Since Luis Scott-Vargas won Grand Prix Los Angeles (and Asher did pretty well on top), Storm has become one of if not the most popular deck in Extended. Following is a two-game match exploring the Storm mirror.
For this video I used Luis Scott-Vargas’s version of Storm, which is:
4 Lotus Bloom
2 Tendrils of Agony
4 Mind’s Desire
4 Peer Through Depths
4 Ponder
4 Remand
2 Sleight of Hand
2 Electrolyze
4 Manamorphose
4 Desperate Ritual
4 Rite of Flame
4 Seething Song
Sideboard
2 Ad Nauseam
3 Brain Freeze
3 Echoing Truth
2 Gigadrowse
3 Pact of Negation
2 Shattering Spree
Here are some things you will notice about this deck…
Luis played main deck Electrolyze. This could theoretically have been Magma Jet (which is cheaper but less versatile against the one toughness creatures in Faeries), or nothing at all (as in Asher’s deck); the Grapeshot version can just Grapeshot Gaddock Teeg to death (though not Ethersworn Canonist).
Luis killed with Tendrils of Agony. It’s tricky, but you can Remand your own Tendrils and re-play it to create a lethal out of smoke, provided you have enough Lotuses and Manamorphoses to produce sufficient Black to play and re-play the Storm sorcery.
The big one is Shattering Spree in the sideboard. One of the cards I was using to beat Storm “back in the day” (at least before the Grand Prix) with the MWC deck was Chalice of the Void. That probably isn’t going to be a solution moving forward. The White deck is probably not fast enough to kill the Storm deck before a solution to Chalice of the Void can be found, especially when the best ineractive card has Replicate.
Storm is a deck that you will want to know; it is very popular (meaning you probably have to know how to beat it at least once or twice to win a PTQ) and an elite deck against Faerie Wizards (another pretty popular deck).
Storm is a powerhouse, and as you can see in the video (if you don’t have a lot of first hand experience with the deck) it is like a bulldozer stapled to a mongoose… nigh-inexorable kryptonite-locked to fast.
The video is pretty funny, especially the Game Three situation where I have double Tendrils, Brain Freeze-Remand-Brain Freeze with the second-to-lethal Tendrils on the stack. It can play tight margin mana with Tendrils and just enough Storm copies, or with sufficient momentum will do a thousand or so damage while decking the other guy the same turn.
Sideboard
1 Pithing Needle
3 Damnation
3 Extirpate
1 Engineered Explosives
3 Choke
2 Ravenous Baloth
2 Seal of Primordium
This deck more or less exchanges the usually defining Death Cloud set from the Life from the Loam versions of The Rock for Tarmogoyf, Bitterblossom, and Umezawa’s Jitte, repositioning the deck from board control to beatdown… while maintaining the card advantage capabilities of the [previously] more common deck.
The biggest take away I have from trying Jacob’s deck is how much better it is against Burn than the Death Cloud version I was on early in this season’s testing. Beating Burn was simply not difficult nor in any way stressful wheresas with Death Cloud, even when you won, you were on the edge of your seat the whole time.
An inability to win by Death Cloud is counterbalanced a little bit by the fact that this deck can still potentially lock the opponent down with Raven’s Crime. Even against Burn this can be useful because even if they are still clocking you for two or more damage you can end up shaving off their options and preventing them from planning — and playing — optimally.
All in all a very solid deck, well worth the try if you are considering B/G.
1 Arashi, the Sky Asunder
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Tarmogoyf
1 Academy Ruins
4 Breeding Pool
1 Minamo, School at Water’s Edge
1 Okina, Temple to the Grandfathers
2 Riptide Laboratory
1 Seat of the Synod
5 Snow-Covered Forest
2 Snow-Covered Island
1 Snow-Covered Mountain
1 Steam Vents
1 Tree of Tales
4 Wooded Foothills
sideboard
1 Chalice of the Void
2 Relic of Progenitus
2 Echoing Truth
2 Repeal
3 Arashi, the Sky Asunder
4 Ancient Grudge
1 Dwarven Blastminer
One of the things that dawned on me recently was how much better the cards are now than Gnarled Mass. I mean you can make the possibly true argument that Isao, Enlightened Bushi was better than Gnarled Mass, but Kitchen Finks and Vendilion Clique really make for a good argument.
