Yearn to Burn

The cycle of finales from War of the Spark are variable as any X-spell is, but are clearly intended for the late-game big play with that X ≥ 10 clause. There is already no shortage of mana-heavy spells that can blow the game wide open, but what intrigues me about one of the finales is what happens if it's in fact played for as small a return as possible.

I'm sure the Timmies out there are wringing their hands with the thoughts of getting to replay Time Stretch and Searing Wind from the graveyard three times each, but that's not the type of situation that's going to regularly come up in competitive play. So if cost is an issue, what happens when you only pay 1 for X?

Mono-red burn decks have been around since day one and still have a showing in even Type 1 play. These decks are often built around many cheap spells that do as much damage as possible, aiming to maximize that magic formula of three-damage-for-one-mana. So for a measly three mana, Finale of Promise could recycle a Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning from your graveyard for six damage! Not a bad addition of firepower to these strategies, seeing as their cards in the graveyard are generally fodder for Grim Lavamancer at best.

Consider playing Monastery Swiftspear on turn one, Lightning Bolt and Lava Spike on turn two, then Finale of Promise on turn three: since you do indeed cast the cards from your graveyard with the Finale (as well as the Finale itself!), each instance triggers Prowess for the Swiftspear. This means you can do those 20 necessary points of damage in three turns and with only four cards. That got you burn players salivating, didn't it?

I'm not saying that this is necessarily the ultra secret tech that all burn decks were waiting for and it will become a new staple of all legacy burn decks because... well, it won't. But it's certainly a powerful option if you can get the right setup with enough Lightning Bolt variants. Nevermind that the three cast triggers means the Finale can immediately bring back Arclight Phoenix with essentially one card, meaning this could even have potential in Standard. Even the casual format would appreciate six damage off of Guttersnipe in addition to whatever spells you cast from the graveyard. Of course, if you really want to capitalize on working smarter rather than harder, you could Finale for 0 to cast Ancestral Visions and Evermind out of your graveyard. Two red for four cards isn't so bad, now is it?

Card in Review - Overlaid Terrain

Between forums, up-to-the-minute strategy articles and online repositories for decklists, it's easier than ever to tap into the well of fine-tuned net tech. Everyone in a play environment will know the best cards, the strongest strategies and the most degenerate combos to look out for. More often than not, the top 8s in high-level play will be a series of mirror matches, with each player running a slight variation of the same damn deck once it's identified as the most optimal choice. We end up seeing the same cards over and over, always being used in the same ways as part of the same strategies.

By gum, one gets tired of optimized play after a while. I want to see some rubbish!

In today's episode of Card in Review, we're also dipping our toes into the well of Bad Card Made Good - a feature that hasn't been given a nod in a long time but which is often one of the most fun exercises in deckbuilding. So who's the lucky loser for today's feature?

Card in Review - Tamanoa

If you think of a burn deck, you've probably got a very specific picture in your head. Get as many 3-damage-for-1-mana spells as you can in a single deck and round it out with some classics like Fireblast and Ball Lightning: you're trying to go as fast as possible here. Cards like Jackal Pup, Flame Rift and Barbarian Ring damage you while you're at it? Hey, no problem, so long as your opponent's life total hits 0 faster. There might not be much in the way of complexity involved, but the purest burn deck is going to be speed, speed, speed - and to hell with the consequences.

Why only have one way of doing things, though? By gum, if No-mar decks can make do without Dromar and Necro decks can exist without Necropotence, then there must be a way to do Burn without a self-destructive bent.

Card in Review - Haakon, Stromgald Scourge

While throwing creatures at your opponent's face is a good time, nothing's more frustrating than having them killed off. Between blockers, kill spells and you occasionally being forced to chump-block, it's not often a critter can stick to the board for long. So rather than try to fight the inevitable, why not embrace it? If they die, so be it - bring them back as many times as you need!

Sounds a little lofty, doesn't it? We can't all be Nether Spirit. Well, so long as you don't mind cavalry charges, you can play all of your creatures from your graveyard just as easily as from your hand - while your crucial card is in play, that is. If you're picturing some mana-hungry behemoth like Debtors' Knell or Sheoldred, worry not. All you need is 3 paltry mana and a little creative deckbuilding, and the Dead Men of Dunharrow will be yours to command!

Ability Salad

Deep down inside, we're all a little bit of a Timmy.

Protest all you want, but we all shared in that special joy when Akroma, Angel of Wrath was first printed. It was really a precedent set by Spirit of the Night, and other creatures such as Sphinx of the Steel Wind followed in their footsteps - simpletons that we are, we love creatures that are a big stack of abilities.

Of course, having a creature that fearsome in combat and that hard to kill necessitates something of an exorbitant mana cost, and it's unlikely to see play outside of reanimation effects - in which case you might be better off with something truly oppressive, like Iona. So how do we accomplish something similar?

