Dragons Of Tarkir Review: The Legends

Welcome to the Ultimate Set Review of Ultimate Destiny Zoners!

(If you don't get the above Pop Culture reference, or do, and just want to watch the ULTIMATE SHOWDOWN OF ULTIMATE DESTINY again, click here!)

Grandpa Growth and I are excited to announce that we will be conglomerating our tasty scoops of insight and other delectable diatribes over to CommanderCast, one of the hottest corners of the Internet for all things concerning our favorite Kitchen Table Sandbox format.

GG and I really appreciate our Zoner Support, and we're making the switch to our new dot-com home not only because we're ambitious, but also because it helps us improve the content quality and quantity we can get to you. It's a real no-brainer to create a one-stop shop, and in this case, one great site that we can all devote our time and energy into is going to be better than just CommanderCast AND The General Zone.

We talked about trying to balance both, to continue to write under TGZ while we move over, but ultimately it just makes sense to keep the break clean, without too much transition or too much sentimentality and sadness due to sudden abruptness.

We want to go out with a bang, and by riding in on the "Set Review" Horse that GG walked in on, doing the Set Review over the next week and a half, we can do this without too many seams showing.

So let's kick things off with the Legends from Khans' last block, who happen to have never known that they were Khans in the first place.


So let's work our way from superfluous to spicy.

Here's Surrak, a shadow of his formerly super-fast, Instant-speed self, but still Formidable. Yeah I went there. I'm getting the bad jokes out of me too.

In judging Surrak's second spin around the time travel wheel, there's one REALLY obvious change that sticks out- his favorite flavor of ice cream.

Seems to me like he went from being very Neopolitan, or even a Cookie Dough man, to being straight VANILLA.

Now, there's nothing wrong with Vanilla. In fact, I too would prefer it to Chocolate, but let's be real. No one wants Vanilla as Magic flavor.

Even the FLAVOR text is too simple for its own good. Surrak we know that great-great-great-great-great-great-grandma Yasova bowed down to Funky Cold Atarka, but that doesn't mean you have to be a Mindless Automaton! There's more to life than being really, really, ridiculously Formidable- ask Derek Zoolander if you don't believe me.

Anyway, I like haste. This is a neat outlet for Green in Commander, that can be better than Concordant Crossroads if you're playing bigger, single threats, and don't get wide in combat. Animar could enjoy not paying full price for this too. Overall, Surrak is irrelevant to tokens, but really good for decks not playing Xenagos, the Party God, that are looking to do throw Hipster beatsticks at their opponents.

Talk about flavor foul double standards. While autistic Narset's planeswalker spark gets ignited despite exposing the hypocrisy and result of Sarkhan's selfishness, Anafenza gets killed for literally being the EXACT SAME THING relative to her clan.

Her reward? Murder. I guess Narset didn't do anything outright, but we're basically painted the same picture in Anafenza's flavor text as we are when Sarkhan visits Taigam and learns Narset was exiled.

I guess we can say my disappointment lies in my allegiance to Abzan colors, but I guess I'm also disappointed that Narset goes OP and lose Legendary relevance while Anafenza is tied to a tree.

No amount of beautiful art can really make me forget the sadness and confusion I have in the storyline, or really the flavor- and this art, is insanely gorgeous. I'm not usually one who likes low contrast, or artwork that tends to have too much orange, but the depth and luster to this work create so much dimension, and really make it pop. From a flavor perspective, the Remembrance, Daghatar's spiked mace filled with a bunch of former leaders and ancestors, were also this luster-y rust color. So I guess that's about the most consistent we get here.

Dromoka, as the story goes, made Daghatar and his people renounce necromancy, the black part of the Abzan clan, shattering said Rememberance over a thousand years ago. So on top of the question of, "Why isn't Anafenza black, considering that she is a part of this old guard necromancy?" I'm also asking the question, "How did Anafenza EVEN LEARN of this part of the Abzan's history AT ALL?" Like I said before- it's not like she found scrolls and learned some secret truth or anything. If she did, maybe she wouldn't be living in a tree.

Overall, I'm definitely more likely to play a card like White Anafenza, but it probably wouldn't be good. In fact, I'm more likely to play Daghatar with just White cards and other colored mana to use his ability than I am to feature Anafenza as the leader of any fighting 99. However, I do love Spirit tribal, and it's just as good for Soldier lovers too.

My love of goofy stuff knows no bounds, and here, with low-man Zurgo, this is a card that teases my inner-innovator.

Much like Kolaghan, the Dash mechanic is what is appealing here. A 2/2 for two is really fair, but being able to protect our Commander with Dash whilst also abusing the super-cool Hero's Blade, Cloudstone Curio, Purphoros, and all of Mono-Red's other goodies like Ogre Battledriver really appeals to me.

Additionally, I think the flavor and story behind Zurgo is probably the most reasonable. The polarity is nice- While is previous version was strong, and all things capable of "beating by example," we have this fantastically wimpy, pathetic Orc who doesn't know how to do anything other than provide sound effects for AC/DC songs.

This card probably shouldn't be leading any Mono-Red decks, but I'd sure love to see the lists that try. I'm intrigued by the mission to make a cool, compelling version of this deck.

Well, HOLY FREAKING FRIJOLES, BATMAN!

Here's the noodley-boodley-est power card of the set, folks. Sidisi's undead corpse is probably the best of the Legends formerly known as Khans. Take back the noodley-boodley thing. We've reached the spicy meatball of the group.

Not only does she just slot into every deck, her Exploit trigger is basically a thing already in Mono-Black Commander- the "Tutors on Tutors.dec" deck.

The conditional nature of Exploit is mind-bogglingly powerful, and we're all supposed to know it. While I'm not a big fan of boisterous cards like this, I have a feeling I'll be playing this somewhere, not as a Commander, but just as an excellent part of the 99.

For me, it compares favorably with my #1 favorite tutor in Mono-Black- Increasing Ambition. I might not be netting an extra card immediately, but the ability to go get cards that generate more card advantage, in addition to investing in a creature with Deathtouch, feels like it will surely pay dividends for every Black and Black-included deck everywhere.

Alright, I've built up the suspense, and it's time to talk Dragons. Once again, we'll go from silly to spicy.

The first thing I do love, across all five of the Dragons, is this Elder typing. As a fan of Magic History, this is nostalgic, and all parts a silly marketing ploy for people who play Commander and still call it EDH. Still it makes sense from a flavor perspective, they were able to do it at a time and place in Magic where everything fits right in terms of block format reconstruction. This part is fine, and so is, for the most part, the generic-ness of each Dragon's name. They kept it simple, and I don't think it would've mattered anyway.

Where this cycle breaks down for me, however, is not just in individual design, but in the structured planning that gets revealed to us in the "present" set. Having the benefit of listening to several sets Mark Rosewater's "Drive to Work" Podcast, I feel that I have a significantly better grasp on the direction of Magic design. That doesn't mean I know everything- heck, I don't know any more than you about what's in the next set, or the upcoming Standard landscape- but I understand design from the mind of a person who is working in this department.

Looking forward and planning ahead has its advantages. This has changed a lot over the last 5-6 years in design, since Alara block, where alignment among Design, Development, and Creative has resulted in cleaner, clearer defined roles so that the experience of a set and mechanics match storyline and create for a full immersion of Magic culture and enhanced game play, from the Kitchen Table to one streaming on Twitch.tv as a Feature Match.

However, following the rules that have established this great age in Magic also comes with consequences and drawbacks. If we relate this to the color pie, it is the innate "Green-ness" conflict that creates the Elder Dragon problem I'm talking about. With rules, there is civilization. With no rules, there is natural order, an innate, organic sense of design.

My argument, I suppose, is that both the Dragonlords and their younger versions printed in Fate Reforged were not given enough natural, rule-breaking consideration in design. This is because both cycles were probably made at the same time, with the kind of caution and conservativism that adheres to the "New World Order" concerning the design rubric. Yes, we don't want to make one set of colors WAYY better than the others- yet, it still happens, and even Mark Rosewater will admit that. They have to have cards that are better so that people will figure out what to play and what not to.

What you'll see is a pattern of criss-crossing, flip-flopping in my review, beginning with Kolaghan, in a second. Where FRF Kolaghan felt like a really fun, really strong card, the Elder Dragon version leaves a lot to be desired in our format. Haste is great, and comparatively, this Elder Dragon aged very well if we compare her to the only other Elder cycle we had before. Still, I'm not sure I see the purpose of that third ability in any format other than Casual, considering that 4RB is a hefty price to pay for anything in Modern, and where she is relevant, there are only two decks right now that make that third ability relevant- Shadowborn Apostles and Relentless Rats.

