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A Durdle’s Guide to Dragon’s Maze – Monocolored and Split Cards

Is it already that time again? It seems like only yesterday I watched Tom Martell take down Pro Tour Gatecrash while writing the final part of the Durdle’s Guide to Gatecrash, yet here we are again with another Pro Tour breathing down our necks and another Durdle’s Guide assailing our eyes with deck ideas and amaze-ing puns.

Welcome! For those who are new here, this is not a set review. This is not a playability guide. This is a way for me to set up the next season of Achievement Unlocked with new deck ideas and achievements while also sharing some brews and ideas with you. As a result there are cards I really like that have been left out simply because I have no achievement ideas for them. If you want an article that will set your brain working and give you some wacky ideas, this is where you want to be. Having said that, let us begin!

White

[card]Renounce the Guilds[/card]
This is a really interesting effect and one that will require some play to determine just how good it is. Anyone can sit here and list off cards that this can remove, but until we know how the format shakes out with regards to what sees play and what doesn’t, we can’t really be sure how good it will actually be. In tandem with [card]Ultimate Price[/card] you will have a fairly versatile removal suite…maybe. How often will this be stuck in your hand because you don’t want to sacrifice your multicolored permanent. How often will it just not get played because you want to play a lot of multicolored stuff?

[card]Scion of Vitu-Ghazi[/card]
The answer to the question “why does it have the awkward ‘from your hand’ clause?” is really rather simple: because it would be broken without it. [card]Cackling Counterpart[/card], [card]Séance[/card], [card]Progenitor Mimic[/card] and even [card]Mimic Vat[/card] would go infinite with Scion if he just had an ETB trigger. With that said, this guy does slot nicely on the curve after a [card]Séance[/card], allowing us to populate whatever we reanimated in our upkeep while also adding 5 power to the board. That will be an achievement on the list for sure.

Outside of that very strong but admittedly narrow interaction, I don’t think we’ll be seeing much of this guy. He’s not badly costed but unless you have Centaurs or better to populate I’m not really sure we’ll be scion much of this guy. He has no evasion, making two 1/1 Birds isn’t really that impressive for 5 mana and there are so many better things we can be doing for the cost. Oh, I’m also going to want to populate a Cackling Counterparted copy of something.

Blue

[card]Aetherling[/card]
I knew [card]Morphling[/card] and you, sirs, are no [card]Morphling[/card]. It’s no [card]Thornling[/card] either, but this guy (these guys?) will almost definitely see play in tap-out control decks going forward. The importance of that first ability cannot be understated, and most of the time you will want to play [card]Aetherling[/card] as a 7-drop at least to protect it from removal right away. I think I like shroud better than flickering, but we take what we can get. Of course the days of damage on the stack are ‘ling gone, making the last two abilities less useful than they were on the other members of the family. His evasion is better but he can never block a flier, which might be relevant.

Comparisons aside, I think every deck we build while this is in the format will need an answer to a resolved [card]Aetherling[/card]. The card can kill you very quickly and is very hard to deal with efficiently if the opponent is even a little competent. I want to play a control deck with this guy as the only finisher, or possibly one where he teams up with [card]Assemble the Legion[/card]. I’m struggling for Achievements here though, and can only come up with one: exile him then sweep the board. It’s a really GOOD one though…

Black

[card]Blood Scrivener[/card]
His name is Bob Zombie, and that’s all there is to it. He also has puntastic flavour text, so he has that going for him. Now, will he see any play? He has natural synergy with [card]Sire of Insanity[/card], and if you control both it’s likely that this guy is sticking around through the first piece of removal. I will want to get that “engine” going as the first achievement in my list with [card]Scrivener[/card]. He also likely gets a look in any Bx aggro deck, refilling your hand as insurance against a sweeper while also beating down for 2. While we still have ISD block in the format, his creature type is very relevant and could add to his playability. I can even see him being played in a more midrange deck that also runs [card]Underworld Connections[/card]. Start the turn with an empty hand, draw two. Play a land, cast the spell, tap Connections and draw two more. Then swing with [card]Vampire Nighthawk[/card]. So many cards!

