Subject: Power Ranking of Exodus 8% - Lowest since Homelands.
Date: Mon, 08 Jun 1998 19:40:25 GMT
From: edt@umich.edu (Eric Taylor)
Newsgroups: rec.games.trading-cards.magic.strategy

Power Ranking of Exodus and some card analysis

The way I judge the relative strength of a set is to look at all the
cards which are powerful in constructed play (this is a very personal
kind of ranking -- everyone's ranking of the power of a set will be a
little different, and it changes with time -- if you ask me again in 6
months I'm sure my opinions of this set will have changed
considerably), and find out what percentage of good cards makes of the
entire set.

For instance, here is my personal list for good stronghold cards:

bottomless pit, dream halls, mana leak, wilver wyvern, hermit druid,
spike feeder, wall of blossoms, ruination, shard phoenix, shock, sacred
ground, warrior en-kor, ensnaring bridge, mox diamond, acidic sliver,
crystalline sliver, vorath's stronghold

17 cards in a 143 card set is a power ranking of 12%

Here is my list of Exodus cards:

equilibrium, carnophage, forbid, mana breach, mind over matter,
survival of the fittest, pandemonium, seismic asssault, shattering
pulse, cataclysm, null brooch

10 cards in a 143 card set is a power ranking of 8%

Other interesting cards are hatred, recurring nightmare, ertai wizard
adept, cartographer, jackalope herd, onslaught, paladin en-vec, reaping
the rewards, coat of arms, memory crystal, dominating licid, price of
progress.

Equilibrium makes every creature a man-o-war for 1 mana.  This gives an
extra boost to tradewind decks, and allows for some nice combos such as
dancing uktabi's, nekratals or any other cip effects, such as wall of
blossoms or gravebane zombie.

Carnophage adds another 2/2 for 1 to the black arsenal.  This creature
will work especially well with bad moon.  Notice that the carnophage is
a zombie and fulfils the zombie criteria of sarcomancy.

Forbid is a well balanced counterspell.  At UU1 it is a possible
candidate to use instead of dissipate in the 3cc counterspell slot, and
as such will work even if the buyback is never used.  The 2 discard
buyback gives this spell a certain flexibility.

Mana breach is a symmetric card, which means it is only useful in
combination with a theme.  A tradewind deck could use the mana breach
instead of armageddon or winter orb as a method of mana control.

Mind over Matter at 2UUUU is too expensive to be used in any normal
deck, however, I expect Zvi will have a tournament playable deck out
any day which requires 4 of these cards.  You can use it in conjunction
with mana vault to generate mana.  It's possible that there will be a
new mostly blue bloom drain style deck which relies on mind over
matter, mana vaults, prosperity and meditate to win.

Survival of the fittest gives new punch to Comer-Zilla and living death
decks.  For 1G you play the enchantment.  Then for as much green as you
have, you can put fatties into your graveyard.

Pandemonium at 3R is not a card which belongs in a sligh deck.  Sligh
needs to kill quicker than this 4 mana card.  Pandemonium does give
graveyard decks yet another victory condition when living death is
played.  Pandemonium also allows the phrexian dreadnought to do 12
damage for 1 mana, so that could be the basis of another combo deck.

Seismic assault is an improved non-symmetric version of land's edge.
This card could show up in a sligh deck or in a new version of
necro-edge.

Shattering pulse makes shatter obsolete.

Cataclysm appears to be the one of the most powerful cards in Exodus.
You can use it with worb + propaganda to give you a quick prison lock.
Or you can use it with spirit mirror + tradewind + bottle gnome to give
you a quick tradewind lock.  Or you can use it in maro-geddon as a
combination geddon and wrath while you keep your maro.  Cataclysm has
the flexiblity of balance at the mana cost of 2WW.

Null brooch is a great card for the pox decks.  With pox + bottomless
pit + null brooch, pox now has a hard lock.  The null brooch will also
probably be used in mono-green decks in order to counter perish.  The
brooch does not belong in a sligh deck which is too quick to want to
pay the 4 casting cost, and which can't afford the passiveness of this
artifact.

* * *

It's hard to guess which card will be the most expensive at the singles
market.  My guess is null brooch because of the numbers of decks which
it can show up in and because I think it has a lot of appeal to
beginners of the game who like the idea of adding countering ability to
just about any deck such as for example an urza-tronic atog deck.

* * *

Other interesting cards include hatred.  You can get a first turn kill
with raging goblin lotus petal ritual ritual hatred, however I suspect
it is not quite tournament viable.

Recurring nightmare will compete with volrath's stronghold for its
ability to recurse your graveyard at lesser mana cost and slightly
different game mechanics which can turn gravebane zombie + wall of
blossoms into a card drawing engine.  Eric Lauer likes this card.

Ertai wizard adept is very expensive and sluggish but because of his
countering ability some people will like using this cumbersome wizard.

Green gets a cartographer, a more expensive, weaker harvest wurm.  You
will be able to play 4 of this guy if you want in a mox diamond deck,
whereas you normally couldn't play 4 harvest wurms in a mox deck,
because the cartographer is more flexible.

Jackalope herd is another fattie for green.  Green is like an eight
times married and divorced man.  He keeps searching for the perfect
wife and never figures out the problem is with him, not his wives.
Green keeps searching for the perfect fattie.  The real problem is that
green needs targetted creature elim, shadow and flying not getting
hitched to yet another fattie.

Onslaught is another red enchantment that red doesn't need.  Like
invasion plans, keep this one in the sideboard, and keep your shocks in
the main deck.

Paladin-en vec with pro red and black promises to be another welcome
addition to the white weenie circuit.  However at 3 mana, he's too
expensive for the real white weenie beatdown.

Reaping the rewards is a buyback zuran orb -- but don't be fooled.
It's not a zuran orb.  The W casting cost makes it weak enough that
gerrard's wisdom will still be white's favorite life gainer.

Coat of arms is a symmetric card.  You can attack with your slivers,
play coat of arms, beef them up, but you better be prepared when some
birds of paradise get beefy and begin serving beatdown.  This is a weak
card that should appeal to beginners.

Memory crystal.  This should make its way into several existing buyback
decks but by itself does not quite appear strong enough to generate any
new achetypes.

Dominating licid.  If his activation were only tap instead of this
"1UU, tap," then the dominating licid would be very powerful.  As it is
the activation cost is slightly excessive.

Price of progress.  You now have another way to kill multi colored
decks.  If he only has 3 multies out that's still 6 damage for 2 mana
which makes it a viable sideboard card.

Overall this set at 8% appears to be the weakest set since homelands.

Graveyard decks gain big from exodus.  The relatively useless reprint
of Library of Leng with Spellbook should have been a reprint of
tormod's crypt instead -- the rath only cycle will be crazy with
graveyard decks.  Controllish or soft lock decks like prison or
tradewind decks gain from exodus.  Green got poop.

One more note:  Wotc continues the interesting trend of printing cards
like cursed scroll (null brooch from exodus) that only begin giving you
card advantage after you have dropped your hand.  Even though it's
popular to call cards like null brooch or cursed scroll "card
disadvantage" cards, remember despite having to drop your hand, this
null brooch is another pure card advantage engine.

--- edt