I'm not saying it's not a cool or compelling ability- just not relevant. Maybe that will change, and we can't see it right now. Or maybe it is in fact as lame as we see. I believe that Kolaghan, being older, should "age," but I just don't feel that this was a result of the natural development of the character, so much as it was these rules of nerfing and not-nerfing to prevent too much OP action going on- which is weird, considering how quickly this set is going to rotate out of Standard.

One of the cool things I noticed in examining the Dragon artwork is just how nice Creative handled the differentiation of Dragons. With so many, it had to be done, and the way they did this exceeded my expectations.

Original Atarka was a good example of this, but Dragonlord Atarka is even better. The way these fiery spines come off provide an extremely appropriate feel for a Dragon that is Red-Green, and it is in a lot of ways reminiscent to Rith, the Awakener, yet still different than her. Karl Kopinski did a great job with this piece.

Moving into our Vanilla test, I'm good with a 5RG Elder Dragon for an 8/8. Having been fed for a thousand years by Temur Hunters, her FRF 6/4 body had only one direction to go, and that was up.

The only part I'm a little upset about is the ETB trigger. While I am SO HAPPY that we are starting to see more targeting for planeswalkers specifically, I still wish that this said "players" too.

One of my biggest pet peeves with the way the rules work is the planeswalker damage redirect. While adding planeswalkers into the rules is part of this cycle of Dragons, and it helps to adapt to the changes, adding "players" would've only helped to further a precedent of differentiation. I mean, I get that these Dragons interact with creatures or planeswalkers, and that's the mechanic they were developing along the cycle- this is just something I would've liked to have seen, and I don't think it would've taken the venom out in this instance.

Alright. Time to talk about our favorite Tasigur-wearing, Sultai-erasing, Elder Dragon.

Dragonlord Silumgar's vanilla test has the worst results- a 3/5 for 4UB is just TERRIBLE, even if we do get some goodies in the rules box, and the artwork.

And we do get some great stuff here. Deathtouch, probably my favorite static ability, and an ETB trigger that gives us our first opportunity to directly Confiscate a planeswalker.

I can see Dragonlord Silumgar being probably more playable than FRF Silumgar. UB is a solid Control archetype, and getting an ELDER DRAGON with this much power is pretty spicy.

Personally, I'm still not excited about having a 3/5 for 4UB, but maybe I'll get over it at some point. His necklace, however, may be a tad more difficult.

It's Oju-time for Ojutai, the great deceiver of the people formerly called Jeskai, and Tarkir-ians everywhere!

I don't get the design and flavor. Is he just so aloof in his high mountain roost that he has conditional hexproof?

Much like Silumgar, he too has shown a decrease in toughness as the years wore on. Whereas it appears to be lethargy in the case of the UB Dragonlord, I'm thinking that Ojutai was knocked down a couple of points because any more and he would be too good, which is not really what I like to see. Again, part of that flip-flopping from his FRF form, and I don't like it.

Anyway, I've done enough flavor-pontificating on him. Ojutai is still a good card. I have a feeling it's going to be relevant in Standard in some sort of Esper Control build, potentially with FRF Silumgar.

For Commander, that means we might not see this card for a while. However, if you Early Adapt like me, snag a copy. I "Anticipate" it's going to play like a much better version of Throw-Mo-Crates (Tromokratis), but with a much better affinity for card advantage. He'll be played, price pending on how soon he arrives.

And finally, we have the biggest, spiciest, meatball of them all- Dromoka.

O, how the nerfed become the nerfing!

It's Nerf or nothing!

Wait... That's not right.

This is the kind of Dragon design I was waiting to see, and I think it's a good place to establish precedent for Dragon design in Green-White.

We'll start with the artwork. Even though Dromoka could be seen as a ripped, mutated porcupine/owl with gargoyle wings, I really like this art a lot. It's regal, and the angle is one that commands respect, which is very congruent with the rules box below.

And Dromoka's rules box is chock-full of power. Perhaps too much power, but definitely necessary if they were ever going to demonstrate how far an off-color Dragon needs to go.

Combined with his vanilla test, this is one tough Dragon. Having Bolstered/Outlasted AKA "Hunkered-Down" for thousands of years, resisting all things, this is some pretty sensible flavor action. He's gotten tougher. He's imposed the celebration of life (lifelink) over death. He's imposing on his opponents' ability to do anything. Being the most aloof and out-of-the-loop in terms of the way they've positioned him in the story, choosing to omit any interactivity with anyone outside of his realm, I think this design really works for me, serving as a powerful outlier, and functioning as a high press for both Control decks and those looking to usurp them.

If I'm going with my heart, this is for sure my favorite pick of the ones we've talked about for Commander. I have a feeling we will be dueling a lot against him and/or his new pal Sigarda together for a very long time. So get yourself over to Arby's, cause this is one Dromoka Shake you don't want to miss.

That's all I got for ya here, Zoners! Be sure to follow me on Twitter @unclelanddrops and for all the exciting new stuff Grandpa Growth and I are gonna be doing over at CommanderCast. We appreciate your support as we move to our new Bat-Time and Bat-Place!

Last Pass.

-Ya Boi Landdrops

My #4MTGCARDS

Praise be to the Norse God of Thunder once again, Zoners!

Today I'm gonna be a little sentimental, but I hope that's not going to keep you from reading.

My pals over at CommanderCast were following the #4MTGCards trending on Twitter the last week or so, and I thought it was a good opportunity for me to follow suit. I'm a huge advocate for using non-relevant things like trading card games as a means to constantly enlighten us and teach us about the greater experience that is life, and I think these four Commanders really exemplify what I'm about. If you're joining us from over on Twitter (which, makes me happy that you're picking up on my media, so thanks!), this is going to be a succinct, but deeper meditation on the cards I've shared today.

So here we go, in chronological order!

I'd been playing Commander for a couple years before I realized I know what I was doing. This culminated the night I threw my Intet deck against the wall.

I've written and talked about this night a lot because I think it's important for a couple of reasons. Number one, that everyone who has ever been an expert at anything has to find that space between where they are and where they want to be before a goal can be realized, and that means admitting to one's self that they are in fact bad or inexperienced with the task at hand.

I owe a lot of my development as a Magic player and enthusiast because of Grandpa Growth, and most of it stems from this moment, where he helped me to understand that what I was lacking was self-accountability in my deckbuilding. Basically, that if I was building my deck, playing my deck, and wasn't winning, there was neither luck nor anyone else to blame but me for continuing to lose. It was a tough lesson, and one that subverted a lot of my expectations, but I am the most grateful for this lesson, because it's translated into an innate trait that I not only use in Magic, but also in life.

Glissa T's is one of my oldest Commanders in the current Deck Portfolio, and one of my most important. Over the years, she's evolved from being a defensive creature for a silly Infect deck to a Dollar General master to now the not-so-cleverly named, "Green Eggs and Glissa" deck I play today.

One of the great things about Glissa, the Traitor is that it is one of the only Commanders I share with Gramps here on the blog, and that's pretty cool. Gramps' Glissa deck was one of the toughest decks I grinded against back when we were grinding out games, and while not nearly as oppressive because of my playstyle and card choices, I still tend to play it more his way than my own.

Despite having a crazy power level, Glissa has helped me not only to have connections with friends from my past, but also friends in the Commander community in the future. My Editor over at CommanderCast, Mark, actually knew who I was before we'd met because of this Green Eggs and Glissa list, which is a really cool connection. Because of Gramps' crazy Glissa Engine, I'd effectively reinvented her, thereby creating an inspired Human-Glissa-Centipede, you know, without the ass to mouth.

Lu Bu is on this list, but not actually a Commander or card I've even played. It belongs to one of my best friends and fellow Zoner, Awston AKA Retardo_08.

Much like my other cards on the list, Lu Bu has a couple reasons that make it special. The first is that it taught me how to build a deck not just for myself, but for someone else. What people dislike so much about net-decking is that it often does not lend itself to sculpting and catering to the person playing it, which translates to stiff, lame, and games that are not compelling.

Awston had come to me looking to build a new deck. He loved Lu Bu, and wanted it to be risky- basically he wanted to play coin flip.dec.

Knowing him, and knowing the kinds of decks he was gonna play against (mine, mostly), this just had bad idea written all over it. Not there wasn't ways to create winning strategy- just that, without tutelage, there wasn't gonna be any consistency.

Rather than set himself up for failure, we studied and brainstormed until we were able to find the middle of this Venn Diagram, where his "risky" flavor met the Red's color pie limitations, and where those two pieces were supported by my idea of having more consistency to resemble winning strategy.