Well, there are a number of "Akroma lite" creatures, with a decent handful of abilities on a smaller body for a commensurately smaller cost. Kjeldoran Skyknight, Vampire Nighthawk, and the more recent Aerial Responder all have three helpful combat abilities but won't set you back more than three mana for your trouble. Pumping one of said creatures up will leave you with a fearsome combatant, but is three abilities really enough? That's only a starting point, if you ask me!

Thankfully, throughout Magic's history there have been a number of cards that allow you to pile abilities from multiple sources onto a single creature, letting several Akroma lite-types Voltron together into a truly fearsome foe - or better yet, all share in the glory of each other's tasty keywords. With the reveal of the most recent member of this exclusive club, the Majestic Myriarch, here then is a chart detailing the various cards that let you combine abilities as well as which ones they have access to.

Card in Review - Spy Kit

Sometimes you see an open-ended card designed to be played with... but with no set goal in mind. As we saw previously, Enchanted Evening has a million potential little synergies with anything that even remotely looks at enchantments. Sun Titan's list of demands are pretty modest at "must be a permanent and 3 or less mana." Other times, however, there's a card that will only work with very... particular synergies in mind.

Card in Review - Necrotic Ooze

Since at least the days of Weatherlight, seeing an opponent dumping creatures into his graveyard en masse is reasonable cause for alarm. Most likely, you have to worry about some or all of those creatures being brought into play, often circumventing their mana costs along the way. But what happens if reanimation isn't the plan? What if the graveyard is exactly where they're intended to stay, and you in fact have to worry about something more fearsome than any or all of the creatures there... because it's in fact all of them at once?

Card in Review - Nacatl War-Pride

Top-down designs are often the most fun, but likewise it's a treacherous terrain to navigate. When a card is designed with a concept in mind first, sometimes the implications of that concept can have loose ends once it's put to print. I'm not talking about such lofty concepts as giving a bird flying or a giant better stats than a human. I mean textbox-filling nonsense that communicates a cool idea - and if that idea is easy to take advantage of or build around, so much so the better.

Card in Review - Sun Titan

M11's Titans were interesting in that they were printed to try and fill two criteria:
1. If they were killed immediately, you weren't left with nothing for your six mana.
2. You never had to choose between attacking with your fatty or using its ability.

Wizards accomplished this by giving them a solid ability that activated when they showed up as well as every time they attacked, in addition to being a 6/6 with a nice evergreen ability for safe measure. This was ultimately successful - possibly even too successful. The problem with the titans is that they overshadowed most every other 5+ drop that was available. Why bother with Vorinclex when you could have already played a Primeval Titan and pulled out six lands? Sure Balefire Dragon wipes your opponent's entire board if he connects, but by the time you play him, Inferno Titan has dealt at least 12 damage.
Each one was a strategy in a box, providing both a creature big enough to win the game as well as support to protect it/yourself or ways to deal with your opponent's threats. Most worked on autopilot - there wasn't much strategy to go with Inferno Titan other than turning it sideways each turn - but a couple required you to build around. Sure Primeval Titan's power came from pulling out combinations of overpowered lands, but even if he's just vomiting basic lands onto the board he's helping you out. The most build-around titan was neither the strongest nor the weakest, but the one I found the most interesting.

Card in Review - Sunforger

The flavourful nature of Magic: the Gathering means that every action in the game (theoretically) is a metaphor for something larger. The players are spell-slinging planeswalkers, their hands (not that kind) are repertoires of spells, creatures are summoned magically, etc. Even some pieces of the game's terminology - such as 'library', 'graveyard' and the more recent addition 'exile' - are inherently illustrative. The card Memory Erosion represent the loss of your cards via the literal deconstruction of your synapses. Spellbook lets you hold any number of cards because it's a physical space to store or record any number of spells you like. It's not faultless, but when they work in the boundaries, it's quite quaint. Got it? Good.

Now then, how would you like your spell-slinging to not originate from some wimpy book, but rather a molten, glowing, skull-fracturing Mjolnir?

Moonmist

Moonmist is an interesting little card. It's most obvious use is for turning all of your werewolves into their crinos form stronger form and then completely swinging combat. Most people stop looking there, though, relegating it as a cute little tribal support card. Take a closer look, though: the card is quite generously worded. The first sentence is simply "transform all humans," full stop - whether they're werewolves or not. What else can this accomplish, then?

Card in Review - Liquimetal Coating

Colour pie got you down? Sure, we all have our favourite colours in Magic, but they all have their shortcomings. Green can't flat-out destroy creatures, black can't remove artifacts, red is helpless against enchantments... or perhaps not. There is now a way for red to get at any enchantment that displeases it, as well as any other type of permanent, including creatures and planeswalkers, without needing to fling so much as a single point of damage. Sounds ridiculous? You would do well to remember that it's not only red cards that can be played in a mono-red deck: artifacts can always come along for the ride as well.

