Today, Wizards of the Coast introduced Orator of Ojutai as the FNM September promo. After amazing us with two modern staples in july and august, Wizards bring us the fake Wall of omens of standard. Even if it has a good ratio cost, the fact it needs a dragon card in your hand makes it unviable in standard. The standard format has already a high density of 4 power which totally makes this promo useless sadly. The art is great although this card will fall in the forgotten ones.
By Bruce Gray – Casual Encounters
Hey MTGers. I’m back and going to open up a pack of Dragons of Tarkir and have a look at what might be first pick in this pack if I was going to be sitting down to draft. I will also be including a brief tournament report of my most recent draft in order to try and glean some further insight from my results. Let’s get at it!
This pack is very pedestrian and unexciting, but that makes it a good tool to use to help improve card selection and evaluation. The rare is actually something I rather like in Haven of the Spirit Dragon. I’m not overly jazzed about taking it first because it isn’t going to scare anyone, but it is an interesting option to pull and just have in case I happen to see a dragon or two later in the draft. The ability to use this as a Splash land to try and cast a Dragonlord, or even their Fate Reforged variants is very enticing.
The next one that catches my eye is Skywise Teachings. This is similar to Goblinslide in many ways, except that it is more expensive to cast, pricier to activate and requires a fair bit of build around to make it really good. With all those drawbacks, if you can build the deck for it you Skywise Teachings can spit out much valuable tokens. 2/2 Fliers are very relevant and can quickly close out a game. I would entertain this, but I would be very unlikely to select it first because it does require going all in in order to make it work. If this wheels around the table I might take a stab at it and see if the deck is open or not.
Atarka Pummeler is a very serviceable creature that grants your team a form of quasi evasion one you reach Formidable. This looks underwhelming, but in the R/G deck it could be very solid. The activation cost is very expensive and that is fundamentally why I wouldn’t be taking this too early. It’s not a first pick, but it could be a solid pick up.
Deadly Wanderings is just a no. Not a chance. 5 mana for an enchantment that only works if I have 1 creature on the board is just not interesting. I can’t conceive of a game state where I would actually want to play this. By the time I hit 5 mana I had better have more than one creature on the board or I’m likely getting steam rolled pretty hard. No thanks. I’ll pass.
Twin Bolt is very solid early removal. It’s flexible, inexpensive, and in a solid colour. I’m not sure how happy I would be to first pick this, but I would be pulling it forward to see if other cards were better.
Of the remaining commons, I like Sidisi’s Faithful, but I won’t be picking it first. The rest is almost entirely filler and not the least bit interesting until you are in a clearly defined colour pair and looking to fill out your deck.
It only really comes down to Haven vs Twin Bolt. Spike-y players might just grab the removal spell and move on, but there is part of me that is prepared to speculate a little with my first pick and roll the dice with the Dragon land. It is colourless, fits in any deck, and generally could be used to cast big beefy fliers (even the less exciting 6 mana ones from Fate Reforged). I think my first choice here is Haven, but this is something that could be debated very easily and even as I sit here typing I am not 100% convinced.
I got my second chance to have a go at Dragons in a draft the other night and wanted to share a few of my experiences that I would like to help take into lessons moving forward.
I ended up going a very disappointing 0-3 in my draft, but I wasn’t disheartened. Do you ever have those nights where you draft a solid deck, but you struggle to finish people off? That was me. I had a very solid R/G deck that had suitable amounts of removal, sizeable creatures and some fun combat tricks. However, what the deck was lacking was a genuine bomb. All the packs I opened had very poor bulk rare cards and I didn’t see any super powerful bombs that I could punch into this deck to close the deal. The best I could do was a Myth Realized (that I splashed but was largely ineffective) and a Frontier Siege that I opted to pass in favour of a Temur Sabretooth. As a result, the most common result was for me to stall out my opponent only to run out of answers and not have something to deal with their bomb in response.
Match 1– Played a player showing Jund colours. He had pulled Den Protector and I saw Flatten a number of times. Game 1 was very grindy and lasted 25 minutes but eventually my defenses caved. In game 2 I got back in the game and had my Lightning Berserker deal an astonishing 11 points of damage. I finally burned him out with Sarkhan’s Rage to even the match 1-1. In game 3 I had to mulligan down to 5. At 5 cards I was looking at 2 lands and decided that a mediocre 5 was better than dropping to 4 cards, so I kept. However, I didn’t draw another land at all and was crushed under a wave of creatures. Boo…I was 0-1 but feeling good about my chances.
Match 2– Played an opponent showing Bant colours and got blown out in game one by a well-timed Dromoka’s Command and a bunch of fliers. Game 2 was more of the same and was dead in short order. Yuck. 0-2 and not really enthused.