And what we invented, little did we know, was this emerging archetype of Trick Voltron. Combined with combat tricks, Final Fortune, and other Double Strike and Multiple Combat step spells, we were able to establish something together that was much stronger, and much more unique, than what the two of us would've come up with by ourselves. Overall, it's one of the decks I'm most proud of, simply because it's not something I made for me. The rivalry between Lu Bu and my Animar deck has created a long-lasting "Snake and Mongoose" battle, which has only increased the kind of excitement that we can only have here in Commander.

My last card is the Commander of a more recent addition to my Deck Portfolio, but one that I will keep together for years to come.

The reason I can't seem to stop talking about this deck is that it hits just about every mark in terms of what I want to accomplish in a given Commander game.

-He subverts the blue stigma of obligatory counterspells.
-He promotes a high level of interactivity, not just with my stuff, but with my opponents creatures as well.
-He gives me multiple lines of play as well as multiple ways to win. I've won with Milling, I've won with 40 damage, I've won with Planeswalker Limit Breaks!
-He powers up oddball cards like Hatching Plans and Stormbound Geist, while also making good cards like Gilded Drake and Reef Worm even better.
-His reactive and proactive flexibility allows me to scale his power level to all kinds of different decks and players.

And even if he didn't hit all of these points, one of the best parts about the Barrin deck was the process. It was one of the most natural, organic deck building experiences I've ever had, mostly because I didn't know who my Commander was gonna be, and at pretty much every point from design to where it is today, I have enjoyed the mystery of not knowing what the card is going to be, much less what the next game is going to look like. In this way it embodies everything that I want to do right when I think about how I want to play the format, and that pairing is in every way the force that compels me to play Magic's greatest Kitchen Table Sandbox format.

Be sure to follow me @unclelanddrops. I'd love to hear and see what your #4MTGCards are, so tell me about it somewhere, will ya?

Pass.
-UL

Do-It-Yourself Design #1: My Gods Before Theros

Heya Zoners!

I know I'm a little early in the week, but I've been waiting for weeks behind the scenes to get this new segment kick-started- Do-It-Yourself Design!

DIYD is all about the multitude of Magic cards people like me and the good folks in You-Make-The-Card forums on MTG Salvation and other sites are doing.

The fact is that Magic is made for us, and whether it's just two people having the same idea at the same time, or actually being involved in design, it's important to demonstrate to the community and Wizards of the Coast that we aren't just trying to break our game, but help to be instrumental in its creation and continued existence.

This series is all about analyzing our made-up stuff to make it formidable and inspiring for future design. Although NONE OF THIS WILL BE REAL, that doesn't mean we might be Pinocchio-ing these bitches into fruition.

So if you make stuff up like me, feel free to send it my way at unclelanddrops@gmail.com. I'd love to talk about your stuff.

As our inaugural voyage, I thought I'd kick things off with an incredible little instance of two kids in 2012 having a vision of the 2013 Theros Gods, and just how eerily similar synchronicity can be.

ENTER TECALLI, THE DANCING STONE

In Fall 2012, me and a buddy of mine were swapping card designs over Facebook, and he sent me the first draft of Tecalli (Tuh-kah-lee), what would become the first of our cycle of Pagan Deities.

The rules needed a little work, but I was instantly enamored. It was strange, powerful, and the flavor of this big, dancing, sumo-golem was just too cool.

We can see that this is very top-down. Tecalli, the ever-moving stone deity, is big enough to throw his weight around, letting his momentum carry him like a pinball.

A few notes on the rules regarding his design.

1. Indestructible hadn't been changed yet, so we need to use "has" instead of "is," in order to adapt to the changes. Because Indestructible became a keyword on all of the creatures for the cycle, they must be changed as well.

2. His blocking trigger also needs to be changed on the card to, "divided as you choose among up to any number of target creatures." Every time I wrote the rules, I was always forgetting half of the clause because we knew what it meant, but never communicated it correctly on the card.

Tecalli's flavor was done so well that this story was simple. His Red magic and unrelenting dancing skills made him a "life of the party," style character, perhaps even more than Xenagos. What attracted his followers was his blind perseverance, spontaneity, and the way he was able to combine them to demonstrate strength.

BIG, BAD BRUKO

So I was looking for Tecalli's art when I found four all-too convenient creatures styled in the same way with different colors. Naturally, I was like, let's build a cycle!

Continuing to design "Art-Down," I began to construct and develop a story for our characters in the set. I created a plane of islands, where underwater volcanoes were forming new pieces of land, these golem deities came alive and were in a constant struggle with each other over whom was going to rule them. This sort of them of new land meets ancient, primitive tale made for a really nice space to create an indigenous/tribal theme, borrowing cultural aspects from various native populations all over the world.

For those of you that remember older computer games, I'd taken some old inspiration from Black & White. In the game, you're a god, and you have this big animal you control that helps you worship and gain influence with villagers so that they'll praise you. Our Legendary Golems were supposed to be both god and animal.

Being Gods, I wanted them to be powerful, but lean back towards "fair," which would make for exciting gameplay. The Artifact subtype helped to weaken our Indestructible keyword, but I still wanted to see how big I could make these guys.

Bruko (Brew-Koh) was designed to be the villain of the set. His raw power attracted a polarizing group of followers, both those wanting to be like him, and those who were too weak to defend themselves.

The storyline was that Bruko has so powerful that he had to be kept in constant check by the magic of the other Golems. However, being animated stone objects, they were magical, but not innately powerful enough to cast magic. But somehow, the other Golems had gotten lucky, and a strange phenomena had kept Bruko shackled for 100 years.  At the outset of our story, Bruko had broken his physical bonds and was on the loose, looking to pay a visit to his old rival, Arum (Are-oom).

Using some of the templating from Tecalli, I thought it'd be very cool to have the Indestructible thing and another color pie additive. In this case, "can't block" felt right, not because he couldn't, but simply because Bruko didn't want to!

One of the weird things I found when they began to release the Gods in Theros was the way they'd compensated for the over-aggressive cost-to-P/T ratio versus what I did here, with the -1/-1 counters. Although they are different ideas, it was cool to compare how we tackled our designs.

Overall, design for Tecalli was my favorite, mostly because I love helping to improve other people's stuff more than my own. However, Bruko's comes in close at second. It was very natural, simple, and solid with the way that -1/-1 counters interact with black cards mechanically. We didn't have to make any changes with Bruko. It was just a great first draft as far as we were concerned.

COCKY ARUM
In the story, Arum is the one who is able to physically restrain Bruko and chain him up the last time he was causing trouble 100 years ago. Since then, Arum has spent all his time reaping the rewards and taking credit for being the so-called "hero" of our plane.

Arum attracted a polarizing group of followers- those who wished to serve him, and the sophisticated people for which he surrounds himself with. The former are responsible for creating statue after statue after statue of his likeness, and placing them all over the islands on the plane.

Combining all of these things in design was not easy. We knew that he was going to have indestructible, but getting that second ability was a challenge. Sick of seeing First Strike and Vigilance get thrown around willy-nilly, as well as just "feeling" the flavor of this card, made us think that this guy wasn't as sharp as was when he imprisoned Bruko, and we couldn't go there.

In studying where we'd gone with the other cards, the theme of combat "do's and don'ts" was beginning to show through. With Arum being the strongest next to Bruko, and the idea that he'd stopped him the last time, we arrived at this nice "can't be blocked" clause. To be more flavorful, this should've been "protection from," but we were, as I said, holding ourselves to a template with the first ability.

The second ability is really weird, but helps to correlate the idea that Arum isn't completely rusty and old. He can be strong when he needs to be, but those days of him being as powerful are few and far between.

RASMUS, THE ROOTED STONE

Rasmus (Razz-Muhss) was probably the most fun to play around with. In order, he was actually the third one I designed in the cycle, and a lot of different rules and keywords went through that text box before I was happy with it.

Before we settled on combat "do's and dont's," the idea was to give everyone a color-pie-friendly static ability with indestructible. We had Reach and Vigilance in the box, and the feel of those seemed right, but wasn't really the flavor.

You see, Rasmus is the least mobile of the deities, but he is also the most or one of the most "magically inclined," because he uses magic to control nature, which controls him. Which is why he innately could not have either one of these abilities.

Rasmus, being "one with nature," attracts the kind of followers who seek enlightenment. His people are usually the most magical, in that they have more natural magic talent. And although his people do a lot of exploring, they all find their way back to him.

