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By: Tarmotog, Naoto Watabe
Oct 30 2008 6:34am
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Today, I'll be talking about which cards to get from the new set, Shards of Alara.

In the first section, I'll be talking about the individual cards that I think can see play in Singleton or Singleton 100. The cards will follow the BUWGR - Gold - Artifacts sequence.

After that section, I'll be talking about the set as a whole and the decks you should expect to see so if you are not interested about looking at the individual cards, you can skip to the
back.

Black

Ad Nauseum

This card is the perfect addition to Vintage with all the mox and cheap cards around but what about in Singleton? It is a really hard call to make on whether or not this card is good in the format or not. I have made decks around Dark Confidant and I would say that it is not easy to let Dark Confidant go a long way in certain builds.

However, if you think about it in a different way, if most of your cards have a very low average casting cost, (since you will, for sure, never hit another Ad Nauseum) it can possibly give you a large chunk of cards. However, your life total will go down fast as you try to max out the number of cards you have. I think that this card is very strong but may end up killing people who don't know when to stop.
One thing to consider when flipping aimlessly is how many cards you can actually cast after you draw them and a card that can possibly work with it is
Firestorm.

Cunning Lethemancer

This card was previewed here on puremtgo. Even though it was somewhat shot down, I think that it deserves more credit than that but probably not as much as in the preview. Cunning Lethemancer is a strong sideboard card because it is a threat that attacks the hand, forcing control decks to react to it faster than they would want to. No doubt it is easy to kill but it is also because of that that people will tend to kill it when they don't really have to. In other words, this is a card that can capitalize on your opponent's playskill to let you gain an advantage.

The main problem is that you yourself will face the same discards and you will need to proper playskill and deck construction to capitalize on this card.

 

Executioner's Capsule

This is one of the few cards I look forward to getting when Shards come online. It's the perfect card for a UB control deck because it can be found by Trinket Mage, can be discarded to Thirst for Knowledge and can be recurred using Academy Ruins, all of which are easily found in a UB control deck. It also lets you spread the use of mana over two different turns, letting you maximize the use of mana.

Fleshbag Marauder

Cruel Edict + change your creature into a black 3/1 creature. Not too shabby especially post combat. Played with Grim Harvest, this can be the Shriekmaw-evoked version of Cruel Edict instead of Terror.

Glaze Fiend

A friend of the affinity deck, this creature can become quite huge on certain turns but it does need to be out early for that to happen. Even so, it should be able to put your opponent in a very pressured state in the early game.

Salvage Titan

This anti-Terror, anti-Smother Craw Wurm can come out as early as turn 2 but it plays totally opposite to the intention of the affinity deck (which is to get out loads of artifacts). A card for the adventurous I'd say but if it is ever seen in play on turn 2, I don't think life is going to be easy.

Blue

Covenant of Minds

Almost always. your opponent will hand you the 3 cards unless there is something really strong in the 3 cards or you have a gigantic hand size. So it issafe to assume this is a 5 mana Concentrate  with less colored requirements that shows the 3 cards you draw.

Etherium Sculptor

This card lets you drop Chromatic Star and other trinkets down for free and lets you drop everything down faster in the affinity deck.

Kederekt Leviathan

1 week ago, I would have overlooked this but in my quest to build a strong reanimator deck for Singleton 100, I stumbled across this creature that can let you stall the board using a reanimation enchantment. Although I have yet to do this "combo" (return it, bounce everything else including the enchantment to reset the non-land permanents on the board), this card has saved me time and time again by stealing tempo and clearing the path for a haste creature. The best part about it is that its unearth cost is at a resonable cost of 7 and many games play until that point.

Master of Etherium

A Broodstar without flying that is an artifact and doubles as an artifact lord. The perfect addition to the Singleton affinity deck.

Mindlock Orb

Player's can't search libraries? Ouch. This card can lock out many strong cards from the game. The cost is rather steep but if you manage to accelerate it out and have a deck that is not damaged by it, you can really wreck the opponent's game. This is a super disruptive card that can potentially give you a few turns to work with before you opponent can adapt to the change in game rules.