Time Vault

I like seeing the collections of people who stopped playing at some point, particularly if their cards are all of the pre-8th Edition frame. Their collections are like a snapshot trapped in time, of decks that didn't use newer, stronger versions of cards not because they didn't want to, but because they didn't exist. In 2001, nobody missed not having Tarmogoyf or Planeswalker cards (ugh) because they didn't know to miss them.

Viashino Sandswimmer is a card that I've never used and don't own. I don't know anyone who has used or owned it. If I've physically seen the card, I can't recall having done so. I know what it does and would recognize it immediately, but in terms of it being a physical object, it might as well not exist to me.

But for someone out there, it was one of their precious few, 117-odd cards. It was perhaps one of three rares they owned. Maybe it was their first rare. Maybe it was their only rare. They played it in their red deck (which splashed green just because they didn't have enough red cards for a full deck) and it was one of their flagship creatures. Isn't that a weird and wonderful thought? For nearly any card that isn't named Wood Elemental, someone out there made it work for them.

Have you used Spined Fluke? You probably haven't, have you? Maybe you don't even own one. But it was the MVP of a messy-yet-effective four-colour deck I had once. Five power and cheap regeneration for three mana, what's not to like? It ate many a blocker, quickly making up for any card disadvantage you might foolishly assume it would have.

Everyone's Magic collection has a little story - no, is a little story - and there's nothing like a quaint little time capsule to remind one of that fact.

Card in Review - Assault Suit

Magic is a game of synergies. The most effective decks time and again seem to involve several powerful cards that can roughly replicate what the others do. A control deck might not particularly favour a Dissipate over a Dissolve in the late game, and a dedicated burn deck will take Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning and Lava Spike all on equal footing. Decks that are too focused on a particular card - most often seen in EDH decks that are helpless without their commander out - are too delicate, and will fall apart if their key card is removed in a way that a more modular deck wouldn't. (I don't mean Modular decks, mind you.)

That said, don't you sometimes just see a card that's so interesting that you want to build around it?

Welcome to Card in Review, a new feature here that, rather than looking at some aspect of the game as a whole, will pick one open-ended card and analyze all sorts of tricks that can be done with it, both general and specific.

What card are we selecting for this first foray into the world of tunnel vision?

Customized Mages

Waging war on enemy planes can be a tiresome task, especially when you're working all by yourself. And, while each deck you build is different, the mages in charge of your library are always the same: 20 life, seven-card hands, one card drawn per turn. Ho hum. How about a little variety?
In this variant for Magic, you get to add a little flavour to your own abilities. Instead of representing yourself with one mage, you can assemble your own spellcasting team from two to, well, however-many-you-want mages. Each one has his own strengths and weaknesses but, combined, you've got a powerful circle of wizards to represent you.

1001 Ways to Die: A Treatise on Removal

It's late and I'm bored, so I'm going to write something of a deckbuilding tidbit.

Generally people will decide what is the "best" removal and run a set or two of said cards to cover themselves. As Magic aggressively evolves and changes with each set, though, there is by now a vast multitude of threats to consider. Certainly, you can't answer all of them, but it's wise to be prepared for as wide a range as possible. I'll break removal into (broad, non-exhaustive) categories to give you an idea. Remember that this is all off the top of my head. No, I won't do any research for you animals.

Obscure Tricks with Abilities

I'm not sure why I'm posting this, but it feels like something that I want to share. There are some things abilities do that are not commonly used. Generally this is due to lack of opportunity, but I'm sure sometimes due to ignorance. There are also some combinations that are not regularly noticed. Things like Flample and First strike + Deathtouch are obvious and need not be covered here.

Dollar Menu Dynamite, Part 6

Another day, another dollar. Er, this is true if "day" is the shorthand way you refer to powerful and unusual cards that take your deck design to a whole new level. Wait, you don't? Huh. Regardless, I'm sure you know the drill by now - I've pulled together ten unusual, underplayed cards that have something to offer even a relatively competitive deck but cost one dollar at most. Think of your favourite builds, peruse the list as follows and keep an eye out for anything that might improve or at least spice up your games!

Dollar Menu Dynamite, Part 5

Tired of playing the same old cards? It can be strategically beneficial to know your deck inside and out, but if you're just playing casual games with your friends, it can also get kind of boring. There's a real element of fun in your own deck surprising you now and then, and there's no better way to encourage the process than trying out a new card or two. Of course, you can't afford to swap out your power cards all the time - or can you? As part of the Dollar Menu Dynamite series, we have here a list of ten cards that can be picked up for a dollar or less yet can make a big impact on the board. Find one that piques your interest and try it on for size!

Dollar Menu Dynamite, Part 4

There's nothing like the thrill of discovering a forgotten card that offers considerable power for cheap. After languishing forgotten, you're free to polish it off like any other gem and bring it to the table. Enter the Dollar Menu Dynamite series, which showcases a number of cards you may not be familiar with, each costing one dollar or less on the open market. Who says you have to break the bank to bring some serious power to the gaming table?