"Can't be countered" broke the rule in our first line of text because we needed something to say "can or can't," and that felt the most Green to us. From a flavor perspective, it fit nicely too, even though having an indestructible thing that can't be countered is probably too powerful without the other abilities.

For his second ability, we were nurturing that flavor of being able to control nature. It was a bit of a throwback to Whip Vine, an old card that I played back when I didn't know what cards were good in Magic, and I liked how it limited his scope.

The last clause is our pseudo-vigilance thing, made to help illustrate nature resetting him to defend. Wanting this card to appeal more to the Johnny psychograph, I'd originally had it templated to say, "Whenever Rasmus, the Rooted Stone becomes tapped, untap him," but I didn't like where it was going, so we scaled it back down.

In hindsight, I think I'd want to make Rasmus a little smaller in terms of P/T, in order to make the flavor pop and justify the rules text. I'd also probably turn him into a "her," just to make the genders a little more balanced.

MADA, THE ROUGH DIAMOND


Mada (Mah-Duh) was the toughest, and probably the one that can be most improved.

Using my Art-down design as flavor inspiration, the story constructed around Mada's character was that her power was derived from the crystal formations that grew within her stones. Additionally, she was the most benevolent and personable of the Deities, seeing herself as a protector and nurturer of the people.

Mada doesn't have the numerical following of any of the other gods, but what they lack in quantity they make up for in quality. Being a protector, Mada's people also align themselves with progressive pursuits of knowledge, social understanding, and teamwork.

In this way, Mada wasn't necessarily interested in combat as much as "disaster relief," which basically meant protecting the people from Bruko's attacks.

Since Bruko has been chained however, her crystals and energy don't power up like they once did. Through the story, we were going to create mechanics and communicate

While her design is cool, I'll admit it feels "intentionally nerfed." Maybe that's because I don't think Blue should always have nice things. That doesn't mean I think the card is bad, just fair, not exactly blue's shtick.

Before I talk about what I messed up with the last two rules, I want to mention her power and toughness. "The Weathered Stone" represented this idea that she is this chiseled, sharp creature, and I wanted to emulate that jagged-ness in her power and toughness. I'm not sure 6/2 are the right numbers, but they were the only ones that looked right on the card. Compared with her converted mana cost, I think the ratio is off, so I'd probably change that before I would change her power or toughness.

The biggest fails were in her last two abilities. Instead of just a simple "blocks" trigger, I'd like to entertain the possibility of "blocks a creature," thereby adding an additional counter to her if she blocks two things. The reason being that what gets her going is that need to protect her people, and I think I undervalued that in execution.

Moving into the second part, I would change the last rule to, "Remove two +1/+1 counters from Mada: Mada loses defender until end of turn." The reason for doing this is that maintaining the original version with a better blocks trigger makes Mada a 7/3, and that's not what I wanted.

Well, that's all for today. If you've got comments, I'm curious to hear what people think about my cards, and also to send me yours to unclelanddrops@gmail.com if you've got some you'd like to share.

Be sure to tune in on Thursday for a story about my #4MTGCards, and follow me on Twitter at @unclelanddrops!

Pass.
-UL

The Stack #60- Last Year's Hits

Afternoon Zoners!

Usually the New Year brings us time to reflect on the good and bad of the past one. That's what we're all about today- celebrating the best of the last.

Tom, Gramps and I have selected our best picks from 2014. So let's get to it.

THIS IS THE STACK!

UNCLE LANDDROPS

Uncle Landdrops-  THUMBS UP
I loved the scry lands, not just Temple of Epiphany. The whole cycle rocked, and gave us some powerful additions to every mana base. This temple was picked because it's my favorite artwork of all of them. The color palette has tremendous contrast, making it incredibly appealing, but the best quality of it is that the electrical storm brewing allows the card to both fit the Ancient Greek-ness of the Theros set while also transcending its own plane. With the Izzet guild so identifiable, I really like the fact that this card and artwork seems to slip right into another Izzet deck without seeming awkward. GG and I both liked how Wizards did something similar in Innistrad with the printing of the enemy-colored m10 counterparts, and I think that's where this set succeeds too.

Grandpa Growth-  THUMBS UP
 Yea...these cards are pretty excellent. I have been playing New Benalia in my mono White decks for years. I always thought it was great. These cards are just ridiculously powerful. Lands have become the most important part of any deck and, in modern Magic sets, some of the most expensive. Taplands in general feel pretty bad to draw late in the game, but the Temple cycle is completely different. If you are going to draw a land, you are so much happier drawing this.

Tom - THUMBS UP
I don't have a lot to say about the Scry lands that hasn't already been said. They're awesome. Topdeck manipulation and colour fixing in the same land? Be still my beating heart.

GRANDPA GROWTH

Grandpa Growth- THUMBS UP
Having played with this a bit, I am well and truly convinced that it is overpowered. Clone effects are almost always cheaper than the thing that they are copying. This is a fair deal because you often have to wait for an opponent to play something appealing before you can unleash your Clone, mitigating any potential tempo gains that would accrue from a less mana-intensive play.

 D^2 completely breaks the mirror by granting Haste and Dethrone. Your version gets to attack immediately giving you a clear tempo advantage AND your copy is often larger than theirs because of a single +1/+1 counter you get when coming from behind. How is this fair at all?

Uncle Landdrops- THUMBS UP
I was so excited for this because of Animar, and it hasn't let me down.

The last awesome thing I did with it was copy my opponent's Ulasht, the Hate Seed. For those who don't know, giving Ulasht more ways to get bigger on the battlefield lends itself to some serious power. Because Animar is a combat-based deck, predicated on getting wide, I got to a point in the game where I just turned him into a bunch of Saprolings and added some additional Hellrider triggers so I could kill both my opponents at the table.

Tom- THUMBS UP
I haven't had a chance to play with it yet, but I love Clone and copy effects. If it weren't for that pesky little bit of Red in the mana cost this would go right into my Roon of the Hidden Realm copy/blink deck. What really sells this card is the Haste, allowing you to hold it until after someone else drops their Blightsteel or Eldrazi in order to copy a big bastard and launch it an opponent immediately.

UNCLE LANDDROPS

Uncle Landdrops-  THUMBS UP
One of the finest mass removal spells I've seen printed. In my opinion, this is right up there with Wrath and Damnation, except it creates an excellent way to get one-sided with some of the weenier White or White-Adjacent decks.

Grandpa Growth-THUMBS UP
This is the best five mana Wrath; in my opinion at least. To create an advantage with Wrath, you usually have to set something up or trade away life points. In the decks that play this, there really is no set up cost. You have cheap Creatures, with which you are beating down during the early game. Naturally, your opponent will have bigger late game plays that outclass your Creatures. However, when you play this, you are right back on the war path. Your opponent is left with a frumpy frown and a bad taste in their mouth.

Tom- THUMBS UP
The only thing better than a wipe is an asymmetrical wipe. It's what justifies the high cost of In Garruk's Wake, it's what makes Martial Coup a nightmare in a weenie token deck and it's what makes Necromantic Selection into a potentially game-ending play. I get something while you get nothing, and it's really hard to argue with that kind of advantage when it's applied to multiple opponents. Best of all it works in the many, many new Alesha brews we're seeing to leave her army of midgets in perfect position for an aggro rush.

TOM

Tom -THUMBS UP
The moment I saw this guy, I knew I was going to build around him. There are so many potent death trigger abilities that draw cards, gain/drain life, force opponents to sacrifice and just generally give everyone a tough time that a general who can not only force sacrafice of creatures but get mightier from each death creates a constantly self-reinforcing deck in which every action benefits in some form or another.

So what makes the card so good? Well, the first and most obvious factor is the harsh punishment handed down on any opponent who tutors, ramps or cracks a fetchland. It's EDH, we know how prevalent this kind of thing is, and being able to shut it down is a slice of fried gold. Not to mention that Ob's ability gives poor old Maralen of the Mornsong a reason to keep getting up in the morning. However, useful as that is (and it really is - you wouldn't believe how often opponents will end up ramping/fetching lands with Ob on board just because they need the mana so badly), it's not what really puts Ob at the top of my list.

No, what drives my demonic pal into the top tier is his combination of two forms of evasion coupled with his ability to get bigger and bigger whenever another creature kicks the bucket. I've noticed that opponents will usually ignore this and focus on his anti-searching tech, but it's actually the latter ability that kills them in what is basically deathtriggers.dec. Be it through my own shenanigans with Skullclamp, Attrition, Ghoulcaller Gisa or Soldevi Adnate, potent symmetrical effects like Butcher of Malakir and Grave Pact, or simply targeted or mass destruction from the likes of Malicious Affliction and Plague Wind, Ob Nixilis accrues +1/+1 counters fast, and his flying/trample let him swing in for huge amounts of Commander Damage.

