Subject: Exodus: Blind Guesswork/Reasoned Analysis Date: Mon, 8 Jun 1998 09:20:20 -0400 From: "Len Blado" To: Well, after a grueling weekend of prerelease, I'm finally getting around to my customary "what's in the new set" evaluation. Due to the fact that I'm too lazy to divide this into bite-sized chunks for the MTG-STRATEGY-L list, I'll simply forward it to Frank and let him deal with it. :) Note that to save space, I'm not going to include spoilers here, so visit www.mtgnews.com to pick up their spoiler. Also note that as of last look, there were some mild inaccuracies in the spoiler- for example, Workhorse actually removes +1/+1 counters rather than adds -1/-1 counters (so, no, Exodus doesn't have a 1-card infinite mana combo). On to the analysis... Individually strong cards: Carnophage- The upkeep cost on Carnophage is so trivial as to be not worth mentioning. You pay it only when it's useful to pay it, and the Carnophage even politely sticks around for sacrificial fodder if need be. Unlike Sacromancy, which can backfire, Carnophage is all positives- either it's a useful, very fast creature, or it's simply a card you put into play and ignore. Oath of Ghouls- With Stronghold, I recommended Volrath's Stronghold highly, if you were playing a heavy black creature deck, the rationale being that exchanging the ability to produce colored mana from your land was well worth the possible benefits. Oath of Ghouls cannot produce mana, but it's cost (B1) and it's effect are both so tremendous that I can't conceive of not wanting to make an effort to play this card. With black's superior graveyard management, it's unlikely your opponent will be able to take advantage of this card. Without even working very hard, it makes black weenie extremely tough. Wrath of God? Who cares. You'll draw a creature a turn anyway. Even worse, it combos extraordinarily with cards like Ball Lighting for a relentless beatdown. Curiosity- The main drawback of Ophidian has always been that while the ability itself is strong, the creature is not. It's very difficult to make sure a 1/3 ground creature with no evasion abilities gets through unblocked. It's comparitively easy, however, to make sure that your Suq'ata Firewalker deals damage, or your Frenetic Efreet is hammering your opponent. Since you draw cards every time you deal the damage, all you have to do is deal damage *once* and you've paid for Curiosity's risk of card disadvantage. For any blue deck with a sufficient load of creatures, I'd highly recommend this card. In my mind, this is actually a creature enchantment worth playing. Dominating Licid- Control Magic is a strong card, if a little pricey. The Dominating Licid is no different; it's overcosted for a 1/1 creature, but has the intrinsic Licid advantages such as blocking and activating the ability, as well as a truly strong Licidment ability. While I'm not certain this will be all that useful in constructed, due to the plethora of removal options out of blue, in Limited it's extraordinary. Equilibrium- Again, a card that's simply very strong in concert with blue's new emphasis on creature-oriented decks. Since your opponent gets no chance to respond when you're unsummoning creatures (unlike Man o' War) and it can be used with any creature you cast, you can very quickly dominant the environment. Indeed, the advantage this confers in a pure creature war is enormous. While using a global enchantment of this nature is often risky, it might well find itself in some bounce decks. Forbid- Irrelevant of what the buyback on this spell is, it is a nonconditional counterspell for UU1. Given that it can be combined with numerous cards to provide the buyback cost if needed, it's certainly worth throwing in a deck for the mere fact that the base card is efficient. If you do manage to draw two extra cards a turn then it becomes a virtually game-ending lock. Avenging Druid- This is the new Ophidian. While 1/3 for G2 isn't anything spectacular, especially out of green, the ability to cycle land into play can be enormously potent (see decks below). However, my suspicion is that it will be best in limited constructed environments such as Rath Cycle, more than in open Type II. Jackalope Herd- WotC keeps issuing Ernham replacements on a fairly regular basis. This is the newest. On the positive side, it's a green creature that's virtually unkillable in the right deck. They Terror it? Giant Growth it in response and it nicely pops back to your hand. On the negative side, it doesn't work at all with Armageddon, and in a close match, it can easily spend most of it's time with summoning sickness as you keep having to recast it. Reclaim- This is an easy one. They reprinted Demonic Tutor and made the card go to the top of your library. Now they've reprinted Regrowth and done the same. In Type I, this card is easily broken- play with 4 in your deck, and every Time Walk you draw will happen 2-3 times. It makes Balance recursion truly practical. In Standard, it's merely an enormously strong card. Look for it to appear in many decks and in many roles. Skyshroud Elite- I rarely mentioned 'boring' cards such as this. In actuality, it's likely to be a fairly strong card, but hardly a gamebreaker. The Kird Ape replacement does have a high likelihood of being 2/3, so it's worthwhile to experiment with it. Dizzying Gaze- Again, a very worthwhile creature enchantment. For true abuse, combine this with Curiosity, and for every R you pay, you draw a card. In any case, even alone, it's a very dominating card, allowing you to