dust Bowl suite by grabbing some cards to go on the offensive. With help from cards that give us extra land plays, as well as the creation of an engine via Life from the Loam, we have the strongest mono-Green graveyard deck in current existence, as well as one of the strongest pure-value engines I've ever seen.

THE TECH

Working our way towards the stronger cards, we'll start with the most obscure and "not terrible."

Arcane Spyglass, without Titania, is probably one of the fairest cards. We don't draw a single card until we have 6 mana, and then we actually have less than 6 mana (the assumption being we don't have mana rocks).

It may not be as absurd as some of my other tech (Sylvan Library, Horn of Greed), but I designed the deck with some serious draw power. There are upwards for 45 lands in this deck, and so digging with our extra resources will yield value that isn't always contingent on having a Titania in play.

However, if she happens to be around, which she usually is, we end up with a midrange creature that will probably have some friends. Also, for every three lands we sacrifice, we get a free card.

Creeping Renaissance has been experiencing an actual creeping renaissance in my metagame, and though most people would be content to say, "Shit man, that's awesome," and move on from literal flavor being IRL flavor, I am not one of those souls. There's always more, and I always want it.

In fact, the coolest part about Creeping Renaissance's creeping renaissance is the fact that we're all playing it in decks for COMPLETELY DIFFERENT SET OF PERMANENTS!

Titania, like me and Brick Tamland, loves Land, our Sidisi player loves to make Zombies and get the ones he's milled away, and our Cromat player gets back all his Superfriends. Like eating Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, there's just no wrong way you can go when playing this card. 

When I don't get Lands back with Renaissance, I'm probably looking for all the cards my Bane of Progress has blown up.

We haven't talked about them yet, but because of the nature of the land-driven-token-generating that his happening, I really like the all-in Wrath effects. Most of my creatures are expendable, and the ones that aren't, I'm not attached to them. Titania is the biggest part of the deck, and because of the way she creates value with her ETB trigger, we will usually have plenty of land to cast her.

As far as Bane of Progress goes, he's powered up in design. Nicknamed after a bygone song from a bygone Teen Pop band in the lost years of the mid 90's, "mmmBoP" here is one of the better ways to police the board. I've struggled since C13 to find the right home for him, simply because I didn't like that he got in the way of my stuff, but again, I don't mind it so much here. I can play around or deal without the noncreature permanents I invest in, and when I need a big thing, he is the big thing.

So far, my high score with Bane of Progress is fifteen +1/+1 counters, without Enchanted Evening or Mycosynth Lattice or Doubling Season/Vorel effects. I'd like to keep track of the high scores in this mini-game, so leave me a comment if you've beaten it. 

For the last year and a half or so, I was actually cutting most of my O-Stones out of decks. What I found was that timely spot removal was really getting the job done, so I went with more of that and less Wrath effects.

Disk and Stone are solid options for decks with expendable creatures, or ones with ways to generate advantages out of them. Most of my Disks and Stones are back in decks now where the design supports them better, like Karn, where I can protect them with Darksteel Forge or Soul of New Phyrexia, or my the topic of my next Better Deckbuilding segment, Obzedat, where investing in Obzedat and having an Instant-speed activation ensures my guild leaders are going to take a couple chunks of damage out of a life total.

The best cards in Titania are the ones you don't expect. By now, I'm sure the Internet has gotten real wise to just how insanely powerful Titania can be with this, but it's still worth mentioning we use it, and more importantly, how it's used.

Zuran Orb, much like Sylvan Safekeeper, should be an actual game-ender in this deck. With Titania out, we can always make enough tokens at Instant speed at the end of someone's turn so we can compensate for blockers whilst avoiding most Wrath effects.

Personally, I don't prefer to use this ability sparingly. By that I mean that I have no problem sacrificing most of my lands if need be. Again, this is a little bit bold, but I've found that what separates the mediocre Aggro player from a better one is not the blind risk, and attacking every turn if able- it's knowing how to manipulate your own momentum by preventing Control players from buying extra turns on the damage clock.

Rites of Flourishing has been long recognized as part of the 99 of most Group Hug decks.

I do not support this archetype at all (another article I will be writing for Commander Cast, as I continue to foreshadow future segements), but this is a card I tend to play with a little more caution when I put it in decks.

