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By: Psychobabble, PB
Apr 30 2014 12:00pm
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This is the second part of my review of the new set for block constructed (part 1 is here). Read on for my thoughts on the black, red, green and multi-coloured cards that seem likely to have an impact on the block format and shape things heading into the upcoming block constructed pro tour.

Black

I mentioned in last week's article that black was clearly the strongest colour in block to date, and that the format-defining pillars of Thoughtseize and Hero's Downfall were in approximately 80% of decks in the metagame. One of the things I was looking for in going over the new set was any sign that the dominance of black might be on the wane. Quite frankly, it doesn't look like it. Black got a huge number of very obviously playable cards and a couple of other interesting options. Black aggro in particular seems incredibly strong day 1 of the new meta, so that's definitely a deck to keep in mind when brewing for the new format.

Agent of Erebos

Right off the bat we have a card which seems destined to have a big impact on the format. Only a few weeks ago, I was bemoaning the lack of graveyard interaction in the format. It seems that was an intentional move, but the designers were aware that the high power level of Whip of Erebos would necessitate some hate down the line. This is pretty strong hate too, quite easily clearing out the graveyard repeatedly in a deck with lots of enchantment creatures like black aggro, or just being able to be cast later on in the game with less enchantment-heavy decks. Not a flashy card, but an important one and likely to drastically knock down the power level of the dredge deck seeing as it's currently common enough that this will see play.

Bloodcrazed Hoplite

This is fighting for space with Hero of Iroas and Akroan Skyguard in the BW heroic deck, but deserves a serious look in the mono black deck as that deck doesn't have any other hero targets with this powerful, permanent, bonus. It's possible that space in that deck is tight enough given the other options that the deck is getting in this set that it doesn't make the cut, but if this was the only black card in JOU then I'd seriously consider cutting the Gray Merchants that are currently in the deck for this, because it fits the aggressive nature of the deck much better. You probably want to be running at least a couple of Boon of Erebos in combination with him, but with all the bestow creatures floating around in the deck, and more coming with JOU, you should trigger him enough for it to be worthwhile.

Brain Maggot

Just what this format needs, more unconditional discard. It's going to make things so much more fun. I mean yes, discard has some inherent weaknesses (bad in the late game, bad against decks with flat power level), but block, overall, has enough variation in power level between the cards that discard is generally powerful so I expect this to be played at least in slower decks, including something like dredge which can tutor this. As an aside, with Mesmeric Fiend type effects, when you see a card that you want your opponent to discard and a removal spell, you're generally best off taking the card that you want them to discard and forcing them to use their removal spell to get it back - it's unlikely that your opponent will have a worse target for their removal than your 1/1, so you might as well force them to use it.

Dictate of Erebos

Even if I've only personally done so in Duels of the Planeswalker, I've played Grave Pact enough times to realise it can do some pretty insane things especially in formats which are slightly slower. This is definitely on the expensive side for an enchantment which doesn't immediately affect the board, but the power level here seems high enough that it's likely to find a home of some sort. What you really want for this to be good is to be playing worse creatures than your opponent and/or have a way of sacrificing them for value. That immediately puts it in contention as a sideboard card for mono black against the (few) midrange decks left in the format, and makes me want to figure out how to make it work with Rescue from the Underworld. It's worth noting that the format is pretty full of random bad late game creatures like Sylvan Caryatid and Satyr Wayfinder which makes edicts in general slightly worse, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't keep an eye on this card.

Gnarled Scarhide

This seems downright scary. Mono black was already the best aggro deck in the format, and it just got one of the best aggro one drops WoTC has printed in a long time. This is easily up there with Experiment One and Delver of Secrets as the best block-constructed one drop of recent years, and it has beautiful symmetry with both heroic and some of the other cards in the mono black deck which really want to be able to turn sideways but sometimes have trouble getting through blockers like Spiteful Returned and Pain seer. You put four of these in your mono black deck on day one of the format, no questions asked. Well, there is a slight question as to whether making basically your entire deck enchantment creatures makes you fatally weak to Feast of Dreams and Deicide, but I'm not sure that mere spot removal is going to stop this card, particularly as it's got pseudo 2-for-1 value when bestowed.