eliminate numerous creatures if you have a stockpile of red mana. Combine with creatures that have damage triggered abilities, and you can play numerous interesting tricks. Seismic Assault- The better version of Land's Edge, this card is enormously potent as an addition to an otherwise normal Red deck. Combined with methods of drawing land, it's a dominating card. Sonic Burst- A good way to look at this card is that it enables you to perform two Shocks at once, to a single target. While this isn't anything special, it could possibly be useful as supplemental direct damage. Kor Chant- In Limited, this card is enormous. Constructed, it's less so, but still strong, as it provides 2-1 card advantage by removing an opposing creature while saving one of your own. Unfortunately, it's very situational, so may not see much constructed play. Paladin en-Vec- In times gone by, this card would have been an enormous addition to White Weenie. Unfortunately, today's environment is less about black and red than blue and green. Still, the mere fact that the majority of creature elimination is black and red makes it a nearly invulnerable attacker and an enormous blocker. Combined with the en-Kors, you can easily render your entire creature force immune to two colors at once. Peace of Mind- While the 'fixed' Zuran Orb has garnered more attention, this lifegainer may well be the best yet for Type II. In an environment where low hand size and full graveyards are becoming increasingly useful, turning every card in your deck into a Healing Salve isn't a bad ability at all. And it's interface (although the wrong color) with Necro is enormous- allowing a Necro deck to face off burn and win. Null Brooch- A permanent version of counterspell that's actually useable. And it's an artifact. This is an enormous card, although somewhat special use. City of Traitors- The main drawback of Ancient Tomb was it's inability to be used in decks that didn't plan on winning very quickly. City of Traitors addressed this problem. And it's drawback is not necessarily a major one. Combo cards: Mind Over Matter- This turns every card in your deck into a Twiddle. Aside from Stasis variants, this allows you to use either Mana Vault or Lotus Vale to power an almost mono-blue Prosp/Bloom deck. And since you'll be getting 3 mana per card rather than 2, you need less exterior card drawing. Of course, getting Mind over Matter into play at UUUU2 isn't exactly easy, but neither it is impossible. (see decks below) Manabond- The new Fastbond is only marginal, since you end up with a ton of mana and nothing to cast with it. However, combined with Horn of Greed, you can quickly recoup the cards you just dumped into your graveyard. Oath of Druids- Ordinarily, this card is only so-so. It's useless against a creatureless deck, and it requires your opponent to activate it. Still, if you're playing a creatureless deck, you can empty your entire library into the graveyard and then Reclaim your Forbidden Crypt, for the ultimate in no-luck games. You can also use it with Gaea's Blessing to shuffle your deck and graveyard every upkeep. Survival of the Fittest- Living Death. Need I say more? Buried Alive is pathetic compared to this card- for roughly the same mana, you can rip all of the creatures out of your deck (incidentally thinning it so you hit your Living Death sooner), and then pound your opponent into rubble. Pandemonium- This is yet another card that is ridiculous with Phyrexian Dreadnaught. 12 damage for 1 mana? Not bad in my book. Or simply toss it in your Bounce deck and use Man o' Wars like better version of Cursed Scroll. Maybe even use it with Ball Lightnings to burn them out a little faster. Oath of Leiges- I think Stasis is back with this card. Playing with Squandered Resources, each turn you can generate another mana, without the difficulties of a burn deck exploiting your Howling Mines in the early game. More importantly, so long as it's out first, you can tap out to play Stasis. Add in some deck recursion and a road to victory, and the fact that you can play a Stasis deck with no more than two mana sources in play can be enormous. Decks: Necro/Peace of Mind- While the mana difficulties of this deck can be enormous, the simple fact that you can effectively nullify a burn deck with a Necro deck is enormous. Lifegaining in Type II up until this point was not sufficient to make Necro overpowered. This has changed. No longer do you need Nevinyrral's Disk. Indeed, you no longer need to get rid of the Necro at all. Simply plunk down your Necro as early as possible, and then proceed to gain fistfuls of life and cards with Peace of Mind. The other component of this deck may surprise some: Volrath's Dungeon. Ignore the fact that it's an enchantment that's removed at the simple expenditure of 5 life by your opponent. Volrath's Dungeon is *Mind Twist*. Dump it in play and get rid of your opponent's entire hand, then refill your own (not worrying about life, since you can turn any card into a Healing Salve). Mind over Matter- The entire goal of this deck is fairly simple: get Mind over Matter in play. Once you've accomplished this, you'll have enormous control over the game, and can wait out the remainder of your combo. More potent than Cadaverous Bloom (which does precisely nothing to help your game) by a long shot. The best version would probably be nearly mono-blue, and designed to generate large amounts of artifact/land mana as quickly as possible, while having enough deck manipulation to fetch the Mind over Matter. Once the