Sneaky, Sneaky..

Let's start with the new Eldrazi card.  Here it is - fresh from the mothership via MTGSalvation.

To quote Chewey - It's awesome!

 This is certainly an interesting card.  If you can cast it, and if you can attack with it, odds are very good that you will win the game. 

Those are pretty big "ifs."

My first thought, when I saw this, was of this card.

Nemesis of Reason is also a very large, very hard to kill creature that has a significant "when this attacks" clause.   However, Nemesis has seen zero play outside of limited (and in my Tier 2.5 or worse UB MIll deck.)  The problem was that Nemesis of Reason was great at milling cards, but did almost nothing to affect board position.  If your opponent had a problem permanent on-board, Nemesis did nothing to resolve that problem.  If not, Nemesis did nothing to prevent the opponent from playing a problematic card in the future.  Nemesis of Reason was cheap, and got in a few hits, but then died to removal or something like Cruel Ultimatum.   Cruel Ultimatum was the perfect illustration of the problem with Nemesis of Reason - Nemesis does nothing to the board state, and nothing at all to prevent the opponent form casting Cruel Ultimatum later on.

Kozilek is exactly the opposite.  Kozilek destroys your opponent's board position.  Annihilator 4 meas the opponent is binning four permanents a turn - plus a fifth, it the opponent blocks with a non-regenerator.  Annihilator seems like a really sick ability - even Annihilator 1 would be pretty harsh, if it was attached to a creature that cannot be blocked and killed easily.  And, like Nemesis of Reason, the ability triggers on having the creature declared as an attacker, not on damage.  This thing would be brutal against Turbo Fog - so what if they fog for a couple turns, if they lose four permanents a turn, they will lose thier Howling Mines, Font of Mythos and lands?  After a few turns of one sided Wildfires, they are not going to be able to Fog anymore, and then they die.

In that respect, this card is a bit like Phage, the Untouchable.  This will also win the game, if it connects.  Phage is also expensive, easily blocked but hard to kill, and a fearful presence when actually on the board.  (More on that in a bit.)

Here's a final card that is, in many respects, similar to Kozilek.

It is also a massively powerful, extremely expensive monster.  The Colossus has a couple advantages over Koz - trample and indestructibility being the big ones.  Darksteel Colossus can still be answered with a Path to Exile, but it shrugs off Terminate and Doom Blade, and damage tends to trample through.  Koz - not so much.

The three cards mentioned above - Nemesis, Phage and Darksteel Colossus - all have one other thing in common.  All three are or were Standard legal recently, and all three saw absolutely zero play.  Ten mana is an incredible amount.  Even five mana was too much for a 3 power creature that didn't affect board position, and the more expensive Phage and Darksteel Colossus are ridiculously overcosted for serious play.

Look at this another way - let's look at the size / converted mana cost (CMC) of creatures actually played in Standard, at the moment.  I'm going to review seven of the top 8 decks from Pro Tour Sand Diego, and count cards.

• CMC =1:  23 cards  [Birds of Paradise, Noble Hierarch, Wild Nacatl] 
• CMC =2:  42 cards  [ Stoneforge Mystic, Lotus Cobra, Putrid Leech, Kor Firewalker, Kor Skyfisher, Plated Geopede]
• CMC =3:  30 cards  [ Knight of the Reliquary, Borderland Ranger, Sprouting Thrinax, Hell's Thunder]
• CMC =4:  21 cards  [ Bloodbraid Elf, Ranger of Eos, Emeria Angel]
• CMC =5:  13 cards  [ Baneslayer Angel, Thornling, Siege-Gang Commander]
• CMC =6:  7 cards  [ Broodmate Dragon] 
• CMC =7+:  no cards at all 

The Top 8 deck I skipped was the Open the Vaults deck that ran a lot of expensive creatures that were almost never cast.   Instead, they were cycled or discarded to Sphinx of Lost Truths.

The simple fact is that creatures costing more than five mana simply don't see Tier One play, unless they twin themselves (e.g. Broodmate Dragon), lock up the board (e.g. Iona, Shield of Emeria) or protect themselves (e.g. Sphinx of Jwar Isle.)   A creature with convereted mana cost of 10?  Not a chance, not hard cast.  Right now, players are having limited success with Cruel Ultimatum decks, and Cruel Ultimatum is two mana cheaper than Kozilek.  Cruel Ultimatum also does a lot more than Kozilek - at least in the turn it was cast.

But, suppose Kozikel, Butcher of Truth didn't cost that much? 

This land was included in Worldwake.   It makes all Eldrazi spells cheaper.  With it in play, Kozilek costs just eight.  With three copies in play, Kozilek costs...

Except that Eye of Ugin is legendary. Drawing a second copy is a blank.   Eye of Ugin does not tap for mana.  That means, that if you play it instead of a land, you are really just lopping a net of one mana off the cost of Eldrazi spells.  Of course, Eye of Ugin has a tutor ability.  It can search out other Eldrazi creature spells.  That could be useful, but does anyone remember this card?

