Dave’s Personal Blog

Aerie Mystics is a bit pricy as a 3/3 for 5, but making your Bant guys flame retardant would be pretty handy.

Asha’s Favor looks like it might be useful, especially in a Naya deck, to give your fatties flying, first strike, and vigilance.

Court Homunculus, while not as good as Wild Nacatl, it should be a strong card in Esper decks.

Speaking of Esper, I’ll jump ahead to talk about Salvage Slasher. Similarly this should see play in Esper decks. It’s sort of the dark twin of the Court Homunculus: it gets pumped by artifacts in the graveyard rather than in play… and as is often the case with things dark, it the more you have in the graveyard the bigger it gets. The downside is that it doesn’t get any tougher. Hmm… I wonder if he’ll find a place in extended affinity decks. He might be an interesting combo with Arcbound Ravager.

Darklit Gargoyle is a useful fellow. 1/2 for 2 is on the edge of OK, but for more to make him a 3/1 as a combat trick… not bad. I used him to good effect.

Martial Coup looks to be a strong card. I haven’t played or come up against it yet, but I can definitely see it being a game turner. I really like the whole cycle of “If X is 5 or more….” cards.

Mirror-Sigil Sergeant rhox (heh). Really… I love this dude. I had him in my first sealed pool. When he hit the table my opponents would ask what he did, and read the card… followed usually by “Oh sh*t”.

Paragon of the Amesha is just plain cool. I love the art. Definitely one of my favorite arts in the set. 2/2 first striker for 3. Decent return on investment. But being able to make it a 5/5 first strikin’, like linkin’ angel (flying implied) is incredible. OK.. that takes WUBRG, but it doesn’t take one of each basic land… this set gives you plenty of ways to get WUBRG. And the flavor of the cards is great.. the transcendence of the honorable to the ranks of the Angels. Cool stuff.

Path to Exile is simply awesome. Use it to remove any threat that’s coming your way. OK, your opponent gets a land… a reasonable price to pay to get rid of a huge threat. And, you can use it of one of your chump blockers to do some color fixing of your own.

Sigil of the Empty Throne doesn’t exactly excite me… yet. But there’s a wicked enchantment based deck waiting to be built around it.

I expect to see Wall of Reverence see limited play.. not sure about it being constructed-worthy. But I got a foil one It’s pretty.

Esperzoa looks like it will have good synergy with Sanctum Gargoyle, continually bouncing & replaying the gargoyle… resurrecting your dudes in the process.

Ethersworn Adjudicator looks strong, but I haven’t seen it in action yet. Being able to knock away a blocker, untap & attack… seems pretty good. It’s an awesome looking card too.

Frontline Sage is a great card. Nothing like digging through your deck looking for answers… especially later in the game when you don’t want to be drawing more land.. this guys lets you manage your draws a bit better.

Master Transmuter looks like another good Esper combo piece.

I had Parasitic Strix in my pools. He saw play in a couple of my decks. A 2 point life transfer is always nice. Without that he’s marginal: a flying 2/2 for 3.

Traumatic Visions … hmmm a hard counter for 5.. and I thought Cancel was expensive at 3. Ok, this gives you basic landcycling for 2… but even so. This might see some play in limited.

Worldly Counsel has proved useful. It’s alwasy nice to be able to dig.. especially so when it doesn’t mill you in the process.

Absorb Vis… I love this card. You can fix your colors with it early in the game or use it late game for an 8 point swing in life. I used it for the latter effect several times.

Drag Down is a very handy removal spell for multi-color decks.

Pestilent Kathari, how I love thee… let me count the ways: 1) flying, 2) deathtouch, and most impressively 3) 2R to gain first strike. That means if it gets blocked, I pay 2R, and your blocker disappears and the katahri flies to fight another turn. It only does 1 damage.. but that’s all it takes with deathtouch… with the first strike.. he’s a repeat offender. One game pretty much stalemated when I had a couple of these bad boys out with mana online to activate them. My opponent had all manner of nasty things.. but didn’t want to loose them. Let me repeat.. these guys are amazing on defense.

Rotting Rats… how can you not love something called Rotting Rats? And they’re Zombies. And they cause discard, and unearth to do it again later. What’s not to love? Rotting Zombie Rats. Wow. These would definitely have had a place in my Zombie Madness deck.

Banefire is going into my “There Be Dragons” deck. It’s a big mana deck, packing a couple Hellkite Overlord as finishers, so firing with an X or 5 or 6 isn’t a big deal. And it has great flavor synergy with Sarkhan Vol who is a centerpiece of the deck.

Dark Temper is more great removal. 2 damage will take out most things early game.. and later once you have something black in play it’ll take out anything.

