Last weekend I played at GP Stockholm. I was picked up for the feature on the second round. As you may know, most of the early round features are not based on the same criteria as the latter rounds, where they focus on famous players and those in the running for Top 8. In my case (and I asked Tobi Henke about this), I was picked, and I quote “[they] had access to certain decklists”. It was my fault then.
One of the weird archetypes I like is Burn. Okay, Burn in itself isn’t strange, but I’ve liked those red-based decks that rely on just casting spells that work well with the creatures. I’m not explaining this very well, but think [scryfall]Thermo-Alchemist[/scryfall]. That’s something.
Now, what’s the difference between [scryfall]Crackling Drake[/scryfall] and [scryfall]Enigmatic Drake[/scryfall]? Not much, actually, but at least we can use flashback, delve and the brand new jump-start (which is clearly the reason for some parts of the text on the card).
Here’s a deck by Todd Anderson, which does it’s best to kill the opponent with [scryfall]Fight with Fire[/scryfall] copied with [scryfall]Primal Wellspring[/scryfall]. So, what if we go deeper and add some green ramp.
Dimir has Surveil. Surveil seems quite good and there’s plenty of cards that have it. Many of them seem (at least without context) to have an outside chance of making it in Standard.
I was looking forward to this, but there hasn’t been that many good cards for this deck. It’s losing [scryfall]Soul-Scar Mage[/scryfall], but there are no 1-drops thusfar from the new set, so it’s going to have to be much slower than it was previously. Which isn’t good. Still, maybe there’s something here.
First, let me say this: I don’t see this being implemented, but I do like the idea.
By now, if you play limited, you’ve probably heard what a bomb this is. Ben Stark apparently loves it, Mike Sigrist listed it as the best uncommon in the set and LSV saw a lot of potential at 3.5 out of 5, although I bet that’s changed since this initial rating. LSV also gave it a not insignificant 2.5 in constructed.
But what is this talk about this in Commander?
Weirdly enough (although obviously it doesn’t actually mean anything) I was designing a card for just this thing in a dream recently. I just don’t remember what it did. I do have a design of this on our Guild forums. Funnily enough, it was also a 12/12 with a casting cost of 2UG, but that’s pretty much the extent of the similarities. Well, that and it couldn’t attack early either. Mine required you control 20 lands. It also had a partner and it gained a +1/+1 counter any time any player revealed a land card from their library or put a land card into play from the library.
Aaanyhow…
Wow. What to do with this?
[scryfall]Lightning Bolt[/scryfall] is very powerful. Indeed, it’s too powerful to put in most formats. Being able to deal with quite a few threats with only one mana is extremely efficient and makes many creatures basically unplayable, which in turn makes designing sets more difficult, as any creature meant to be constructed playable than needs to dodge the Bolt or be very cheap.