The thing most people don't realize is that the secret to successful decks with RoF is that the winner is the player whom consistently plays the additional land that this card allows, thereby maximizing its value.

With 45-47 lands in the deck, we can support this card nicely while also using it to dig. In combination with use and re-use of Fetches, Panoramas, and Myriad Landscape, this is usually not about generosity. Sometimes, you have to help others get ahead so you can. This is clearly what's going on here.

There's a pretty extensive Land Destruction package in the deck. With Crucible, and access to cards with extra land plays, there is plenty of opportunity to play a heavy resource denial strategy.

The cool thing about the Strip Mines and Ghost Quarters is that we have additional options for targets in our little Loam engine. We can control our opponent's lands, and in the process, we gain extra creatures.

What's cool about Ghost Quarter is that grabs more land out of the deck when we do this. The value, again, is just overflowing here.

One of the obvious includes in the deck are cards with Landfall triggers. Of course, most people will be holding up their removal for Avenger of Zendikar and Rampaging Baloths, which can get really out of hand.

Grazing Gladehart, on the other hand, has a really nice home here in the deck because of the bigger targets and tokens in the deck. Before our little Antelope meets his end, the opportunity to gain upwards of 10+ life is significant.

The last card I want to talk about is Arashi, the Sky Asunder.

Although the art for this creature looks like it's lacking one, there is plenty of punch here.

Captain Sisay players can probably attest to the excellent utility Channel adds to its deck design.

In Titania, I replicate this a little bit with my Time of Need package. It's exponentially smaller, but there's only three creatures I really need at various stages of the game: Azusa, Kamahl, and Arashi.

Green typically has some issues with flying, and this is a way I've found to get to my answer, should I not get my go-to Silklash Spider.

Per usual, here's the full list. Feel free to drop me a comment, +1, or whatever.

I Love Land- Titania EDH

We've got a new look, some new people, and I'm pretty excited to be inching towards Year 3 of TGZ. Thanks for making it happen!

Pass.
-UL

In General: Banned and Restricted Update

Hello an welcome back to In General. I am Grandpa Growth and here on Sundays, we cover just about anything and everything relating to Magic: the Gathering. I promised at the end of the Fate Reforged Set Review that I would be discussing the top commons from the new set in my Pauper Cube update article. That will still absolutely happen, but I am pushing it back a week because we got some incredible news in the Magic world.

If you haven't already seen it, the new banned and restricted list has been announced. You can read all about it here: B&R Update. This is huge news friends: several cards were banned, some were unbanned, and multiple formats were affected. Let's walk through the changes and I will give you my take on each card.

Modern

Banned: Treasure Cruise

This is about as predictable as the sunrise, but I still think it is worth talking about. Treasure Cruise was abusive and had created a stranglehold. It singlehandedly forced about a dozen decks completely out of the format. Tight aggro-control lists require specific, high-synergy cards to coalesce into a solid game plan. These decks often need some cheap card draw or cantrips to glue the deck together. Without Treasure Cruise, Delver really isn't going to be a deck. This opens up lots of space in the format for decks that were more easily disrupted by Delver's cheap counterspells.



Banned: Dig Through Time

Although the debate was not unanimous. no one should be surprised to see Dig get buried along with Cruise. Delver decks would easily just switch the cards. They would be worse, but still strong. The trouble is that a slightly weaker Delver deck couldn't beat things like Scapeshift or Twin, who still get to freely abuse Dig. Banning Dig Through Time will make it so that Twin, UWR, Tron, and Scapeshift are back to their pre-Khans status in terms of power level and metagame share.





Banned: Birthing Pod

This caught many by surprise, myself included. I thought that Pod would be banned a year ago, but it wasn't. Since then, I just assumed that Wizards was endorsing, or at least accepting, Pod as the dominant deck in the format. The argument had been brought up that Cruise and Dig HAD to go, but then we were just left with the same format that existed pre-Khans (plus Siege Rhino). Many people thought that this would not lead to an interesting Pro Tour format, thus the banning of Birthing Pod.

Those who paid attention to the announcement of PT Fate Reforged will probably remember that it was slated to be a Standard constructed portion. This was later changed, as announced by Aaron Forsythe himself. This seemed a little fishy at the time, but I didn't think anything of it until now. The reason for the change is clear and it shows that Wizards has been leaning towards banning Pod for a long time now.