Match 3– Opponent was playing Esper. I got out to a good start but a couple of quick removal spells took care of most of my pressure. We both stalled a bit and built out our boards for a bit and were in a stalemate. This is where the lack of a bomb hurt me because he cast Dragonlord Silumgar, took my Temur Sabretooth, and the rest was academic. Game 2 was very similar and we stalled out pretty good. I was likely slightly ahead, but I had a tough time gaining any advantage profitably without taking a pile of damage on the crack back. Temur Sabretooth was on board and playing good D. I was eyeing up casting Pinion Feast on his Abzan Skycaptain thinking that I could handle the counters landing on his Jeskai Sage, but I’m glad I held off. The next turn he cast Silumgar again and I immediately Feasted it. Thank goodness. It still didn’t help me much as I got pecked at by some fliers and eventually couldn’t answer the flying creatures.
0-3 and a little disappointed, but I didn’t feel like I mis-played my cards. Sometimes mistakes cost you games. Sometimes your opponents have better decks. However, there are a few things I’ve learned from this.
Like I said, I felt the deck was solid. I knew I was a little light on creatures, but with a pair of Formless Nurturing I figured I was ok on that front. I liked my removal package and felt it was quite solid considering my colours. The only problem was the lack of a genuine bomb to seal a game. Sigh. Oh well. Next time I end up drafting this sort of deck I will need to be sure to pack more creatures and fewer spells to give this sort of underpowered deck a better fighting chance.
Thanks for stopping by to read. I hope you guys have a great MTG day and stop by for some more Casual Encounters soon!
By Bruce Gray – Casual Encounters
@bgray8791 on Twitter
By Samuel Carrier
As a breath of fresh spring air, modern master 2015 has arrived! I couldn’t wait so long after a great drafting experience with the first set, Modern Masters. An awesome set including great cards and value at the same time! Since the spoiler was available a week before I had a look at articles and archetypes available in the 249 cards Wizards got up for us! So as soon as the set was available and playable at my LGS (local gaming store) I would look forward enjoying a well balanced set and have fun with the new archetypes.
This archetype goal is to put counters when our creatures comes into play to gain advantage with abilities requiring to have counters on your creatures to be targeted.
Aquastrand Spider: a 2/2 bear that gives reach! sign me up!
Cytoplast Root-Kin: a 4/4 for 4 mana that give another +1/+1 counter to those who already have on except himself. Also, the fact you can graft multiple times on bigger creatures is nuts.
Helium Squirter:even if its a 3/3 for 5 mana but the fact it gives flying to another creature can be useful.
Plaxcaster frogling: a 3/3 for 3 mana graft that
and…
as many Thrummingbird as possible… because don’t forget Sphere of the suns, your graft creatures and Tumble Magnet (great to tap creatures) can be proliferated!
Your goal is to dump as many Artifacts onto the battlefield to gain advantage by having three Artifacts or more to activate metalcraft and to reduce the cost of your spells as well.
You have living weapons such as; Flayer husk and Sickleslicer
You do have tons of equipment to be more effective and plenty of good little guys.
Here are the core cards you will look to get:
Etched champion: Quick beater and hard to manage if your enemy is low on artifacts.
Indomitable archangel: A 4/4 flyer for 4 mana that protects all your artifact. So good!
Blinding souleater: A phyrexian tap creature that’s a 1/3 for 3 mana.
Cranial Plating: No explanations needed for this card, it’s a stapple of Modern Affinity deck.
Your goal is to burn and agressively attack your opponent with bloodthirsted guys and cost effictive guys.
Here are the core cards you will look to get:
Ashenmoor Gouger: A big 4/4 for 3 mana that cant block.
Stormblood Berserker: A 1/1 bloodthirst 2 for 2 mana with evasion.
Vampire outcast: A 2/2 bloodthirst 2 lifelink for 4 mana
Your goal is to cast multiple spells that does 1/1 tokens and boost them to kill your opponent:
Here are the core cards you will look to get:
Scatter the seeds: A 5 mana convoke spell that does 3 tokens.
Scion of the wild: aA 3 mana power and toughness of numbers of creatures you ontrol. (I made him 7/7 or 8/8 sometimes)
Kavu primarch: a 3/3 for 4 mana that can be kicked to be 7/7 and can be paid convoke!
And the MVP here
Overwhelm: a +3/+3 all your guys instant and convoke. Really great to finish off.
This archetype use the soulshift ability for redundancy of spells and creature. They also have good comes into play abilities.
Here are the core cards you will look to get;
Thief of Hope; a 2/2 for 3 mana soulshift 2 that if you play a spirit or arcane drain 1 life.
Nameless inversion: A 2 mana +3/-3 removal as an instant that can be recurred with soulshift and can be used as a kill condition later if you play big thoughness guys.
Hikari, Twilight Guardian: A 4/4 flyer for 5 mana that can blink until end of turn when you play a spirit or arcane.
