Looks like a new plane is about to open up – Zendikar. The spells of this new plane are already being revealed by secret sources and the Wizards company. A lot of cool looking art and powerful spells are in store for us planeswalkers when the set comes in the next month.

I find it disturbing to leave this colorful plane of Alara. Seeing the snazzy lights as 2, 3 and even 4 colors combine together to form powerful spells. Zendikar seems to be the opposite. Structured and mono colored spells. I feel this set will be mostly mono colored with land management as their theme.

Going over to this new plane won’t be cheap. The tri colored decks of Alara doesn’t seem to be of use to this new plane though I’m starting to see some mana fixing cards like Harrow. I wonder if my blue-black Esper deck can still continue to prosper with the M10 changes and the new Zendikar cards… Time to go back to the battlegrounds and see.

I was just wondering at the “fantasy” creatures we have not only in Magic but in the real world. How did man ever think about dragons, elves, dwarves, goblins and all these creatures? Are the humanoid races of dwarves, goblins and halflings just people who are short? How about elves being really tall and thin humans? It probably also depends on the area where the magical creature was thought of.

Take for instance a two headed giant. Is that even possible? Maybe not. However if you think about it, a giant is a person who is extremely large and tall. What if this “giant” had a kid – actually 2 kids – a conjoint twin with 2 heads. People would believe that if this kid grew up, he would be huge, tall and have 2 heads.

Minotaurs are bull men creatures. Centaurs are man-horse. I wonder how these 2 creatures got into history. Centaurs could easily be thought of as men on horses who would think of a bull headed man. Wait! Bullheaded means stupid right? Maybe minotaurs is actually an insult to someone meaning bullhead. The use of the word might have brought about that creature.

Vampires…these creatures are now have a lord with M10. There was a Dracula in history and he drank the blood of his enemies. The concept of vampires probably stemmed from that.

I applaud one of the races in Magic – the cephalids. Cephalids are octopus like creatures who are one of the sentient blue creature types. Octopi are one of the smartest sea creatures in the world. Their intelligence level is at par or even greater with dolphins. The only problem with Octopi are their extremely short life spans which prevent them from fully utilizing their intellect. I wonder if the Magic creative team thought of this when they thought of the Cephalids.

I want to see Magic with more fantasy creatures – like the Loxodon that aren’t in regular mythology and fantasy.

It’s national secret day (just kidding made that up over at my other blog -Dear My Future Self.) So I was thinking about one of my favorite creatures – Szadek, Lord of Secrets.  I recalled the plane of Ravinca in the real world.  I first met the vampire legend while thinking about who to use for a friendly battle.  My friends and I had a Ravinca Theme battle.  We would use preconstructed Ravinca block decks.  There were 5 of us so 1 took Boros, the other Gruul, the other took Orzhov and another Golgari.  I originally headed over to Svogthos, the Restless Tomb to meet with the queen of the Golgari.  Yet my friend was really quick and was there first to acquire their aid.  I didn’t know who to pick – the Cult of Rakdos, the mad scientist Simic or the Azorius Senate.  I walked in a confused manner in the urban landscape and ended up in the sewers.  I soon learned that I stumbled upon Duskmantle, the House of Shadow.

I didn’t even know I was at another guild’s place.  Who had heard of the shadow guild – the Dimir?  No one.  Yet I met the master of the guild – this vampire.  I didn’t know whether it was his offer or maybe he actually had me under his control – I agreed to work with him in my duels.

My first battle was going to be chaotic.  It was 5 player chaos, anyone could attack anyone, last man standing would win.  I managed to keep an early defense with my Vedalken Entrancer.  Mossdogs dominated the battlefield taking out the Gruul barbarians.  I was ignored in the early skirmishes for being the “weak” guild.  My Lurking Informant gave me useful information and became a good annoyance that the Boros guild was screaming, wanting to shoot their Lightning Helix spell at it.  The Gruul was the first to fall with the combined effort of the Orzhov and Golgari.  I feared I would be next as I managed to call in the vampire legend.  Strangely, no one took notice of his presence.  Szadek fed his thirst for knowledge by taking on the Golgari.  The Golgari didn’t care as a fatter grave meant more fertilizer for their beasts yet this became to their undoing.  Szadek grew to 4x his initial power in just 2 turns.  I managed to take out the Golgari by making the planeswalker go out of his mind.  The 2 others now realized the power of the Lord of Secrets.  Another information drain against the church of Orzhov increased Szadek’s power and nearly destroyed the planeswalker.  The Orzhov mage only had a few more spells in the library but he triumphantly screamed as he casted a Pillory of the Sleepless against the 40/40 vampire yet I grinned as I Induced Paranoia making him scream and give up the fight.  The last duelist – Boros, gave up, he could not handle a direct attack from Szadek.