It was a reusable tutor that was as expensive to use as the Eye, but Planar Portal could fetch anything, not just creatures.  On the other hand, if you ever saw the Portal in operation, it was probably in a EDH game.  Six mana to activate is unreasonable.  Even Diabolic Tutor, at four mana for a one shot find anything, is never played in Standard.  

Eye of Ugin seems to have a couple serious drawbacks - it costs a land drop and having two copies of a legend in hand is dreadful.  This could be overcome if Rise of the Eldrazi set included some sort of cheap tutor that could both find the one or two Eyes in your deck and put one directly into play.  Putting it into your hand, like Sylvan Scrying is probably not enough - it would have to put it into play.  Into the North did that for Snow lands, but Eye of Ugin does not have a subtype that could limit the search.  Eye of Ugin has is just legendary and non-basic.  A land tutor that could find any nonbasic and/ or legendary land and put it into play could easily be overpowered.  After all, Crop Rotation was restricted in Vintage because it could find Tolarian Academy - and both Crop Rotation and Academy will be online shortly.  

The best option for hard casting Kozilek in Standard is probably not the Eye but a mana ramp strategy, where the deck is simply playing lots of  lands and accelerators already.  Here's  an example:

Valakut Ramp

Justin Corbett - 17th at PT San Diego

Creatures 4 Bloodbraid Elf 4 Siege-Gang Commander 4 Goblin Ruinblaster 12 cards Other Spells 4 Rampant Growth 4 Harrow 4 Lightning Bolt 4 Khalni Heart Expedition 4 Expedition Map 3 Burst Lightning 23 cards

Lands 12 Mountain 3 Forest 2 Naya Panorama 4 Terramorphic Expanse 4 Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle 25 cards Sideboard 3 Chandra Nalaar 2 Bogardan Hellkite 3 Avenger of Zendikar 3 Chain Reaction 4 Grazing Gladehart 15 cards

The Valakut Ramp decks sideboard - and sometimes maindeck - Bogardan Hellkite, which costs eight mana.  Eight is a lot less than ten, however.  Moreover, the Hellkite has flash, which is almost haste, since you can cast it during the opponent's endstep and attack before they untap.  Giving the opponent a whole turn to untap and deal with the threat (that you just paid TEN mana for) seems suboptimal.

On the plus side, if you actually cast Kozikel, then you will draw four cards.  The card draw triggers on casting the spell; it is not a comes into play ability.  That means that you get the cards even if your opponent counters Kozikel.  That goes a long way to making Kozikel playable.  (A long way, but maybe not long enough.)  If you were going to invest 10 mana into something that is completely negated by Essence Scatter, it would totally suck.

I have been looking at other ways of playing the card without paying the full 10 mana.  At first, I thought that this card could do it:

However, that won't work.  Kozikel is colorless.  As such, it will not share colors with anything.  You cannot play Kozikel by discarding an Ornithopter or a land. 

Offhand, I cannot see any way that this creature could reasonably be cast, given the cards we have now.  However, I could see some sort of cycle of cost-reducing lands or artifacts appearing in Rise of the Eldrazi.  The Urzatron (Urza's Mine, Urza's Power Plant and Urza's Tower) worked together to power out huge spells.  Maybe Rise has something like that - or maybe an assortment of Body Parts of Ugin to go with the Eye.  Or maybe Kozikel, Butcher of Truth is just one of Wizards' famous skill testers.

Well, if we cannot hard cast it, maybe we can cheat it into play.  On the drive home the other day, I thought about fetching Kozikel with Tinker.   It was so interesting that I roughed out a deck, one with a variety of Tinker targets.  Once I got home and could read Kozikel, though, the deck vanished.  Kozikel is not an artifact.  Tinker cannot find it.  (Besides, Tinker is Classic only, and any time I fetch a card with Tinker in paper Vintage or Classic, I want the card to win the game right away.  Kozikel doesn't do that.)

Cheating Kozikel into play does forgo the four cards that you would get casting him, unfortunately, but it might be the only option.  Ten mana is - well, for comparison, I looked at a bunch of matches recently.  Even with a deck that is half mana, you cannot expect to hit your tenth land drop before turn 13, on average, and games very rarely last that long.  I reviewed a bunch of my most recent games online, and they averaged 8 turns or so, whether limited or constructed.  Playing a creature five turns after you are dead seems like a poor strategy.

Right now, I can only find two options for playing the card without playing its mana cost in Standard-legal decks. 

The first is to play it in a deck with Polymorph and tokens - and no other creatures.  The format does have some options for doing this, including cards like Khalni Garden and Dragon Fodder to make creature tokens.  However, these decks can already use Polymorph to fetch Progenitus, but they are putting up results anywhere outside of very casual matches.  In any such deck, Progenitus is infinitely better than Kozikel, since Progenituis is immune to the latest in removal tech - Cunning Sparkmage equipped with a Basilisk Collar.   