Mind over Matter is in play, accumulate the rest of the resources you need to win: Prosperity, Mana Vault/Lotus Vale. Heck, if you're using Lotus Vale, toss in a Drain Life. While the precise deck design needs to be tweaked, I can guarantee that someone's going to produce this deck, and very quickly. Limited Resources LD- You'll notice I didn't even mention this card above. Well, that's because it basically sucks. However, between Red/Green LD and Green's ability to dump land into play (such as the Avenging Druid), there is a very real chance that you can accomplish a situation where there's ten land in play- and it's all yours. Once you've reached this stage, your opponent is effectively 'locked off the board', especially if you can eliminate their artifact mana. While slow, the early game disruption of LD can be effective at stopping truly awful threats, as well as a reasonable red/green creature complement. The Sphere of Resistance might make a slot in this deck, although I'm uncertain if a single additional mana for every spell is necessarily all that worthwhile. Null Brooch/Bottomless Pit/Ensnaring Bridge- The problem with current Ensnaring Bridge decks is that they look somewhat silly when faced with primarily noncreature decks. Without a hand, you simply cannot address the plethora of threats your opponent will muster. Null Brooch changes all of this. These three cards make as near a total lockdown on the game as you're likely to ever see. Considering that all they'll be able to play for the remainder of the game is land, and no current Type II land can be a threat while Ensnaring Bridge is in play (and you have no hand), this deck, properly constructed, should be a real contender. The Colors: This set gives relatively nothing intrinsically strong to black (Oath of Ghouls, Carnophage), but it really boosts the power of black decks overall. My suspicion is that variants on the Necro deck I described above have the potential to be extremely dominating in an environment suspicious of combo decks- Necro tends to beat countermagic, and when you can transform every card in your deck into a Healing Salve, burn/Sligh fades off as a credible threat. Indeed, you might very well see people start playing with Stronghold Taskmaster to address the threat of black creatures soon. :) Red has languished in the doldrums for most of the Rath Cycle, for one reason: mana. Many of the best red spells, including Fireblast, require a heavy dedication to red. This hasn't changed much. The addition of Seismic Assault doesn't change this much. Look for red decks to continue in the current vein. Aside from the possibility of abusing Mind over Matter, blue seems like it's slowly getting marginalized. Yes, blue got some solid cards in this set, but nothing really earthshattering. Most of the cards are very blue- gradual control cards. With the addition of the possibility of counterspells without blue, it's value as a splash color is subtly diminished. My suspicion is that the current crop of Tradewind-style multicolor decks will continue for some time, but that they'll be decreasing steadily. Green, as usual, got a fairly mundane crop of cards. Some good, some bad. However, it's 'basic resource' quota is slowly increasing, to the point where green is now the ultimate splash color. Indeed, the only weakness green has left is creature removal. If you're willing to ignore that, Green has some of the best 1-1 removal cards in the game, the best recursion in the game, the best mana in the game, the best creatures in the game, and some of the best deck manipulation in the game. Look for green to be all over the place, but not necessarily as a primary deck color. White seems to be trying to reclaim it's reputation as a control color. Although my personal theory is that Cataclysm is actually fairly weak, as it doesn't 'finish the job', and a situation where either Armageddon or Wrath of God wouldn't be superior is hard to find, there does seem to be an attempt to boost it's supplemental control cards, as with Green. Given the existance already of Armageddon, Wrath of God, and Disenchant, this really makes White a premier color for combining with anything. Overall: Exodus is fair- better than Stronghold, but not excellent in terms of card power. It has a nice mix of practical workhorse cards and cards that take some thought. Probably the biggest limitation of the set I can see is the underlying theme- abilities that can only be used effectively when you're losing the game. While some of the abilities have proved tremendously useful (Cursed Scroll, Living Death) in past sets because you can 'fake' losing in order to boost their power, by and large such abilities fall into Zvi's definition of 'rewarding poor play'. Presumably WotC printed these cards on the premise that they would help balance out games, and prevent them from turning into routs, but Magic already had a host of such cards (mass destruction, etc.) that work much better. Also, the entire Rath Cycle is intriguing in it's approach to nonbasic land. Exodus has numerous cards that really attack players using nonbasic land. Most of them are too weak and situational to ever see play, but there seems to be a definite bias against nonbasic land. However, the nonbasic land included in the Rath Cycle is for the most part, extremely weak. The mana-producing nonbasic land primarily produces colorless mana, and the best nonbasic land in the Cycle is Wasteland- which isn't very useable when you don't have any other nonbasic land to destroy. -Len Blado