Grandpa Growth- THUMBS DOWN

I find it interesting that the reactions to this card have varied so widely. When my threats don't do something to immediately impact the board, I take issue - ESPECIALLY with expensive cards. This does grow quickly, so the fact that it is undersized for its costs doesn't particularly bother me. People use to play Scavenger Drake in this format, and at one time, that was acceptable.

The truth is that nowadays, there is no good reason to be playing a threat that matches up poorly against removal. There are enough good options in every color that you just don't have to make that sacrifice.

Uncle Landdrops- THUMBS UP
On an individual card basis, I do side with Gramps. Still, we all know O.B. Nix isn't exactly in colors that play fair when it comes to paying for spells, and this is something Mono-Black likes to build around. Premier Reanimation, Boots, and/or Greaves do well to fix the problems here.

GRANDPA GROWTH

Grandpa Growth- THUMBS UP
You've already heard a hundred people talk about how great this reprint is. You are about to hear a couple more people do the same. I am going to do something different.

I don't really 'get' the flavor behind the Dragon bones and the fetchlands. Take delta here for an example: the card seems to imply that the bones are doing the polluting or ARE THE POLLUTION. This is incongruent when you look Wooded Foothills or Windswept Heath, both of which have very 'pretty', nature-centric arts. On those cards it's implied that the skeletons are somehow empowering the growth of plants. Seems weird. Am I alone here?

Tom - THUMBS UP
As a relatively recent convert to the game of Magic, original fetches were way outside of my reach. These reprints have made them much more available, and as someone who loves an efficient mana base I'm overjoyed. The sheer potency of lands that search out the colour you need without an ETB tapped clause is high indeed.

Of course, my excitement has absolutely nothing to do with that foil Windswept Heath I pulled from one of my very first KTK boosters. At all. Ahem.

Uncle Landdrops- THUMBS UP
This was something I'd found to be an inevitable reprint, and I couldn't think of a better place and a better way to do it.

On top of being economically sensitive to players who held the $35+ original printings from Onslaught (This is because of the block-structure change), I think Wizards did a really nice thing within the confines of their story arc by using the reprint to connect the story of Ugin and his homeland to Zendikar, the last time we saw fetches in Standard. Additionally, it gives us a way to weave and re-weave characters to which we are already familiar with, which is a really smart thing to do in just about every way imaginable.

Well, that's how we stacked it up. We don't have much for news, but it is spoiler season! You can find our latest info and thoughts soon, but if you can't wait that long, follow me on Twitter @unclelanddrops, where I'm sure to be making snarky remarks, re-posting images from PAXEAST yesterday, or answering any questions you have in the future in 140 characters or less.

Until then, make good choices.

Pass.

-The TGZ Staff

Card Corner: Sunscorch Regent

Happy Day of Thor, Zoners!

We're ankles deep into spoilers, and I hope you're feeling wondrously overwhelmed by the influx of the biggest, baddest tribal in the Multiverse.

Today on Card Corner, we're gonna take a look at the CommanderCast preview card I got to check out a few weeks ahead of time, which was a pretty awesome experience.

So after sitting on my thoughts for a week and a half, I get to do some analyzing and postulating, and I hope you'll join me as we talk about the White Dragon Regent!

THE FLAVOR

Although there are Dragons scattered across every color in Magic History, the most compelling part about this block's theme was the sort of "future flavor," if you will, in design. While Red, Black, and even Blue have that innate "enemy" color persona, Green and White have never really been able to reproduce the same kind of reverence when it comes to making a Dragon feel like a Dragon.

The sneak peek in Fate Reforged did little-to-nothing for me in terms of mapping out how they were going to demonstrate this, and I have to admit I felt a little cheated. For starters, Dromoka didn't feel complete as a Dragon (or a Legendary Creature, in my opinion), and the two cards we did get (Wardscale Dragon and Destructor Dragon) barely seemed to communicate a precedent for this design space.

In all fairness, these colors pose a challenge. With Green, Flying is a static ability left almost exclusively to small bugs and bees, while White has the opposite problem- too many creatures with Flying, and not enough space to separate their feel from Angels or Birds.

Relating to Sunscorch Regent, it's pretty clear that the Tarkir flavor REALLY overpowers the essence of this card as a Dragon, which is fine, but it's not aligned with my personal impressions and expectations as a marketed product. While I won't say it was a let down, because I understand what Design and Development had to do to make this work, I have to admit I was a little disappointed. I'm still not sure what a White Dragon looks like, and even though it's a foolish human impulse to use one card to demonstrate the whole, it was clear that Sunscorch Regent wasn't going to be that card, and we were still in the hunt.

THE MECHANICS

Mechanically, I think this card is pretty nice. This is probably attributed to the fact that they really went what they call "Bottoms Up," designing cards with rules and stats before giving it a name and all that.

As it relates to Tarkir, and what we understand of Dragons, and the underlying motivations of the Dragon Broods, it does this well. A reactionary, opponent contingent trigger provides balance while maintaining the power of that old green Forgotten Ancient made by the Magic Community a long time ago. Infused with the afterthought of incremental life gain, we're reminded that this is in fact a card we're gonna pay Plains mana to play, while also giving us additional value driven incentive.

Here in Commander, this card is playable, simply because a 5-Cost creature with evasion and a reason to remove it provides enough incentive for our opponent(s) to think about it. There is going to be a drastic difference between its value in multiplayer versus 1v1, but I think it will be fine for either.

THE ART

The last thing I want to talk about is the artwork, so I've posted it at again. I find it both cool and strange. The colors and scaliness of the dragon itself are typical of what we understand to be the differentiation between the kinds of Dragons on the plane- almost a regional phenotype. Much like desert lizards, these dragons are dry, scaly things that are easily distinguishable.

What I don't like is the color palette. It's just too beige to distinguish the dragon from the background. It's almost like camouflage, which could be an arguable flavor point, but I'm not sure that's really Dromoka brood thing.

Which leads us to the part I both like and dislike- the beam of light coming from Sunscorch Regent's mouth. This is where our eyes are drawn, and I like this eerie, glowing quality. Immediately, I thought Sunscorch Regent was abducting two small people, and I found this notion to be fairly charming, for no real reason.

The thing I dislike is that the more I've been thinking about this, the more I realize that it doesn't make sense when you think about what the card ACTUALLY does. We don't know whether or not Sunscorch Regent is helping or hurting these people. Regardless, how does that relate to the flavor? If he is using it to "sunscorch," that doesn't sound like a good thing. And his reactive, triggered ability suggests that this is a creature more incentivized by hitting back than hitting first. This art doesn't convey these things clearly, based on what I know about the story of Tarkir and the innate-ness of the card.

CONCLUSION

Overall, I think this card is pretty average for us. I like the weirdness, and am really happy, regardless of whether or not it slides into any deck I make, that I had the privilege of getting to see it before everyone else.

Let me know what you think about my thoughts here in the comments below, or on Twitter, where you can now FOLLOW ME @UncleLanddrops! I'm anxious to hear your thoughts!

Pass.
-UL

The Stack #59- Y U No Play?

Happy Weekend Once Again Zoners!

Like I always say, "Three's a Pattern," so I hope you're getting used to that old Stack Saturday. Today's episode marks our third since we returned from that less-than-glorious hiatus of not sharing our tech.

Today, Tom, Gramps, and I found ourselves with a pretty good topic- Commanders we'd most like to see get played. There are a lot of signals that get sent from the pre-game "shuffle and flip," and whether it's indicative of an exploited matchup, or just sheer excitement for a Legend that's been generally unloved across the current state of sanctioned formats, there's a lot of "feels" to experience when we step into our Kitchen Table Sandbox.

Anywho, let's get cracking- THIS IS THE STACK!

GRANDPA GROWTH

Grandpa Growth- THUMBS UP
Don't think I have ever lost to this card. Not sure how I would. This is something of a running joke between Landdrops and myself.

Uncle Landdrops- THUMBS DOWN
Haha. JorK the Dork!

I've tried hard, searched far and wide to build Boros, and at some point, I'm gonna have to give up.

JorK is where I draw the line. I guess I'd be happy to see someone flip this up, but I do think this card has a lot in common with its artwork- it's clear, crisp, and bizarrely evoking, but still found wanting to be better.