Triumphantly, the weak deck – Dimir of the shadow has won!

The later battles didn’t bode so well as they were one on one.  Szadek being his secretive vampire self, hid among the shadows never again to be seen after gaining so much power in the multiplayer fight.  I lost all the one on one battles after the vampire legend seem to have left me.  I felt used yet I will always remember the power of an information sucking vampire.

Looking at the paper’s over here in Alara, there’s a lot of hype with the new core set – the so called “Magic 2010″.  I’ve been following spoiler’s in rumor dens all over the planes.   The set would be around 50% new cards and the rest would be reprints.  In the plane of the real, the Wizard’s company has finally released the set in real life.  This means that a full art spoiler is now available and being my over zealous self, rushed and ogled at the new artwork and read the full text of the new spells.

My first impression of the set wasn’t good.  The so called new spells aren’t really so new.  Some cards are merely renames of older cards.  There are still a lot of low power cards such as those artifacts that give you 1 life if you play a certain spell color.

After sometime in looking at the art and the different cards, my mind changed.  I am amazed at my old time favorite spell – the lightning bolt is back.  Serra Angel is now down to uncommon status making her now easier to find.  The art of the cards also really great – too bad I only play online where looking at small pictures of cards on a screen isn’t that amazing.

I can’t wait till the release of this set over online.  It’s a refreshing new start with new rules and new cards.

Having been around for so long, I’ve noticed that creature cards do get better and better over time.  I was browsing through the old Invasion age spells and the creatures at that time were usually not as good as the creatures we have today.  Look at the rare volver cycle in Apocalypse, Anavolver was the “famous” card of that set though it isn’t really that good especially now.  Anavolver was a 3/3 for 4 or depending on the kicker costs paid, up to a 6/6 for 7 with other abilities.  Ignoring the kicker, 7 casting now gets huge and really powerful creatures.  Look at Broodmother Dragon only costs 6 for a 4/4 flyer which creates fliers every turn.  Enlisted Wurm is a 5/5 for 6 with cascade and it’s just an uncommon.  How about monstrous 7 casting cost creatures like Thraximundar.

Of course what makes the volvers good is it’s versatility.  It could be an overcosted vanilla creature or it’s abilities could be modified to make it better.  How about vanilla creatures before?  It used to be that green had the bears now, we have white and green bears.  Not to mention the upgraded version of the bears like the Ashcoat Bear which is a 2/2 with flash.  It’s now not common to find whole groups of creatures with a good ability and have 2/1 for 2 cc.

The power creep seems to be favoring creatures though.  Most spells are now comes into play abilities of the creatures which make them really good.  Old time favorite spells like Counterspell no longer has a standard equivalent.  Black removal seems to get worse now too.  Terror is the one in standard which is the basic black removal but with all the artifact and black creatures around, it’s usefulness isn’t that high.  Dark Banishing a simple black removal spell is no longer in standard.  What we have now are wannabe removal like Executioner’s Capsule which may be good in an Esper Deck but since it doesn’t kill regenerators and is an artifact spell, it’s still somewhat worse.

Anyway, for all planeswalkers in magic online – it’s the 7 year anniversary and just login now until July 24 to receive a free Incinerate foil by August.  Can’t wait for that, as a cheap ass planeswalker, a free incinerate will go great for my red green aggro decks.

Being a planeswalker who has been in and out the different planes, I come upon a decree that again will change the laws of Magic.  I’ve heard some rumors of some changes.  I didn’t find them very significant a few word changes yet the official decree has been announced and I feel the laws got weirder and annoying.

Battlefield and exile…I’m fine with this as they’re just names.  I’d rather wish they’d use void instead of exile as it just sounds cooler.

Mulligan rule doesn’t change much.  Makes games start faster.

