Greetings traveller,
This is my adventure into the Adventures in the Forgotten Realms.
DUNGEON MECHANIC
When players remember this set they'll remember the dungeon mechanic, but no way am I remembering all the rooms! The mechanic is a little awkward; It's like when you're unsure exactly what's on the other side of a flip card but you can't check because you'll reveal information.
None of the dungeon venturing cards are breaking the format but some are playable.
Avoid running 1toughness 2drops if Wrenn and Six is popular in your metagame. You practically lose the game on the spot if that happens. Otherwise I like ~ in human or knight tribal.
Rogue tribal perhaps. Or at least a good card to have in the sideboard if you're running no creatures maindeck and you expect the opponent to side out their removal.
THE CREATURE LANDS
Lands which have some nonmana ability which gives value, always have some kind of drawback. This new series is no exception. However, there are very few value lands which enter untapped and produce coloured mana. There is the series of Hour of Devastation uncommons and the horizon lands, but they also cost life. There is the legendary series from Kamigawa but they only work on legendary creatures. These new AFR creature lands fit nicely into decks which can't afford colourless lands or lands which enter tapped.
Sacrifices to Skullclamp, Transmogrify and Natural Order.
Most aggro decks can run this.
Especially good in Goblins where lords pump ~ and the tokens it produces.
You can activate multiple times for extra triggers a la Raging Ravine. You effectively need 9 mana to get two tokens, so we're talking super late game.
Helps the average creature deck fly over Moat or Island Sanctuary for those final points of damage.
Requires a lot of mana and therefore isn't good at finishing off planeswalkers like most creature lands are.
The high activation cost of ~ can be a blessing and a curse: a curse because you can't afford to activate and hold up a counterspell but also a blessing because it conceals information, e.g. if you don't attack with Creeping Tar Pit on an empty board, it tells the opponent you probably have a counterspell, with ~ you don't have that problem until 7 mana.
EQUIPMENT
Skullclamp, etc.
Can reduce equip costs to zero and therefore combos with Cephalid Illusionist.
I'd like to make an all-in Valduk deck one day.
ZOMBIES
You wouldn't run it in straight two colour aggro because in those decks you can have 2/2 1drops, which don't die to Wrenn and Six.
ARTIFACTS
Easy to miss as an artifact land, very sneaky. A big addition to artifact strategies.
Later in the game you can dump mana into making treasures to boost Tolarian Academy, Cranial Plating or sacrifice to Arcbound Ravager.
The original image is not on Gatherer, only this foil version, weird.
This is a huge printing for artifact strategies because it's the first playable artifact which deals with Null Rod et al. Before now you had to blow up your own stuff too with Culling Scales, and even if you tried, you probably died before the Scales hit Null Rod.
There are plenty of blue tutors for ~ but you'll need nonartifact colour sources to ensure you can cast them under Null Rod.
- Manifold Key and Time Vault
- Painter's Servant and Grindstone
- Mesmeric Orb and Basalt Monolith
- Sword of the Meek and Thopter Foundry
Pretty sweet with Sword of the Meek, especially if you search for artifacts which produce 1/1's, e.g. Breya's Apprentice or Desecrated Tomb.
There are many creatures which do this now:
4/4 haste turn3 is great. Pop Wrenn and Six or a Liliana
Amazing with nontoken artifacts that give you value even if they die, e.g. Chromatic Star, Arcum's Astrolabe, Terrarion, Ichor Wellspring.If you can copy the ability you can produce multiple 4/4's at once.
Replaces itself and becomes a significant threat.
GOBLINS
I ran Boggart Ram-Gang a long time ago and was happy with it. Those were different times though.
DRAGONS
Unlike Cavern of Souls or Unclaimed Territory, you can use mana from ~ on anything you want.
Dragon tribal is a long way behind other tribes in number of tribal payoffs. Also, dragons are traditionally 4 or more mana, making the curve difficult to fill out. Lately they have been printing cheap dragons though, e.g. Sprite Dragon, Smoldering Egg and Scion of Draco.
The most exciting possibility is Descendants’ Path. One day I’ll break that card.
Great at killing planeswalkers.
Hard to imagine beating ~ in a race.
Ward4 is excellent. All you need is counterspells to protect ~ when it taps to attack, then you win. Giving it vigilance also works.
The dream is to turn something difficult to kill into an Angel and book it, e.g. Mutavault.
You'll want some amount of lifegain to keep the zombies coming late game.
Good black devotion for Nykthos.
You can get something funny altered on the book in the art.
Fuels Contamination.