Grixis (U/R/B) good ol’times by Samuel Carrier
I went 2-0-1 with the deck.
So my deck goal was to gain time to drop big bombs and win. Having 3 bounce lands and Evolving Wilds plus 2 Sphere of the suns and Expedition Map made the mana base smooth and perfect to run so many multiple colorful costs( i.e. Gorehorn minotaurs, Vampire outcasts, Cryptic command, Niv Mizzet, etc) This deck also shows that even if you want to follow an archetype, you still need to check for signals. Sphere and Expedition maps are 3rd to 6th pick easily as it stabilize color splashing for removals or bombs if necessary.
Also, having 2 fireslingers and 2 two-drops with burst lightning made the bloodthirst trigger easily. Given I had big cheap guys, I had a race versus Eldrazi decks. The Graft archetype was the hardest one I faced as I had to draw with my opponent for lack of time game 3 on my second match.
After I attended two sealed events, I can tell that Green Red is really the best duo as they’re so many mana accelations in the format to ramp to eldrazis sometimes plus the best cheap burns as Lightning bolt and Burst lightning. They can also run boardsweeper as Savage twister or Wildfire. Affinity metalcraft has to be really really strong to win in the format.
Most of the time, you will use a few artifacts to fill in except in the case of an extremely good Affinity picks. Given of that, Smash to smithereens is a good card to play to create advantage. I wish I could’ve attended GP Las Vegas or GP Utrecht as they both are amazing events to attend to. I wish the best to all of you readers and you can be sure I will be at the next Modern masters GP!!
See you around,
By Samuel Carrier
By Bruce Gray – Casual Encounters
Wow. It has been a while since I last cracked a pack for my own blog. The last time I posted one was March 10th! Yikes. Since then Dragons of Tarkir has become a thing and NOW Modern Masters 2015 is hitting the shelves (like TODAY). I guess that sort of makes Dragons of Tarkir old news, but I still enjoy the set. So, I’m going to open up a pack and have a look and see what I would take if I was sitting down to start a draft. Let’s take a look at the pack.
This is a very interesting pack. It has some solid playables, the uncommons seem strong, and an intriguing rare card. Let’s start with the rare and move from there. Volcanic Vision is a fascinating card to open up. My first gut reaction was “No Way”. The 7 mana is extremely steep and the fact that it returns a Sorcery or Instant to my hand is hardly exciting. However, I sat and thought about the card for a long while and I feel like my first reaction might have been way off.
The text on the card reads “Return an Instant or Sorcery from your graveyard to your hand. Volcanic Vision deals damage equal to that card’s converted mana cost to each creature your opponents controls. Exile Volcanic Vision”. The key word here is EACH. You could conceivably have this behave like a one sided sweeper, provided you have a suitable target in your graveyard. Herein lies the problem. The conditional nature of the spell, that you need a good target to get good value, is crucial and a major stumbling block for the card. Most times you have things like Roast, Twin Bolt, Wild Slash, or even Bathe in Dragonfire as suitable targets, but I’m not thrilled by those. Each of those spells deal a couple of points of damage, wipe out a couple of “bears”, but I’ve invested a huge amount of mana in this silly spell. The return just might be marginal or I open myself to being blown out by a 2 mana Negate. Also, the typical Red burn spells or cheap enough that they won’t handle the big threats that MUST be answered meaning that my 7 mana hasn’t done enough to win me the game. So, I keep thinking, these Burn spells CAN’T be the intended target of Volcanic Vision and there must be a better target worth playing.
The real payoff for playing Volcanic Vision is buying back something like a Fierce Invocation, a Pyrotechnics, or a Sarkhan’s Rage. All of these spells have a converted mana cost of 5 mana and that essentially burns out all the creatures your opponent is likely to be using. Now, all of these are plausible options to be able to pick up, and the one sided wrath-esque effect is pretty terrific, but that feels like a lot of things that need to line up just right for this to work.
If you take Volcanic Vision it is very much a speculative sort of pick and one you are hoping pays off in the end. The power level of this card is extremely high because it could wipe out everything your opponent has on the battlefield, but in that same vein it could sit in your hand. In addition to the raw damage being dealt by Volcanic Vision, you are full on getting your instant/sorcery spell back and can recast it all over again. The potential to generate massive card advantage off the torching of a bunch of creatures your opponent controls and getting a card back is pretty insane and might be worth the risk.
I would look at this and think seriously about it. I think it would garner some consideration because the power level is so high, but this is a very speculative first pick and contingent on having some other cards to play into it in order to generate maximum value.
The next card that gets my eye is Swift Warkite. 6 mana for 4/4 flier that gets me back a card from the graveyard is nothing to take lightly. My issue with this as a first pick is that it is a gold card meaning that there is a higher chance I can’t play it. I’m not going to rule it out, but I’m not excited to pick a gold card first because it just forces me to be so much more inflexible if I intend on playing it.