Tezzeret the Seeker

This planeswalker reminds me of Garruk Wildspeaker but it can get you your powerful artifacts like Mana Crypt on the turn it comes out or maybe the relevant sword for the matchup. If you don't have anything to do, giving your artifact creatures vigilance or just charging up the ultimate ability are fine options. Like Garruk Wildspeaker, his takes only 1 turn to charge to the ultimate so he might see play in the Singleton affinity deck as well. Do remember that you artifact creatures are also affected by his "ultimate" and will become 5/5s.

 

White

Battlegrace Angel

The good part about her is that the lifelink ability can go unto an attacking creature like Tarmogoyf for instance but her drawback of not being able to use both exalted and her lifelink ability when blocking can be quite significant. Even so, the potential to gain 5 life on the next turn makes her a very strong candidate for the control deck. She is a card you should get to attack a more damage based metagame.

Dispeller's Capsule

Disenchant that can be found by Trinket Mage, can be discarded to Thirst for Knowledge and can be recurred by Academy Ruins. The three cards that I named are easily found in a blue based deck so I don't see why this card cannot make it into decks or sideboards at the very least. Singleton100 benefits directly to this card. The biggest drawback is that casting it and using it eats up 4 mana in total which can be rather inefficient and thus more unstable as an answer.

Ethersworn Cannonist

Although this card is rather disruptive, having it in play does not mean much unless your opponent intends to cast multiple spells in a turn. A nice card to have in the Singleton affinity deck because of it barely disrupts the deck itself. More of a sideboard card and can even fit in decks that have white mana, as an anti-storm beater, like in zoo.

Knight of the White Orchid

A card that lets you burst out from the back when you are lacking in land drops especially in a deck that doesn't favor running many lands. A very strong addition to the white weenie card pool. Playing it and Tithe allows you to splash another color because of the dual lands available in the format.

Knight-Captain of Eos

A smaller Siege-Gang Commander but it allows you to fog at least twice if untouched. A very nice card to have in a UW deck with Reveillark in it. With Momentary Blink, it can stall many turns for you unless your opponent has removal for it.

Ranger of Eos

A very strong resupplier for the white weenie decks, capable of searching out Figure of Destiny and another creature. RW aggro is another archetype that might benefit from this card if they are willing to play a 4 mana 2/2.

 

Resounding Silence

Getting to 8 mana is not a very difficult thing to do. An uncounterable 3 for 1 card is very neat and even a 4 mana "remove target attacking creature from the game" is very much decent. Unfortunately, this card is almost made for the UGW control archetype so not many decks can enjoy its power. I think that this is one card that should be able to displace old favourites because of its potential.

Sigiled Paladin

2/2 first strike, exalted. A nice card to push the extra point of damage across on turn 2 and maybe after the board is cleared. A neat candidate but probably more valued in Singleton 100 than in Singleton.

 

Green

Gift of the Gargatuan

While it looks like a simple limited-only card, I think it can work fairly well in a rock deck, giving you 2 cards consistently but would mean that you may need to play slightly more creatures than usual.

Wild Nacatl

This card is somewhere between Isamaru, Hound of Konda and Rogue Elephant most of the time. Even if it is just a 1 mana 2/2, it's very much worth it already. A card that invites you to play white in your deck which may be very tempting but you can always opt not to or just splash a some duals.

Red

Caldera Hellion

Firespout on legs. If you're lucky, you get to go home with a 4/4 or 5/5 creature after clearing the board. Everytime I look at such creatures, I think of how cool they get when played with Grim Harvest which I think is really strong as a control element.

Goblin Assault

Bitterblossom for goblins with an unusual drawback. I already think that Bitterblossom should be in the goblin deck but would this card displace it or use a different slot in the deck? Its strength lies in the fact that your opponent needs to have more than 1 blocker before this card can be neutralized but can one really keep churning out blockers against the goblin tribe? I wouldn't say that it will be very strong since its cost lies in the highly sought after 3 slot but I would recommend trying it out. Paired together with Goblin Burrows, it is unlikely that your goblins don't get through.

