New Phyrexia Event Decks Info Released
Today on the mothership, Magic Arcana announces the new Event Decks that will be released on 10 June for New Phyrexia. War of Attrition is a mono-White Equipment list, while Rot from Within looks to be a mono-Green Infect build. But don’t just take our word for it- have a look yourselves!
Ertai’s Meddling: Path of Blight (Mirrodin Besieged)
Today begins our next round of Ertai’s Meddlings for the Mirrodin Besieged intro decks. For those recently joining us, the Meddlings are one of our most popular features, where we take an intro deck and tighten it up. As the game’s developers have acknowledged, intro decks include a number of suboptimal choices to help guide new players along the path to deckbuilding. In that vein, then, Meddlings are signposts along the way- a possible outcome if you take out the bad cards and fill it with ones that reinforce the deck’s underlying theme and strategy.
Of course, cramming a bunch of rares and mythics into the deck to up its power level is one thing, but we prefer to take the accessible approach. Many new and returning players don’t have access to every card they’d like, so Ertai’s Meddling adheres to the following two rules:
The idea here is to let folks build with cards they might already have laying about, rather than having to go out and buy a bunch more. There’s also the added challenge of ‘doing more with less.’ As Mark Rosewater so often says, restrictions breed creativity. That being the case, the object of our creativity today is Path of Blight, the successor to Phyrexian Poison and the set’s infect-based offering. Unlike Poison, Path drops the Black component and picks up White, reflective of the growing corruption of the Phyrexians on Mirrodin. For us, this makes our job a little more difficult, as Black is loaded with quality infect cards but White has precious few. Let’s see what we can come up with, and we’ll begin by reviewing the strengths and weaknesses of the deck we identified in our initial review.
First Look at New Phyrexia Intro Packs!
Images of the upcoming set’s Intro Packs were released today on MTG Salvation, and here they are!
Shards of Alara: Naya Behemoths Review (Part 2 of 2)
It’s our final visit to the plane of Alara for the while (until we return in the future with Conflux), and it’s been a richly rewarding one. Although this is a set Sam much prefers over me, we’ve both found reasons to enjoy and appreciate the set. Sam’s delighted in the setting and memorable characters like Ajani and Elspeth, while I’ve found a word here to describe my personal colour-preference: Grixis.
And so it’s with some irony that for our final match we’ll have completely switched places, for I’ll be piloting Naya Behemoths while Sam sets up behind Grixis Undead. Being candid, I’ve probably looked forward to playing this deck the least as a matter of personal enjoyment- heavy creature decks don’t typically thrill me the way others do, but we’re both ready to see how they measure up. Can the heavy killpower of Grixis keep my behemoths at bay, or will Sam find herself reduced to a foul-smelling substance beneath the foot of one of my mighty gargantua- here are our notes.
Whispers of the Muse: Prophylaxis’s “Phyrexian Poison”
Today’s Whispers of the Muse comes our way courtesy of longtime reader Prophylaxis, who’s looking to go competitive with an infect strategy.
I kept the core theme, but it has a lot of different card choices. This deck originated from the precon “Phyrexian Poison”.
Current decklist: http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/bg-infect-55/
Comments:
Yup, it’s an infect deck. Never tested against FNM crowd, though I’m planning to (I don’t go to tournaments all too often, as I’m usually late for them). All of my card choices and the reason I picked them are on the link. I know I need:
Verdant Catacombs – Expensive.. 12 a pop makes me vomit.
Inkmoth Nexus – Expensive and hard to find. I would put only 2 or 3 in there because of mana problems.
Consuming Vapors – I’m debating whether or not to put this in or not. It costs good mana, but its effect is tremendous.
Shards of Alara: Naya Behemoths Review (Part 1 of 2)
It’s our last stop on our tour of the plane of Alara, and this one’s going to be big. No- huge. Wait… gargantuan! That’s right, today we’re visiting Naya, the shard where going big isn’t just a philosophy, it’s a necessity. Like Esper, the mechanical distinctiveness of this shard isn’t keyworded. There’s no equivalent of unearth or exalted or devour here. Rather, Naya takes a “size matters” approach, giving you a raft of massive fatties as well as cards that care about power. Indeed, with over half your creatures weighing in with a power of 5 or greater, Naya specialises in doing one thing, and that’s smashing your opponent’s head in. As we’ll see, the bulk of the deck is engineered to either do that itself, or to help you do that.
We’ll begin, fittingly enough, with the creatures.
Shards of Alara: Esper Artifice Review (Part 2 of 2)
With Jund available as an opponent deck, my nemesis this time could be no other than Sam. In addition to loving the shard of Jund, Sam also happens to have a devour deck of her own that she delights in playing. For my part, I’d be leading the more thoughtful and pensive shard of Esper into battle, though certainly not a shard without its own formidable resources. In our analysis of Esper Artifice, we found it a solidly-built skies deck with some unique artifact twists. Now we’d see just how well that strategy paid off. Our notes from the three matches are as follows…
Shards of Alara: Esper Artifice Review (Part 1 of 2)
Thus far in our tour of the various shards of Alara, we’ve found three new keywords: Bant’s exalted, Grixis’ unearth, and Jund’s devour. The designers of the set wanted to give each shard its own identity through a mechanic, but for the last two shards on our list no keyword was needed. Instead, they have a more thematic approach, and for Esper that meant a new innovation- coloured artifacts. Sure there had been a smattering of these before, but Esper was designed to be dedicated to them fully- every Esper-themed creature is an artifact.
Esper in some ways is something of a mini-Mirrodin, a land where artifacts and artifice holds sway. Visually and conceptually distinction from Mirrodin, however, was achieved through the concept of etherium, a metal infused with Magic that could be not just grafted onto, but actually replace body parts and appendages. The most notable example of this is the iconic right arm of Tezzeret, but it extends to all living things on the shard.
This gives the shard’s denizens a cohesive look and feel, and Esper Artifice takes full advantage. Many of the deck’s cards care about artifacts in some way- either through direct interaction or passive bonus. Nowhere is this more prevalent than with the deck’s creatures, and so there we’ll begin.
Shards of Alara: Bant Exalted Review (Part 2 of 2)
Although in the lore the shards of Bant and Esper weren’t directly inimical to one another, they might as well have been tonight as Jimi and I sat down to do battle with both. Jimi selected the synergistic and artifact-heavy Esper Artifice, and we lined them up for the customary three games. Would exalted have what it takes to take down the etherium-addicts? Here are our notes from the match.
Shards of Alara: Bant Exalted Review (Part 1 of 2)
Most of you are familiar with the concept of a ‘cycle’ in Magic: the Gathering, but for those newer to the game who may not have come across this concept yet, it is as follows. A cycle describes a group of cards that are linked together either thematically or mechanically. A good example from the latest block might be the Smith cycle (Myrsmith, Painsmith, Riddlesmith, Embersmith, and Lifesmith), with each card doing something very similar yet representative of the colour each card draws from.
In that vein, the five intro decks from the Shards of Alara set could be said to be a “cycle” as well. This is not just thematic, which is the obvious part- each of the five decks represents a shard of the plane of Alara, a part of the plane that has splintered off from the others and carries a very different topography and culture. It’s the actual compostion of each deck’s mana base that also gives it a mechanical connection. Within each deck is seventeen land, and each of the five has it divided identically. The primary colour gets seven of its respective basic land. Bant, identified with the colour White, has seven Plains. Then each of the two allied colours gets three basics each. As the allied colours of White are Blue and Green, there are three Islands and three Forests in the deck.
Ertai's Lament 