King Macar, the Gold-Cursed

This one's a little more on the speculative side, but the potential is there given that the upside is Gild on a stick - I also have to wonder if all these gold artifact tokens aren't seeding for something in the upcoming block. It's fairly tricky to get King Macar to profitably tap when there's anything on the board that you'd like him to kill, so you probably only want to play him in a deck which can either tap him outside of combat (eg. Springleaf Drum, which is already played in some BW heroic decks, or perhaps Phenax, God of Deception if you want to go deep) or which can give him evasion or protection (eg. Gods Willing, or any number of blue enchantments). It's possible that you could use this as a sideboard card for black creature decks to bring in in creature mirrors and hope that you can use removal to clear out any blockers and take over the game from there.

Master of the Feast

BAM. This is clearly designed to have an impact, and it has a pretty chance to get there. You have to think that in any deck which would play this, getting in one hit with it would be enough to effectively end the game so the question is, is your chance of doing that greater than your chance of being punished? To really be punished here, your opponent needs an instant speed answer (well, that or Kiora which is a pretty amazing answer). If they play a sorcery speed removal spell - Revoke Existence, Banishing Light, Gild - then you haven't lost anything. The real problem is instant speed removal, of which only Hero's Downfall and instant speed enchantment removal reliably take it out it. Hero's Downfall is obviously a fairly common spell, but with the amount of discard available in black, you might be able to make sure your opponent doesn't have it on the turn you play this, and if they miss their topdeck then they might be effectively dead. This kind of feels like the format's Pack Rat, and we all know how fun Thoughtseize into Pack Rat is in standard. I can't wait. No, really.

Ritual of the Returned

I just wanted to point out that Nighthowler always creates a 0/0 token with this, which makes it very unlikely that you'd want to play it. If you have any of the other main creatures in the dredge deck for this in your graveyard - Ashen Rider, Abhorrent Overlord - you'd much rather leave them there for potential Whip/Rescue shenanigans than exile them to get a vanilla beater.

Squelching Leeches

This is probably a bit slow for the mono black aggro deck, but I think it's worth considering particularly as it's the most threatening creature that the deck can play which isn't an enchantment. If this deck is as popular as I feel it could be, then maindeck enchantment removal could become very good given that it hits basically all of the main threats in the deck - Gnarled Scarhide, Master of the Feast, Spiteful Returned and Herald of Torment. At the end of the day it's just a big, dumb, slow beater which isn't usually where you want to be but I wouldn't write it off completely.

Red

Well, from the best to the worse - outside of a couple of cards for the marginal, "dies to Drown in Sorrow" all-in aggro deck, red looks awful this set. I noted last week that red's already in a really bad place in block right now, only seeing play in the afore-mentioned (fringe) aggro deck, and this set just looks to cement that. THS contained quite a few decent midrange red cards (Stormbreath Dragon, Ember Swallower, Purphoros and his hammer as well as the RG gold cards), but red largely lost its midrange identity with BNG and that trend has continued with JIN unfortunately, leaving red as only really lending itself to all in fragile-aggro. At least it gets one good new option for that deck, and RW heroic might be a thing with Mana Confluence, but apart from that the only hope for red is in the new mythic.

Blinding Flare

Interestingly enough, there's no falter in the format yet. And this is a pretty decent one, although it gets somewhat expensive if you're trying to get Elspeth tokens out of the way. The ability to target your own heroic creatures with extra mana is genuine upside, and I could definitely see this as at least a sideboard card and possibly a maindeck card - it seems particularly good in RW heroic which has a few additional good hero targets to sink extra strive mana into, although watch your red land count if you're on that plan.

Dictate of the Twin Gods

I'm definitely stretching here. I'm not convinced this effect has ever been good when symmetrical, and the block already has Xenagos, God of Revels which has a similar effect in a non-symmetrical way. I can't help but wonder if this could be a combo enabler though, given that it has flash. I could maybe, possibly, see this in a UR counter-burn deck, where you control the board, save this up till the late game and win out of nowhere with some combination of burn, Battlemage Thaumaturge and Spellheart Chimera (the latter given haste with Hammer of Purphoros maybe?). UWR control with Purphoros, Elspeth, dome you for 12 and stormbreath for 8? Yeah, probably not, but maybe someone can make this work for a one shot kill.