Unbanned: Golgari Grave-Troll

There is no Dredge deck in Modern and there won't be one even with this being legal. Troll was pre-preemptively banned when Modern was announced as a new constructed format. The thinking was that they wanted to differentiate this new format from old extended and restricting the power of non-interactive combo decks like Dredge and Dark Depths was a clear first step. I like the unbanning of Grave-Troll because I am not sure it should really be on the list in the first place.

As it stands Grave-Troll really can't have an impact on the format by itself. Dredge could be a problem with the right cards, but Dread Return is the key card in the archetype. Bridge From Below and Narcomoeba are cute, but there are a dozen or more high quality sweepers to solve that problem. E.g. Slagstorm, Drown in Sorrow, Wrath of God. This would only ever be a problem if you could Dread Return a Flamekin Zealot.


Legacy

Banned: Treasure Cruise

Again, no surprise here. The card is simply too powerful in concert with a critical mass of cheap threats, disruption, and burn. Importantly though, Dig Through Time has not been tested as rigorously in Legacy and could play a role in certain decks like Miracles, given an opportunity. An opportunity which the card will get it seems.


Unbanned: Worldgorger Dragon

This isn't as clear cut to me. This card was crazy and abusive and let to degenerate games with degenerate decks. In the announcement article on the mothership, this change was explained by the fact that any reanimator decks would simply rather reanimate Griselbrand than Worldgorger anyway. I am not so sure that it true though. Griselbrand almost always draws enough cards to find a combo finish, which is tough to beat, but that only speaks to the idea of banning that card.

In my opinion, the choice to bring back Dragon shouldn't be based only on the fact that Griselbrand is more appealing. Why would you unban a card that can instantly create a two-card infinite mana combo as early as turn one? Is that what we want to happen in Legacy? Force of will and Daze help keep unfair decks in check, but I don't want Wizards putting me in the position of choosing between only two decks: broken or Blue.


Vintage

Restricted: Treasure Cruise

I like this decision. Vintage is the broken format where no one cares what you are doing as long as it is awesome. Treasure Cruise was a little too strong, but things never really get banned in Vintage, which I like.

As you know I am a huge fan of Pauper and compete regularly on MTGO. I was expecting to see Treasure Cruise banned in Pauper, but it wasn't. I think that the format is diverse and healthy, but many people complain that Delver was already the best deck before Treasure Cruise and now there is no stopping it.

That is dramatic, but I am surprised about this no-call. It could be that Wizards doesn't really care if the format is imbalanced right now because there is no premier level events in Pauper. That would be unfortunate, but I expect it to be at least a little true.


Unrestricted: Gifts Ungiven

Okay. Well that is cool andall, but I am not sure it matters too much. Don't get me wrong, Gifts is a totally broken card and it leads to many truly miserable games. It often means that you just can't lose when you cast it. We all know what the card is capable of.

My thinking here is that there are cheaper ways to win in Vintage, so why pay more? Most decks weren't even taking advantage of their ability to play the first copy of Gifts, so that tells me they probably didn't want the second, third, or fourth.

That's all for today Zoners. As promised next week I will have the Fate Reforged Pauper Cube update article. See you then.

-GG

Calling All Autobots!

Happy Thor's Day Zoners! 

We got a few pieces of mischief I'd like to manage today. First of all, if you're looking for an article from me about what I like to talk about, here's my "Trick" Voltron piece that featured on CommanderCast yesterday. Check it out, leave me a line in the comments if you've got questions or an inspiration.

CommanderCast- Trick Voltron

In other news, let's get to the title for this article. Me and Gramps are in the market for some people that want to talk about Commander content and general Magic news. We're also gearing up for a big return of your favorite tech segment, The Stack, and we're looking for guests for that too.

This message goes out to all Autobots, particularly writers and avid Commanders looking for a soapbox.

So if you have a cool idea for an ongoing segment, or you're interested in chatting about cards, shoot me an email at unclelanddrops@gmail.com. We're here. We're waiting.

You can look forward to next week's feature, where I get to talk about the most Land Dropping Land Drops deck I've designed to date- Titania, Protector of Argoth. 

Alright. Mischief Managed!