Tom- THUMBS DOWN
I'm going to be the contrarian on this one, but I see potential. Boros and aggro may both be jokes in what we Commander players call (loosely) a metagame - with, admittedly, fairly good reason, but Metalcraft is super easy to activate in a world of T1 Sol Ring, Boros Signet, T2 Sad Robot/Swiftfoot Boots/Fireshrieker/whatever followed by T3 Jor Kadeen swinging for the fences. Sure, that's the dream opening, yet cheap-but-useful artifacts abound in the format and the Boros colours can both Voltron fairly well or churn out tokens at a hectic pace, making JK's own pump effect rather potent. Pack in guys to increase the pump or grant evasion like Agrus Kos, Legion Loyalist and Victory's Herald, and you've got yourself a stew.

UNCLE LANDDROPS

Uncle Landdrops-  THUMBS UP
"I have been brought to this place and I cannot leave. I may be free of amber, but I am still in prison."

That's Mangara's flavor text, and I think it's poetically relevant to the strife he faces in our format. Why this dude isn't more common, I have no clue. His mana cost, P/T, and ability make him the PERFECT fit to combo off with sac outlets and Mono-White mainstays like Karmic Guide, Sun Titan, and Reveillark. With the way his activated ability works, there are so many ways to stack triggers and play board police, even if you just end up sending him back to the Command Zone. I know White has Eight-and-a-Half-Tails, Brimaz, and some other tribal and Voltron types, but seriously- I find it really strange that we don't see nearly enough of Mangara in the metagame.

Tom- THUMBS DOWN
I really don't want to see cheap, repeatable exile effects on the other side of the table. If nobody sleeves this dude up, I'll be happy. Unless it's me, in which case, bow before me, foolish mortals!

Grandpa Growth - THUMBS UP
I have played a fair amount of this card in 8.5 Tails decks. I wouldn't ever consider making it my commander, but the card is quite good in my estimation. It isn't premium removal, so don't misunderstand. It is substitute that can serve multiple purposes. White decks in particular have great ways to make this a relevant threat when you don't need it to exile problem targets.

TOM

Tom- THUMBS UP
There are really only three guys on the list of dragons in these colours that I'd consider playing, and two of them are only useful when they die. It's not that Silumgar is necessarily bad as a card -  in 5-colour Scion or a Nicol Bolas/Crosis Grixis dragon tribal I can see him doing solid work, but as a general I think he's pretty laughable. A temporary -1/-1 in EDH is not exactly stunning utility to build a deck around, particularly when it needs otherwise weak support cards to make the effect stronger. If someone slaps this down on my table, then unless I'm running a token build and have sustained a strong enough blow to the head that I forgot to include pump effects, I'm going to feel pretty safe ignoring it.

Uncle Landdrops-  THUMBS UP 
Yeah, I know what I said about Silumgar being derped in design in my Legendary Review. I don't take back what I said, but also recall I talked about how good Hexproof, Flying and that weird 3/7 body are together.

By himself, Silly-gar is gonna get rid of all those pesky 1 toughness tokens. Despite thinking I was going to build either Atarka Dragonstorm or Kolaghan Dash Beatz, I've actually broke ground on building this deck because there are two sweet cards unique to Silumgar that no other Dragon in the FRF cycle has- Xenograft and Conspiracy, which make that creature type thing basically irrelevant. Add in all the blue Riptide creatures from Legions which mess with creature type, and we've got ourselves a little stew going. Look forward to this one, because I think it's going to be a lot more compelling than we all thought.

Grandpa Growth- THUMBS UP
I won't be playing it. Basically every time I say that, which happens quite a bit, it means that I have very little confidence in my opponent. I can think of at least a dozen other generals in this color combination. I think that people know this isn't good enough for Commander, but they are just playing it because it is new, or maybe they are...either way I understand. I am not immune to the allure of fun. I want to try new things and get outside the comfort zone every once in a while. Still though, I don't want to feel like I need a list of excuses for why I built a deck.

GRANDPA GROWTH

Grandpa Growth- THUMBS UP
Basically every time someone decides to play a group hug deck, they are signalling to me that they aren't serious about winning the game. There are certainly ways to manipulate the political landscape of the game to your advantage, but there are even more ways to just outright win the game no matter how many players are at the table.

Uncle Landdrops- THUMBS DOWN
The first time you see Pheldagriff, you laugh, and think or say all the things GG mentioned. Every time afterward, you think about how uninteresting it is to be given carte blanche in Magical Christmas Land, and how basically the only winner in a Pheldagriff game is the player who gets to play immediately after the Pheldagriff player. Even if the player is bad at Magic, or the deck is actually bad.

I'm not salty about Pheldagriff, but about his association with bad Magic strategy being reinforced and supported by another quality I find useless- politics. I hope to be able to write my thoughts about the latter either here or on CommanderCast. I'm not on the "let's ban this archetype," but I do think that much like Trade Secrets, the game is a lot more fun without the stereotypical "Pheldagriff player."

Tom- THUMBS DOWN
I am intensely suspicious of this goofy-looking dude.Sure, he seems friendly, and he hands out gifts like a cheating spouse desperately hoping that enough shiny trinkets will make them feel less guilty, but I've got my eye on him. This is mostly because despite seemingly every player who runs him doing so in a Group Hug build, he seems to me like a potentially dangerous Voltron General.

A 4/4 for four is a good start, and optional Flying/Trample are solid attributes for Voltron. The option to bounce him to avoid removal or Wrath is also pretty sweet. While the activated abilities do give a little bit here and a little bit there to opponents, two life/a weenie token/a single card aren't so strong in EDH that they're painful to give away, and the bulk of those won't help to stop a flying, trampling Phelly anyway. Personally I'd play the deck as a rattlesnake ambush, disguising it as a Hug-style deck to dodge any early game hate while using cards like Well of Ideas that seem friendly but actually benefit me more than my opponents, then pumping Uncle Phel with Auras (because his colours are truly sweet for that kind of play and unlike Equipment, we can keep them in hand until we need them and retain the element of surprise) and smashing a shocked opponent out of the game.

Bottom line - beware of hippos bearing gifts.

UNCLE LANDDROPS

Grandpa Growth- THUMBS UP
I wouldn't be unhappy to play against Keranos, but I wouldn't be thrilled either. This color combination houses some of the most brutal combos in the format and 99% of the counterspells. I have played several different Izzet decks and I have rarely been disappointed. Regardless of your choice of general, this deck has potential to dominate.

That being said, I would be much more scared to see Niv-Mizzet or Jhoira. Although, playing against God cards is super annoying for most decks.

Tom- THUMBS UP
He draws cards, he smites weenies and utility dudes, and he's indestructible. And as GG says, he's in a colour pairing able to pull off some seriously unpleasant business. I think his colours are why I like his ability so much; it's trivially easy to stack the top of your library in Izzet, ensuring you get the effect you want every turn.

On the flipside, his devotion is harder to hit in a pairing more focused around non-permanent spells, we're getting more and more Deglamer and Deicide effects to deal with pesky gods, and by himself he isn't essential to any of the really unpleasant combo decks I can think of.

Uncle Landdrops- THUMBS UP
This is an expensive dude right now, but aesthetically is one of the Gods that I thought looked the part. He's more Zeus than Heliod, and matches that point mechanically too. I haven't seen a whole lot of lists on the internet trying to get ambitious, but I think that's just because of the price barrier.  

Also- Queue Song of Storms!



That wraps 'er all up for this week, so do your thing in the comments if you're outraged by anything we like or dislike.

ALSO- BIG ANNOUNCEMENT

Grandpa and I are getting ready to drag our Luddite attitudes into the Wave of Vitriol known as Twitter. I'm already there, you can find and follow me @unclelanddrops, where I'll be doing any of the following things:

-Posting pictures of silly alternate artwork I made or found.
-Making up goofy nicknames for cards.
-Stuff happening to me or friends across Commander/MTG outlets.
-Crazy ideas for decklists, and links to actual decklists I find cool.
-A 24/7 place for you to share with me your awesome Magic-related tom-foolery, or ask me to help you with a deck tech.

So if you like/do any of this stuff, click that follow button to keep the party going by following me @unclelanddrops. Look for GG's info soon as well.

Pass.

-The TGZ Staff

Card Corner: Mark of Fury

Happy Day o' Thor, Zoners! Welcome back to another edition of Card Corner, the place where ya boi Landdrops spotlights some of his strangest experiments in technology.

Today's card is one I've had stashed away for a long time now- Mark of Fury.

This card was originally in Heartless Hidetsugu's first 99 when I built the deck a couple years ago. I found Mark of Fury somewhere on the Internet, looking through other mono-Red lists that were adjacent to what I was looking to accomplish with HH, and I needed Haste so I could blast the table and accomplish my goals.

