Ertai's Lament

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.

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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…

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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.

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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.

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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.

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