-UL

Fate Reforged Set Review: Utility and Mana

Welcome to the final installment of The General Zone's Review of Fate Reforged. If you missed any of the previous articles, you can find them linked here:

Legends Part 1
Legends Part 2
Threats
Answers

In today's segment we will finish up our review by discussing every thing that is left: Utility cards and mana producers.

A mana card is very simple. It either produces mana, fixes colors, or puts additional lands into play. Easy.

A utility card is harder to pin down. Utility cards add flexibility to your deck. They expand your functionality or your resources. Good examples include Glorious Anthem and Ponder. Obviously this category is diverse. It is a catch-all. Let's see what we are working with in Fate Reforged.

I am only one paragraph into this article and I am already confused. The dragons are attacking the humans. They are besieging the Abzan's sandsteppe citadel. Why then, is the Dragon's ability defensive (preventing potential attacks) and the Khan's ability offensive (boosting the stats of Creatures just before you attack). Yet another flavor fail. The conveyance of concept on this card just isn't satisfactory.

The abilities themselves are not bad, but neither one is really powerful enough to justify play in a good Commander deck. This is a particularly bad time for a cycle of Enchanments. Last year's God cards and Dictates, as well as the recent reprinting of Doubling Season, has pushed the value of Enchantment removal to all time highs.



Mastery of the Unseen has a lot of hidden value. It is ostensibly an expensive source of 2/2 dorks. This is still completely reasonable. Compare to Mobilization and Heliod. The bonus here is the ability to flip up a Manifest(ed) Creature. That turns your 2/2 into an entire extra card. Combine that with the fact that this will gain you 5+ life over the course of most games, and we are talking about one spicy little engine.






I play Merfolk Looter in a couple of decks. No, I am not joking. Looting is actually a tremendous boon to any draw. Commander decks are full of expensive cards, situational removal, finishers, and combo pieces. The ability to smooth out your draw will let you set up more powerful late game plays. Increasing your access to removal and lands will help you reliably survive to cast your fatties. Basically, its everything that a control deck wants and it is slightly more resistant to removal than traditional looters.

As far as I am concerned, this card doesn't have a second mode.

I love taking extra turns; the effect is just so powerful. However, I do not love jumping through hoops. You have to Delve away six cards just to make this the same price as a regular Time Warp. A cost of 6UU would have been pretty insane, but the third Blue sends this card to the doghouse. It is disappointing that the design team couldn't find a middle ground.

I am very disappointed with the flavor of this card. Sarkhan literally goes to the past in this set. Why is he not in the art, DOING JUST THAT?! Secondly, He has traveled backwards, with the intention of changing the past. Delve as a mechanic is the perfect conduit for doing that. You are literally going through the things that have been used previously in the game and GETTING RID OF THEM.

Cards in graveyards have previously been used to represent ancestors, memories, and sometimes literally events in the past within the flavor of the game. The only excuse that I am willing to accept is that the character pictured in this art is somehow accidentally brought forward in time because of Sarkhan's actions. If she doesn't feature prominently in future stories or cards, then this will have been a complete waste.

The name of this card is perfect, no complaints there.


If you are going to choose Khans, you overpaid by a significant margin. Oversold Cemetary is appropriately (not really, but oh well) costed at 1B. If you are choosing Dragons in 1-v-1, you should be playing Sorin Markov instead. Combining these two thoughts, I recommend that you don't play this card.

Weird card alert! As I alluded to in my article last Sunday, this is one of my favorite cards in the set. It is going to create a very interesting dynamic in multiplayer games and is sure to see quite a bit of play. It is unfortunate that this is Red. It is also unfortunate that this isn't great in 1v1 games. Still though, this card is going to be a ton of fun.

I want to briefly dive into the psychology of playing this card. You are going to activate it asap to get your free cards. Done deal. You pick your favorite opponent to give it to and then they are most likely to cash it for some quick cards as well...but then what happens? Do they give it back? That is the big question.

This card rewards cooperation and political alliances, to be sure. The interesting thing to me is, the first person to jump off the gravy train can really screw over the other one. If I give it to you, you give it back, and then I give to to yet another person, I have four cards, but each of my opponent's only have two. In any game with an odd number of people (especially three) this gets very risky. You play it, but then have to give away control to an opponent, who can screw you over and start their own card draw treaty with a third party. This will result in them both getting way ahead of the table and leaving you in the dust. If you are going to play this, make sure you have someway to stop it from getting out of control.