Mana emptying is okay.  Though we lose the ability to float, we now have the ability to tap lands and drain opponent’s mana.

Mana burn is somewhat of an minor issue.  Normally I’m fine with mana burn, it punishes my stupidity for forgetting that my artifact spells cost 1 less to play.  Without it, it just means I wasted mana.  I do know some reasons to mana burn on purpose but those are indeed rare.

Deathtouch and Lifelink are something I don’t care about too.  Being able to lifelink just once is fine, it sound a bit more sensible too.

My biggest gripe is the way combat damage is handled now.  Combat damage is no longer (again) placed on the stack.  I’ve seen how it works with and without the stack  and I definitely prefer with the stack as it allows tricks such as unsummoning a creature being able to damage an enemy creature while saving itself.  Well, I feel this is important as my current Esper deck relies on Unsummon a lot and it’s standard version uses Call to Heel for more unsummoning fun yet with this change, my deck goes down the drain.  Yet I can live with that.  I lived without combat damage in stack before, I can live with it now.

The problem now comes with assigning damage.  Attackers can no longer assign damage to blockers.  Damage is dealt fully to kill the first creature then remaining damage is passed on the remaining blockers.  No longer can one hit multiple creatures should there be multiple blockers.  That’s bad as there are tricks that deal with multiple blockers.  Say a 4/4 is blocked by a 2 2/4s, before, 4 damage can be dealt 2 damage to both and a Volcanic Fallout be used to mop the both blockers.  Now, it’s block, 4 damage automatically to 1.  There are also cards like Inflame which deals 2 damage to creatures already dealt damage, if damage can’t be assigned to multiple blockers.  I feel that most red and black cards are going to get hurt and a lot of white creatures get better as white has a load of high toughness creatures with low attack.  Blocking with multiple creatures now sound better especially with damage prevention tricks.  Will this new form of damage dealing make banding useful again?

Looking at the forums, masses of planeswalkers are gripping about the combat damage thing.  I’m another one of them.  Trying to add new customers at the expense of your older ones…bad business move Wizards.  Magic doesn’t really have a mass appeal, don’t bother trying.  Kids will still prefer YuGiOh or Pokemon games since they can relate to those more – those things have animes to back their success.  Magic is for the smarter gamer – I understood the Revised ed cards back when I was 10, I’m pretty sure that 10 year olds (has society gotten so dumb?) can understand the cleaner wordings of 10th edition.

After searching the marketplace, I met up with a dealer who sent me his 4 Master of Etherium for 2 tickets plus 2 other unimportant cards for now.  I modified my army and spells to include the lord of artifice.

With my army, I marched across Alara, battling several mage types.  The first and most prominent are the Jund mages.  Not the devour Jund, the Bloodbraid Jund.  They are either very aggressive sporting Putrid Leeches and Jund Hackblades cutting your life in half with one big attack.  They can also be somewhat controlling with Volcanic Fallout, Terminate and Bituminous Blast filling most of their deck.  The aggressive one I can somewhat handle, as long as my Sharding Sphinx manages to outlast the barrage of creatures.  The control one is too difficult as most of my creatures have only 2 toughness, they die too easy to the Volcanic Fallout.

The second type are the Bant / Naya Exalted armies.  This deck I can handle as long as their individual card power is not that high and depending on our draws.  Naya seems to be somewhat more scary as they plop down huge creatures, if I can’t manage a Sharding Sphinx thopter lock, I won’t be able to win.

The third type are other Esper decks.  These aren’t that common and victory is mainly decided on the better draw and better play.

As most enemies I’ve met are the Jund battlemages, I’ve tried to modify the deck to better handle the threat.  Yet all of this is in vain as my record has gone worse.  Cards like Esperooza is totally useless as it slows my deck down too much and trying to use it as combo for Kaliedostone, Parastic Strix and Glaze Fiend.  Glaze Fiend is also a bad card as it relies on luck for artifact drops.  If you don’t draw artifacts, it’s a 0/1 flier for 2.

Looks like I’m going to step away from Alara and hit the Standard tournaments for a while.  Maybe it can fare a bit better.

aka Evolution Machina or Robot Bird Droppings (I hate naming decks based on cards like Cascade Swans, I could call this Robot Bird Heel though).