Eye of Vecna and Hand of Vecna are passable cards in a Death's Shadow strategy. Maybe combine them all with Second Chance and Marchesa, the Black Rose.
MISCELLANEOUS
Her whip covering the text really bothers me.The +1 needs to be effective for ~ to be worth running. She ultimates fast. The 1/1's are great with Skullclamp.
Possible addition to High Tide combo if they're trying to go fully instant speed.
In competition with:
Titania, Protectr of Argoth
I like this in metagames with lots of graveyard abuse. Unfortunately delve creatures will eat up the graveyard before ~ gets a chance, also those delve creature will probably be bigger than ~. To make ~ work you'll need removal for big blockers. Bounce works also, because ~ will stop the graveyard getting big enough to recast the delve threats.
I can imagine growing this for a couple turns with lots of 1drops and other cheap spells like Mishra's Bauble, Urza's Bauble, Gitaxian Probe and Manamorphose. If it gets to a 3/3, that's a good deal.
Super powerful. Excellent in the UR maximum spells deck, which I like to call 'Drakes', except all the drakes have long since been cut from it. Of course Demilich is competing with delve spells, of which there are many premium ones. I think the recursiveness is worth it; One of the weaknesses of Drakes is it only has room for so many win conditions because so much space is taken up by cantrips and therefore if your win condition gets removed you may be left spinning your wheels.~ may be so demanding on cards that it may be correct to go over 60 cards maindeck. You'd need to test a tonne to find the correct number.
I've tentatively added this to my Scapeshift deck as the last spell. That deck is hungry for self contained land accelerants because it needs one to keep a hand. The deck already runs Diligent Farmhand. The problem with Neverwinter Dryad is that it clashes with Field of the Dead: Currently I'm running one Forest and two Snow-Covered Forests. I've decided the risk of having no basic forest to search with ~ is worse than missing a zombie because I have two lands with the same name.
Fill your deck with creatures that are free with level 2 and go crazy. Mox Amber goes in the deck, which is a super powerful addition.When you're building around ~, it becomes powerful enough that you would run Enlightened Tutor for it.
You can have X be zero to effectively sacrifice creatures at will. Until now we were relying on Varolz to be our sacrifice outlet for persist combo to find with Green Sun's Zenith. Now we have an upgrade provided that we can cast Minsc. He is quite tough on mana requirements. I would avoid basic Swamp or any colourless land.
A 3/2 body is worth a card, so this doesn't feel like the usual on-top tutor.I've been running ~ in my Yorion Combos deck and have been very happy with it.
Some combo decks, e.g. Storm, dig whilst producing mana, but they don't want to draw their Emrakul or whatever win condition until they have critical mass. In that case 'wishes' can be good win conditions because if you don't have critical mass yet, they still find something useful.You can run ~ in a noncombo deck if your sideboard contains a lot of super cheap bullets like Massacre, Mogg Salvage, Grafdigger's Cage, etc. You may need more value like multiple prowess triggers or getting Lava Dart to flip Erayo.
Effectively Village Rites in an Aristocrats deck.
I like this at the moment because there are lots of delve creatures to bounce.
Metagame dependant. Right now I wouldn't run ~ becaise Murktide Regent is a dragon. There are a bunch of '1B mana kill target dude' instants that have some condition. On any given week one of them is better than the others, e.g.:Works with Transmogrify et al.
Right now there isn't a good reason to run mono green, but that could change in the future.
Elf tribal.
One of the best mill cards printed. Eventually there'll be a metagame where mill is viable, even if only for a month.
Resilient threat for mono red. If you are two colours I think you can find a better threat.
Spending 3 mana to not effect the board is a tempo loss you'll need to recover from. Serra's Sanctum and Balance would be good at doing so.
Her whip covering the text really bothers me.
The +1 needs to be effective for ~ to be worth running. She ultimates fast. The 1/1's are great with Skullclamp.
Titania, Protectr of Argoth
When you're building around ~, it becomes powerful enough that you would run Enlightened Tutor for it.
Works with Transmogrify et al.
You can win the game with much cheaper threats these days but perhaps there's a Contamination deck for ~ to rule over.
I used to live in Yarraville and walking under the Westgate at night felt like a scene from Blade.
Good curve topper for Vampires. Nice to have some big vampires for Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord.Dwarven Recruiter has potential to make Dwarf tribal a reality.
CONCLUSION
Here are my picks for best cards in the set. No points here, which is good. They're all roughly the same power level, which is a testament to the set designers:
See you on the glorious field of battle,
Mulch.
