A response to Will Price of Progress’s tongue-in-cheeck Tweet RE: Sages of the Anima.

Recently seen on Twitter:

Translation:

<Will Price> BDM, what are the odds that michaelj will build a deck with Congregation at Dawn and Sages of the Anima?

I have found Twitter to be both fun and awesome for communicating. Like if I hadn’t happened upon Will’s post I might not even have looked at Sages of the Anima.

For myself I know this is true, but Will, Matt, and Brian would all have to answer for themselves… A lot of the time I don’t have the time to answer every Facebook email, personal email, and so on (even blog comments) that friends, readers, and so on send my way… But on Twitter? I find myself engaging much more with people’s questions just due to the nature of the format. If you want to follow any of the Top8Magic team on Twitter, here are our handles…

• FiveWithFlores / Michael Flores
• Top8Games / Brian David-Marshall
• sloppystack / Will Price
• MattWang97 / the elusive Matt Wang
• Top8Magic / Top8Magic Blog Updates and Other Surprises! [Added by Matt Wang]

Anyway… Back to Sages of the Anima…

So why does he think I am going to make a deck with Sages of the Anima and Congregation at Dawn?

The combo is kind of obvious; when you have Sages of the Anima in play, you can potentially “Ancestral Recall” if there are three creature cards on top of your library. Lo and behold - Congregation at Dawn can put three such creature cards on top of your deck.

Unfortunately I don’t think it very likely that I will play those two cards together in a Constructed deck any time soon. Here are the top five reasons why:

1. What happens when I draw them in the wrong order?
   That is, what happens if I have an open to resolve the reasonably but not exceptionally sized Sages of the Anima, but haven’t drawn the other side of my combo yet? That’s right; I’m never going to draw the Congregation.
2. I like drawing lands.
   With Sages in play, I’m not going to be drawing many, ever again. Heck, with Congregation at Dawn, I’m going to be setting myself up to not draw any! How am I supposed to afford these fives with no lands?
3. It actually goes against everything else I have been moving towards given my personal realizations in the last few months.
   See…
   • The Grinch That Stole Mike’s Rating,
   • Previous Level Green, and…
   • The Physical Reality of Magical Spells
4. What would I really be getting out of it?
   Ultimately… not a whole lot. This is a two-card combo where one of the cards is an expensive but not overpowered rare adn the other half is a pretty good “helper” card that has had some successful builds under its belt… But in Extended, where this combo would probably live, I’d like to hope I have something better figured out.
5. Like I’m really going to bogart some idea that Will published on Twitter.
   You know… like I’m really going to bogart some terrible idea that Will published on Twitter, first.

For a broader look at the same new card, check out my non-Will Price of Progress / Congregation at Dawn exploration of Sages of the Anima at Five with Flores.

LOVE
MIKE

Bituminous Blast showcases a snazzy new mechanic from Alara Reborn; Cascade. When you play a spell with Cascade you get to reveal cards from the top of your library until you hit a card with a lower converted casting cost and then you can play that spell without paying the casting cost. It is the kind of mechanic that gets you excited to play some Magic — Limited or Constructed. In Limited it will usually result in a free creature since you generally play 16 or 17 of them in a 40 card deck but when you hit a spell it should pretty much be a blowout. But what about Bituminous Blast in Constructed?

Build a better bolt!

At instant speed, there seems to be little doubt that this will be a Constructed card that see abundant play. Prophetic Bolt saw play — although, to be fair, it was a little more flexible in that it could hit players — and all that netted you was a free Impulse. There is obviously not a shortage of exciting, blowouts you can Cascade into with this ranging from a zero casting cost Ancestral Visions to the cost-capped Cryptic Command.

The cold cascaded Cryptic Command is obviously going to be the Holy Grail for this card. Your opponent plays some back-breaking spell and you kill a guy and randomly hit the Command to counter it and draw a card. A free Sarkhan Vol or Garruck is also pretty spicy — who knows what will come off the top of your deck when you blast a creature.

Maybe someone will know… It seems like the ability to arrange the top of your deck will become much more valuable once Cascade cards hit the format. Excluding any new cards that might enter into the equation in Alara Reborn I did a Gatherer search for Standard looking for the character string, “back in any order” and came back with a disappointingly small number of options — and none of them are in Block:

Discombobulate — Is Standard ready for this countermagic to take its place on the Constructed stage? Counter your spell and arrange the next four cards so I draw a land and have a Cryptic Command looming on top with the Blast in hand? It seems far fetched even to me and I made a case for playing Nemesis of Reason in rooms other than kitchens!

Gilt-Leaf Seer — I cannot imagine any scenario where this happens outside of a wacky packs draft.

Inkfathom Divers — I would rather play with Nemesis of Reason.

Ponder – This is obviously the standout here. It is already played in Constructed formats and is even restricted in Vintage.

Sage Owl — Words fail me…

We are basically left with just Ponder as an tool for the Blast from that pool of cards. Other possibilities for managing your Blasts include:

The Harbinger cycle — Flamekin Harbinger is probably the best of the bunch here. On color and something that has seen play in Constructed before and could be part of an Elemental or Shaman strategy.