However, because it's an enchantment, and a pretty decent one that can be recycled for something that resembles card advantage, the incentive to remove HH went up.

Additionally, I realized that this card was doing something else that I didn't necessarily want to do, which was blast the table on my own turn. What I've found as I've played Hidetsugu is that taking damage before I start slugging the table is optimal, and in order to give myself a chance to win, I needed to keep that time-value option open as long as possible.

Although this is a great time to talk about Mark of Fury, considering that Heroic and Dash are in Standard right now, meaning that us Commander players are testing it out, I'm not sure we'll ever get another card printed like this. From flavor and color pie perspectives, I'm just not thinking that another enchantment like this will get printed, much less in red. Urza block is home to a lot of broken, weird things that Wizards Lead Designer Mark Rosewater has said they will never do again. While it's not Treachery, the value of this card has scaled well because of the power given to creatures, so much that I believe this would no longer be a Common, if they were to ever reprint this.

However, it doesn't mean we can't enjoy and abuse what we've got. There are a lot of times, I've found, in playing red decks where I said, "Damn, I wish I had Haste!" Well, in case you didn't know, we always did!

After finding this card, the problem diminished quickly. Whether's it's been in HH, its new home in my Common/Uncommon Uril, the Miststalker deck, or even designs I've been less proud of, like Herioc Anax & Cymede, Mark of Fury has been a solid play for support. Because Haste is a time sensitive mechanic, value is massive. Coupled with a cheap additional cost of one red per creature to cast it, and our opponents have a serious problem on their hands.

From a design perspective, this may not be in Red's wheelhouse, but the spirit and sentiment do produce something. The pressure and tempo this Mark of Fury creates for typically not-fast Inferno Titans or Utvara Hellkites is exactly the flavor of red, and the fact that they've continued to design cards that produce this effect with more attention to the color's restriction (Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker, Feldon of the Third Path, Flamerush Rider, Splinter Twin, Heat Shimmer), demonstrate cleaner precedent moving forward. Even Archwing Dragon and Dash are much sleeker implements of the card advantage going on here.

Anyway, this card has been really good for me, and I hope it will be for you too. It's another cheap spell that's got a market value of around a dime in US, and I can't imagine this being hard to find either, seeing as how it's a common and all. So pick a copy up and check it out.

Also, this week CMDR Decks did a spotlight on my Heartless Hidetsugu deck. Here's the link if you want to check out what it looks like today.

Heartless Hidetsugu CMDR Decks

Pass.

-UL

The Stack #57- Stack-zarus, Come Forth!

Breaking Bad. That was a Breaking Bad reference.

So in case you're not familiar with the recurring trope that is used in Comedy Central's longest running raunchy cartoon,  people happen to come back from the dead a lot. Frankly, the rate of resurrected characters has been astounding across the many programs I follow.

Whether it is because I'm in the resurrecting or reanimating spirit, or just because the truth of the matter is that TGZ's best co-collaborative segment never really did die- it just went and hid out in New Hampshire for several months under a different identity so as to gain perspective- we're back. By we, I mean, The Stack, and there's soon to be a whole host of new guests getting featured.

To honor this momentous occasion, the re-launching features twice the theme- our favorite cards with Flashback, and our favorite cards to Reanimate.

So yeah, we're playing it again, cause The Stack is great, and it never gets old.

Time to throw it in reverse for thirst!
THIS IS THE STACK!

TOM

Tom- THUMBS UP
OK, yeah, I know. Technically, not so much a target for reanimation as it raises itself. Still, that raid trigger is kinda like a Creature-based version of Flashback, so I'm throwing caution to the winds and including the card anyways.

For a deck that runs off death triggers and reanimation, Bloodsoaked Champion is...well, a champion. He's an ideal early turn play to couple with your Skullclamp for immediate card advantage. He's super easy to recur and he gets around the pesky non-token specification for cards like Grim Haruspex and Harvester of Souls. Best of all he can be reanimated repeatedly per turn for so long as you have mana and a sac outlet, making him practically a boardwipe when combined with Grave Pact, Ashnod's Altar and a handful of Swamps.

Uncle Landdrops- THUMBS UP
Mad props to BS Champ. I've literally pulled my playset of this card from Sealed and Draft, where it's probably even better than it is in Commander: eating Morph dudes for breakfast and being personally responsible for the best Aggro decks in both environments. If it wasn't for Sagu Mauler, I'd say it was the best Creature in those environments.

The big flavor question me and the rest of Reddit want to know though- How does he not block if he's holding two shields?

Grandpa Growth- THUMBS UP
The card is pretty great, but I have to admit, I hate it. Wizards has printed more quality Skullclamp enablers than they have quality exiling removal to deal with those enablers. There are a dozen or more Creatures that look nearly identical to this, which all scare the crap out of me. BSC isn't even the top contender in this category, but it is still enough to get my attention. The added benefit of having a bunch of these cards in your deck is that your opponent often starts losing life very early on AND they can't expect to weasel out of harm's way using a Wrath effect. Just adding card advantage to any Creature makes them into the perfect threat.

UNCLE LANDDROPS

Uncle Landdrops-  THUMBS UP
This is the most common Flashback card I play in my decks. Along side Merfolk Looter, this becomes a serious amount of card draw, even when all I'm doing is flashing it back.

Grandpa Growth- THUMBS UP
This is a super high-impact common, which I love. It is a great way to generate a ton of card advantage throughout the game. It presses your opponent to have multiple counterspells. Is it a little expensive? Sure, but this isn't really an early game type of card. This is the kind of thing you are either sandbagging or celebrating when you draw it late.

Tom - THUMBS UP
Overcosted, Sorcery-speed card draw is pretty meh. On the flipside, anything that allows for "target player" to draw cards wins out over straight self-draw for the added flexibility; Nekusar and a few other decks want that, and even in non-janky non-combo decks giving free cards to beleagured players can be an interesting political tool.

I like the Flashback cost as well. Anything that asks such a small life cost is much better in EDH than elsewhere and two mana + three life for two cards = solid.

GRANDPA GROWTH

Grandpa Growth- THUMBS UP
If you know me, and you know what this card does, then there is no more explanation necessary. This was a close pick for me though, there are probably half a dozen cards that I could very easily claim are my 'favesies'. Army of the Damned, Creeping Rennaissance, Cackling Counterpart, Fervent Denial.

I just want to point out that Landdrops and I both picked commons for this topic. Go Pauper. Whoo!

Uncle Landdrops- THUMBS UP
Pauper cards are really helpful in making not just deck designs, but also, Commander, much more exciting.

I love Mystical Teachings, and I often find that I make sketchy U/B decks just so that I can play some of my favorites with these specific color identities. Teachings is definitely there.

That Black in the color identity is what I think makes it both very strong and very scarce in terms what decks this card can go in, relative to our format. I'm not playing Tutors-on-Tutors so much anymore, but this one that I've definitely built several different packages around.

Tom- THUMBS DOWN
A personal preference, but I don't really like to tutor. Granted, it's understood that sometimes you just need a very specific card, but when building decks I err towards redundancy so that there are several cards which can fill any role required. Being able to search the library for answers is undeniably useful, but also - for my money - leads to repetitive games as the "best" answers are usually tutored up or used to win a game out of nowhere. It's funny and cool the first time, but after several games end the same way it grows stale. Not to mention the endless searching/shuffling drawing out the pace of a game can be exceptionally annoying to other players. Putting Flashback on a tutor card is guaranteed to have me grinding my teeth.

UNCLE LANDDROPS

Grandpa Growth- THUMBS UP
This card dominated Standard, shines in Commander, and should be in every Cube out there. The card is just completely bananas at all points in the game. It resists/pairs well with some of the best cards in the format: Removal? Psssh. Show and Tell? What a joke! Upheaval? Deal.

On a related note: I just watched Firefly last year. It wasn't that good. Things I don't like: Nathan Fillion, Joss Whedon, Science Fiction.

Tom- THUMBS UP
I had thoughts to put here, but got all distracted by GG's closing statement. Blasphemy. May the Angel of Serenity smite you.

The best thing about the card is the flexibility. It can be a recursion engine for your graveyard, a multi-target Oblivion Ring for your foes or a bouncing engine for your own ETB creatures. Sweet value in every instance. I run the Angel in my Roon copy/blink deck, and under the right circumstances - like when paired with a Progenitor Mimic or a kicked Rite of Replication - she can spirit away entire armies of opponents' beasties.