One other thing I want to do, more for fun than anything else, is to have Bob Zombie out when I flash in a [card]Notion Thief[/card] as the last card in my hand, preferably in response to a big draw spell. I can’t help it, that sort of value addiction is in the blood.

[card]Pontiff of Blight[/card]
I can’t think of another 2/7 in Magic, but there probably is one. Regardless, Pontiff will block almost every ground-pounder in Standard right now while giving you a very real clock with every spell you cast. Cards like [card]Lingering Souls[/card] and [card]Sorin, Lord of Innistrad[/card] will provide a steady supply of bodies with extort while also keeping you alive. Sounds a lot like the embodiment of Orzhov to me. Extorting for 5 with one spell will be an achievement here, and probably an early one.

Six mana should not be paid blightly, but when the effect is this large you kind of have to consider it. Something like cipher spells will help ensure we can extort every turn, but the black ones aren’t very good ([card]Undercity Plague[/card] might be worth a try I guess) so we’d be looking at Esper. That does give us some cantrips and such to play as well, plus [card]Snapcaster Mage[/card], so perhaps that’s the way to go.

Red

[card]Possibility Storm[/card]
I’m sure I’m not alone when I say that my first impression on reading this card was “oh, it’s the set’s red chaos rare” and not giving any further thought to this having any possibility of seeing play. Those of you who have been reading the Achievement Unlocked series will know about my friend Shane, aka Shug. He’s the Patrick Sullivan of our local players, and always opens a deluge of that one red rare or mythic that won’t see play even in a Lansdell deck.

Then I reread it, and the sparks began flying. This card is tricky for sure, and probably not good. But I think it can be built around in order to minimize its impact on us while completely hosing some opponents, and that’s a recipe for playability at the very least. If I cast a [card]Thundermaw Hellkite[/card] and instead hit a [card]Hellrider[/card], I will be slightly annoyed but still glad to have a beater. If you cast [card]Dissipate[/card] and instead hit [card]Sphinx’s Revelation[/card], you’d be justified in storming out of the room. And that’s just one you have ONE of them out. Having two of them is just instant value. Cast one spell, resolve two? Sure! I’ll be building around it and one achievement will be to hit a spell that costs at least 3 more than the one I cast. I think getting two of them in play will be an achievement too.

But we’re forgetting one crucial thing, and it’s the thing I really want to do with this card the most: combo it with [card]Curse of Exhaustion[/card]. As they are both enchantments, [card]Possibility Storm[/card] even acts as a tutor of sorts if you cast a second Storm without [card]Exhaustion[/card] out. I think the deck can also run [card]Assemble the Legion[/card] as a kill condition to hit off casting another Curse or Storm. If our only sorceries are sweepers, we are always going to hit one when we need it. We can then use artifact mana to ramp along with instant-speed spot removal. Getting the lock will be an achievement without a doubt, and I feel like there are more to be had here. All these ideas from one seemingly unplayable enchantment…we are going DEEP with this set!

[card]Pyrewild Shaman[/card]
Pretty much the first rare I ever opened was [card]Hammer of Bogardan[/card]. As a Magic neophyte I couldn’t really understand why players were going pyrewild over the card, but I kept it because it looked cool. As I learned more about the game it became clear why people loved the Hammer: a constant, recurring source of damage that could grind your opponent out and make sure you won the long game. I’m starting to realise that I love that kind of deck, one that gives me inevitability and staying power.

[card]Pyrewild Shaman[/card] is in an interesting spot in comparison. On the one hand it can be cast and swing on its own, and can be bloodrushed on to other copies of itself. The bloodrush is hard to counter, cheap to activate and reasonably costed to regrow. It does require an attacker to get through in order to regrow it, but I hear red has some spells that might be able to clear blockers out of the way. One thing I really want to do here is bloodrush it on to a first striker or double striker, regrow it then bloodrush it again before regular damage. I doubt this card will be a high-end competitive staple even if aggro decks find a hold, but if it sees no play at all it will be a real shame, man.