It’s not that I’ve abandoned the White deck so much as I don’t think the White deck can win in a format where Storm is one of the top decks. You see Game One you have to be extremely lucky to win, and sideboarded your strategy revolves around Chalice of the Void; if the opponent is playing Luis Scott-Vargas’s version with multiple Shattering Sprees I don’t know how you can reasonably win. Sure you are going to beat the Fae, Red Decks, and so on but I think that an utterly unwinnable matchup against Storm is a dodgy proposition at this particular time.
On balance, this deck (that is, Critical Mass) has no such Storm vulnerability. In fact, I put it as the best deck in the format against Storm (at least from my experience). I have never lost to that kind of combo deck.
You have a couple of things going for you:
Your Birds of Paradise accelerates out your Trinket Mage and supplements your operating mana, allowing you to stick a meaningful Chalice of the Void before you’ve lost the game.
Your Birds of Paradise and Sakura Tribe-Elders give you a slight mana boost allowing you to play Glen Elendra Archmage with U open, as opposed to just tapping out and losing.
I really like the Storm matchup with this deck and would be comfortable playing it all day.
I like the Faeries / Wizards decks in general but I didn’t know how to win the mirror. The mirror seems quite miserable to me (but scouting from the LA floor from ManningBot seems to indicate that the mirror is highly skill intensive… I must confess that I don’t see how to gain an edge by play skill); however this deck has a fair edge over the Faeries / Wizards style of deck.
In a sense it maintains the old Kamigawa-era Critical Mass edge over Jushi Blue. You are a similar deck with fewer permission spells but tremendously more impressive mana and threats. I was in the process of beating up a Faeries player last week when he played Vedalken Shackles. I did some minor math and decided I would try to overwhelm his Shackles… A single hit from any of my significant threats would be enough. I played Iwamori of the Open Fist. He showed me Azami, Lady of Scrolls. I passed. Before the end he played an instant Vendilion Clique and drew two. I conceded game despite having no illusions of possibly losing a turn and a half before. As you can see the deck no longer has any copies of Iwamori of the Open Fist.
My current strategy is to just play a lot of Arashis. I’ve always loved Arashi and it seems fine at beating Wizards. I side the one main deck copy out quite a bit. I think I’ve only ever gone 5/5 against Zoo.
Speaking of Zoo, that is a nigh-comical matchup. You have Sakura Tribe-Elder, Kitchen Finks, and Umezawa’s Jitte all main, plus Engineered Explosives backup. Really, not a difficult matchup.
What is a difficult but not unwinnable matchup is Affinity. Critical Mass is a dog in Game One. I don’t think that the opposing win expectation is much over fifty per cent, but the Affinity Game One wins are all blowouts so it might “feel” very good for Affinity. Certainly they have some margin to play with if they run the multiple Master of Etherium version. Sideboarding makes Critical Mass a heavy favorite. You have all these great guys and all these Ancient Grudges both. I think that I have been generally lucky drawing Ancient Grudges in sideboarded games, but Critical Mass has been an overwhelming favorite in my experience.
B/G Loam has been interesting. This is a matchup that can go either way. I have won most Game Ones in tempo-oriented fashion, but like I said it can go either way. I’ve noticed that Critical Mass has become a heavier favorite in sideboarded games due to the inclusion of the second Relic of Progenitus. Previously I was concentrating on just not getting blown out by Life from the Loam and sometimes losing to the opponent drawing another one. The two Progenitus version has been much more steady and I think Critical Mass is a moderate favorite in sideboarded games, a slight favorite overall.
Overall I would not hesitate to play this deck the day after tomorrow. I have never tested it but I assume Critical Mass would be a dog to a well played and good version of the Martyr deck. Most of the other matchups seem managable if not favorable blowouts.
I have not missed Thirst For Knowlege, largely because the deck is so active and I can get some of the selection / card advantage back with Sakura-Tribe Elder and Sword of Fire and Ice… The one card I sometimes miss, though, is Pithing Needle (usually when faced with some annoying Vedalken Shackles).
Anyway, that’s my deck. I hope you get something useful out of it. Good luck this weekend to anyone playing. I suggest you obtain The Touch.
