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By: Lord Erman, Nafiz Erman
Mar 29 2009 10:03am
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Rogue Play - Scoping the Unknown
Part: I
by Nafiz Erman

 

Hello everybody. As some of you already knows, Wizards of the Coast announced a new MTGO-only format; the so called Kaleidoscope. The official announcement can be found here. It is a format that will be played with only gold (multicolor in other words) cards and the only banned card is Glittering Wish. The card pool will be Extended card pool. And that is all we know at the moment. We don't know the other extra rules of the format; we don't even know if there are any other extra rules for the format. The only thing we can guess is that just because Glittering Wish is banned, there will be a sideboard.

I wished that I could have wished a wish... ah well, farewell Glittering Wish!

The official announcement was explaining the reason for banning Glittering Wish but that wasen't very satisfying for me. I think that WotC acted in a "shoot first and ask questions later" way. They solve the problem even before it became a problem.

Anyway, the information we have at the moment about the format is too little, but that can't and won't stop us from speculating about it, right? Exactly, I thought so too.

After the announcement, I spent a lot time on MTGO searching for gold cards and I'm here to share with you my findings. Some cards, which you never even think of playing, will be staples in Kaleidoscope. Let's see what these are.

 

MANA

First of all by mana I mean lands, mana creatures and land-fetching spells. And the first card is actually a no-brainer.

A long forgotten land from Dissension, Pillar of the Paruns has now become the hottest chase rare all of a sudden! I mean, even back when Ravnica block was in Standard, this card rarely saw play even in the Casual Room. But now in a format where everything is gold, this card is pure diamond. I bought my playset one day after the official announcement was made and I bought them for the price they used to be. And last time I checked the card's price, it was $8,50. Ouch!! If the format turns out to be a success, I expect it to be something between $10 - $15 (why not, is it worse than Breeding Pool for example?).

There are also two other lands that I believe will be very important in Kaleidoscope. And no, one of them is not Reflecting Pool. That card is already important in almost all the formats it is allowed to play in and this new format won't be an exception. No, I'm talking about these:

These two new additions from Conflux are soooooo good in Kaleidoscope (I know because I already started playtesting decks!). Ancient Ziggurat might not look that tempting to some of you who will try some form of a control deck with few creatures. Of course I have respect to those players, but my early test results tell me that going the beatdown route in this format is more viable than the "sit & wait" tactic (more on this later). And unlike other formats, there is absolutely no chance that your Exotic Orchard will stay as a basic swamp or basic plains in Kaleidoscope. It will always be at least two colors.

Then we have mana producing creatures. On a second thought, do we have them actually? I mean we don't have Birds of ParadiseLlanowar Elves, Noble Hierarch or land fetching creatures like Wood Elves or Civic Wayfinder etc... But we do have something, right? Well, bad news here folks because it seems that without the monocolor creatures, our options are very limited.

We have Knotvine Mystic (meh!), we have Manaforge Cinder (meh!), we have Radha, Heir to Keld, we have Steward of Valeron and we have "use once and use with caution" Wild Cantor. Seeing this very few and not so tempting options, I believe that deck building in Kaleidoscope will be a real challange if you are in need of fast mana. Playing a three mana creature on turn two will almost never happen. Which actually is something very common in any other formats. So aggro deck builders should adjust their decks.

And as for the Wood Elves variants, unfortunately we have none. Yes shocking and somewhat dissapointing I know, but that's the truth (and no, Knight of the Reliquary won't count!).

And what about our Rampant Growths? What do we have in this category and are they good?

We have limited options here again. I mean, yes I'm aware that the format itself is limiting deckbuilding but as you will see in a short while, the creature list isn't that limited. But other areas such as this one (land fetching), do not offer great options. Actually the best we have here is Exploding Borders. How come you ask? How come a four mana spell that gets you only one basic land can be so great? Because the other card we have is Safewright Quest (which I think will see some play) and that's all! Two cards. Two cards to get you a land from your library.

Nevertheless I must say that I'm very hopeful that Alara Reborn will give more than just a few cards to this category (and playable ones too).

Okay, let's finish this part. Mana in Kaleidoscope, as you see, is the hardest and at the same time the easiest of problems. We have so many excellent lands in the format so that getting color screwed will be a very rare situation. However do not build too mana intensive decks. The options to generate extra mana or to get extra lands into play are very limited and not very playable.

 

CREATURES

This part is easy. We actually have everything we need.

You want aggro? You want control? You want combo?

We have a wide array of options and the best creatures of Extended's card pool are at our disposal.

And the best thing is that we don't have to limit ourselves to only two colors. A turn one Pillar of the Paruns and a turn two Reflecting Pool will open all the doors of multicolor goodness to us.

How many would you like to take?