Green

[card]Skylasher[/card]
If you’ve read my articles and reviews before, you know I am a big fan of reading text boxes first. This card’s text box is an absolute beating. How much would we have loved this in Innistrad block? It does look like something out of a nightmare and would have really bent Delver over for forty lashes.

Is it good now though? Well the most obvious application is to flash it in and block a [card]Geist of Saint Traft[/card], which I’ll be listing as an achievement to unlock. I can also see it in Legacy, where it blocks Delver and [card]Vendilion Clique[/card] while being immune to Jace. It’s not immune to Bolt, Swords or [card]Abrupt Decay[/card] however, which will hurt it somewhat. Lots of abilities, places it fits well, but I think ultimately short of being a player.

Split Cards

[card]Beck // Call[/card]
Yes yes, we all know that this card is supposed to enable Elf Combo in Modern. That’s an incredibly narrow view though, because I think the combo deck into which this fits is not really Elves at all, just a lot of mana dorks. We don’t have [card]Wirewood Symbiote[/card] or [card]Quirion Ranger[/card] in Modern, but we do have [card]Scryb Ranger[/card] . Symbiote is a hit for sure but [card]Scryb Ranger[/card] might even be better than [card]Quirion Ranger[/card].

My podcasting cohost Travis Hall has already written a ton about this card (and as much as he wrote about it for you guys, he wrote WAY more in our group chat on Facebook) in Modern, but I think it might be playable as a combo piece in Standard. I don’t believe we have all the pieces yet, but the deck is infuriatingly nagging at the edge of my consciousness. Do we want to take advantage of [card]Axebane Guardian[/card] and the other defenders to generate a ton of mana, finding a way to untap Guardian a couple of times? Could there be a deck with Pack Rat? Can we go RUG and make tokens on the cheap with [card]Goblin Electromancer[/card] and cards like [card]Goblin[/card] Rally? Maybe that deck splashes white so we can fuse Beck//Call and live that dream? So many options!

[card]Breaking // Entering[/card]
Take a look at the price of [card]Glimpse the Unthinkable[/card]. I KNOW. One half of this card is a slightly worse Glimpse. The other half is a slightly better [card]Rise from the Grave[/card]. That to me makes a playable card. [card]Entering[/card] is clearly the better half, being able to reanimate from any graveyard AND giving the creature haste. Fusing the card lets you potentially hit something like [card]Worldspine Wurm[/card] or Emrakul. That will be an achievement, even if it’s not exactly meta-Breaking.

One thing that you might not intuitively grasp is that you can actually cascade into the [card]Entering[/card] half of the card with the three mana cascade spells. This card’s converted mana cost is 2 AND 6 (the same as Beck//Call actually…hmmm…), so when you cast [card]Violent Outburst[/card] (for example) this card will be a hit for it. You can then choose to cast either half. Now granted, you can’t play [card]Faithless Looting[/card] and [card]Izzet Charm[/card] to fill your yard like you normally would, but you CAN play [card]Thirst for Knowledge[/card], [card]Compulsive Research[/card], Liliana, [card]Pilfered Plans[/card] and [card]Forbidden Alchemy[/card]. I’m sure there are more options here. Also remember that the creature you reanimate gains haste AND sticks around, so although you lose the explosiveness of a potential turn 1 win you actually gain more consistency and resiliency to a blocker. Just be aware that you cannot fuse off cascade. I’ll certainly be trying to get myself a hasty [card]Griselbrand[/card] from a cascade into this baby.

