Five With Flores

This was what all the hype [on Twitter] was about:

I already wrote the full Preview over on the mother ship so go read what I have to say about Lotus Cobra over there: The Dave Price Rule and the Upper Limit.

I really think this is one of the most insane cards in years… Seems so much faster and different in flavor and function when compared with other Zendikar cards. What do you think?

Best two-drop of all time or what? (Obviously better than Dark Confidant! Come on!)

LOVE
MIKE

Currently Reading: Dead and Gone (Sookie Stackhouse, Book 9)

Zendikar rare Scute Mob is not quite Tarmogoyf… Does it matter?

Scute Mob is looking to be one of the most signficant cards in Zendikar… and that’s saying something!

No, you didn’t read that wrong… Scute Mob is probably a terrible one drop, as far as one drops go. That is, don’t look for it to be much more effective than, say, a Mon’s Goblin Raiders, at least not on or around turn one.

The value of Scute Mob is that as the game progresses–past turn five or so depending on the acceleration involved–it is an extremely powerful card.

Imagine Scute Mob in a control deck of some sort. It is probably needlessly narrow to say a U/G control deck given the mana options, but suffice it to imagine a control deck capable of producing G and countering target spell.

Scute Mob is a perfect card to play with five lands in play. The contol deck in question will have four lands left to fight permission wars, either over Scute Mob (that is, resolving it) or keeping the opponent from doing some kind of funny business.

The next turn, Scute Mob will be a 5/5… That is, a 5/5 for one mana.

Okay, there is already a cadillac control creature, a pair of them in fact, Broodmate Dragon and Baneslayer Angel. The first turn around, Scute Mob will not be able to tangle with Baneslayer Angel, but remember it is already far faster than Broodmate Dragon, and a fight–specifically the double block–may be significantly less profitable than it may look from afar.

The greater problem is that Scute Mob is going to be 9/9 the next turn, and 13/13 the turn after that (and so on) provided its daddy has five or more lands in play. It will jump past Baneslayer Angel in the course of one turn, and be completely out of control before too long.

Now our previous hypothetical outlined playing Scute Mob in the middle of the middle turns, and potentially fighting over it (or stuff going on around it). There is no reason the control player couldn’t just play Scute Mob at some point (even turn one) and wait for it to eventually grow up. That is a possibility, and might even be the right play against either another counterspell deck or a combo deck that needs to be put on a clock.

The even more interesting interaction may be Scute Mob piggybacking Ranger of Eos. Think about that tag team! Ranger of Eos already “implies” having four lands… five lands is just one more than that. It is entirely possible to see Antoine Ruel digging up a pair of Scute Mobs and playing them both immediately, presenting 13 or so power the following turn.

Un

Real

I see Scute Mob as being a clear Staple. It is just too cost effective. Go get your playset immediately; it is the second coming of Tarmogoyf, everything Figure of Destiny wanted to be and more.

LOVE
MIKE

Currently Reading: Nikolai Dante: Beast of Rudinshtein (Rebellion 2000ad)

My Favorite New Card is Emeria, the Sky Ruin!

Well, I am not 100% sure that my favorite new card from Zendikar will be Emeria, the Sky Ruin… but I’m pretty sure it will be.

Emeria, the Sky Ruin is functionally quite similar to old favorite Debtors’ Knell. It does not gobble up creatures from the opponent’s graveyard, but it has a tremendous upside: You Don’t Have to Resolve It. That was the “problem” with Debtors’ Knell (if you can really say there was a problem with a Standard and Block staple)… It coexisted with cards like Remand and Mana Leak so it could be challenging to get into play against Blue opponents. Emeria, the Sky Ruin, on balance is “just” a land, so you just lay it out there to, you know, run (”Sky Ruin”) the opponent’s day.

So of course as cool as Emeria seems, it has some limitations.

The most obvious is that you have to have seven Plains in play before it does anything. You know, when we first started chatting about new Zendikar cards, BDM (aka @Top8Games) said he just knew I would love me an Emeria. I mean, how could I not?

This card touches not on the “Greenest Mage of All” aspect of michaelj (aka @fivewithflores), but the part of me that ran a B/W cycling Eternal Dragon deck in an Extended Pro Tour, the side that produced the first ever Windbrisk Heights / three token “combo” deck (grafted onto a, you know, Eternal Dragon-based Extended deck), or the part of me that went full-on Martyr of Sands for last year’s Exteded PTQ season (you know, with Eternal Dragons and Decree of Justice and all that). The sad irony is that this card would be bananas in one of the Eternal Dragon decks that I always seem to make in Extended (down to returning Martyr of Sands for free, and / or Eternal Dragon itself) without any kind of an unintended interaction with Akroma’s Vengeance.

So let’s think about this jobber in Standard…

We are going to lose Windbrisk Heights — probably the single strongest nonbasic land in current Standard — as Lorwyn Block makes way for Zendikar. That means that straight White decks aren’t going to have a lot of conflict for non-Plains in terms of making space. You can probably run 20-22 Plains and four copies of Emeria, the Sky Ruin in your White deck and have a solid expectation of having seven Plains alongside your Emeria, the Sky Ruin come turn eight (or whenever you actually have eight lands in play).

The interesting thing is…

We don’t know what kinds of creatures are going to fit best with Emeria, the Sky Ruin… at least not in Standard.

We are going to lose our Evoke Elementals (Mulldrifter and so on); there is no clear path for a Fulminator Mage-style lockdown; and even in Extended, Eternal Dragon and such cycling creatures will have rotated. The best thing I can come up with off the top of my head is Glassdusk Hulk… But surely we can come up with something better than this…

Surely we can come up with something better than this…

Regardless of the specifics of how to break (or at least “best exploit”) Emeria, the Sky Ruin in a long game, the basic principles seem to be clear…

1. It’s about as good as a Debtors’ Knell once you have it going.
2. Counterspell-based defenses will be insufficient.
3. Removal-based defenses will eventually be exhausted.
4. … And it ain’t exactly fast.

The question is whether it will be good.

I, for one, have always enjoyed creating and trying to properly position these esoteric corner-case decks that generate unexpected Stage Three situations… and Emeria, the Sky Ruin seems like the Flores long-game cream dream all bundled up in a single card that you don’t actually have to resolve.

So yeah, Emeria, the Sky Ruin is, at least at present, my favorite new Zendikar card. I look forward to cultivating a long and card-profitable relationship with it.

LOVE
MIKE

Currently Reading: Invincible, Book 11: Happy Days