The other Standard legal option is almost as bad as Polymorph, but at least it can be played in a deck full of creatures.  That option is Elvish Piper.  The Piper puts creatures directly into play for cheap.  Admittedly, Piper dies to everything, including even collarless Cunning Sparkmages, but it can at least get the creature into play.  If it lives. 

Traditionally, the other option for cheating a creature into play is to Reanimate it.   Current Standard does have Rise from the Grave, but Rise is a sorcery.   Kozikel has a special provision that, like Darksteel Colossus, make it impossible to reanimate via a sorcery.  However, the wording on Kozikel is not the same as on Darksteel Colossus.  The Colossus has a replacement ability - if it would be put into a graveyard, it is shuffled into the library instead.  The replacement ability means Darksteel Colossus is never in the graveyard.  Kozikel is worded a bit differently:  "when ~this~ is put into a graveyard..."  That is a triggered ability, which means that the shuffle into library ability uses the stack.  Unlike replacement effects, the triggered ability allows an opportunity for instant speed reanimation.  Therefore, you could use something like Entomb or Buried Alive to put Kozikel into your graveyard, and then snag it with Corpse Dance or Necromancy.   That would get the creature into play for at least a turn, and Corpse Dance does give it haste.  Hardly perfect, but better than anything available in Standard.  

Doomed Necromancer would also work, with something like Entomb.  Fragile and impractical, but it could work.  Still, considering that Doomed Necromancer is very similar to Elvish Piper in terms of P/T and costs, and Elvish Piper does not require Entomb, the Piper's probably marginally less bad.

In just a few short weeks, however, we will have a fine way of cheating Kozikel, Butcher of Truth into play.  Urza's Saga will bring us this:

Sneak Attack can do some truly stupid things.  I have lost to turn one Mountain, Rite of Flame, Desperate Ritual, Mana Crypt, Sneak Attack, sneak Serra Avatar into play, swing for 20, gg. 

More commonly, decks don't try to power out the Sneak Attack quite that fast, but they do accelerate into Sneak Attack.  If a deck untaps with Sneak Attack in play, and cards in hand, it is going to be swinging with monsters very shortly.  The best part about Sneak Attack is that it gives anything snuck out haste, so the monster can attack immediately.  Sneaking out Kozikel at the beginning of combat, then attacking, will trigger the opponent-sacrifices-four-permanents effect quickly.  Good times.  The fact that Kozikel shuffles your graveyard back into your library lets you reload more easily.   In the past, Serra Avatar and Darksteel Colossus were the main card that could return themselves to the library to combo with Sneak Attack.   Kozikel adds to that effect.

In my Sneak Attack decks, I often ran Academy Rector - a 1/2 white creature that, when it died, could be removed from the graveyard in order to put an enchantment from your library directly into play without paying its mana cost.  The Rector could get Sneak Attack, if I hadn't already found one.  It could also get Greater Good.   Greater Good is the nuts with Sneak Attack - simply sacrifice the creatures you snuck into play to Greater Good and draw replacements. 

Imagine the following scenario.

Turn one:  Taiga, Birds of Paradise

Turn two:  Mountain, Wall of Roots, Rampant Growth for Mountain

Turn three:  Mountain, Sneak Attack, Sneak out  Academy Rector, when Rector dies, get Greater Good.

Turn four:  Sneak out Darksteel Colossus, sacrifice it to Greater Good (drawing a net of eight cards), play Mountain, Sneak out Serra Avatar. Sacrifice it to Greater Good.  (The triggers stack, so it shuffles into the library before you draw for Greater Good.)  Draw your life total - 3 cards.  Sneak out  Kozikel, swing, smash 4 permanents, deal 12 damage.  Sacrifice Kozikel to draw another nine cards.  Post combat, sneak out Academy Rector.  When Sneak Attack kills it at the beginning of your end step, fetch Seismic Assault.  Since you have drawn a net of 30+ cards off Greater Good so far, odds are pretty good that you can kill your opponent with Seismic Assault.

If this is a multiplayer game, you can do the whole thing again next turn, and probably end up sending Darksteel Colossus, Serra Avatar and Kozikel all in the same attack phase, at any opponents who have not already conceded.  Post combat, you can sacrifice them all for cards post combat.  Thanks to Kozikel's shuffle-your-graveyard-into-your-library effect, you won't have to worry about decking yourself.

I don't really expect that this deck is good enough for Classic, but it will be a blast in causal and multiplayer.  On the other hand, if Wizards does not restrict Academy Rector in Classic, I'll be testing it.  Sneak Attack is pretty broken, and the Sneak Attack / Kozikel / Greater Good engine may be the best mass card drawing effect around.  One red mana to draw nine cards is actually better than Contract from Below.

Situational?  Sure.  Is the above an example of Best Case Scenario mentality?  Absolutely.  However, it is not that hard to get that scenario to happen.  Once Rise of the Eldrazi hits the stores, I'll be trying it in paper games, and online if I can get the Sneak Attacks and Kozikels.

/me crosses fingers.

PRJ

"One Million Words" on MTGO