Prophetic Flamespeaker

This is far and away the most powerful red spell in the set, and probably the entire block when viewed in a vacuum. The question is, is it more playable in the block format than Two-Headed Cerberus? That's a really tough call. The main type of deck which could use this is an aggro or tempo deck with a curve that basically tops out at three. That sort of deck would play a bunch of cheap removal and other cheap spells so it can take advantage of the double strike in the same turn as it has used a removal spell on an opponent's blocker. That's much more likely to happen in a format like modern with good one mana removal than block, although between Magma Spray, Chained to the Rocks and Oppressive Rays you could theoretically get there in block. Battlemage Thaumaturge would also help you out there, as would Hero of Iroas. In fact, the latter makes me wonder about this as a replacement for Fabled Hero in RW heroic decks, putting an aura/combat trick on this to pump it past blocker range and then playing out a bunch of cheap creature or ordeals could be pretty good. You could also think about using this as a value card in a midrange deck, but you're much less likely to be able to cast a four or five mana spell off Flamespeaker in the same turn as you've managed to get him in for a hit, so I doubt that's a good plan. Again, this is an engine card that dies to every removal spell ever, although at least he isn't an enchantment creature.

Satyr Hoplite

This is the most obvious candidate for a red constructed card in the set, giving a huge shot in the arm for RW heroic as the first red hero which gives a permanent bonus more useful than a 1/1 soldier. This gives you more redundancy for Favored Hoplite into ordeal draws, which is how that deck gets a good chunk of its wins, although missing one point of toughness does unfortunately put you in Lightning Strike range even after attacking with an ordeal. Still, this is an almost auto-include in RW heroic and that deck seems stronger in JOU with the better mana base, so well worth trying out.

Spite of Mogis

I didn't mention this in the discussion of removal last week, which probably tells you I don't really think this is good, but it is worth a mention as a possible inclusion in a hypothetical UR(w?) control deck. That deck probably wants to finish the game off with Spellheart Chimera, and generally has the potential to put a lot of instants into the graveyard over the course of the game and maybe you even want to help things along a little bit with Dakra Mystic. Being only one mana matters less and less as the game goes on, though, and this does zero damage if your graveyard is empty, so realistically this probably isn't going to make the cut.

Green

The mono-coloured green cards in this set seem overall fairly underwhelming, but it does get one of the set's most intriguing cards, which is also the only constellation card which seems potentially constructed playable. There's also a few nice little synergy cards and enablers, which as we saw last set with Satyr Wayfinder can be more important to a format's development than the big flashy spells.

Eidolon of Blossoms

I complained a couple of times last week that this was double the mana cost of Argothian Enchantress, which was probably a little unfair seeing as that card was completely broken (though a lot of that was to do with shroud). In theory, the effect on this card is powerful enough that it could be playable despite costing four mana, especially seeing as it cantrips itself so the worst case scenario isn't that bad. The thing I'm struggling with, though, is that the set already has Ephara, God of the Polis which has a very similar effect in a creature-based deck, possibly more powerful in fact, and that sees approximately zero play. I'm not quite sure why that is, maybe the removal in this set is good enough to keep four mana card draw engines in check, or maybe there's just more powerful things you want to be doing once you hit four mana than draw more cards, but either way I think you want to be doing something better than just turning your (Course of Kruphix)'s into cantrips if you intend to play Eidolon. So what's the upside here? Thinking completely out of the box, if you combine this with Hero of Iroas you can start churning through your deck pretty well, and things would get downright silly if you threw Meletis Astronomer into the picture. What are you setting up though? A big voltron attacker? Decks are fairly well prepared to deal with that by now. Can you do something silly with fonts and graveyard recursion? Does this play well with one of the gods? What about the inspired guys that make enchantment creatures? It's also worth noting that there's a bunch of enchantment-creature token makers in the set outside of the inspired guys, including Fated Intervention, Hammer of Purphoros, Heliod, God of the Sun and the new Pharika, God of Affliction. Eidolon of Blossoms could certainly be an engine card of some kind, but I thought the same of Phenax God of Deception and was proven horribly wrong so the same might be the case here - especially as this dies to EVERYTHING, including Annul and Magma Spray.

Font of Fertility / Golden Hind

Voyaging Satyr, your days are numbered. Realistically, few decks in this format want to do more than play a tapped temple on turn one, so Font of Fertility is reasonably close to Rampant Growth with possible upside if combined with Eidolon of Blossoms late game. I'd say that most decks which play Voyaging Satyr right now would be better off immediately switching to font for mana ramp reliability, although if you still want to chance your mana dork dying to Magma Jet, then Golden Hind is generally a slight upgrade thanks to an extra point of power. Perhaps in a 3-colour deck with lots of double mana requirements the satyr could still be preferable, but most decks would just want the bear.