And even if you still like to keep your color choices at minimum, which is two of course, there are still so many nice creatures available thanks to "Ravnica's guilds meet Shadowmoor's hybrids meet Alara's shards" cards.

Good enough for you?

The only thing to worry is the one mana slot. The only options we have are Shadowmoor Block's hybrids (and yeah, Wild Cantor too). So even though we can't start with a Isamaru, Hound of Konda followed by a Watchwolf, we can still start with a Figure of Destiny followed by a Rakdos Guildmage if we'd like. Combo decks or control decks won't be effected by this situation maybe, but the aggro decks already lost a good portion of their one drop possibilities. So keep this in mind when building your deck.

 

PLANESWALKERS

And this is the easiest and the shortest part. We only have three multicolor planeswalkers and I don't think that Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker will see that much tournament level play. But as always we have the magnificient Ajani Vengeant as well as Sarkhan Vol. People were talking about Sarkhan Vol and saying how he was living under the shadow of other better planeswalkers these days, but now I believe that he found his home. Kaleidoscope will be his home.

 

REMOVAL

This part we should examine in two sub-categories. Mass Removal and Spot Removal.

Mass Removal is a big problem in Kaleidoscope. We almost have nothing. Remember I said that going the beatdown route will be better than to sit and wait? This is the reason actually. Mass Removal is always the most important part of any non-aggro deck. So what shall we do without Wrath of God and any other such cards? What do we have left?

The best option seems to be this:

And the second best card after Savage Twister seems to be the second part of Crime/Punishment. Then there is Void as another playable option. If you don't like these three options, I'm afraid to tell you that you won't find anything better than these. I mean, are Culling Sun or Brightflame or Child of Alara better than Savage Twister? I personally don't think they are.

As for the Spot Removal, we have almost every good card we will need. I don't think that I have to tell you how good Mortify or Putrefy or Lightning Helix are. However there are three things I must tell you about Spot Removal in Kaleidoscope.

The first one is that we lost many nice and cheap (as in mana cost) removal spells. We don't have Path to Exile, we don't have Terror or even "hard to deal with" Oblivion Ring. This thing you should keep in mind. For removal you will pay mana greater than the amount you used to pay. That may effect your gameplay and thus your way of building your deck. Instead of casting a Deathmark or a Condemn (or even a Slaughter Pact), you will now at least pay two mana for Agony Warp or Lightning Helix. Or in some cases three mana for Unmake.

The second thing is that we won't have those assassins such as Nekrataal or Shriekmaw or even the basic one Royal Assassin. Deck building needs a little bit of evolving in this category. We will start playing with cards like Murderous Redcap (which I think will see a lot of play) or even with Giltspire Avenger

And finally there is one card I must specifically talk about. At the beginning I said that there are some cards which normally you wouldn't play at all but are bombs in Kaleidoscope. Pillar of the Paruns is such a card. And this dear readers, is another one:

The first part of Pure/Simple is the answer to everything! It is simply Vindicate! Most definately an auto-include to almost all decks.

And now that the removal part is also over, let's talk about what blue mages will do in this format; meaning card drawing and counter magic.

 

CARD DRAWING

Card drawing, looking at the top X cards of libraries, searching the library for X cards and then revealing them to the opponent for him to choose one or more cards, are a blue mage's basic tricks. But in Kaleidoscope there is a problem; there are no pure blue mages in the format to start with! 

Usually a blue mage likes to play creatures that let him draw some cards or peek at the top part of his library. To name a few, Court Hussar, Sage of Epityr, Aeon Chronicler, Fathom Seer and Mulldrifter come to my mind. Now all are gone.

Or common blue mages like tricky spells such as Ancestral Vision, Compulsive Research or Ponder. All those are gone too. So a blue mage has to allign himself with some other color(s) in Kaleidoscope. Which ones? Let's see.

First of all the same problem I wrote about above for Spot Removal is occuring here again. We have to pay more than what we used to pay for some actions in Kaleidoscope. If we want to draw cards, we now have to play spells like Esper Charm, Consult the Necrosages or even the overcosted Kiss of the Amesha. Or we can play creatures like Shadowmage Infiltrator, Dimir Guildmage or the mighty Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind.

So as you see the results aren't that much satisfying (at least not for me). Wistful Selkie's one time effect isn't that interesting. Invoke the Firemind will mostly a removal spell rather than a card drawing one. And how many times do you think you can hit the opponent with Dimir Cutpurse?

Again, I trust Alara Reborn for this category. It better bring in some new goodies.

 

COUNTER MAGIC

If I were you, I wouldn't depend on counter spells too much in this format and wouldn't try to build a "counter all" type of deck. Such a deck won't exist (at least not at tournament level) simply because there aren't many such cards are in the format. Sure Voidslime is nice. Punish Ignorance is nice. Even though situational, Bant Charm and Countersquall are also nice. But even an average player knows how play around those.