Salt Road Ambushers is essentially a Hill Giant that also packs a powerful ability and the ability to come into play as a Megamorph. The raw stats make it quite playable, and the Morph cost is hardly outrageous either. However, the real payoff is whether you can make the extra ability that grants +1/+1 counters to creatures as they flip up an actually relevant line of text. The question is how many Morphs are you going to be able to grab? How many creatures can you Manifest? If you are sold on the Morph/Manifest style deck then this would be an amazing first pick and a real engine to help your Morphs outclass the opponent very quickly. However, Megamorphs are slightly less prevalent than they were in Khans of Tarkir and typically more expensive meaning that you might only ever get to flip 1 or 2 Morphs in a game. That sort of return is hardly overwhelming, but it is nice to think that you could make it work.
Strongarm Monk comes with a form of super Prowess and that might entice some people to jump on board. I’m not a big fan and I feel like for his raw stats that I’m getting short changed. Also, I’m not keen to need to pack my deck full of non-creature spells in order to get this sort of bonus. I feel like this sort of bonus is at odds with the need to play creatures in my draft deck in order to get work done and that finding enough good non-creature spells is a little tricky. I can see the value, but this would not be something that catches my eye much.
Coat with Venom is a fine combat trick. Not a first pick, but a fine combat trick.
Anticipate plays along really nicely with Strongarm Monk but I don’t think that deck manipulation is so important that I need to take this first. No, this will be a much later pick if I find myself in blue.
Kolaghan Aspirant is a fine 2 drop by is also not a first pick. Moving on.
Enduring Victory highlights the ongoing cost increase for removal spells. This acts just like Divine Verdict, but now we’ve added an extra mana to the casting cost in order to justify Bolster 2. Don’t get me wrong, the Bolster is nothing to sneeze at and you’ll run the removal spell, but I do miss having more access to efficient removal.
Epic Confrontation would actually be something that catches my eye because it is a very efficient and powerful removal spell. The +1/+2 it grants really pushes the power level on the card and allows creatures to punch out of their regular “weight class”. As much as it would be strange, I would have this pulled to the front and give it a hard look to be first pick.
Of the remaining cards, Tormenting Voice, Keeper of the Lens, Reckless Imp, Elusive Spellfist, and Conifer Strider, exactly none of them would even get a look for first pick. I would rather speculate on the 7 mana rare or the over costed super-prowess Monk than try these on for size. So, that sums up what I think of this group.
My first pick would be Volcanic Vision. I would be prepared to speculate on my first pick with something that behaves like a pseudo asymmetrical board wipe knowing that I’m not married to that card or that colour. However, I know that I need to be on the lookout for useful instants and sorceries in order to get maximum value for this card.
Thanks for taking the time to stop by. What you would be taking from this pack? Would you be trying the Volcanic Vision? The Warkite? Epic Confrontation? Leave me a comment down below and let me know what you think!
Have yourself a great MTG day.
By Bruce Gray – Casual Encounters
@bgray8791 on Twitter
Another awesome FNM promo, after our last announcement for the September’s FNM promo Path to Exile. Serum Visions FNM promo will be a nice Modern reprint, even though dealers might be sad to see the value of the card go down, it’s not true, every single Serum Visions that Three Kings Loot adds to inventory gets bought out right away. All this means the demand is high and with more reprints of the Serum Visions FNM the demand will grow. It’s a bit like Modern Masters 2015, the most played cards in that set’s demand will just go up as more people have access to those cards then more people will want to play by completing there sets for example. Nice one! Wizards with sweet new artwork for Serum visions FNM promo.
It is very exciting to hear that Wizards of the Coast will be printing a Path to Exile FNM promo for July. It is true that Path was already a WPN promo, but still this means that we can expect more of these Modern promos as well as other formats. I am sure that we will be seeing Commander and Legacy promos soon enough. The game is healthy and although these reprints will bring down there prices, it won’t be long till they go back up seeing it is a good format. Path to Exile FNM promo will flood the market there is no doubt about that, but I am usually complaining about the quality of cards picked for FNM promos. For this instance I will say to WoTC good move.
The latest preview is the Frost Walker FNM promo, which is a 2-drop with 4 power that’s ok for an aggressive blue/x deck. A Temur built using ferocious would make good use of the walker, turning spells like Stubborn Denial into a one casting cost Negate. Overall this FNM preview is not that impressive, but hopefully it will get more play and at least add some value to our trading binder. There are discussions going on about this card, 4 power on a two-drop is a big deal and should not be tossed away like garbage. It’s aggressive in Limited and can also be in constructed, only time will tell as brewers all over concoct some crazier builds.