The Clash mechanic – Lash Out sees play and is also on-color. You don’t get the ablity to manage much but it is still better than nothing.

Cream of the Crop – I love this card and would be thrilled to have it see Constructed play but I don’t see this working out the way I want it to since you have to spend your mana on a creature, set up your deck, and still have enough mana to Blast something.

Footbottom Feast – Not brimming with excitement over this one.

Hag-Hedge Mage — This is kind of interesting and makes me pine for Reclaim. The colors work even if the mana might not. You need to have two forests in play to reclaim anything.

Tutoring can be a Blast!

Lilliana Vess — The Villainess is the best option so far as she lets you go get exactly the card you want to have on top and costs no mana to use beyond what you need to spend to get her into play. I could see this actually happening in a 5-Color Planeswalker deck. Vess tutors Ajani Vengeant to the top and then you Blast it into play. You do also have Cryptic Command in that deck. This could be a spicy one!

Moonring Island – Doesn’t let you manipulate anything but it does let you know whats coming.

Telling Time — This is another fine card to mix with Cascade and could see play. It might just be better than Ponder but that may be my bias for instants coming through.

It is clear that Vess is the best of the bunch, not only letting you set up your Bituminous Blast but finding it for you in the first place if that is way you need. I will be eager to see if the AJ Sacher Planeswalker Control deck makes room for Cascade spells.

Nemesis of Reason — or should I write it, “NEMESIS OF REASON!!!!!!!!!!!!” like the forum denizens do when talking about this card? — is the kind of card Tony Tsai used to pay his mortgage with. Tony was a long time eBay seller of Magic cards and he could often be seen at various PTQs, Prereleases, and Regionals trading away Polluted Deltas, Cranial Extractions, and the like for as many Nut Collectors and Traumatizes as he could get his greedly little shark fins on. Nemesis of Reason is a card that tournament players sneer at but will clearly the centerpiece of many a kitchen table top masterpiece.

Constructed or no?

When you look at previous cards that had similar effects; Scaplexis, Traumatize, Glimpse the Unthinkable, and Sanity Grinding, to name a few, you do not find many Constructed all-stars. Hell you can’t even find a utility infielder in that bunch but I can’t help but wonder if this card might have a role it could play in a sixty card deck. It is an obvious powerhouse that is justifably a first pick in Limited, where it will usually end the game in two swings and is capable of holding the ground admirably against the fattiest five-power dudes Naya can throw at you. Seven toughness for five mana is nothing to sneeze at. But what about Constructed?

The first place to look is Block Constructed — a format relevant for players heading to Honolulu and MTGO players hoping to mise a seat at the 2009 MTGO Championships. I can see this card causing all sorts of problems for players who have a dozen lands that come into play tapped but they still get a turn to deal with it but if you have one…there may be three more where that came from. Over the course of a long game you may only need to untap once with this in play to defeat the 5Color player.

One of the problems with this guy in Block could be that there are number of strategies that are built around getting guys into your graveyard. The Esper decks are much more comfortable with their graveyard as a resource than their deck or hand and Nemesis of Reason may just be doing them a favor. Similarly the Blightning colored decks are pretty happy to take three, mill ten cards and unleash a barrage of Extractor Demons, Dredgescape Zombies, and Shambling Remains on the next turn. If he could mill either player when attacking — he is worded to only affect the defending player — he would be a much more likely candidate for this format. If he does see play it would most likely be as a sideboard card against 5Color but I don’t lean strongly in that direction.

In Standard he seems even less likely despite having more tools to make him effective; Makeshift Mannequin, Heat Shimmer, various doppelgangers, and shapeshifting changelings. I just have a hard time imagining a format that can be as quick as this — think about staring at him in your opening hand against Black-White Tokens — finding a place for this card. But when you look at the winning deck from Kyoto, played by the amazing Gabriel Nassif, you see a deck that hopes to nullify aggro strategies with Plumveil and Wall of Reverence. Imagine for a moment a deck playing against the Nassif deck that, instead of trying to deal twenty damage, transformed to a post board version with four copies of Nemesis of Reason which is not going to die to their defensive creatures, and aimed to mill twenty instead.

Hmmmm…maybe I am talking myself into this. I can imagine this guy getting imprinted on a Soul Foundry on the old formica tabletop but I could also see a shot at him making a case for himself in sideboards in Block and possibly even Standard. Whatever you do, don’t let these go to cheaply at the Prerelease even if it never makes the Top 8 decks page on the mothership.

Where michaelj puzzles over the strange Alara Reborn rare, Soulquake.

Aesthetics:
I don’t understand anything about this card, really.

Who would want it?

Timmy I guess? It is very oomph-tacular… assuming that there is lots of stuff on the board (or at least once was lots of stuff on the board?). But now what? You spent seven mana (and lots of it in the good colors) for… You get to pass the turn and the opponent potentially has a hand full of the same?

Spike? I don’t think Spike would touch this unless…

Jonny? He is such a rat bastard, that Jonny.