But there is one card I must definately mention. Who said that for two mana we can't counter every card type because it is not fair? Who said that to be able to counter everything, we should pay at least three mana (as in Cancel)? I don't know who said that but definately that rule isn't true in Kaleidoscope. Ladies and gentlemen, please salute this bomb:

Trial/Error is definately THE card for everyone who likes to have counter magic in their decks.

By the way, even now when the format isn't yet officially announced (the first short announcement we got was more or less a teaser about the format), I encounter many players in the casual room who are trying Kaleidoscope decks. More people are starting to talk about it everyday. The price of Pillar of the Paruns already skyrocketed. And once again, Wizards managed to turn some crappy cards into staples. Such as Pillar of the Paruns, Pure/Simple and Trial/Error. And there is one last such card too that I have to mention.

 

TUTORING

Tutoring will be the last category I will talk about in this article. If I continue, then I have to mention also land destruction, discard, creature boosting, graveyard manipulation etc.. which then will turn this one into an unending article.

Anyway, we said Tutoring and Tutors, right? Okay. As we all know, this is actually black's domain. In Extended there are many nice tutor cards but none of them would do any good to us... unless they are gold of course.

Our gold tutor options are actually nice. From the overcosted Conflux to the transmute keyworded Dimir creatures, we have some nice options and we have something for every type of deck. Sphinx Summoner gets you your Esper goodies. Congregation at Dawn (which I like very much) gets you the right creature at the right time to meet all your aggro needs. Sliver Overlord is the master of the Sliver decks (oh yes, they do exist in this format too (unfortunately I must add)) and Scion of the Ur-Dragon is there to satisfy all your casual Dragon obessions.

But there is one tutor to rule them all, one tutor to find them, one tutor to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them... uhm okay that was something else, sorry for the confusion!

Anyway, that one tutor I'm talking about is this:

Black's domain it might be in other formats, but tutoring in Kaleidoscope will belong to Azorius. Supply/Demand dear readers, will be all the answer to all your tutoring needs.

Okay everybody, I'm ending the first part of Rogue Play - Scoping the Unknown right here. I hope that I was successful to get your attention to this new colorful format ("colorful" as in every meaning of the word). In a short while, after Wizards announces the official rules, I'll be back with Part II when I will talk about some strategies and some early deck ideas.

Thanks for reading

See you online,
Nafiz Erman, aka Lord Erman

14 Comments

Great Article by Uberferret (not verified) at Sun, 03/29/2009 - 14:12
Uberferret's picture
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One thing to be aware of is how fragile your manabase actually is in Kscope. if your opponent can destroy all but one color you're screwed in most cases.

Maybe by Scartore at Sun, 03/29/2009 - 14:42
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Although with hybrids allowed it would be possible to make an all hybrid monocolored deck. One of my casual dex is a B/R Aggro deck with a completely black manabase, I could easily port it to this format. I should do that... Mmmmm

The hybrid cards aren't by BishopX (not verified) at Sun, 03/29/2009 - 17:36
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The hybrid cards aren't legal. You need to reread the Wotc post, he specifically rules out using cards like Spectral Procession.

Hybrids by midnight_dancer (not verified) at Sun, 03/29/2009 - 18:57
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Spectral Procession isn't multicoloured. It's white. It is unclear whether truely multicolored hybrids (e.g. Figure of Destiny) are going to be allowed.

First of all, very nice by Neverloze (not verified) at Sun, 03/29/2009 - 19:04
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First of all, very nice article.
As a long time fan of Prismatic (and its various formats) and 100 card singleton, I must say that I really hope this new format will take its ground in MTGO. It will be exciting to see what decks out there will be the rulers.

As you point out mana fetching will be a major issue in this format. I fear that the prices of rare lands will scare many people from trying this on a competitive level. You will need almost 4x each dual, shockland, fetchland, painland etc. to build a deck fast enough to respond to a mana pool filled with rare lands.

A question - we don't know if the format is singleton, right?

And finally, hybrids are legal. Spectral Procession is a mono white card and is therefore not allowed. :)

Error and Demand by jayhoegh at Sun, 03/29/2009 - 21:33
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I knew there was a card that let you tutor for a multi-coloured card in your deck. It kinda seems weird that Wizards says that is okay, but not Glittering Wish? Maybe the one extra mana is enough to make a difference, but last I checked they upped Demonic Tutor to 4 mana from 2, not to 3 mana.
Anyway, I immediately bought a couple playsets of Trial//Error and Supply//Demand. I failed to do this for Pillar of the Paruns cause I thought it wouldn't shift that much, and I regretted it. Besides, these were dirt cheap anyway.