Uncle Landdrops-  THUMBS UP
Well, I have no clue what the hell Grandpa is thinking. Firefly Rulz. Hopefully there are enough Browncoats and Jayne's Hats that enjoy what's going on here. This is my altered version (credit to the unknown Deviant Artist for this) for the Angel of Infinite Card Advantage and Beatdowns, but I believe everyone will recognize Return to Ravnica's premier reanimate target.

I play this in Saffi, and I can't tell you how design predicated on Reanimate-Reinforcement makes this so filthy. Sac outlets and trigger stacking make her one of the strongest synergies I have in a deck where there are plenty of synergies that actually end the game outright as opposed to denying resources. She's still one of the best cards in the deck and has saved my skin more than a few times, making her not just an Angel based on card type alone.

Alright, well that wraps 'er all up. Be sure to holla in the comments below if you have a card to contribute, you have a topic you'd like us to tackle, or you'd like to be a guest on a future episode of The Stack!

Until next time, be sure not to let this Wookie win.

Pass.
-UL/GG/Tom

Better Deckbuilding: Obzedat, Ghost Council

Happy Thor's Day Zoners, and welcome back to Better Deckbuilding!

I'm pretty excited to share my deck based around the Ghost-iest Gangstas of Gatecrash- the Obzedizzle!

While some might say it's not that difficult to build a Commander deck, that doesn't mean it's good. I spent a lot of long hours building several different iterations of Orzhov, finding them to be clunky, somewhat boring iterations of GoodStuff decks that never resonated nor represented the kinds of decks I wanted to play.

Although I only made the Resolution last year to find versions of Boros and Orzhov I could be happy with, you could say that this has been moving a lot longer than that.

So I'd like to dedicate this special episode of Better Deckbuilding to others who may be on the strugglebus, still looking for that Legendary Creature to get excited about, or that one special little space in design that you've always seen, but never found before. Although playing and winning with these decks is awesome, nothing gets me more jazzed than finding the surprise. And building around Obzedizzle was surely that!

WHY OBZEDIZZLE?

Back when I reviewed Gatecrash, I was pretty salty about the flavor of this card. My biggest criticisms being 1) Generally, that the creatures on cards updated from our last visit felt a little "too easy" to design and 2) Specifically, that gaining Haste felt like a forced flavor foul, made so that it would see play in Standard (which, it did.)

None of this is to say I didn't think the card was good- just a little unimpressive in terms of design. It stunk that I couldn't get excited about a new potential Commander in colors I wanted to play. I mean, I love Haste just as much as the next person. I even get the argument for being the "Black" part of the ability, and that the combined effect is a "Chinese Take-Out Style" (This is what Mark Rosewater calls it when they combine effects of two different colors. See also Recoil) print on the card.

So it took me some time to get over myself in order to take him for a test drive. Fortunately, some other things I didn't realize were compelling me towards Obzedat, as well as a good headspace for deck design.

The first factor was a metagame choice to bring back the Wrath. Over the last couple years, my metagame has experienced some serious shifts. We've had too many Wraths and not enough spot removal. We've had not enough removal, and too much Battlecruiser Magic. Now we have a ton of spot removal, and not enough ways to clear the board.

Because a healthy metagame really wants to have the same qualities that pitchers and hitters do in baseball, where they're constantly making adjustments to psych the other one out. I liked the idea of playing a Wrath deck, but with a little bit of a twist.

The twist, naturally, involves playing around our General. With the additions of some powerful, faster mass removal effects, a combination of old stand-by's and ones that I wanted to try out, I came up with a really nice control-based Orzhov deck that I've had a lot of success with.

THE STRATEGY

Basically, it's a Wrath-Based Control Deck. We are fortified with answers, so that we can play most of the early game with spot removal for serious threats while building up a big enough mana base to get Obzedat out and doing its thing.

While there are a lot of Obzedat lists out there doing some serious Extort and dedicated Life Gain strategy and Combo, this deck is avoiding these intentions. There are a few cards in the deck that help create engines based on the Obzedat's Syphon Life trigger, but the deck's not specifically designed to rely on these effects, making them ironically, as you'll see, a little bit more potent.

THE TECH

There are quite a few popular cards that see a significant power boost in this brew- Oblivion Stone, Nevinyrral's Disk, and Magus of the Disk.

I've attempted to make the Wrath-proof battle deck several times with no success. Tajic and Zurgo have been the Commanders, and they weren't successful.

What's better about this deck is the timing flexibility and its conjunction with Obzedat's ability. With Tajic, the problem was that being only a 2/2, he needed stuff he could pick up and swing with. Not wanting to lose the equipment, these cards were avoided in favor of cheaper, Sorcery-speed Wraths, which made the deck hard to play, with too many cards and not enough mana to play them all in a single turn.

With Obzedat, we get to, much more literally, get people to "play into our Wraths." We have a solid creature needing no equipment, and, with no creature on the battlefield, we can actually lure players into attacking us, protecting the Obzedat from our own stuff while also eliminating cards from our opponent's hands and board.

Because I don't get to play this color combination enough, you can almost always guarantee that I will be rocking this card, and mentioning it as a piece of tech.

I understand that this innately makes it almost the opposite of tech, but it is my favorite Fog effect, because I get to say,  "Nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh Batwing!"

Fun story- I have actually won multiple games with this card, so even if it it isn't tech anymore, I can't explain how it continues to win me games.

Anyway, back to Wrath tech. I think people are very reluctant to commit to such an expensive card, but it's a good one.

Frankly, it's not on my list of favorite Wraths, but it shines here, where I already play Rout and Angel of the Dire Hour. Seven sits at a good spot in our curve, where we're cleaning up the big 6-drops, clearing way for the Ghosts to get in for damage.

One of the cool tricks with this card is the ability to respond on our own turn, before Obzedizzle returns, or on our end step, when we exile him.

The latter, tapping out on our end step, may sound inefficient, but it's actually fine. Letting our opponents untap is sometimes too much time, and we all need a good scry every now and again.

Before we get back to our cool removal, let's talk about some of the creatures I'm playing.

Stinkweed Imp, as I've found out across the Interwebz, is becoming a relatively popular include for Karador decks, and that makes me happy.

I think this is a card that Gramps brought up when talking about Pauper a while back, and I decided that I should just play this card in normal EDH and see what happens.

What happens is you get an incredible creature with a lot of re-tread value. Having a huge Dredge cost attached to a huge Rattlesnake effect makes this an effective card for decks that don't play a lot of creatures, and don't want to tap out so much while also having at least some permanents permanently on the board (Obzedizzle tends to come and go, remember).

Long story short, I will be trying to slide more copies of this card into more decks. And I will be looking for a foil one too. Cause this is the kind of card I like to get in foil. Janky weird stuff.

My copy of Retaliate had an unsuccessful run in my Darien, King of Kjeldor deck, where it was silly for anyone to want to attack when Darien was out, and chances were, I probably didn't have enough mana to support it.

Doing my binder check after my first run with the deck, I had Executioner's Swing sitting out, and realized this would be a much bigger improvement. With Obzedat gaining a steady amount of life, I don't mind giving my opponents the opportunity to think they've done something meaningful if I can get rid of their board as a result.

Sometimes, cards we think are bad don't turn out to be so horrible. I've already used this a couple times, taking like 15-20 damage, and completely obliterating my opponent's board because they chose to attack.

So we'll run back the other Fated card in Obzedizzle's colors.

Fated Return has been an incredible addition to both of the decks I've played it in so far.

My first was in the Doran Defender deck, where I cast Fated Return to Reanimate an opponent's Sun Titan and ensure I had my Rolling Stones out for my nonsense Walls.

A few weeks ago, I cast Fated Return on my opponent's Pontiff of Blight and took Obzedat into Extorts-ville. It was the coolest.

And by coolest, I mean, I won the game by casting Solemn Simulacrum with multiple Extort triggers. So I've done that.

Last card I'll talk about is a piece of old school CommanderCast tech- Seht's Tiger.

This card is seriously, seriously bonkers. I don't usually tell you to get up IMMEDIATELY and go buy a card, but if I did, it'd be this one.

I've been listening to a lot of Mark Rosewater's Drive To Work podcast, and one of the elements he's mentioned that he likes to do in design is create cards that players have to discover their possibilities.

Seht's Tiger is definitely one of these. Because at face value, this doesn't look like a way to both counter Fact or Fiction and Fog your opponent. But it's both. And it's a creature. Also, I love Flash. This card is all the things I love, which is why it was on one of our first episodes of The Stack, and it's back again (and so too, will be The Stack).

Here's the list in its entirety, so's you can check out the rest of it. Obzedizzle

Remember to come back by on Saturday for the triumphant return of The Stack!

Pass.
-UL