 

Hell's Thunder

Its strength depends greatly on how often you expect to meet flying defences. Bitterblossom can easily block it twice but against a deck without air defence, it can easily hit for 8 damage altogether and feed your suspended Greater Gargadon. I would sideboard it in Singleton but probably try it maindeck in Singleton 100.

Gold

Agony Warp

If you look at the various -3 toughness cards, most of the time, the portion that affects the power is often neglected unless used against a 4/4 or bigger body. As such, those cards are mostly useful only for the toughness affecting side. Agony Warp allows you to handle 2 separate creatures efficiently, letting you Fog one and kill the other. I believe that this is going to be a very strong addition to the UB archetype.

Ajani Vengeant

Looking at it, you know that this card would either fit a very aggressive deck or a control deck if it would even make it in the deck. I personally would try this planeswalker in a URW control build. Using cards like Court Hussar to hold the ground, throwing Lightning Helix every 3 turns is a good way to control the board. The ultimate ability is very devastating against control decks not trying to kill you but it does take 5 full turns to charge up and unload.
In the control role, this card can be compared directly with
Chandra Nalaar but it does have the advantage of being able to stop a creature or maybe a land from untapping which can prove useful and can come out a turn earlier. I am a fan of Lightning Helix which I think is a very good way to survive a game. However, it is rather vulnerable to burn spells because of its low loyalty count and suffers against shrouded creatures. I suggest playing it if you can manage to keep the early game heavily controlled with removals and good blockers.

Bant Charm

The three modes of this card are:
-destroy target artifact
-put target creature on the bottom of its owner's library
-counter target instant spell

UGW control in Singleton is one of the powerful control decks around because of the natural advantage it has over other control decks with the access to the mana accelerating Krosan Verge. This card can stop many of the problem cards in the format, missing only enchantments, planeswalkers and sorceries.
If you look closely, it somewhat complements
Treva's Charm from Planeshift which has:
-destroy target enchantment
-remove target attacking creature from the game
-draw a card, then discard a card
I think the last ability of
Treva's Charm is dumb but do remember that UGW is a color combination that can work with cards in the graveyard with cards like Genesis or Glory.
Bant Charm is definitely going to be a favorite of many if they can get the mana together.

Cruel Ultimatum

This card is very funny since it's Cruel EdictConcentrate + Mindstab + Raise Dead + Tendrils of Agony for 2.5 storm?
I've tried it in Singleton 100 and it works (like it should) but you must know that it isn't the best card to cast when facing counter magic unless you somehow catch your opponent off guard. For Singleton, I'm not very sure whether you will get into the game state where you can cast it because the games don't last that long in that format unless you manage to drag it to turn 7 (which isn't very difficult).

Deft Duelist

A nice card to have in UW weenie decks. Shroud and first strike make a very powerful combination in both offense and defense.

Empyrial Archangel

Reanimator, secret force or just plain ol' UGW control (maybe) will be using this card to wreck red decks. The main problem thatAkroma, Angel of Wrath had was that even if she was out, the crazy goblins people could still find a way to win. With Empyrial Archangel, this problem is halfed. She is a big blocker that gives red players no way to deal damage straight to the face. Sure she dies after she takes 8 damage but 8 damage to an angel and not the player probably means that your opponent would have ran out of fuel to punch in damage equal to the your life total. Somehow, if she starts attacking, she's a 4 turn clock that still forces your opponent to deal 8 damage in a turn to get rid of. Seriously, if I could easily deal 8 damage in a turn, I would be getting to play free spells using Spinerock Knoll all the time but I don't. If red decks have a problem, I don't see why other colors wouldn't.

If you play reanimate Empyrial Archangel, the win condition of your opponent is restricted out of damage. This means that the Worldgorger Dragon combo deck can't use direct damage from a single spell like Ghitu Fire to win (unless using Bogardan Hellkite) and is limited to decking or using two burn spells to win. Also, you can Makeshift Mannequin her without worrying about the counter on her.

