Another spoiler season has ended, and Dragon’s Maze is laid bare before our lecherous eyeballs. It’s time for us to wander into the maze and try to brew our way to the other side. As always, these are the cards that caught my eye.
Disclaimer: Look, I’m just not going to review every card. I’m just not. I’ll leave that herculean task to the likes of Conley Woods, Chris Lansdell, and LSV, those who have been driven to insane levels of punnery just to make it through another set review without jumping off a high building at the thought of discovering relevance in another vanilla five-drop. If you really need me to affirm that [card]Armored Wolf Rider[/card] is either 1) the most broken card since Jace started sculpting minds or 2) not worth its weight in toilet paper (hint: most cards fall somewhere in this spectrum), then consider yourself affirmed. These are the cards that jumped up and violently assaulted my inner brewer.
Simic:
[card]Renegade Krasis[/card]: My pick for most underappreciated card in the set. If you follow Horde of Notions at all, you know that I’ve spent a lot of time experimenting with the evolve creatures. From the beginning, it’s felt like the deck was really missing a good three-drop. I tested [card]Vampire Nighthawk[/card]; I tried skipping the three-drop all together; and I even tested [card]Elusive Krasis[/card] (not good, not horrible, kinda like a warm toilet seat). So long as you know how to stack your triggers, Renegade Krasis should be an evolve lord and fill the void for the deck. I mean, curving an early evolve creature into this guy into [card]Corpsejack Menace[/card] translates to, “Play [card]Supreme Verdict[/card] or die.”
[card]Beck // Call[/card]: In case you didn’t know, I wrote an entire article about this monster.
[card]Bred for the Hunt[/card]: You need to draw at least three cards with this for it to be worth the effect. Otherwise, hey, just play [card]Divination[/card]. I don’t think this is worth the trouble, but it might be a sideboard all-star. Like [card]Triumph of Ferocity[/card] without all the spousal abuse hysterics.
[card]Give // Take[/card]: This really, really, really needed to be an instant. As is, I will still test it out, and it might be playable as a one-of.
[card]Plasm Capture[/card]: First up, I have seen [card]Mana Drain[/card]. I have cast Mana Drain. I have even let Mana Drain sleep over on a cold winter’s night. You, Mr. [card]Plasm Capture[/card] are no Mana Drain. You are Mana Drain’s fat friend after a four-hour bender at the buffet table. That said, there’s plenty of room for Mana Drain’s fat friend to be good in Standard. Countering an opponent’s turn-five five-drop and untapping into something like [card]Omniscience[/card] is the nut-high scrotal stomp, right? And pairing those Islands with Forests may seem like a bad version of “The Odd Couple” at first, but green is the best color at utilizing lots of extra mana. The more I look at this, the more I think it will be a player in the future metagame. Also, the art and flavor text are badass. I’m just thankful this wasn’t blue-white.
[card]Progenitor Mimic[/card]: The value of [card]Clone[/card] effects has risen exponentially in the last few years, as Standard (and maybe Modern) seems to have coalesced into a “have an ETB effect or GTFO” format. Six mana may be too much, but Clone + upside seems worthy of consideration.
[card]Vorel of the Hull Clade[/card]: I feel like they reached into a Scrabble bag and pulled out a handful of tiles to name this thing. Here we have our Simic champion, the Maze Runner with the lowest power and an ability that would only help him get through the maze if he had a handful of underlings to grow. Flavor fail. He is, however, another three-drop for my BUG Evolve deck and can get out of hand very quickly. The 4 toughness on the backside will be a boon to your early evolve creatures. I dismissed him at first when I thought he only added one additional counter, but then someone un-derped me and I realized he doubled them. Think about our good buddy, the previously mentioned [card]Corpsejack Menace[/card], with Vorel.
Simic has some interesting cards. While I’ve talked at great length about the possibilities of the Simic ability, evolve, the cards in the guild offer a lot of playability across multiple archetypes. Overall, Simic had a strong showing.
Golgari:
[card]Deadbridge Chant[/card]: Saved by the fact that it enables itself. The “at random” clause is disheartening and may necessitate something like [card]Purify the Grave[/card], but the fact that it’s either [card]Debtor’s Knell[/card] or a one-sided [card]Howling Mine[/card] at worst means that it needs to be tested. Mike Flores has been championing [card]Staff of Nin[/card] for about a year. This is probably better.