I said Spencer’s forum post was my favorite but I actually forgot about this one, which actually touched what passes for my soul:
oldbsturgeon
i just want to say that this article was very inspiring to me for maybe a very strange reason.
i work as a therapist in substance abuse and i sometimes have clients that have codependency issues with another person.
today we were discussing this persons relationship and how the other person is currently dictating the field of battle and that the client is agreeing to her strategy and will continue to stay with her. by eliminating interaction, such as dredge’s strategy, she can focus on her goal of bettering herself, and when her partner trys to interact in will not matter and she will ultimately lose. either her partner must accept the new terms or will fall further trying to pursue her faulty goals.
thanks mike
I was reminded of this because of an email this morning (which has transformed itself into a Star City forum post also) by Anthony LaCassa, or Ath0919 here and on Star City.
Anth0919
Mike,
So I just read this article and all I have to say is holy crap!
I feel kind of stupid for being blown away by the article, since it’s pretty much based on simple math and I’m an accountant. I guess this is something I feel that I should have been able to realize on my own without having it explained. That being said, I’ve just begun venturing into competitive Magic over the past few months.
Thanks for this article… it’s the best I’ve read regarding theory on choosing a deck.
Which just goes to show: It’s not just for teenie weenie kids any more. Grown ups with jobs love michaelj too!
yes Yes YES
I will go over the deck that prompted young Zack Hall to proclaim “you should go into sales” to me yesterday. Maybe later today depending on Lost, Top Chef, etc.
I was reading Star City Games this week and until I saw a poll for most popular articles by some author or other, I totally forgot they had end-of-the-year awards.
What do you think the chances are that this two-time Writer of the Year gets a nod now that he is no longer in the weeklies? Winky-wink.
Anyway, I decided go go over my eight or so months at Star City in 2008 and pluck my favorite articles. I am pretty sure they are all non-Premium now for those of you who don’t have that service.
michaelj sez: This article is superbly written. Ego, yes; but still a fact. That is, it is a good read and would have been the kind of article I would have liked to have read had I not written it (actually I liked re-reading it, so I guess it has nothing to do with whether or not I had written it). This article features Dune battle strategy, lightsaber duels, basically everything awesome including passably awesome Magic strategy.
My favorite forum post:
SRmogg Just wanted to say that as of now this is currently my favorite magic article ever. Like, it was pretty unreal. I’ve read every enderverse novel many times, and I also really like Kurt Vonnegut. I alreayd knew most the startegic content, but if someone didn’t and was looking for a new way to attack a wide open format with many powerful linears like extended, it’s pretty excellent.Â
michaelj sez: Just a fair number of good ideas in this one, including getting the pat on the head from Pat, actually learning something while I was working on it, and answering a request by Adam Prosak. Just a pretty good article. I had actually forgotten doing the Wrath of God math; at the time (“that” time, actually) I was playing at my absolute best (this was right before Charleston and my States win)… I think combined with my The Touch tee shirt, GerryT’s mulligan advice, and remembering to do the math when I am pressed with a difficult decision, I will probably knock off a Honolulu PTQ win in one try. On that note…
My favorite forum post:
qwertius this article helped me a great deal.Â
I see myself as a talented player that never reached his potential for several reasons. Flores points to several directions I should look upon to improve.
michaelj sez: I had just come back from meeting millionaire copywriter Dr. Harlan Kilstein the first time, and I had inadvertently invented a sub-array of NLP theory, and was all excited about learning how to do modeling correctly. I actually want to do more modeling exercises in my writing in the future (in fact I have been thinking of creating a mulligans model inspired by GerryT’s post in The Hidden Value of MTGO Ringers; I don’t know if you noticed but I am pretty excited about that one. Just a great contribution to the site by Gerry). Also this one has a maddening amount of hand-written sections from The Confusion as well as the best opening page of any novel: madness and goodness both.
My favorite forum post:
Anselm And then there’s Thomas Pynchon, who does (almost) everything Stephenson does, but better.
[Actually this is like my least favorite forum post of all time. Ravitz and I went out and bought Gravity’s Rainbow after this forum post and it’s been close to a year and neither of us has finished it yet.]
michaelj sez:
I actually forgot that I wrote this one. This was both one of the best articles I ever published and not as good as it should have been (I had been keeping it under my hat for about three years to be honest, and didn’t get to flesh out everything I wanted to in one article… It was meant to be a video series). This article lays out the advanced rock-paper-scissors theory I use (or more aptly, “used” when I was really good at that kind of thing during Kamigawa- and Ravnica-era Standard formats) to pick the right deck consistently. Certainly my favorite of the five, and a short list contender for Article of the Year (provided anyone remembers I wrote it… Like I said I didn’t).