This card ends up being very similar to Chandra Pryomaster, but just worse. You are locked into whatever you choose and you only get to ping stuff AFTER you lose a Creature. I would say that Chandra is already pretty mediocre and a further reduction in her power and flexibility is just not worth playing.

Again, massive flavor fail. What do either of these abilities have to do with what is going on in the art or the mechanics of these groups represented? Am I expected to believe that the dragon's siege strategy is to fly overhead, get killed, and then fall on top of the opposing army thereby injuring some of the soldiers? That doesn't sound like the tactics of an ancient, hyper-intelligent, apex predator of colossal size.


We have finally done it. We got a card that makes some sort of flavor sense, even if it is only on one half of the card. A new dragon shows up to the battle and they get to immediately scrap with somebody else's dude.

Unfortunately, this card sucks. If you choose Khans, you would have way rather had a Garruk Wildspeaker instead. It would allow you much more flexibility in which colors of mana you get and also provide other options with his minus abilities. In point of fact though, this does add mana on BOTH of your main phases, which could potentially be a difference maker, however unlikely.

If you pick Dragons then you are setting yourself up for failure. Green has a relative dearth of quality Flying Creatures and this ability isn't attractive enough to make me want to play under-powered cards.


At Green's higher rarities we see some quality pieces of card advantage and recursion. There are some high points in this card's design: It is an Instant, it doesn't require targeting of specific cards, and it conveniently dodges effects that remove your graveyard by giving you new choices during the resolution of the spell. Someone cracking a Tormod's Crypt in response to your Grim Discovery is an effective counter. Sudden Reclamation is still likely to get SOMETHING even if your graveyard is empty when it starts to resolve. I am not sure that this is worth doubling the cost of the card, but I think that it is still worth looking at, particularly in budget lists.

This land isn't exactly exciting. In Commander, virtually any nonbasic land that you include in your deck is going to tap for any relevant color anyway. Some five color decks, like say: Scion of the Ur-Dragon, might be interested, but I don't foresee this card making much of a splash in the format.


Final note: I left out a great deal of cards in this section of the review because I thought that many of them were just stone unplayable in the current format. If you feel a case could be made for one of those cards, strike up a conversation in the comments.

By all descriptions, this set looks pretty sweet. I am excited to play with the new cards in Limited and Commander. I hope you enjoyed last weekend's prerelease events and as always, leave your feedback on the review articles in the comments below. I will see you again on Sunday!

-GG

Fate Reforged: The Dragon Legends

Heya. Landdrops here, and so is the second half of the Legendary Creature review for Fate Reforged.

If you missed my chit chat about the Khans, you can find it here.
Fate Reforged Legendary Creature Part I: Khans

If you haven't seen Grandpa Growth's Threats and Answers review, they are here.
Fate Reforged Set Review: Threats
Fate Reforged Set Review: Answers

Now it's time to indulge our big, splashy, inner-Timmys because Zoners, we got a Legendary Dragon cycle in Standard for the first time since Planar Chaos. 

With the ascendance of Xenagos in Born of the Gods, I think we can all agree that Gruul colors got a significant addition to their perennially lackluster color pie contributions.

At minimum, Atarka extends the trend, and feels very exciting. With access to ramp and Haste, I like her chances. Sure, we have Karrthus, Rith, and Prossh sharing colors, but with less options comes more consistency, allowing this deck to make Dragonstorm dreams a little more realistic. 

With a huge target on Atarka, we can probably pave the way for the plethora of Dragons in the other 99. Overall, I like the design. 4 toughness gives you little incentive to sit back and play defense, economically reinforcing what these colors do best: face-smashing.

Dromoka is a tough card to justify. With very few actual Dragons, let alone playable ones, triggering the Bolster ability is going to be a tough one. I mean, I guess you can 'Shrek and Donkey' this little combo with Mirror Entity, but I don't know anyone who doesn't just point the first Doom Blade they can at that nutty Changeling.