Here is a thought: If you have some way to convert cards in hand to mana (think Cadaverous Bloom) then this card becomes very interesting. You can potentially discard lots of cards to make mana, which in turn can cast the very expensive Soulquake, which in turn can become more mana still. Some kind of effect like this may turn the card into a combo piece.

However for conventional Magic? The obvious application is to somehow recover from sweeper spells when you are a creature deck… and that doesn’t really make a lot of sense to me. You can’t play this unconditionally to recover (what if you have a clock in play that would be annoying); plus it costs a bajillion for a creature deck; plus it’s in the wrong colors.

And rare?

I guess it has to be rare?

Actually I could see Soulquake as uncommon potentially. A very puzzling card. Anyone have any better ideas [that I will inevitably co-opt if they are any good]?

Where can I see this fitting in?
It’s not a very convenient Upheaval, so I am going to have to vote combo deck for now.

Snap Judgment Rating: I plead the fifth.

LOVE
MIKE

Earlier today I posted the link the Alara Reborn Visual Spoiler  — featuring a whopping 16 cards that have been revealed in various places so far — on Twitter and asked which card people thought would see play in Constructed. I expempted the already proven Terminate from the discusssion but left the floor open. Thought Hemorrhage was the early leader among the replies but as the day wore on there was more and more support for the exciting Jund Hackblade.

Who hacks the Hackblade?

I have to admit, I spent a lot of time thinking about this guy today. I remember a discussion with Billy Moreno about building aggro decks after watching Billy overload some rather unimpressive beaters into the one-drop slot of an otherwise impressive looking red deck. Billy suggested that you needed a certain critical mass of one-drops — he played a whopping total of 14 in his PT Hawaii deck — to ensure that the deck made its scripted plays. He normally advocates at least 10 in an aggro deck. That would certainly seem to be true of any deck that was going to feature the Hackblade. The way this card will really shine is when played on turn two after leading off with Tattermunge Maniac or Figure of Destiny.

With the Maniac he is clearly amazing. Imagine leading off with the pup, sending it in alongside a 3/2 ‘Blade, and then following up with the Ram Gang on turn three against a deck which made its third land drop tapped. That is 13 points of beats by turn three. I am pretty sure you can find some assortment of similarlly colored cards to get those final 7 points pushed across even if they find a way to deal with your team.

Figure of Destiny is a little more clumsy to deal with since you usually want to use your mana to pump the Figure on turn two but you would certainly be happy deal with those kind of problems if you had to. The real problem comes if you decide that you need two more one-drops to make the deck click — or if you hate to play with Maniacs or don’t want to have to pick up a set of Figures. Are there any more playable multi-colored one-drops in Standard? Assuming that there are no multi-colored one drops in Alara Reborn since it is reportedly a gold set we can actually pull together a list of not ready for prime time one-drops auditioning for a shot at the big time alongside the hasty Jund beater:

Duergar Assailant — This quasi-Fanatic is almost certainly going to be the guy. He is not nearly as good as the Mogg Fanatic but he does make combat annoying and assuming we were going to warp our deck for the Hackmaster this is likely the performer that would get the part. We did call everyone else to tryout so lets see what they have to offer. Damned alphabetical ordered auditiions.

Elvish Hexhunter — Not exciting but certainly not unprecedented to see similar cards get some Constructed action. Granted it was usually when Illusions of Grandeur was in the environment. Maybe but probably not getting a callback.

Manforge Cinder – I guess it could help fix your mana…next!

Nip Gwillion – And then we will make it a 4/4 with Edge of Divinity and…next!

Odious Trow — I could have sworn you had Wither…next!

Oona’s Gatewarden — …next!

Rhys the Redeemed – Interesting. Not dead in the mid and late game and uses your mana. Green and white is not the direction we were leaning here but we will get back to you.

Skuzzback Scrapper — Wither is okay. Colors look fine. Still would feel pretty emabarassed playing this guy when my opponent was bracing for a first turn Figure. Put him on the call back list — just not near the top.

Seedcradle Witch — Oooh! I had completely forgotten about this one. I like it. Makes and even better use of your mid-game mana than Rhys and does not need to fully recovered from summoning sickness. Again…colors don’t seem right but and interesting possibility.

Slippery Boggle – Am I am completely off my rocker for liking this one? It is actually immune to Mogg Fanatic when trying to set up your Hackblade turn. Nimble Mongoose has been good for me even without Threshhold and I can target this guy with an aura or equipment. I could see myself playing this guy but probably not in this deck.

Stream Hopper – Probably a much better choice from the same cycle than the previously mentioned Boggle. Semi-Flying Man can get across the red zone while other one-drops just crane their necks and stay home.

The Hackblade is almost certainly be a staple card in Standard beatdown decks. There are plenty of viable one-drops that allow it to single handedly attack for six by the end of turn three and it is also perfectly fine to play it on two and then attack for six on turn three with either a second copy or a Ram-Gang. All in all, a pretty nice beater at common meaning it should become a fixture in Pauper.