I would play something by tarmotog(whoisn'tloggedin) (not verified) at Sun, 03/29/2009 - 22:43
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I would play something aggressive like monored/red+ something (rb,rw,rg) all seem enticing)in the format..
assault/battery(timeshifted),figures,gourgers,demigod.. (efficient=win cos most gold cards cost 2 mana at least)
i think the key to winning in the format is to recognize that it's not meant to actually be a prismatic deck. I would predict that the more successful decks are decks that can focus on getting cards that are minimally clunky and those would beat up the "greatly slower" decks until people start to figure out that they have to start to focus on getting efficient cards to work.
the problem is that there are not that many cards in ext that are actually multi-colored and they are mainly concentrated in rav block, shadowmoor and alara. I doubt mana issues are going to be prominent yet (until fetchlands go away) since it is possible to make the most crazy mana base if you have 4x this and that.

Great Article by J127T at Mon, 03/30/2009 - 00:24
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Just finished reading the article, and just wanted to say good job. I liked the article and thought you covered the topic well. Im sad I missed out on Pillar while it was ~$2. I'll probably invest in them before too long. I cant wait for this upcoming format and hope that it shows promise with popularity in the MTGO community. The pauper PE fired this weekend with 107 people. The MTGO formats can do well if set up properly. Hopefully Kaleidoscope will be one of those formats. I plan on building my first attempt at a deck this week and plan on using several of the cards suggested in this format. I potentially see this format turning into an expensive one quickly.

The rules of the format are by Lord Erman at Mon, 03/30/2009 - 06:54
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The rules of the format are made clear after I submitted the article. It will be the normal constructed deck building with 60 cards main, 15 cards sideboard and max 4 copies of each card.

I have seen many trying a mono-red deck by the way. It exists and it is definately playable (even though not for my taste).

The format will turn into an expensive format but not because of the cards you play but because of the cards that let you play your cards (aka lands). 4x Pillar of the Paruns, 4x Reflecting Pool, 4x Exotic Orchard, 4x Ravnica shockland of your choice and you spend already more than $150. Maybe this is another reason why people try mono-red decks (because of its relatively cheap manabase).

But the price of the other non-land cards are mostly at acceptable levels. For example 5 color control decks like to play Trial/Error (Uncommon), Countersquall (Uncommon), Voidslime (rare-reasonable price), Agony Warp (Common) etc.. and then win with Broodmate Dragon (rare-reasonable price) and/or Cruel Ultimatum (rare-reasonable price). So if you can manage to afford the manabase, the rest shouldn't be much of a problem.

LE

Chase Rares by Scartore at Mon, 03/30/2009 - 10:43
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I'm guessing the Chase rares will be in Reborn.

Pillar of the Paruns by rfeltrin (not verified) at Mon, 03/30/2009 - 09:27
rfeltrin's picture

What an article! Nice coverage. I've been looking for an article like this for some days. I'm glad that I did the homework to dig for the gems of the format and I could find them at reasonable prices.
There is just one card I didn't buy and I'd like to see some comments: Pillar of the Paruns!
WOTC is going to release a complete multicolor set and they are not going to reprint it? I doubt and I really think its going to come as uncommons since its what u need to play the draft format.
Am I wrong?

Alara Reborn by Scartore at Mon, 03/30/2009 - 10:39
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Alara Reborn will probably cover a lot of the holes we see in this format right now. I bet it provides a land fetcher, a Wrath equivalent, and spot removal, like maybe a reprint of terminate? And I'd expect to see a functional reprint of Pillar. The first couple of weeks of this format before Alara Reborn hits should be wild and wooly and a lot of fun, then things will settle down after Alara fills in the holes for the various deck archtypes.
No matter what, i think this will be an awesome casual format.

Initial Thoughts by jed roguski (not verified) at Mon, 03/30/2009 - 17:16
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I started testing for this format as soon as I heard about it (some of you early testers ahve probably already played me). Aggro will be tough to deal with in this format unless Alara Reborn gives some sort of (playable) sweeper. Unless you have an early answer for a turn 3 Wooly Thoctar you are going to have a rough day. Also Oversoul of Dusk may be a fantastic finisher. It evades almost all removal and so far I have only seen it dealt with via Glare of Subdual. Look for RGW to be a powerful archetype.

Nice article, it was really by GregAndThenSome (not verified) at Thu, 04/02/2009 - 11:45
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Nice article, it was really interesting for being about a format that doesn't even exist yet. It looks like Firespout with be the sweeper of choice and that 4-toughness creatures will have a bit more value in the format (Lightning Helix, Branching Bolt anyone?) and that the format will be very slow. Shakey mana bases could give Fulminator Mage a bit of a competitive push too. Will be very interesting to see a meta-game develop. So far, I imagine big spells, fatties and great multiplayer. Just my two cents. Good job.