That said, I don't hate this card, but it's probably not going to be Commanding any powerful decks. I could see it supporting Sigarda and Captain Sisay in Selesnya's 'most powerful beat-stick decks' though. 5/5's for five with the ability to get bigger should help. 

Also, is Bolster so strong that Dromoka should get robbed of a third ability? I'd love to know what happened in development that got its third ability nerfed. For me, this is a nice ripe place to show us the humble beginnings of some of these +1/+1 counter "lords" we saw in the Abzan clan. I don't know what ability she would feature, but it would've been cool to see a little more going on here. 

Of all the new Generals, of all the Dragons, Kolaghan is by far my pick of the Legendary litter from Fate Reforged. I absolutely love this card. 

Archwing Dragon was one of my favorite cards from Avacyn Restored, and a fun aggressive feature in the early days of my Animar deck. I look forward to using the developed version, Dash, on some of the creatures that come out next Friday.

Dash as a mechanic is the primary source of my fondness for Kolaghan, but I also like its chances with this attack trigger. Not only does it increase the momentum of aggressive red decks, it's also in a Dragon-friendly set of colors, which gives us opportunity for aggressive expansion. Combine this with the opportunity to protect our General, and I think we've got ourselves a stew going. 

I know it says, "Oh-Jew-Tie" on the top of this card, but I really, really want to call this guy "Sky Lapras."

For me, the mana cost is the hardest part to digest. Still, I think it's a mountain worth climbing. Dragons are few, but there's a handful of clones and relevant Changelings that can be played early on to help set up the big Blizzard beats that 'Sky Lapras' swings with. It's a solid threat with clear control support in its colors. You're gonna want to let a few Wrath effects get played before you start slamming people with our Flying Frost Titan friend here, but I can see a nice niche control deck built around this.

As a support card, Scion combo decks are probably going to give Ojutai the biggest immediate return on investment. I also like its chances in the Narset/Dragonstorm deck I see in my metagame, but I'm not seeing this is as a good support card in general. If you like the long game, I think this is a better card to build around than it is in a deck. I think I can sell people on the nice artwork, the pseudo Frost Titan ability, and the potential for the late-late.

Our last card is probably the weakest card in the cycle, in both terms of design and power. 

It's pretty terrible, but Hexproof and Flying, these are things I like and we've seen worse in the last couple years (COUGH it's not Emmara Tandris), so I'm not going to complain, but just ponder on where I think this could've been improved. 

The power and toughness is weird, but not totally unusable. It makes sense to me that a card named "Drifting Death" would be a little more "combat weak" and "defensively reinforced."

7 toughness provides some serious blocking power against a lot of big creatures. This is where I think the design went wrong: not necessarily in the size of Silumgar's butt, but how it interacts with an attack trigger.

Imagine how cool this card would be if the triggered ability read, "Whenever a creature you control blocks or is blocked by a Dragon, that creature gets -1/-1 for each Dragon you control." 

GG and I have long talked about how we like and appreciate it in those few moments when Wizards demonstrates the confidence to break cycle theme. Embracing card inequality seems counterintuitive, but it is the best way to ensure card design quality. Aesthetic symmetry makes cards easier to develop, and keeping design restraints does provide for easier development, but that shouldn't prevent the team from knowing when rules are meant to be broken. I would've really liked to have seen a little more power here, something that gave this creature a little more momentum to swing around like the other dragons in the cycle. 

Well that's all I got. Be sure to check GG's last installment on Tuesday in anticipation of the big release this week. Fate Reforged looks super-sweet and I can't wait to start playing all this new stuff.

-UL

Fate Reforged Set Review: Answers

Welcome back to The General Zone's Review of Fate Reforged! If you missed the previous installment you can catch up here: Threats.

In today's segment we will be covering all of the answer cards in the set. An answer is something that you use to deal with your opponent's threats. Answers stop or delay your opponent from winning the game. Removal, counterspells, discard effects, graveyard hate, these are all examples of answers, but there are many more out there. This category comprises many different types of cards, but the important information to note when you want to evaluate an answer is what you are meant to use it against. Context is always important, but more so with answers than with threats. Let's take a look at what Fate Reforged has to offer.

This certainly does a lot, but there are many downsides too. We have seen multiple mass Reanimate effects in the last few sets and many of them are just better than this. Immortal Servitude and Return to the Ranks both come to mind as direct competitors to this card.