My favorite forum post:
ThePChapin Flores! I knew you still had it in you!Â
This article hit home with me like no other article since that fateful “How to win a PTQ” last year…”Â
Grand Slam. Not close.
center425 Man I love the people flaming the advice on sideboards. Honestly, I bet everyone one of you played cards that were awful in your bad matchups for no reason.
So I hope you like reading or re-reading some of 2008’s best stuff, from me, on Star City. Hopefully I will continue to be able to produce passably awesome content now and forever. Hopefully.
LOVE
MIKE
PS In case you haven’t noticed (and I think I mentioned it roughly DI times in this article, you should read GerryT’s comment in The Hidden Value of MTGO Ringers. Like right now!).
PPS Follow me on Twitter. Please! I want to feel loved.
A quick review on Conflux rare, Knight of the Reliquary.
Aesthetics:
My friend Luis Neiman (aka Luis Not Vargas) asked me last week what I thought of this card, but I hadn’t seen it yet. He described it as a 2/2 for three mana (which it is); to which I said, unexciting. Then he explained how Knight of the Reliquary is basically a progressive Tarmogoyf (or Countryside Crusher) while fixing mana, thinning out lands, or even drawing extra cards!
Here are some things to keep in mind:
You can only sacrifice a Forest or Plains, but you can get any kind of land you want. So for instance in Extended you can get a Flagstones of Trokair and then another Flagstones of Trokair and they can kill one another, netting you both more lands, and more lands in the graveyard.
You can tutor up specialty lands, such as Academy Ruins, Ghost Quarters, Riptide Laboratories, or even Urza’s parts (though I have doubts about those in any deck that would be willing to play a 2/2 like this one)
Knight of the Reliquary hasn’t got vigilance; so if you want to play searcher, you are either playing defense or simply forgoing your Red Zone rights. It’s not just a free giant monster on the cheap; on the other hand…
In a format like Extended, you might have a gaggle of lands in the graveyard anyway, charging up Knight of the Reliquary from the get-go.
Where do I see this fitting in?
This card can go in a couple of places. First of all, it can be incorporated into any creature deck that can play it. It’s just a good card. Worst case scenario, it should be a serviceable Gnarled Mass, that is, an automatic PTQ winner 🙂
Secondly, Knight of the Reliquary can go into a specific creature deck with a bunch of Forests and Plains and specialty lands, serving much the same function as “any creature deck” but with a more specialized function. It can beat. It can be good. But it can also perform surgery. It can be Dwarven Blastminer, grabbing Ghost Quarters to kill the opponent’s special lands. It can be a slow and inexorable Demonfire, finding Vitu-Ghazi, the City-Tree, eventually killing the control opponent… but it might take a while. It can even be a kind of Platinum Angel, finding Prahv, Spires of Order to force the opponent to commit more and more resources to the board even as it grows out of easy control.
Then there are the “Karoo” interactions, where Knight of the Reliquary is a kind of Benalish Heralds.
And of course the process of putting lands into the graveyard can give it a synergy with Life from the Loam or Crucible of Worlds (in this case you can call it a Terravore in a pinch).
Finally — that is “finally” in the context of things that I have thought of off the top of my head — Knight of the Reliquary can be a specific puzzle piece that finishes a deck strategy. Maybe it fills the role of a flexible Reap and Sow in a deck that needs to stick two or three different kinds of lands together like Legos.
Snap Judgment Rating: Role Player (high) to Staple (low-medium)
P.S. While you’re here, in case you haven’t read the previous post The Hidden Value of MTGO Ringers, check it out. The comments section is one of the most awesomest ones in the short history of this site, and includes an opening line by GerryT that is the equal of any strategy article that has been written this year. Do yourself a favor and check it out 🙂
What does it mean if Adam Yurchick won with a four card opening hand? More than just a good story, I hope!Â
I was out to dinner with newly Top 8-ified reigning #1 Apprentice Asher “ManningBot” Hecht and he told me something very interesting: According to Asher, Adam Yurchick (Top 8 at Grand Prix Philadelphia with “old school” U/W ‘Tron among other finishes) won the last round of the Grand Prix on a mulligan to four.
That’s cool.
Cool anecdote, right?
But that’s not all.
According to Asher, “That’s how you know the MTGO ringers… They know when to mulligan.”
