The Planeswalker's Stronghold

So we all know about the booster pack changes, basic lands, mythic rares, and starter deck concepts, but here is some thing you may not know yet. It has come to my attention that there will be a new battlemage cycle. One will be named for each of the five planes of Alara. Each "plane" Battlemage has a casting cost of 2 and a color, a 2/2 power toughness, and a simple single mana activations of it's allied colors. These will be in the uncommon slot, and are already being watched as possible break out chase uncommons for the set. Odds are all will be playable for their shard deck, but one will break out for Standard and hit a 3-5 range. There was notice taken when the Rhox artwork took it from it's beastly almost dino beater image of Nemesis, to it's current humonoid status. The origins of the Rhox have finally been discovered. There is an intelligent creature type with Rhox clan names. These are expected to be in the white shard, and represent the green overlap. Th

Like everyone else on Tuesday, I spent some free time playing around on the new mothership . All in all, I am pretty impressed, although I did find the new navigation a little hard to figure out. I think minor learning curve adjustments should settle that out. One thing I was most impressed with is the new draft simulator. I applied my patent pending draft tech to the simulation and got some remarkable results. I was able to draft $72 in binder worthy cards. I win! Who cares at this point if you scrub out in the first round? I walked with 2 pain lands (both in colors), 2 relentless rats, pithing needle, Squee , Beacon of Immortality , and Windborn Muse, and nine other cards worth a $1 trade value or more. I was able to build a some what clunky BWU deck featuring a number of good creatures for limited like Nantuko Husk, Festering Goblin, Phantom Warrior, Tundra wolves, Severed Legion, and Phyrexian Rager . In the JohnnieK limited theory, I did well with 15 creatures, but came up

Moving forward this fall with the new block, I think it is going to be resoundingly clear that color will continue to be a dominant factor in deck selection. For this reason I intend to take a hard look at the existing color pie, and make some sort of determination as to the overall strength of each color. Since I am a budget player first and foremost. I will begin by looking at the commons. In the category of stand out commons we have the following list. Faerie Trickerie Incinerate Llanowar Elves Mulldrifter Oblivion Ring Ponder Shard Volley Shield of the Oversoul Terror Unmake Wild Griffin or put another way White 3 Blue 3 Black 2 Red 2 Green 2 There really is no clear leader here based on on the numbers, but is the hype and rumors are to be believed White's enchantments here are in a very strong position moving forward. With Alara having been forcasted as a non-traditional human based environment , Green's Llanowar elves has to be discounted putting it in a clearly

This particular deck has a lot going for it. It's cute, it's sexy, it's cheap, but in the end it's a fragile 3 card combo, and we lack the support cards to make it a house. The combo is fairly easy to draw into, and to get off in 5 turns or less. My testing confirmed that it is possible roughly 40% of the time. The problem tends to be that you have an opponent. Because this combo requires 3 cards to work effectively, and one of them must come out a turn earlier, you are wide open to a variety of disruption. Just hitting the highlights, Oblivion Ring, Unmake, a small but effective host of counter magic, and a variable arsenal of spot removal will take down a key piece. While we have some options, to stabilize , it normally is not enough to put this deck back on it's feet. In the end I think the card pool we have assembled offers much better options. A more stable deck based on creatures, and creature control will give a much more reliable win option based in skills