The problem with rally is that you will never get to attack with the Creatures, so you can't win the game with this. You also lose access to those Creatures when they go to exile. You would rather they stayed in your graveyard at that point. Despite how strong this card looks, I just don't think that it is good enough to edge out its competitors.

Reprisal isn't good enough to play. There are just better removal spells. A Reprisal that allows you to counter opposing removal spells is much more reasonable. I think that this is worth looking into, but will probably fall short. This has flexibility, which I like, but flexibility doesn't always translate directly to power.










Hands down, this is one of the most exciting cards in the set. Blue needs high quality spot removal and this fits the bill. It reminds me of both Chaos Warp and Pongify. 95% of the time it will be better than both of those. It always costs two mana, but gives the opponent a colorless 2/2 instead of a Green 3/3. A 2/2 is probably worse than a random non-Creature permanent in Commander, including lands, so this sounds promising.

In the other 5% of cases, the times where Chaos Warp really hurts you, Reality Shift still hurts you. Potentially more even, but also potentially less. This card will lead to some funny stories, but most of the time it will do its job without burning you.



I have actually seen a few dragon theme decks in my time, which is all the incentive that I would need to play this. If your commander is a dragon, or you have 5+ dragons in your deck, you will probably be favored when you cast this. I think even the potential to Wrath the board and leave you with just one good threat is enough to win most games.

The flavor of this card is pretty awesome. It shows an iconic moment in the games story while tying together the time travel plot with gusto. The name suggests that this moment in time will have far reaching consequences. This is how you make a flavorful card. I do wish that there were a time travel flavored card that actually represented whatever spell or ritual Sarkhan undertook to get to this point though. I want to see what a reverse Time Warp effect would look like in Magic.

Fleshbag Marauder sees occasional play as a cheap and aggressive sacrifice effect. There are plenty of other cards that can fill this role, but I wouldn't be surprised if I saw a handful of these in play over the next year. Beyond that though, there isn't much to see here.










If you must die today...take all your friends with you? It is strange to me that the flavor text on this card is from the human perspective, but the spell being cast makes me think that the dragon is the one who is doing the arcbonding. That is a verb right?

Also, this card is pretty horrible. There are many other Red cards like this, where things have to go very right in order for you to get anything out of it, and it is always worse than Wrath of God. It is also Red, which we know is worse than White in this format.




I have been waiting for this card for a long time. I finally got it, but it is very disappointing. I always thought that this card could exist and be completely reasonable, but I was thinking of it costing 1G or maybe 1GG and you get to choose one or two. Naturalize is a common and it has stayed relevant through the last few years, but it is definitely underpowered nowadays. It only sees play in limited and then only in sideboards. It basically never gets main decked. If you are designing cards for your limited environment, I would want you to design sideboard cards that are good enough to be played in the main deck a certain percentage of the time. Constructed level sideboard cards should look cheaper, more narrow, and more hateful. While the limited cards need to be applicable enough that you don't have to be embarrassed to play them, otherwise they are just garbage that clogs up your packs.

As far as Commander goes, this is basically always going to kill something that is on the board. The problem is that it is a little expensive and it does nothing against a God card. Gods are slightly less popular than they were last year, but it is still a benchmark of the format. Your non-Creature removal has to interact with God cards.




I don't normally like Fog effects in Commander. They just don't do enough to justify using a whole card. Cards are always at a premium and they are by far the most important resource you have in any given game. Now, if you have a card that makes any single attack by your opponent into a complete embarrassment...that card I might consider playing.

If the Ferocious is taken care of, this is as good as any fight card, but it also saves you some damage. That seems pretty cool. Of course, the question must be raised, how reliable are your 4/4's and whether you want to expose yourself to spot removal in response to this. It shouldn't be a problem for many decks, but these requirements will limit the usefulness of the card.

Speaking of fight spells, Grim Contest is a new one. I won't say that it is a good one, or even a bad one, but I can confirm that it is real. If you're still playing Doran, and you are upset that you can't have a fight spell that works for you, now you can stop complaining. Congratulations! I cannot recommend playing this in any other deck.

That is all for today guys. Let us know in the comments what you think about the new set! On Sunday I will be back with my final segment of the review in which I will cover the remaining cards from Fate Reforged!