Throwing Gods Before Swine

Welcome back to another edition of EDH in Ottawa! I hope you'll forgive the tardiness of this week's entry. Today we'll look at a few spoiled Theros cards and their impact on EDH. Theros, this fall's expansion, looks to be loaded with legendary goodies and has a renewed focus on Enchantments as well. It should all add up to some fun pre-releases, so check out the MTGOttawa and Magic the Gathering in Ottawa Facebook pages to find one that's close and convenient to your location.

That being said, Theros' aura is heavily influenced by Greek folklore and thus the new hybrid creature type we have now. The gods start out as enchantments, but when enough "Devotion" is reached (calculated by counting the number of concordant mana symbols on your side) they become a creature card. There's one for each colour and all of them have large bodies, a repeatable activated ability and are Indestructible. Add to that the difficulty some colours have with removing enchantments and you're sure to have a few headaches around your table, whether Limited or Commander.

Here's Thassa, God of the Sea:

As we can see, big body with useful ability and the indestructible keyword. Potential difficulties are in the offing when you play a spell that will give you devotion and calculations need to be done about your boardstate, but these should be resolved pretty easily by stating "Playing X, Devotion 5" so that decisions can be made by both players. Of course, since these are legendary you can use them as commanders, but there are just better options in their respective colours. Still, an indestructible commander will entice some to try them out.

Which brings us to our next headache, Curse of the Swine. Blue has the ability to exile, but it's generally limited to spells on the stack and not creatures on the battlefield. Even leaving aside that you grant them a 2/2 token for every creature you remove, that's probably less power, toughness and utility than they had before. Now, in a duel you're probably going to have blockers of your own so you need to gauge whether spending four to five mana with potential retribution is worth it.

Things get dramatically different in EDH though; imagine the three other players at the table each have something obnoxious, say an Academy Rector, some obnoxious and non-Hexproof commander (*cough* Edric *cough* ) and a utility card like a Solemn. By gratuitously cherry-picking your targets, you give them a useless token and give yourself some breathing room. Of course, nothing says you can't exile your own stuff if you need some enter the battlefield triggers to win, like Warstorm Surge for example. Fully expect this around your tables in a few weeks and perhaps counter it with a Privileged Position or just killing the blue player first. That always works.

Following the theme of Enchantment Creatures introduced in Theros, we have Bestow, which grants itself Aura status when targeting a creature. Additional utility occurs when you play it as a creature, in this case a Grizzly Bears with Reach, and the Bestow card resolving even if its target is removed, unlike previous Aura cards which would be countered if the target was invalid. The usual gamut of combat tricks are represented, from flying to reach to first strike. Hopefully you all open a few of these at your limited events, they look pretty tasty in that format.

The new multiland cycle gives us the ability to Scry 1 and access to two colours in exchange for a loss of tempo. While I can empathize with players that want these untapped to start, R&D probably erred on the side of caution in this case, since you could play your land, Scry, use some immediate draw and start ramping up your draws. You're probably not playing a full set of these in a deck, but a few library peeks might be that small edge you'll need to get over the top. For EDH you probably have a ton of better options but you can always throw an extra one into your library to dump that unneeded stuff to get that Terminus or Temporal Mastery to go off. And hey, you can replay them with Crucible if you're really digging.

Expect a more comprehensive EDH breakdown in the next few weeks once we have a full spoiler, in the meantime here's Shane Shuster with another edition of Overrated and Underrated:

Overrated and Underrated

This week, Phyrexian Arena vs. Dark Confidant

"Bob (named after  its creator, Bob Maher) is a an all-star in every format where it is legal. For (1)(B), you get a 2/1 creature that grants an extra draw each turn at the cost of but in revealing that card and paying life equal to its converted mana cost (CMC). There is not much more you can ask from a two-drop, especially in a deck where you have four of him and your mana curve doesn't go past three or four. But this is EDH, the format that is famous for playing the fattest creatures, having absurd amounts of ramp and mana, using the wackiest cards and combos, and fun, political, multiplayer situations. It isn't generally not the format of low-cost spells, as you will find yourself drawing a card and paying six, seven, eight or even sixteen (call-out to my homeboy Draco) life which negates any usefuless it may have, as you would have to build the whole deck around this single card, not recommended.

"On the other hand, Phyrexian Arena costs (1)(B)(B) which is only one more black mana, which really isn't a big deal in EDH, and has the following benefits: it's an enchantment which makes it harder to remove, it only costs you one life each turn and finally, it doesn't make you reveal the drawn card. Also, the price point is drastically different with Bob at roughlly $80 and Phyrexian Arena sitting under $10. One of the advantages to using Bob is that you can get him down on turn two (or one because of the obscene amounts of ramp) and you are not drawing which can get around cards like Consecrated Sphinx and Chains of Mephistopheles. Bob is also really effective in some competitive, mono-black, EDH decks with lower mana curves such as Xiahou Dun. Overall, both are very powerful cards that can be useful in many decks but if I had only one card slot left in the deck, I would choose the Arena.

Shane Shuster

Please reach me at shaneshuster@gmail.com for any comments, future comparison suggestions or just to drop me a quick line.