Main Deck:

4 Tidehollow Strix
4 Executioner’s Capsule
4 Sedraxis Alchemist
4 Etherium Sculptor
4 Esper Stormblade
1 Crumbling Necropolis
4 Island
3 Esper Panorama
4 Swamp
3 Swamp
4 Mistvein Borderpost
1 Agony Warp
4 Sharding Sphinx
4 Island
3 Call to Heel
1 Island
4 Parasitic Strix
4 Unsummon

Sideboard:
2 Brainbite
4 Cancel
4 Infest
4 Zombie Outlander
1 Mask of Riddles

This deck didn’t have the stormblade and the borderpost before but it’s much more powerful now with it thus it’s actually version 2, I used to use the Salvage Slasher but it only got useful against a Mind Funeral deck.  There’s also a standard version of this deck but it mainly used 10th ed cards so I decided to go full Alara as I didn’t want to go to the hassle of grabbing the Lorwyn and Shadowmoor block cards.

The current record of this deck against casual decks in a 1 win game is 9 wins – 3 losses.  It also has 2 match wins and 1 loss in Alara block constructed.

I wouldn’t count all the wins here as a straight up victory as some of the decks I fought were Timmy (aka super fat creatures) decks that needed loads of mana to start and I already snipped a lot of their life.  When their big fat monster dropped, I could easily unsummon or chump block with my horde of thopters.

I’ve lost to a deck with Bloodbraid Elf (really good card with ugly art) and Putrid Leech.  Of course it also depends on the draw as I can try and outlast that sort of burst in the 4th to 5th turn with the cascade of the Bloodbraid.  I did manage to beat a deck that used Blightning and Bloodbraid.

The second deck type I lost to was a fully tricked out Exalted deck.  There were two of them.  One use the white planeswalker, Elspeth, Knotvine Paladin, and Battlegrace Angel.  The other was similar but didn’t have the planeswalker but used a lot of artifact and creature removal and Martial Coup.

I can easily beat a casual Exalted deck without all the lifelink and rares as my thopters can block their single attacking creature over and over but it really depends on the starting draw on how agressive my hand is.

I’m still looking for a Master of Etherium that I can get 4 for just 1 ticket as of now, all I’ve seen is 2 for 1 ticket hopefully as time passes, this dude will get cheaper.  This is afterall a budget planeswalking blog.

I have chosen to be an Esper archmage.  I’ve tried being one of the savage battlemages of Jund yet their beasts and spells are no longer to my liking.  They lack the power and finesse that metal and blue magic can provide.  Yes metal, the power of etherium.

I dropped by the interplanar marketplace to recruit my army and purchase spells.  I found that most of the spells and creatures can be bought cheaply, 64 common spells for 1 ticket.  Also, I found that I could recruit 4 Sharding Sphinxes and 4 Salvage Titans for 1 ticket.  The golem I probably won’t use at the moment but the Sphinx gleamed of untapped power waiting to be used.

Basically my library of spells was created using a very small amount of tickets but seemed to be decent enough to handle the average planeswalker.

I decided to go back to Jund and seek out opponents while travelling to the shard of Esper.  I battled several opponents all were good and had different spells and creatures who joined them yet I bested them with just minor scratches to my brand new Etherium sports jacket which I also bought from the marketplace.

As I reached the edge of Jund, where skulls of dead animals and beasts littered the floor, I confronted another planeswalker looking for a fight.  I thought I would easily jump to the shard of Esper without much trouble yet this person seemed different.  He wore the colors of a Jund battlemage – black, red and green.   He called upon an Elvish Visionary to scout my army.  In response, I called upon my fierce robotic bird, Tidehollow Strix while also readying an Executioner’s capsule.  After minor skirmishes with my creature, he called out his army be placing a banner.  It was the beginning of the Goblin Assault.  I manage to call upon an Etherium Sculptor to aid me in forging my etherium spells into creatures that could attack the opponent.  He also tried to Terminate my Tidehollow, yet I managed to Unsummon it.

With a gleam in his eye, the Jund mage placed another Goblin Assault as the first goblin wave appeared charging towards me.  I had to take the barage of goblins but luckily, I summoned a Sedraxis Alchemist to slow down the Goblin Assault by taking away one of them.  Yet when it became his turn to strike, he placed a couple more Goblin Assaults bringing it up to 3.  With the amount of goblins charging about, I felt that this mage was holding back his bigger monster as it is in Jund.  He was hiding some dragon waiting to devour the goblins yet he dared not to send anything as my Executioner’s capsule managed to bring fear on my opponent’s choices.  He also called in a Hissing Iguanar, spewing acidic remains towards me for every goblin my army takes down.