Okay. That can just be a bumper sticker statement. Like “everything happens for a reason,” or “there is no such thing as objectivity.” That is, it sounds cool to some people. MTGO ringers (or people who want to grow up to be MTGO ringers) might think this is a great and absolutely true statement!
Let’s assume for a moment that it is true.
What does it mean?
I play a fair amount of MTGO (as you probably know from watching my videos)… I used to play more MTGO, and tournaments as well (in fact, the summer I was very good at Magic, I wrote a lot of articles detailing the 8-man tournaments I was playing all the time, viz. Vore: Still Awesome, Beating Down With Bracht’s Ninjas, and The Next Step in Steam Vents. But since that summer I have de-volved into playing mostly Tournament Practice room just so that I don’t have to set aside three hours at a time.
The difference between how I am playing now and a legitimate MTGO ringer is that there is nothing really at stake in how I play (other than my leisure / entertainment time). So I mostly just never mulligan because I care more about exploring new deck ideas than actually winning MTGO tournaments. But when you are playing tournaments and — like I was that summer — meticulously logging your ratings deltas and tournament win / loss percentages with every deck you play, there is more at stake. Having more at stake encourages you to take mulligans more seriously because your success criteria is / becomes about winning individual games rather than exploring ideas. Tournament Magic is a far different animal from Tournament Practice room, yadda yadda yadda, and more repetitions (when winning specific games actually matter to you) influence behavior (in this case mulligan behavior) over time.
So let’s get back to Adam’s win on four.
Why does it matter again?
According to Asher, “He was unwilling to keep an unwinnable five.”
This is really interesting.
It’s basic math actually.
But while we are actually riding the emotional rollercoaster of a tournament match that might matter, we don’t necessarily pay attention to the math. I was thinking back to a hand I kept in the last round that mattered at the Star City Philadelphia $5,000 tournament. I had just gotten topdecked out of legitimately beating the eventual tournament champion in an extremely hostile matchup (he was dead to any burn spell — and I topdecked Incinerate — but not before he got me by pulling his main-deck Burrenton Forge-Tender a the turn before). What was I thinking at the time?Â
Oh, I’m probably going to lose anyway. Keep.
I guess I have to keep this.
Maybe this hand will improve.
Something like this.
If I sat down and had a conversation with myself, I probably could have figured out that the hand I kept — which had very little action — had even less chance of winning the game, a game I had to win if I was going to make Top 8 (and if I had gotten the match, I would have had a pretty good chance of winning the tournament instead of finishing out of the money).Â
I had already given up.
So what am I losing if I mulligan?
If I have already consigned myself to losing — or something tantamount to losing like throwing my hands up in the air and praying that some otherworldly forces give me rip after rip so that I can win out of pure hazard and fortune rather than, I dunno, tighter mulligan decisions — then what am I losing by shipping one card? By this reasoning, the card isn’t even good, right?
You don’t mulligan in these situations (I don’t anyway) in order to avoid feeling badly, I guess. I don’t know if there is any other idea. Just some kind of chasing some kind of dead end. You “don’t want to go deeper” even though your one land five card hand has nearly no chance of winning as it is… But what is deeper? Do you have a lower chance of winning than the zero you are stuck with if you stick with this hand?
Seems pretty silly when you say it out loud, right?
I don’t even know if the story about Adam is true (though I assume it’s true). But whether or not it is true, I am going to try to embrace it as life-changing (or at least game-changing) in my own future mulligans.
I mean… It’s almost like a Decree of Justice stapled onto an Akroma’s Vengeance! It’s like my dream card!
(Sad as that is to say).
Martial Coup is even super expensive, like cycling a Decree for a million guys, or, um, playing Akroma’s Vengeance. Incidentally how much does it suck that Akroma’s Vengeance is going to rotate in Extended after this year? Man!Â
Okay, back to Martial Coup…
Basically…
At two mana it’s nothing.
At three mana it’s sub-Squire.
At four mana it’s barely playable in Limited.
At five mana it would be pretty good in Limited, if the creatures had flying.
At six mana it’s sadly Pro Tour Top 8 caliber… Yes, in Constructed*
At seven mana… OH MY GOD HAVE YOU READ THIS CARD?
Okay, so the question is, what kinds of decks can make the seven mana required to kick butt with Martial Coup?
Where do I see this fitting in?