Esper Charm

The modes are:
-target player draws 2 cards
-target player discards 2 cards
-destroy target enchantment

Depending on the matchup, this card can go from mediocre to very strong. Drawing 2 cards at instant speed is what blue decks have wanted all this while but the mana cost is rather restrictive. As an instant speed Mind Rot, this can nab a newly drawn card and lock your opponent out of that particular turn. Also, it can nab cards in responce to a draw spell to take out cards with more value from the hand. The last mode can fight Bitterblossom and may be able to occasionally destroy a Heartbeat of Spring in the more extreme cases but it's just useful to have.

Even with the various possibilities, this card cannot react to most threats actively and may become a liability in your hand unless against a control matchup where it would shine better because of its instant speed.

Goblin Deathraiders

Goblin, 3/1, trample and cost RB. It's not like the goblin player can't pay RB so they get a new addition to the deck. 3 power for 2 mana without any great drawback is not common. A nice addition to the goblin team.

Grixis Charm

The modes are:

-return target permanent to its owner's hand
-target creature gets -4/-4 until end of turn
-creatures you control get +2/+0 until end of turn

Most of the time the first two modes will be the most relevant to you. If you play with tokens or a couple of evasive creatures like Shriekmaw and Mulldrifter, the third mode might be able to win you a couple of games as well. Not really spectacular but it is indeed versatile. It will be rather rare to be in a situation in which it can't help at all.

Hellkite Overlord

8 mana, 8/8 haste, trample, Firebreathing and BG:regenerate.
For awhile, I was thinking about whether or not
Dragonstorm can be pulled off in Singleton. Before this, you would need a big number of dragons before you could actually win on your turn if you could at all. With Hellkite Overlord, you can dragonstorm into this, Rorix Bladewing and Bogardan Hellkite to deal 8+6+5=19 damage by a storm count of just 3.
Even if not used with
Dragonstorm, Hellkite Overlord seems like a very nice finisher for the relevant colors. Being black makes it immune to a considerable amount of removal spells and 8 mana is not very difficult to churn out especially with Garruk Wildspeaker definitely showing his face in such a deck.
Also, it has a very large body that can go into reanimator decks to end games early.

Hindering Light

A very strong sideboard card but a very limited maindeck card because most of the time spells may not have targets when you have the mana up. I'd say that Exclude should hit more than this but once you know your opponent will be casting spells that fit the condition of it, it will be a very strong counter magic.

Jhessian Infiltrator

One may call it Gaea's Skyfolk that can't be blocked but can't block flying. Works splendidly with the ninja tribe (or clan rather) and will definitely connect your equipment with the opponent. A good card for the "sea stompy" build (UGR beats).

Jund Charm

The modes of this card are:
-remove target player's graveyard from the game
-deal 2 damage to each creature
-put 2 +1/+1 counters on target creature

All three abilities are very useful. However, the Jund shard is not a very popular color combination which would tend to mean that it would be very seldom played despite being a very multi-purpose card that attack many different decks from their weak areas.

Naya Charm

The modes of this card are:
-deal 3 damage to target creature
-return target card from your graveyard to your hand
-tap all creatures target player controls

Again, all 3 abilities are very relevant for the Naya color combination. Needless to say, it is a very versatile card to play in an aggressive deck. However, its possibilities don't stop there. The second ability is useful for the 5c Heartbeat of Spring deck in the Singleton 100 format since Recover variants are very much favored in the Heartbeat of Spring deck. (5c for Mana Flare, Mirari's Wake+Decree of Justice)

Punish Igorance

I believe that this is Absorb no. 2 instead of the more obvious Absorb + Undermine. If you are playing UBW, you probably prefer the life gain over the life loss this card. For that reason, I'd rather play Absorb over this but you can play it if you feel that one is not enough.

Qasali Ambusher

A free creature that has the potential to block turn 1 drops by simply having a Temple Garden out. A very powerful card to fight early drops or prevent tempo loss and can be easily searched out by Eladamri's Call for a 2 mana 2/3 flash creature.

Rafiq of the Many

This is a "win-more very fast" card. If you somehow have a strong creature in play, getting double strike is going to be devastating. It looks like it can easily turn the tables or secure your advantage when in play. It is a card that needs to be answered to immediately on the turn it comes out which I don't think all decks are capable of doing.

Realm Razor

A crazy card to leak through. Thankfully it's 6 mana but if you ever get caught with your pants down, you may not be able to pull it back up. For that reason, I think that Slaughter Pact's maindeck vallue will go up.