[card]Catch // Release[/card]
The catch in making this card good is going to be breaking the parity of the [card]Release[/card] part. We know that Catch is OK to good, a Zealous Conscript effect for less mana without the 3/3 haster attached can definitely do something. Obviously the intention here is for us to fuse it and sac the permanent we stole, and sometimes that will be the correct line. There’s no way I’m going to be happy with just that, though.

The first card that came to mind was [card]Hatching Plans[/card]. People used to play it with [card]Perilous Research[/card] to draw a ton of cards for a small investment, but adding [card]Release[/card] to the mix lets you replace some of the permanents you’ll be losing to the spell. Creatures with persist or undying make the sacrifice less onerous, and of course our old friend [card]Flagstones of Trokair[/card] loves being sacrificed. We can avoid the planeswalker part simply by not playing any. Artifacts like the Spellbombs, the [card]Wellspring[/card]s, [card]Chromatic Star[/card] and even [card]Wurmcoil Engine[/card] can all provide a benefit on sacrifice. We can also sacrifice a [card]Reveillark[/card] for maximum value. I’ll be looking to cast this and get card advantage from it as one of my achievements, but my thoughts on this card are that it will be best out of the sideboard in Standard.

[card]Flesh // Blood[/card]
Another one we can cascade into, Flesh//Blood I think has more utility than it initially appears to have. If Reanimator is playing its slightly more fair game of late reanimation spells, this gives you a nice way to counteract their plan and still get a benefit from it. Yes it’s any graveyard, though sadly not at instant speed. The power of the creature card in the graveyard will be defined if the creature has a * there, so something like a [card]Lord of Extinction[/card] or even a [card]Boneyard Wurm[/card] could be rather big. Putting those counters on something like a [card]Phyrexian Crusader[/card] (for just [card]Flesh[/card], as fusing it makes it a red spell) or an [card]Inkmoth Nexus[/card] will spell the end of the game for most opponents. Note that the CREATURE is dealing the damage and not [card]Blood[/card], so infect, lifelink, deathtouch and so on will all apply.

Unlike most [card]Fling[/card] effects, [card]Blood[/card] does not require you to sacrifice the creature. Having two of these in hand with a large creature out represents a ton of potential damage with very little risk to you, and can end the game very fast. If you have a creature that is hard to kill, fusing the spell to dump a ton of counters on it and then dome your opponent is pretty impressive and gives us a way to flesh out our Varolz decks. I’ll be looking to one-shot people in Modern with an infect hit, either with an attack or with [card]Blood[/card]. In Standard the plays are less impressive but I still want to cast it exiling an opponent’s creature, as well as exiling a [card]Boneyard Wurm[/card], [card]Splinterfright[/card] or [card]Lord of Extinction[/card] to go Super Saiyan.

[card]Maze’s End[/card]
[card]Thawing Glaciers[/card] is one of the most powerful cards of yesteryear that a lot of people never got a chance to play with. I have many fond memories of just emptying my library of lands and making sure that all my late-game draws were just gas, while never missing a land drop.

While [card]Maze’s End[/card] is far from being as good as [card]Glaciers[/card], it’s still not hard to see a path to playability for it. It should be obvious to anyone who follows the Achievement Unlocked series that I *will* be playing this at some point and I *will* be trying to win with it. Even without that though, the ability to both fix your mana and ensure a land drop should not be understated. We’ll be losing at least one set of duals come rotation, and depending what is in Theros we maze well try out gates to replace them. Yes this costs 3 to activate and the land still comes in tapped, but you also get to tap [card]Maze’s End[/card] for mana if you need it. Activating at the end of their turn lets you untap with the gate, and at worst you can just replay [card]Maze’s End[/card] the next turn. It seems bad right now but I can’t shake the feeling that we will see this card in Standard before next October.

Thoughts on everything but gold cards

I am acutely aware that I have only reviewed rares and mythics so far. This is interesting, as most sets have SOMETHING at lower rarities that makes me drool. Maybe it’s all in the gold cards, which are coming up in part 2. There’s plenty to begin with here though, and I am looking forward to getting into the brewing mode!

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