Kruphix's Insight / Reviving Melody

With Agent of Erebos in the format, I'm not convinced the dredge deck will survive, but if it does then it'll want to consider one or both of these. Kruphix's Insight digs very deeply into your deck, which is potentially worth paying an extra mana for and gives the deck access to up to twelve graveyard combo pieces which greatly increases its consistency. You want to try to skew your deck towards playing as many enchantments as possible to increase your hits off it - Courser, Font of Fertility (over Caryatid even), Whip, perhaps even Eidolon of Blossoms - I'm not sure that it gets there but it's interesting to consider, and even if it doesn't get in the dredge deck it would be a key part of the Eidolon deck if such a thing exists. Reviving Melody is the Golgari Divination I guess, though doesn't do the mana smoothing thing which makes Divination so good. You don't want to go overboard with non-creature/enchantment spells in your dredge deck, but this is a decent card advantage spell to keep in mind if you're naturally filling up your graveyard.

Swarmborn Giant

I may be stretching here, but this thing is BEEFY. There's recent precedent for 6/6s for 4 in block - Desecration Demon and Alms Beast - both of which saw fairly heavy play in RTR block. This has got a pretty huge downside against aggro though given that your opponent can just attack past it with a couple of cheap attackers, suiciding one but killing your blocker in the process which is not what you want out of a massive blocker. This is certainly big, but I think it'd have a bigger chance of seeing play as a vanilla 6/6 for four with no monstrous, and even then it wouldn't be guaranteed especially seeing how little Polukranos has been doing in the format recently.

Multicoloured

There's more multicoloured gods and planeswalkers in this set, though there's also more answers to those card types than ever which means these aren't auto-plays by any means.

Ajani, Mentor of Heroes

Hmmm, lets play the "throw a dart and evaluate the power level of a planeswalker" game. Looking over WoTCs recent record with planeswalkers since ISD, they're batting at about a .500 for them having at least some relevance in their respective standard format and slightly higher in their block format. Which is to say, planeswalkers aren't automatically playable, but they have a much higher chance of being so than any other type of card, which isn't particularly surprising. In this block so far, Elspeth is very close to the best card in the format, Ashiok is a strong sideboard card, Xenagos was once a strong player but is hurt by how bad red is right now and Kiora has never made a mark but still strikes me as potentially viable at some point. Anyway, where does that get us with Ajani? I'm not sure, but I don't like the fact that he doesn't protect himself on an empty board and costing five mana is pretty steep too. But if you have so much as a 2/2 Satyr token lying about though (hello Naya superfriends?), things get much better. And impulsing for creatures (or friends to be super with?) seems fairly sweet. All in all, I can see this getting there but it's not guaranteed. Some sort of GW rampey-midrangey-creature deck with him as a topper, or a naya superfriends deck with Xenagos and Elspeth (can I be greedy and jam in Kiora too? Pretty please?) could work too, perhaps you could even jam Hundred-Handed One in there, who wears +3/+3 fairly nicely. Banishing Light does make all planeswalkers a bit worse, although that's much less of a concern if you're playing Polis Crusher, who also happens to wear +3/+3 pretty well.

Note: I seem to have reached some sort of card image limit, subsequent card images are linked but not displayed.

Athreos, God of Passage

This looks absolutely insane on paper. Top your BW aggro curve off with this, and how exactly does your opponent ever win the game when all of your creatures bolt their face when they die? Except they don't. Punisher mechanics have proven to us time and time again that they read much better than they play, and while this does read very well, and will probably play pretty well to, it isn't an auto-win even if your opponent doesn't have any one of the many answers to gods in the format/set to hand. First of all, it's quite possible for your opponent to just let you bounce your creature to hand and tempo you out. Sure you get a lot of card advantage, but it doesn't matter if your opponent's Lightning Strikes act like Unsummon if they still get to kill you in the meantime. Second, there's quite a lot of removal in the format which exiles stuff - Chained to the Rocks, Last Breath, Magma Spray, Anger of the Gods, Gild, Banishing Light, Revoke Existence, Glare of Heresy - not to mention that counterspells still do their thing. This card is way better when you're able to put it in an aristocrats-type shell where you are sacrificing your own creatures for value, and generating additional value from Ahtreos, which you're clearly not going to be doing in block constructed. As I said, this will probably still play out fairly well, but it's easy to overestimate Athreos and it's somewhat possible that it won't find a home in block.

Iroas, God of Victory

Weenie aggro decks in this format don't tend to have a problem with single large blockers. In between ordeal/bestow pumps, evasion-granting auras, combat tricks and removal, you can generally get by the odd Polukranos that's trying to make your life difficult. What these decks have issues with is removal and Elspeth tokens, which this doesn't really help with. Activating the multi-coloured gods isn't really a consistent game plan in block, so I expect this one to stay on the bench because it doesn't seem to justify itself as an enchantment.