Rhox War Monk

A very efficient stopper against red decks. Even if it can go down rather easily, you can gain quite abit of tempo by just casting it. I wouldn't say a 3/4 body is very spectacular after seeing to many GW variations of a 3 mana 3/4 but it can indeed give you its casting cost worth easily.

Sarkhan Vol

Envision this: You are running RG beatdown, you have a smooth curve of turn 1 Mogg Fanatic, turn 2 River Boa, Turn 3 Wild Mongrel and you cast Sarkhan Vol on turn 4 and give the team haste. Next turn you snatch the blocker and attack the opponent. Ouch!

Sarkhan Vol is a card that totally changes the way you want to play the game from the other side of the (digital) table. How do you choose the best option when he threatens you by promising hasted creatures or by Threatening your creatures. Worst of all, if you don't deal with him, you will be promised lethal damage worth of creatures once the "ultimate" ability is fully charged. I hope not to see him on the other side of the board.

Sedraxis Specter

3 mana for a 3 power specter is good plus it can still come back for one final hit after killed. A very problematic card that easily translate into card advantage only if you can support the cost. Even trading a creature and dropping a card makes it quite strong.

 

Sedris, the Traitor King

Being able to unearth Mulldrifter, Shriekmaw, Flametongue Kavu and many others makes this card worth trying out. Being black and big makes him immune to a large variety of removal spells. He has a decent size but his power lies on how much he can abuse the dead creatures. A card that decks without removal may find losing badly to.

As mentioned somewhere above, I have been toying with a reanimator deck for Singleton 100. This card is one of the cards that I think fits the deck very nicely and I hope to unearth many fat creatures for the win.

Sharuum the Hagemon

A very unusual ability to have which can abused quite easily, beit artifacts or artifact creatures. An application that immediately comes to mind is casting Buried Alive to put this and maybe a Sundering Titan into the graveyard and reanimating the mythic rare to put the opponent under a 2 turn clock with little options to fight back. Thirst for Knowledge discarding a Mindslaver for instance and casting Sharuum on the next turn is big trouble for the opponent as well. 6 mana is really easy to pull off and it is very much worth its body without its ability anytime so I think it's a really good bargain.

Steward of Valeron

Llanowar Elves + Veteran Cavalier. This card is totally GW and fits nicely into the archetype, even being able to beatdown without losing the acceleration tempo. A very high quality card for its cost.

Stoic Angel

The tempo loss created when she survives past the opponents untap step can be very huge depending on the deck. The more the deck focuses on quantity of creatures rather than quality, the more devastating her effect is. With built-in vigilance, her drawback is almost totally negligible since UGW usually plays quality over quantity.

Swerve

Deflection at 2 mana? The world is changing so much. This card fits really well in a UR deck and I think it is very well designed, perfect for the color combination unlike the previous noggles and even the Izzet guild. Now people should be careful of this card when they see an Island and a Mountain untapped.

Tidehollow Sculler

Mesmeric Fiend that is both black and white, I think this card can be played in the affinity deck for Singleton and but probably only as a Mesmeric Fiend in Singleton 100. A card that should see play in the relevant color combination.

Tidehollow Strix

UB for a deathtouch artifact creature is very strong in limited. I think that this might be a strong candidate for a sideboard slot if the UB deck runs Academy Ruins, as an answer to difficult monsters that can be taken down with deathtouch such as an opposing Morphling. Worth testing out if the "limited" view of it can be removed.

Whoolly Thoctar

3 mana 5/4, a Doran, the Siege Tower on friendlier mana and doesn't water down your troops. It's highly likely a new mainstay in the zoo decks. Having nothing else besides flavor text in its text box, I don't think there will be much that needs to be said.

 

Artifact

Lich's Mirror

It is possible to get a deck working around this in the other formats but I think it's not very easy to pull off in Singleton.
Of course, the deck I think it goes into is the storm deck but they build would then need ways to kill itself. I think it's quite contradictory and can backfire rather easily.
Personally, I want to play this card in a burn deck, that runs many
Lightning Bolt effects. So that you can throw everything at the opponent, reset and start again, hopefully having enough burn spells to win since you should have about 2 more turns in the game.