In Standard, the obvious answer is Reflecting Pool Control. That deck already plays sevens like Cruel Ultimatum. This isn’t as powerful as Cruel Ultimatum (even at seven) but it is so much easier to play. I was thinking of a U/r/W version (only three colors) for Pro Tour Kyoto and this might be a good option.
Over on Twitter** zeichen95 / Mark Ian suggested playing it as a one-of in Kithkin. That’s a pretty interesting idea, and a nice way to break open the mirror, especially for a beatdown deck that plays a million lands.
In Extended BDM thinks this is a card that can put U/W UrzaTron back into the mix. It is certainly quite powerful if you are playing it for seven or more, and ‘Tron is the kind of deck that can make seven or more.
The reservations I have about this card — and again I am very excited by it — are based on the fact that it does nothing until you hit a gigantic mana count (I cycle my Akroma’s Vengeances at least one third of the time by the way). That probably keeps Martial Coup out of four-of candidacy in most strategies that might be willing to play it.
Snap Judgment Rating:Â Role Player
LOVE
MIKE
* Bonus points if you know what I am talking about.
** To follow me on Twitter: Twitter.com/fivewithflores
The comparison to Demonfire are pretty obvious, so that’s what I’ll talk about first.
You guys probably know that I was a gigantic Demonfire fan. I played it in G/R Snow, This Girl, and other decks, usually as the killer. One of the most memorable games I had at the 2006 New York State Championships was over Christian Culcano; I swung with my Firemane Angel knowing that he could not resist — really had no recourse from — playing his gigantic Snow seven mid-combat (thanks to Teferi). I had Culcano’s mana tapped and I played ye olde Compulsive Research into a Hellbent Demonfire. We agreed whoever won that deciding third game was going to win the next two (and I upheld).
Thing is… I didn’t have nearly the mana I would have needed to go uncounterable with Banefire.
So the question is… What is easier, Hellbent or X = 5?
Actually… That’s not a question at all. It doesn’t matter. We don’t have the option for Hellbent and we are therefore stuck with this one… Which is fine! This is a very good card and I am going to enjoy — in the words of Jonathan Becker — “being able to win matches again.”
For some of the decks that were the most notorious Demonfire decks, such as B/R, X = 5 would not have necessarily been easy to hit (while Hellbent was pretty easy). On balance, the controlling decks that also liked Demonfire, viz. U/R/W control, will much prefer the X = 5 version. Like playing one of these might be good in Reflecting Pool Control even.
Where do I see this fitting in?
Frankly all different kinds of decks. G/R Ramp decks will be able to go big with this, Reflecting Pool control can play it as an alternate finisher, maybe even combo decks. For example can an Extended deck just produce 21 mana and kill you with this? Is that easier or harder than Storm combo? Blaze was a defining combo kill card a few years back; Banefire is just so obviously better… Do I really need to finish this sentence?
In a sense I am happy I didn’t get this as an official Top Decks preview card. To me it’s just obviously good and workable in lots of places and I don’t know what to say so much as look forward to actually playing with Banefire.
A quick review on Conflux mythic rare, Maelstrom Angel.
Aesthetics:
Ah… Now I get it!
Previously cards like Conflux (review forthcoming) and Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker seemed very out of whack. Like I guess they can print largely impractical if aesthetically flavorful and eye-widening cards like these… But the main villain? Do you really name the set after a Constructed Unplayable?
With Maelstrom Angel, the formerly impossible becomes free!
I actually thought about this a bit today after seeing this card… Will Magic de-volve to just who can hit the other guy with a Maelstrom Angel? It seems like you can make a deck to be able to cast Maelstrom Angel and pack it with all kinds of impossible jones and hope for the best.
Can you imagine accelerating this one out then getting in there to the tune of a turn five Cruel Ultimatum? Conflux is pretty exciting, too.
Hit you with Maelstrom Angel
Play Conflux.
Hmmm… Go get Firespout, Cruel Ultimatum, Thoughtseize, Cryptic Command… and… um, Beacon of Immortality.
5/5 flying — in Black — seems like a nice recipe for something that is not going to die [easily]. The card is big and Terror-proof to start.
Where do I see this fitting in?
Wherever there are domains in play that have not done anything yet or horribly overpriced cards waiting for a mercy cast, she is there.
Snap Judgment Rating: Ever the Flagship! Even if the ship ain’t that good in the end, it wouldn’t have existed at all maybe…
All Conflux