[card]Drown in Filth[/card]: This card looks to be much stronger in Modern than Standard (unless it’s a subtle hint that allied fetchlands are coming in M14!). However, if we can find a way to make a “Dredge” deck work in Standard, this has potential. I think three is the magic number for this to be playable, and it’s probably just too hard to get there with [card]Ghost Quarter[/card] as your only enabler. In Modern, however, this is just about everything you could hope for. It “enables” [card]Deathrite Shaman[/card], [card]Life from the Loam[/card], [card]Tarmogoyf[/card], [card]Snapcaster Mage[/card], and [card]Knight of the Reliquary[/card]. That’s a strong list of synergistic cards.
[card]Gaze of Granite[/card]: One of the more exciting cards in the set. People are already comparing it to [card]Pernicious Deed[/card] and finding it wanting. Well, yeah, it’s not as good as Deed, but Deed was outstanding—possibly the best mass removal spell ever printed. Being able to spend the mana over multiple turns is generally a better option (until that Deed gets hit with a Disenchant), but, there have been many times when I’ve sandbagged a Deed, played it, and sacrificed it on the same turn for maximum surprise and effect. Saying this stinks is like comparing every basketball player to Michael Jordan. Just because it’s not the best doesn’t mean it sucks. The people turning up their noses and comparing it to [card]Engineered Explosives[/card] or [card]Ratchet Bomb[/card] on the other hand are total Munsons. There is a humongous difference between “Equal to X” and “X or less.” This card will see play in Modern, where it can totally wreck Affinity, Zoo, and Birthing Pod as early as turn 4, and should see play in Standard. One of my top ten in all of Dragon’s Maze.
[card]Putrefy[/card]: This becomes one of the best removal spells in Standard the moment it’s legal. Ironically, the two cards most impacted by Putrefy’s reprint are [card]Lotleth Troll[/card] and [card]Varolz, the Scar-Striped[/card], two fellow Golgarians. That we get this in standard while [card]Mortify[/card] sulks on the bench like an athletically-challenged fat kid in gym class means that artifacts just got a whole lot worse and enchantments are much better.
[card]Rot Farm Skeleton[/card]: I’m beginning to see the vaguest outline of a Neo-Dredge list with this; [card]Drown in Filth[/card]; [card]Boneyard Wurm[/card]; [card]Varolz, the Scar-Striped[/card]; [card]Deathrite Shaman[/card] and crew. While I wouldn’t go wild with this card, every time you play it from your graveyard it’s basically a free card draw, or more, if you “dredge” into something useful. I can see this being played as a one-of in a certain type of control deck too.
[card]Varolz, the Scar-Striped[/card]: The Golgari champion does not fark around. My pick for the best Maze Runner (and another Scrabble All-Star), Varolz immediately makes me want to go back and reevaluate every creature in Standard and Modern. [card]Death’s Shadow[/card] sold out everywhere overnight when people started digging through Gatherer for high-power/low-cost creatures. And while this may be the correct approach (looking right at you, [card]Boneyard Wurm[/card]), don’t underestimate the ability to just gain incremental value off of dead creatures. Even something as innocuous as an [card]Arbor Elf[/card] can offer immense value late game with Varolz. Another pick for my top ten of the set, and a card I cannot wait to start playing.
So there you have it: my picks for the most exciting cards from the Simic and Golgari guilds in Dragon’s Maze. But you know I can’t leave you without a decklist to warm your souls:
[deck title=Travis Hall – BUG Out]
[Lands]
4 Breeding Pool
4 Hinterland Harbor
4 Overgrown Tomb
4 Woodland Cemetery
4 Watery Grave
4 Forest
[/Lands]
[Creatures]
4 Experiment One
4 Gyre Sage
4 Strangleroot Geist
4 Renegade Krasis
2 Vorel of the Hull Clade
4 Corpsejack Menace
2 Master Biomancer
3 Prime Speaker Zegana
2 Primordial Hydra
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
2 Simic Charm
4 Putrefy
1 Give split Take
[/Spells]
[Sideboard]
2 Garruk Relentless
2 Plasm Capture
1 Gaze of Granite
1 Vraska the Unseen
4 Vampire Nighthawk
3 Thragtusk
2 Varolz, the Scar Striped
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]
I’m beginning to think there’s a really strong evolve/scavenge archetype, and Varolz may actually be the best three-drop for this deck. It hurt to cut [card]Cloudfin Raptor[/card], but I wanted to give [card]Strangelroot Geist[/card] a chance.
If you like my suggestions, you can follow me on Twitter: @travishall456. I throw around random observations and deck ideas every day. You can also hear me on the Horde of Notions podcast each week, discussing deck ideas for FNM level events and the PTQ grinders.
Travis Hall is a resident Mana D rogue deck brewer with an unhealthy addiction to Heartless Summoning and Birthing Pod.