Worldwake Spoilers - Celestial Colonnade analysis

Well the buy-a-box promo card for Worldwake has been spoiled on the MTG Salvation forums within the past couple days. Lets take a look below:


(Source)

Wow. Not only are man-lands back but they are back with a vengeance. This card has the spike in me jumping for joy. What we have is a mana-fixing man-land that can be turned into a Serra Angel each turn for a slightly more prohibitive cost. Besides the normal perks of dodging sorcery removal and counters as a man-land, the creature has vigilance so it can be tapped for mana after you attack or still be used next turn for counters. If we get some better counters in Worldwake this will fit nicely into a blue / white control deck for sure.

To me this seems like it has the potential to be one of the best cycles of man-lands printed. Having a mana fixer early in the game that can be used as a beater in the late game is quite powerful even if it does always come into play tapped. I would assume we will only see an allied cycle on these lands in Worldwake but I guess we will have to wait for more spoilers to confirm this. I personally can't wait to see the rest of the cycle. If they are anything as good as this I feel these lands have the potential to be big in standard as long as the activation cost is correctly priced for the type of deck they are designed to fit into.

One thing that seems a bit odd to me though is why we are getting the first multi-color man lands in what has been said to be a very mono-colored block. The Leatherback Baloth I talked about in the last spoiler post only seems to support the mono-color theme but this card certainly does not. Is wizards so caught up in multi-color land cycles that they would go against the theme of a block just to print some interesting cards? Must every set contain a cycle of $10 multi-color rare lands? Are they doing these things to cater to the type II players out there? I guess we will figure some of these questions out as the spoiler season continues.

Future Consideration: Prophetic Bolt

If there is one part of my current cube that I am not happy with it would have to be my gold/hybrid section. It is only 50 cards that are made of of 5 of each of the 2 color pairs. I never really hit the many of the gold blocks so my cards are mostly old golds or hybrids from shadowmoor block. Of all of the color combos this has left my blue/red very weak and mainly agro creatures.

Lets take a look at the current lineup:

Inside Out
Noggle Ransaker
Noggle Bandit
Crag Puca
Dominus of Fealty

I would like at least 1 less creature to help push the blue feeling of these cards a little bit more that there is currently. After review, I have decided that I want to add in Prophetic Bolt. This card is a kicked Burst Lightning and an Impuse on one printed card for only a slightly more restrictive cost. The spell has both a very blue and very red effect and I like what it adds to the red/blue gold section of the deck. I think I can easily swap out one of the Noggles for it without missing them too much.

Have any input on this choice? Is there a better Red/Blue card I should be considering for my cube?

Worldwake Spoilers - Leatherback Baloth analysis

Another card for Worldwake has been spoiled over on the MTG Salvation forums. Lets take a look at the card from nivek99 below:


(Source)

This card certainly is as boring as it is powerful. Powerful in the sense that it is much better than the 5 existing GGG creature spells (click here for the otheres) but boring in the design space since it is only a vanilla creature. I am certain this will see some sort of play however as it avoids most damage based removal. This card really is doing what green does best which is dropping big creatures; however, it is doing it much more efficiently than usual.

I do like that mono color cards seem to be catching up in power level to all the gold cards in the Alara block, but you have to wonder at what point is lightning bolt going to be too weak for the current meta? How long will it be before players will start with 30 life to offset the power of modern cards? Is black going to be the new king of removal since even a Flame Javelin, one of reds best removal/finisher cards from shadowmoor, can not even slay the beast?

The scary thing is that with acceleration this can be a turn 2 drop. I am not trying to cause alarm and say "a 4/5 for 3! the sky is falling!" but if Worldwake is going to be a set made up of many strong mono cards like this it seems like it will upset the meta game alot. I am going to call it now, this will see standard play.

It is assumed that the card was an early leaked common promo for Worldwake. It seems to me that it really will be an uncommon given its similarity to Woolly Thoctar. It is an interesting look at what Worldwake may have to offer us as it is the first non-reprint spoiled for the set so far. The Worldwake spoiler season seems to be starting early so lets hope we keep getting a steady stream of leaks as it continues.