Relic of the Progenitus

Unlike the frequently used cards like Scrabbling Claws, Phyrexian Furnace or Tormod's Crypt, this card will wipe out your graveyard as well. If you expect to fight many Tarmogoyfs in a day, this is a card for you. Otherwise, the other 3 trinkets should suffice for you.

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Singleton Talk

Like how the storm deck was the biggest winner from MED II, I think this set has its winners. The biggest one is probably affinity, with capsules and creatures and its own planeswalker to boost the deck. White decks generally have quite a nice volume of cards to work with from the set.

However personally, I find that the reanimation strategy has gotten a large number of strong creatures and that deck is my personal winner (or I'm just satisfied with my testings).

First of, Hellkite Overlord totally overpowers Spirit of the Night. (who cares about a 6/5 haste, pro black, first strike when attacking,trample creature when u have the big mythic dragon?)
Sedris, the Traitor King gives everyone unearth?
Kederekt Leviathan does something no other creature does.

The deck receives moderate support from MED II (many tutors) as well together with a reanimation enchantment, Dance of the Dead.
I'm waiting for Tempest to come online with Living Death and Reanimate to further boost the power of the deck. (I never thought that I would be excited over Tempest.)

 

Back to Shards of Alara, I have noticed that the cards, as versatile as they were, were largely bound to the whole shard concept and were greatly restricted in the casting cost area. To support the Shards of Alara cards, players would have to have a very strong mana base to support them and I'd say this is no easy feat for the average player. Singleton maybe but Singleton 100? With Shards affecting the card choices of players, I'd say this is a good time to pick up a plain ol' consistent deck and beat the daylights out of the players trying to cast their 3 color spells.

If one would play according to the shards, there would be 5 main archetypes:

UGW control
RGW beatdown
UBW control
RGB aggro control
UBR control

Of which, the most popular would be UBW control followed by UGW control or RGW beatdown.

Esper belongs to the "most powerful" color combination because both black and white are allies with the most powerful color, blue.
To fill up the gaps of blue which occur due to its mana intensive nature, white or black are usually played together with it. However, now we are looking at both white and black alongside blue. 3 colors that favor commitment put together is not always the best idea. As such, the power of an Esper deck would come from the ability for it to actually get the appropriate amount of mana at the best possible timing. For this reason, an Esper based deck should have a balanced mana base heavily dependant on blue.

UGW control is considerably more open to new cards and is probably the strongest of the 3 because of its strong aggro matchup and strong control matchup. The strength comes from being able to play UW elements with powerful cards that green give access to, particularly Krosan Verge and a variety of man lands (Nantuko Monastery, Treetop Village and Faerie Conclave) which are really strong against control decks. Also, cards like Tithe of even Gift of Estates allow the UGW control deck to draw cards (or lands actually) at an unrivalled cost.

RGW beatdown, or the Naya Shard, is the limit of efficient creatures. The mana cost to damage ratio in this shard is hard to beat and they can easily take the life total from 20 to 0 without too much effort because of the quality of the cards. Depending on the build, the design can tilt towards RG+W or GW+R, both of which emphasize on the different qualities of the strategies. However, both put together, the GW+R would have an advantage over RG+W but would lose out against dedicated control decks more than its counterpart.

Jund belongs in its own special class of aggro control with the ability to handle almost any variety of cards efficiently and play with powerful creatures. The biggest problem it has is probably its inability to handle spells that wreck the game when resolved. It is also not very popular because it relies heavily on creatures which will easily be swept away by wrath effects from the control decks.

Grixis belongs to a color combination that has access to bombastic spells and creatures. This characteristic makes the Grixis shard more mana intensive than others because it really wants to cast the big spells it has. The strength of this color combination lies in its ability to maximize its raw power of the individual cards rather than the whole deck. Most of the time, you will see many mana artifacts in such a deck with strong creatures and powerful spells. As you could already guess, its weakness probably lies during its setup and the higher risk of mana problems. This is coupled with the fact that many of the cards in the shard play with various conditions which means that some cards can just slip in at the right time and somehow take the game. The difficulty of piloting such a deck is twofold, with difficulty in both deckbuilding and in choosing which cards to play since you can end up with very restricted plays.

