Comments on: Shards of Alara – Five Corner Cases

By: ElCoco

ElCoco — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 14:03:02 +0000

Immortal Coil is one of my favorite cards from Shards of Alara. I got it at the prerelease and it was love at first sight.
Noel deCordova wrote about building around it>/a>. I don’t really like the “give it to opponent” aproach, but using it proactively, that would be cool… and risky… but we all like to live on the edge, don’t we?

What about using its drawing ability but not the second and third, Skill Borrower do it for us.
And a couple of dredge cards could help too.

when will there be some “graveyard veil”?

By: rawdon

rawdon — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 21:26:39 +0000

I like Deathgreeter in the abstract, as the black Soul Warden. But I agree that it’s a lesser card. After all, a mass removal spell like Wrath will kill it too, so you don’t get its benefits.

Necrogenesis seems like an updated version of Night Soil. Arguably Necrogenesis is slightly better at generating Saprolings (since you’re more likely to be limited by the number of creature cards in graveyards than by available mana), while Night Soil is better at removing cards from graveyards. Overall I think it’s a fine card for a deck that wants to generate tokens.

It occurred to me last night that the deck to put Corpse Connoisseur into is my Cairn Wanderer deck, to fetch a Skyhunter Skirmisher or Mistmeadow Skulk to make my Wanderer(s) nastier. I agree that it’s expensive, though. I think being a 3/3 unearthable body helps make up for that, especially in slower metagames.

I like the notion of fetching Squee, too, especially in a deck with (for instance) Jaya Ballard.

By: KZipple

KZipple — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 21:19:07 +0000

Not to sound like a total barn, but does it really cost you anything to consider uses for these cards? You can’t lose anything by it.

I think Connoisseur is potentially very exciting…bringing things back from the graveyard is not a fair thing to do, even if it only happens with certain cards. Playing it with Squee does sound like it might be fun. I’m not sure what to do with it, but still.
And Necrogenesis is hot. It might not be as bonkers as it is in Limited, but it’s probably pretty good in the right deck. Five Color probably has some issues with it going long even beyond randomly having elements of it hosed. Just a thought.
Mike, do you think Immortal Coil has potential? Not everywhere, but could it be good somewhere maybe?

By: kenseiden

kenseiden — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 17:03:36 +0000

Corpse Coinosseur is expensive, Call to Hell is far worse than unsummon andthe rest are pretty bad. Thumbs down, sorry. There’s more good cards out there waiting for a home.