Weekly Roundup - 11/30 - 12/06

Weekly Roundup is a weekly overview (or roundup) of interesting articles that have been posted in the magic blogosphere...other than the awesome ones posted here of course.

Worldwake Spoilers

Worldwake Spoilers Begin - New Jace Confirmed! - Mananation.com

Mananation compiles the first scraps of Worldwake information together. Check out the first spoiled reprint and cards leaked from the intro packs. I am ready for this spoiler season to get into full swing.

Standard

Breaking Through - When Christmas Becomes New Year's - Channelfireball.com

I love witnessing when a new deck comes along and shakes up the meta of the competitive magic environment. If I was playing competitive Magic right now this would be the deck I would want to play.

DeckBuilding

Developing Your Planeswalker Algorithm - channelfireball.com

This article goes over all of the planeswalkers' abilities, when they should be used, and what decks to use them in. This was hands down my favorite article of the week.

R & D

Designing for Spike - Wizards.com

Any article about designing magic is a winner in my book. I enjoy the different magic psychological profiles and am glad to see that Magic's veteran R & D still "gets" the game after working on it for so long. I highly recommend this article if you have any interest.

Zendikar Multiverse Outtakes - Wizards.com

A look at the lighter side of designing magic. While not incredibly deep or insightful, I did get a few chuckles out of some of the designer comments posted for cards in Zendikar during the design process.

Limited

JBoots Drafts Zendikar #6 - Mananation.com

I have found this series to be the most interesting limited coverage on the web. I may not always agree with his picks and from time to time he does make play mistakes, but being able to watch a draft from picks to finish has really helped boost my skills in the format. If you have any interest in drafting you need to watch all of JBoot's videos now.

EDH

EDHing Your PDS: Slivers Deck - 99edhproblems.com

A much different look at turning the premium sliver deck into an EDH deck than was posted in last week's weekly roundup. A good read for all of you who are interested in the format.

Card Synergy - Your First Combo

I am not sure if this is necessarily the case anymore but when I started playing Magic: The Gathering players started from humble beginnings with limited card pools. It wasn't unusual for people you play against to be using 5 color 150 card decks that consisted of their his or her entire collection. Because of this phenomena their didn't seem to be much card and deck synergy from most players beyond Keldon Warlord and the other 6 creatures that person had in play.

I too might have turned out to be another player like this had it not been for a lucky pull from my revised sealed deck/tournament pack and three booster packs that made up my initial magic collection. I was fortunate enough to pull both a Thicket Basilisk and a Lure in my collection of cards. In terms of modern magic this could hardly even be considered a combo. More modern cards like Turntimber Basilisk or even Stone-Tongue Basilisk have a little bit of this combo built into a single card. Back in the early days of magic though this was super secret tech and a great way to get card advantage over an opponent (not that we knew what that was back then mind you).

After the first time I cleared the board using this combo my opponents were stunned. My 2/4, Deathtouch for 5 become the bane of all the other local players. My green/white/red deck become feared by my opponent. Anytime I would play the basilisk I would just leave it on the sidelines. It would never attack or never block to avoid dying to Giant Growth or Lightning bolt. It would sit waiting for me to draw my lure as it waged psychological warfare against my enemies. My opponents knew that their creatures' days were numbered.

Overall, I feel lucky that my first magic cards had some synergy together. It allowed me to take a serious look at the game that made me develop more as a Johnny/Spike instead of being a Timmy who stacked his deck with Craw Wurms. It was the start that led me into playing competitive magic as well as made me focus more on maximizing my deck choices. It also lead me down a path where I would eventually even scoff at the my original combo. Sometimes I wonder what kind of magic player I would have turned out to be if that lure would have been a wanderlust instead . I can honestly say I am glad I don't know.

What was your first combo? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

Worldwake spoiler season is starting

Well it looks like it is that time again. Mananation has kicked off the Worldwake spoiler season with this post on their website. In addition to that, MTG salvation has started off the spoiler list on their site here. While I doubt I have enough clout to be able to have any cards to spoil for you all at this point (though I would love to if you are reading this wizards), expect commentary on spoiled cards here on Mana Workshop as the spoiler season picks up and moves into full swing.