Outside the Shards, the usable cards to the popular archetypes are not many.

For example,

UB control gains Executioner's Capsule and Agony Warp.
Mono red burn gains
Hell's Thunder and Lich's Mirror.
RG beatdown gains
Wild Nacatl and Sarkhan Vol.
GW beatdown gains
Steward of Valeron.

Overall, Shards of Alara is slightly secluded set which is focused on benefitting the 3 color shard combinations but it contains a number of good cards to get for various strategies but not many. Therefore, it is a set that one can selectively purchase the individual cards for their decks without spending too much. Most cards from the set are relatively cheap when compared to previous sets. I think that you should pick up some of the dubious cards now while they are flooding the market.

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Until next time, this is Tarmotog attacking with big fat creatures!

Any questions can be sent to tarmotog@hotmail.com.

7 Comments

4 Player Queues? by Sensei at Sat, 11/01/2008 - 18:27
Sensei's picture

How come I never see you in the Sanctioned room?  I'm there all the time.

by Tarmotog at Sun, 11/02/2008 - 06:28
Tarmotog's picture

Me? I played a little of the 4 mans b4 shards and probably won't  be starting again until I get obtain more shards cards and make sure the deck I play is at a satisfactory state. I spend most of my online time tuning decks in the casual room and use most of my resources to expand my collection. I don't play using my tarmotog handle so u might very well just bump into me and not know it. ;p

by Tarmotog at Fri, 10/31/2008 - 06:34
Tarmotog's picture

there is the singleton 100 format that does not play really fast.. with the big variance in draws and the setup time required for some decks.

with a proper number of creatures, it is possible to set up into a stronger position if a WGB control or rock deck chooses not to play blue spells. If there isn't any very relevant card to cast on turn 3, why not?I won't call it fact or fiction or anything but it's definitely a decent spell to cast.

Assuming it draws 1 card means you probably have not made your deck consciously knowing that you play it. For every card you play in Singleton or 100 card singleton, you must know how it reacts with the rest of the deck so if you cannot imagine it netting you 2 cards you shouldn't be playing it at all.

by Tarmotog at Thu, 10/30/2008 - 16:41
Tarmotog's picture

I think that necropotence into lich's mirror is not going to be any good since u have to discard at end of turn, giving you just a good hand in one turn with no permanents in play so unless you can definitely win with a 'starting' 7 card hand there is no reason to do so.

Playing too many cards that try to lose for you in Singleton where you
-may not have lich's mirror out with only 1 copy in your deck
-may run into artifact hate and really end up losing the game for nothing
is not a very good idea..
so because of the lack of consistency in getting it out, I would think that to use it, you would either have to make the deck around it to make it work, or let it work in the most natural way like naturally dying to mana crypt. =x

because it shuffles all your permanents away, you want to be able to bank on that fact by having a deck capable of playing business cards with very little permanents in play which is why I think a 'burn' deck is one of those decks that can naturally make use of the artifact.

GoG by Stu Benedict at Fri, 10/31/2008 - 09:26
Stu Benedict's picture

Personal experience ... GoG is awesome. The ability to select the land is great when you have utility lands. I have also had hits for both creatures and lands about 4 out of 5 times playing it.

Gift of the Gangantuan by Anonymous(Unregistered) 24.58.199.237 (not verified) at Thu, 10/30/2008 - 19:46
Anonymous(Unregistered) 24.58.199.237's picture

Gift of the Gangantuan?  Seriously?  A card that is usually a 2G draw one sorcery?  The singleton format must be really underdeveloped.

by khirareq at Thu, 10/30/2008 - 15:27
khirareq's picture

This is the first time I've seen Lich's mirror (no, I don't get out much; why do you ask?)  The obvious thing to do with this is "you lose the game" effects.  Final Fortune springs to mind, but killing yourself with Necro is probably better - the cards are "set aside", and so would still come into your hand at EOT!  Because Necro totally needed a way to be stronger!