One of the Johnny-tastic (that is, creativity-inspiring) cards from Morningtide is the critter-recurring Reveillark. Sort of a Proclamation of Rebirth on a stick, the Reveillark is part of a tenuous combo engine that depends on these three cards:
…and then some creature of power 2 or less that can win you the game if it zooms in and out of play a whole lot. The basic mechanics of the combo work as follows:
Get Mirror Entity and Reveillark into play, and get Body Double and a win condition creature either into play or into your graveyard.
Use Mirror Entity’s ability with X = 0. Respond to this with the same ability, with X = 0 again. Do this an arbitrarily large number of times.
Everything dies, Reveillark’s ability triggers, bringing back Body Double (copying Reveillark) and a win condition creature.
Resolve the next Mirror Entity activation. Everyone dies. Body Double copying Reveillark triggers Reveillark’s ability, and the cycle repeats.
So what are our win cons? Well, honorable mention goes to Marsh Flitter and Mogg War Marshal for generating arbitrarily large armies of Goblins (Rogues and Warriors, respectively!), but in reality, there are very few actual win conditions. Here they are:
Highway Robber – simply kill your opponent via life loss
Venerable Monk – gain a ton of life
Aven Riftwatcher – gain a ton of life, the airborne version
Merrow Witsniper – mill them out
So what’s the ideal frame for this somewhat clunky combo? Given its similarity to the venerable (and somewhat more durable) Project X combo, one feels that this might best be shoehorned into a deck that can function without the combo. Project X was basically a midrange, rock-style deck that also had a combo (with two ways to win — infinite life and infinite 1/1s). We probably want something similar, although blue-white is an odd color combination for midrange beats. I’m not yet convinced that there’s a straight white-blue or a white-blue-black deck that will power this clunky combo to victory. As such, no decklist in the extended this time. I’m still waiting on the Idea Fairy for that one.
Monthly Archives: January 2008
Elfs
“Elves are cool. Of course I’m an elf. Samma wagga kan?”
Please excuse me if the quote isn’t exactly right. Been a while since I actually pulled out Sprawl Sites.
Seventh place in the top eight of the not-underattended (149 people) PTQ in Roanoke went to, of all things, elves. Well, more properly, an Intruder Alarm deck.
Yeah. More in the extended entry.
Void Rock
For a bit now, I’ve been wanting to jam together a bunch of my favorite cards into one hideous concoction. Specifically, I’ve been enjoying playing Rock decks of late, but you know what’s been missing?
Hellkites.
And Void.
So why not just jam everything together into one black-red-green mash that has the best of all three colors and their respective combinations? And if you’re doing that, why not go ahead and have a legendary Elf Warrior as part of your manabase instead of those wimpy little birds? What, after all, could be cooler than Radha, some dragons, some planeswalkers, Voiding away your opponent’s field and hand, and then Profane Commanding them out of the game?
Walking up the cost ladder with Morningtide
When I put together a deck, whether it be from a sealed card pool, a draft pool, or “all the cards I own and can borrow,” I like to look at cards arrayed by cost. In general, it’s a lot more useful to think about where cards fall on the mana curve than where they fall on the color pie. Thus, despite having just reviewed a bunch of cards by color in the last few posts, when I really look at Morningtide with an eye toward the kind of constructed Standard decks I like to build, I’m far more likely to go to Gatherer and arrange things by cost.
Following that train of thought, in the extended I’ve listed the true constructed highlights (for my style of play!) in the set, in cost order.
Morningtide standouts: Green – a mixed salad
I am not super-thrilled by the green cards in Morningtide, even among the standouts. Perhaps I would be more excited if I were playing hardcore treefolk or elf decks…but both styles of play feel suboptimal to me. Ah, well. Regardless, some cards stood out to me, in particular one creature — more in the extended.
Morningtide standouts: Red – In the land of giants
Red has a number of good cards in Morningtide, one of which is already raking in the big bucks on ebay, and one of which is a charming little common. Full discussion in the extended.
Morningtide standouts: Black – Shatter! Blossom!
Lorwyn gave me two black cards I really enjoy, Liliana Vess and Profane Command. Liliana is discard and tutoring, both things that please me (and both used in equal measure in my games so far), while Profane Command is a versatile, solid package of win conditions.
Although nothing so stunning appears in Morningtide, black still manages to cough up a couple of really intriguing cards that may end up seeing some real long-term play. More in the extended, along with a B/R Sligh-style decklist using two new cards.
Morningtide standouts: Blue – of Springs and Negation
Six cards really caught my eye as I went through Morningtide blue, but I’m still up in the air on the value of most of them. A couple may be constructible, and one is certainly a limited bomb, but none of them really hammer you with a tide of “play me” waves (not like, say, Cryptic Command…). More in the extended.
Morningtide standouts: White
With the full card list from Morningtide available following the prerelease, I’ve done a first-pass look at the cards. Color-by-color, I’ll be putting up some of the standouts. Some of these may not turn out to be, well, good — they’re cards that caught my eye, more than anything. For the white edition, I saw three cards that initially grabbed my attention. Click over to the extended for those three cards and a decklist.
Three from Morningtide
This post is about some spoilers for the upcoming Magic set Morningtide, the second set in Lorwyn block…so the bulk of it is in the extended.
You can check out the official Morningtide minisite by clicking here.
The spoilers come from the MTGSalvation spoilers here. Generally, I only trust spoiled cards with the actual card art (and you even have to be careful then, as people can mock up perfectly respectable cards), so that’s what I’m discussing here.