Voracious Dragon… Dragon Fodder just became even more relevant.

Wandering Goblins is pretty cool. In one game my opponent attacked with this guy… thinking to pump it to 5/3 (he had all 5 basic land types out). He pauses, looks at the card, looks at his lands (he had 9 or 10 in play), and says.. “oh.. I can do it more than once”, taps 9 to make it a 15/3 and destroys me. Needless to say, his guy is pretty handy.

Cliffrunner Behemoth… as Rhox War Monk taught many of us, lifelink on something big is pretty sweet. Haste on the same thing is even sweeter.

Thornling looks pretty good. If you have enough land out to play him, you have enough to make him pretty nasty. I can see him as a key player in a mono great beats deck.

Tukatongue Thallid. Ah Thallids. Fond memories of Thallids & Saprolings. My first homebrew decks were Gb or Gw (or Gbw) thallid decks and a Gw saproling token deck. There’s a certain beauty in fielding 101 saproliings one turn and dropping a Coat of Arms precombat the next turn. That said, this guy isn’t quite in the same league as the Thallids of yore. But still, a 1/1 for G that replaces himself when he dies. Not too shabby.

Sphinx Summoner is a little pricy at 5 for a 3/3 flyer. But when you consider that it’s a tutor as well, it’s pretty decent. In an Esper deck where everything is artifacts… it could be a nice toolbox combo piece. Note that, contrary to it’s name, it doesn’t just tutor for sphinxes.. any artifact creature will do [but 'Artifact Creature Summoner' just sounds lame].

As 4/3 for 5 that can become a 2/3 unblockable dude, Vectis Agents isn’t too bad. And he looks great on a T-Shirt.

Malfegor shows up in both plain & shiney-prerelease glory. Whether he proves to be a contender remains to be seen. 6 for a 6/6 dragon is decent. Sure you loose your hand, but your opponent will loose a few creatures as well.

I can’t do this post without commenting on Apocalypse Hydra, one of the poster boys for Conflux. Another of the “If X is 5 or more” cycle, I love how it plays up being a hydra. The build-in ping ability is great. This guy will be interesting to see in action.

Magister Sphinx is pretty awesome. His CIP effect is great… knock down your opponent, or replenish yourself. Plus, he’s a 5/5 flying body. For 7, I’d say that’s a fair deal. I used him repeatedly in my first prerelease flight: He was in two of my Conflux boosters, once as a foil.

Blood Tyrant is another game winner. First off, 7 for a flying 5/5 is pretty good even if that 7 is 4UBR… if you’re playing Gryxis and don’t have UBR online by turn 7, something is very wrong. This guy is going to get +2/+2 in each of your upkeeps, so the first time he gets to attack he’ll likely be a 7/7, then a 9/9, and so on. Did I mention he flies? And has trample? This is another “Oh sh*t” card. This guy just begs me to play multi-player with his other ability: +5/+5 (in counters) when someone looses the game.

No discussion of Conflux would be complete with mentioning the über-Planeswalker, the Elder Dragon himself, Nicol Bolas. Pricy, but a juicy payoff if you can keep him around for 3 turns: blow away a couple lands or enchantments, then blow away 7 more permanents, not to mention wiping out their hand and knocking them down by 7 life. And the sweetest thing.. Nicol Bolas will still be there. Alternatively you can use him (as if… you don’t use Bolas, he uses you) to destroy non-creatures and steal creatures… for the rest of the game. Gotta love that.

I liked Skyward Eye Prophets. Again, it helps dig for answers and land. Nice in limited, not sure about constructed.

What can you say about Fusion Elemental? Playing an 8/8 on turn 5 is incredible. Yes, I’ve had all 5 colors online by turn 5… again, not necessarily all 5 basic lands.. but all 5 colors thanks to some fixers which I always seemed to have in abundance in my pools.

Maelstrom Archangel has the look of a card that will be the cornerstone of some combo decks… it’s a perfect way to get something like Progenitus into play.

Speaking of Progenitus.. if you can get this guy into play and online… yikes! He even has his own Facebook group. I have yet to die at the hands (um necks) of Progenitus, but my time will come. And the art is phenomenal… i’d love to crack a foil of this bad boy. One word… Deathrender.

Rupture Spire is a handy color fixer, but doesn’t help with domain.

Unstable Frontier will help you with that.

Exotic Orchard not only helps out with the abilities of all those creatures you’ve stolen (e.g. with Nicol Bolas), but it looks good too.

Armillary Sphere is a great way to fix colors and build up domain.

Mana Cylix is another great color fixer. It’s great to be able to drop one of these on turn 1.

Obelisk of Alara seems pretty handy. Regardless what colors you are running, there’s something it can do for you. I know I’ll be trying it out.