Taking the Sliver Premium deck to EDH

Originally when I set out with the goal of using the Sliver premium deck I was excited because I thought it would be a pretty unique idea; However, it appears that I was not alone in this idea. The deck lends itself very well to the singleton format because if you take out all the nonbasic land duplicates you have a list of 50 cards which is half of your EDH deck right there. It would leave you with the following cards:

Singleton precon list

When I started working with this decklist my goal was to use these 50 cards for the base. The more I looked worked on the deck the more frustrated I got. Slivers just don't seem to work that well in a singleton format. There is some redundancy in different sliver's abilities such as a few that offer trample and 2 that offer +1/+1. but without the redundancy that you can get from having duplicate effects on the battle field you often have to lose abilities to use the sliver sacrifice abilities. This became frustrating enough for me that I have decided to focus mainly on the cards to play and will forgo creating a final deck list.

If you want full deck list ideas then take a look at 99edhproblems or MTG Deck Source who both also have taken a look at this issue. I feel both of these decks make the right choices in terms of what slivers to play so instead I will focus on the tribal cards you will want to play along with your slivers.

The Cards to Consider

Shared Triumph - The enchantment version of sinew sliver. Anything that is going to boost our slivers power and toughness is going to be worth taking as most of them are small bodies.

Urza's Incubator - This is a nice card to play because many slivers have a single colored mana and many colorless. Since some of slivers seem to cost too much for what they do I feel this card is a good fix for that problem.

AEther Vial - A nice way to work around color screw and ramping out some additional slivers.

Cryptic Gateway - This card will allow you drop in multiple fatties a turn or flash in a sliver during an opponent's turn.

Patriarch's Bidding - This card can be a nice win condition if you use something like Necrotic Sliver to clear the board and set yourself up for the next attack with all of your fallen slivers.

Unnatural Selection - another card that is harder to remove than your Amoeboid Changeling that will allow you to take multiple creatures from your opponent per turn with your general. It also works well with Peer Pressure but I am not sure that would be worth taking on its own.

Mana Echos - This card is awesome if you are playing sliver queen. It allows you to create as many tokens as you want or to drop a giant fireball on an opponents head.

Door of Destinies - A solid pick for any tribal deck. This works even better in EDH since the games tend to allow for a slower curve.

Harsh Mercy - A cheaper almost wrath. Much like Patriarch's Bidding this card will most likely work out better for you than your opponent unless they are playing a heavily tribal deck as well.

More Changelings

Since the precon is ok with going with changelings I feel like its ok to add some more to the mix.

Changeling Titan - Other than your large legendary creatures you don't have too many options on large bodies to play as slivers. I like changeling titan because if you have mana issues he is not too hard to drop into play either.

Chameleon Colossus - a pump-able body that gets all of the bonuses of your slivers? yes please. Some might say it is a big commitment to green, but when I was working on the deck originally I found my list was shaping up to be a 5 color green sliver deck. Your millage my vary.

Mutavault - If you thought mutavault was rude in fairies think again. In this deck, mutavault becomes the most disgusting land ever printed. Good times.

Mirror Entity - I like this card here because i feel like our slivers are almost too small to make the difference in the late game sometimes. Being able to pump them up seems like a good fix for that problem to me.

Conclusion

While this obviously doesn't take you to a full deck it certainly gives you a good idea on what cards you want to go with. When I started looking at putting a deck together for this I actually found that selecting the slivers was the easy part. I have to pour over set lists to really be able to find the cards that I liked to fill out the tribal support the way that I wanted to. Hopefully you all found this helpful.

Sorry for the lack of a full decklist. Between my poor mana fixing cards and the issues I came up when designing a sliver EDH deck I came to the conclusion that it was not the deck I wanted to play after all. Hopefully for those of you that do want to play EDH slivers the tribal cards and changeling selection will be of some use to you. If you are interested in some of my picks, my work in progress decklist can be found here. Some of the picks are a little wonky and wouldn't have made the final cut and I never got around to completing the mana base. Sadly I doubt the deck will ever be completed as I have lost interest for the reasons I have stated above.

What cards would you play in a EDH sliver deck that are pissing?