Keranos, God of Storms

This is the card which makes you want to play UR(w?) control in the format. It's a real shame that gods are able to be killed by so many cards, meaning this isn't nearly as indestructible as it looks, but this is a seriously decent win-con - probably superior to Elspeth in the right deck given that it doesn't die to Hero's Downfall, meaning you can completely blank that card which esper decks do not currently. BWR control played some combination of Mogis and Heliod as (slow) god win-conditions, this seems much better than either and will certainly make you think about ditching black for red in your control deck, particularly if you want the cheap burn to deal with mono black aggro decks.

Nyx Weaver

This immediately struck me as a replacement for Courser of Kruphix in the dredge deck, and it probably is although doing so would give you less targets for Kruphix's insight so that's something to keep in mind. It also means you be able to hard-cast your seven and eight drops less frequently, so maybe you want to find a way of jamming them both in the same deck. Either way, this is a nice little graveyard synergy card and should definitely make its way into the dredge deck in some number.

Pharika, God of Affliction

Ditto :). This is a huge mirror breaker, assuming the dredge deck survives, and it quite possibly justifies a maindeck slot, although whether it does or not probably depends on how good 1/1 rats are in the format.

Underworld Coinsmith

This is fairly close to playable in the BW aggro deck. If it drained life on the trigger, or even just caused one life loss, I'd say it'd almost certainly be there given the number of incidental enchantment creatures that are in the deck, as it is it's probably only in sideboard consideration for the aggro matchup, where it seems quite decent as incidental life-gain and a bit of late game reach is what you want in the aggro matchup.

Conclusion

 

And that's it! This is technically a small set, but it seems destined to have an oversized impact on the format. The big question for me is whether any of the potential new decks - URw control, Gx enchantress particularly - will get there and whether Mana Confluence will make two-colour heroic aggro truly viable. I'm looking forward to seeing how it plays out, and am especially excited to see what happens at the upcoming block pro tour when the full block format will be on display at the highest level.

6 Comments

Thanks for the comment as by Psychobabble at Wed, 04/30/2014 - 22:54
Psychobabble's picture

Thanks for the comment as always. Good point re Ajani, junk dredge seems perfect. Turn your Wayfinders, Coursers and harpy tokens into huge threats. And comes down a turn earlier than Elspeth. Yeah, that seems perfect, and gives the deck another way to work if its graveyard is removed.

I'm way less convinced on Eidolon. It's too slow to be of use against aggro. Voice is kind of similar in that respect but that was only good because it came on turn 2 and also immediately impacted the board after blocking without you having to spend more mana. A turn 4 2/2 value-blocker is just irrelevant when you're under pressure. And I agree that it's theoretically great value against control, but I don't think it's better than Ephara and Ephara doesn't get played. You need to go way under or way over the top against the control decks in this format, not play 2/2s for 4 that draw you cards, hopefully. And it's not always a 2-for-1, annul and dissolve stop it from drawing you a card quite effectively.

Idk, I hope you're right because it would be nice to see something new shake things up, but I'll have to see it to believe it. I also note that I would have been MUCH higher on eidolon if there was even one enchantment land in the set.

This is matt. It will be by eatsleepdie at Sat, 05/03/2014 - 17:12
eatsleepdie's picture

This is matt. It will be interesting to see what happens. A couple points to defend eidolon against aggro. Considering the deck would be played in (green) we have better blockers coming out the previous two turns (carytid and courser) eidolon is not intended to block unless desperately needed. What could be better than having a courser and eidolon of blossoms going into T5 against aggro? Another reason eidolon is great against aggro (and anything) is because she forces an answer on a 2/2 body that replaced itself already. That is so powerful when she isn't even your wincon. If aggro doesn't answer her then you have a much better chance at finding your answers. What kind of enchantments will be played in green? Creatures. When nearly every body in your deck has ETB "draw a card", aggro is going to have a bad day. And i think eidolon is much better than ephara in this set. Eidolon is a guaranteed body a color that supports her card draw. Ephara draws but doesn't support a aggressive build by being a 4 mana sideline enchantment. I have a deck I am working on, and feel is very powerful against aggro and elspeth with JOU cards using eidolon. Eidolon just needs the right shell ;).

Would love to see a UR or URW by IYankemDDS at Thu, 05/01/2014 - 00:47
IYankemDDS's picture

Would love to see a UR or URW deck. I really enjoy the one that you wrote about toward the end of Triple Theros. If one is viable, I would likely switch to it.

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