I managed to hold back the tide of goblins with my wizards while managing to slowly bite small chunks the battlemages life force.  Then, I heard a thunderous roar.  The Jund mage couldn’t wait any longer, he sent a Caldera Hellion, devouring his 3 goblins and elf and burning away my own army.  Before the deadly flames could engulf my zombie wizard, I managed to send him back, Calling him to Heel.  I also knew that this dragon would be troublesome, so I broke my executioner’s capsule.  The dark magic engulfed it from the inside and quickly ate away it’s existence.  I managed to call another Sculptor and the Alchemist which I sent back.  I also managed to throw an Agony Warp spell to the Iguanar who was hurting me more as the more and more goblins died.

Wave after wave of goblins came to attack again.  This was becoming a stalemate until I finally called my Sphinx.  With my robotic army taking chunks out of my opponent’s life force, the Sphinx would mold that life into small robotic planes – thopters.  Yet the life of my Sphinx didn’t last very long, it was Terminated only being able to create 2 thopters.  The waves of goblins were already taking large chunks of my own life force but again I had a savior – Parasitic Strix.  This bird managed to steal my opponent’s life force while restoring my own.  I felt that this battle was close to ending, my opponent barely stood, another hit from my Strix or Alchemist and he will be defeated.

Not giving up, he charged his growing goblin horde taking my life force down drastically.  Confidently he summoned his trump card – Dragon Broodmother.  It looked like he was about to end my life with one swoop, yet I too still had my own trump card…Call to Heel.

During my turn, a baby dragon came devouring some goblins up.  I readied my Call to Heel spell targeting my Parastic Strix then resending my Strix out to absorb the remaining life force of my opponent.  Gasping for breath, the battlemage drops to the floor, with me victorious.

Walking to Esper, I was satisfied with the last death match.  I savored the victory of my army over the brutish army of Jund.

My experience in Jund has not been pleasant.  I’ve always liked the combination of red and green and a multi colored plane should be really good for multiple colors.  However this is not the case.  The main theme of Jund is devour.  Devour is a very flavorful ability but it is very useless in real life.  In drafts and sealed tournaments, devour is a decent ability.  Able to create large fat creatures by eating the weaker ones, a Jund mage would then easily over power the other mage with raw size.  However, in constructed games, devour is never really good.  There is just too much removal.

In standard, there is terror and terminate which are both common answers for large creatures.  There are very few black devour creatures to be protected from the terror spell and terminate pretty much kills anything which isn’t protected from red and black.

The blue mage’s answer is unsummon, disperese, boomerang and call to heel.  Any of those spells will set any Jund player a lot.  The cost of sacrificing an army of smaller creatures and letting your big Voracious Dragon be sent back to your hand is very expensive.

White has oblivion ring and pacifism.  Both good spells that will either throw your vicious creature to the void or make him into a gibbering wimp, not willing to fight against anything.

Green has large creatures of their own to stop your own expensive creatures.  Should two large creatures fight and the devour creature loses, the card disadvantage created is enough to make you lose.

My  recomendation is not to try and use the devour mechanic, it’s just too weak.  There are other ways for a red green aggro deck to work.  Cascade is a nice mechanic that could be of use, especially with small but efficient creatures.

Current projected cascade beatdown in Alara block: (budget edition…no Bloodbraid Elves)

4 Jund Hackblade
4 Hellspark Elemental
4 Rip-Clan Crasher
4 Scourge Devil
4 Elvish Visionary
4 Giant Ambush Beetle

4 Violent Outburst
4 Magma Spray
4 Colossal Might

4 Firewild Borderpost
10 Mountain
8 Forrest
2 Either Jungle Shrine or Savage Lands (doesn’t matter which)

This deck is mainly a aggro deck bring down a creature and attack.  Baring any mass removal like Infest or Volcanic Fallout, it should be able to overrun if anyone would try to use it, feel free but I am getting more and more interested with the shard of Esper and have already started my trek there.