Hello there!
You've probably noticed that there's a spoiler season in full swing, so let's take a stroll through the card image gallery and see what we can see. These comments are just on the officially spoiled cards as they occur to me looking through them alphabetically. I'll supply the card text so you don't have to go flicking between pages.
| Dearly Departed |
| Cost: 4WW |
| Creature -- Spirit |
| Text: Flying |
| As long as Dearly Departed is in your graveyard, each Human creature you control enters the battlefield with an additional +1/+1 counter on it. |
| 5/5 |
The first card of some interest is Dearly Departed, although the creature itself is not that notable as just a 5/5 flyer. The interesting part of the card is the static graveyard ability, which is a new take on the lord/anthem pump effect theme. But what would we need to have to make this card worth considering?
First, there needs to be enough playable Human creatures that would want the counters. This could be because you are playing an aggro deck and increased damage will accelerate your clock, or maybe the toughness increase will take them out of range of a key removal spell. Alternatively, there may be a number of Humans that interact with the counters (such as the already spoiled Mikaeus, the Lunarch). There are certainly plenty of good Humans in white, with Mirran Crusader, Hero of Bladehold and Blade Splicer already seeing play.
The second part of the puzzle would be having some way to get the Dearly Departed into the graveyard. This could take the form of playing a lot of looting or self-milling effects and hoping to hit them, but I think it will really need some way to directly pull the cards from the library to push this over the top. Perhaps there will be an exorcist that can search your library for a spirit and put it into graveyard?
| Elite Inquisitor |
| Cost: WW |
| Creature -- Human Soldier |
| Text: First strike, vigilance |
| Protection from Vampires, from Werewolves, and from Zombies |
| 2/2 |
Now here's a card where it is important not to be blinded by the flavour and to consider how it will actually function in play. In the same way that the protection abilities on Baneslayer Angel did not come up that frequently, they will never be preventing removal spells from dealing with Elite Inquisitor (as there has been no indication of a return to the world of Tribal spells). They are only relevant in combat against those specific creature types, so what we're generally looking at here is a 2/2 with first strike and vigilance.
Similar creatures have been playable in the past, but at first glance the Inquisitor does not quite live up to the lifelink of Knight of Meadowgrain, or the plains searching ability of Knight of the White Orchid.
Vigilance may be important if the format is largely about ground combat, and having an attacker and blocker is valuable. It also seems that the Human subtype could be important (see Dearly Departed for example). The combination of the two may make the Inquisitor a good creature to equip, but my gut feeling is that this will be a niche card whose value will be dependent on the number of Vampire, Werewolf or Zombie decks in the meta game.
| Mentor of the Meek |
| Cost: 2W |
| Creature -- Human Soldier |
| Text: Whenever another creature with power 2 or less enters the battlefield under your control, you may pay 1. If you do, draw a card. |
| 2/2 |
Mentor of the Meek has the key phrase "draw a card" which alone makes it worth evaluating. What we're getting for our three mana investment is a 2/2 with no abilities that effect the battlefield, that wants to be played in a deck that is planning on making more creatures of power two or less, and is interested in having additional mana left to take advantage of this ability.
If you can get an extra card for each creature you are fairly well covered against over-extending into Day of Judgment, which is one of the main problems with these kinds of strategy normally. Even better value would be to have a reliable source of creatures, such as a Selesnya Evangel or Imperious Perfect.
Sadly the rotation will take all of the Eldrazi Spawn producers out of standard, which would otherwise complement Mentor of the Meek perfectly. Awakening Zone is a straight "at the beginning of your upkeep, draw a card" with both of these in play. Jade Mage is less interesting, costing 3G to produce a 1/1 Saproling and a card.
Which brings us to drawback number one; as a 2/2 there is no real guarantee that Mentor of the Meek will survive to draw you cards. It is very likely that the Mentor is killed and you are left with a deck that can only make small creatures with no benefit. Against a deck that is incapable of removing a 2/2, how much help do you really need to win?
Secondly, weenie decks will often look to effects like Honor of the Pure, or the previously discussed Dearly Departed, to make the cheaper creatures they play more of a threat. This plays directly against Mentor of the Meek, who will stop helping out once your men stop being meek and start having a little self respect.
It is possible that there is a GW Ramp deck that can power out enough mana and tokens to make this worthwhile, but I think this card will be a limited bomb that doesn't quite have the impact to make it in constructed.
| Mikaeus, the Lunarch |
| Cost: XW |
| Legendary Creature -- Human Cleric |
| Text: Mikaeus, the Lunarch enters the battlefield with X +1/+1 counters on it. |
| T: Put a +1/+1 counter on Mikaeus. |
| T, Remove a +1/+1 counter from Mikaeus: Put a +1/+1 counter on each other creature you control. |
| 0/0 |
As previously spoiled in the roundly disappointing From the Vault: Legends, Mikaeus is a kind of Steel Overseer that swaps efficiency for MOAR POWER! This is the kind of creature that begs to be played with Swiftfoot Boots, just waiting for the opponent to tap out before slamming 5 or 6 mana into him and hexproofing him up.
The second ability is reminscent of Ajani Goldmane, and the immediate thought is to look for a BW tokens style deck that can take maximum value from it. Of course, the key to that deck was that Bitterblossom, Spectral Procession and Cloadgoat Ranger let you do this without expending so many cards that Day of Judgment would be crippling. In fact it would often come powering right back and deploy another three or four creatures the following turn. Right now we have Blade Splicer and Grave Titan, and possibly Kuldotha Rebirth, but not so many other powerful token makers. From the new cards we know of, Moan of the Unhallowed is a possibility, and Dearly Departed, Mentor of the Meek and Mikaeus could well point to a token making subtheme that is yet to be revealed in the set. Perhaps there will be a supply of screaming villagers to be sacrificed to the horrors that we can work with.
| Civilized Scholar |
| Cost: 2U |
| Creature -- Human Advisor |
| Text: T: Draw a card, then discard a card. If a creature card is discarded this way, untap Civilized Scholar, then transform it. |
| 0/1 |
| ** |
| Homicidal Brute |
| Creature -- Human Mutant |
| Text: At the beginning of your end step, if Homicidal Brute didn't attack this turn, tap Homicidal Brute, then transform it. |
| 5/1 |
This probably won't see any play, but it's worth at least thinking about the potential for cards like this. What we have is a guy that dies to almost everything (even Twisted Image!), but on the other hand if we can discard a creature to his ability he can be attacking for five damage on turn four. With counters, Unsummon and similar effects to clear the way that's a four turn clock.
As I said; this probably comes to nothing. The key is in being open enough to consider the "bad" ideas to be able to spot which are actually "good" ones that could easily be skipped over.
| Ludevic's Test Subject |
| Cost: 1U |
| Creature -- Lizard |
| Text: Defender |
| 1U: Put a hatchling counter on Ludevic's Test Subject. Then if there are five or more hatchling counters on it, remove all of them and transform it. |
| 0/3 |
| ** |
| Ludevic's Abomination |
| Creature -- Lizard Horror |
| Trample |
| 13/13 |
This is level up by another name, although with the added bonus that enough mana can save it from instant speed damage-based removal. The first form is pretty unexciting, so what we're looking at is really a 13/13 with trample for 6UUUUUU that can be paid in installments. This isn't a great deal (compare to Ulamog at a similar price point), so there needs to be a blue deck that wants to devote time to conducting the tests or some way to circumvent the transform cost for us to be interested. At the moment we have seen Moonmist that will auto-transform Humans, so it is quite possible that there is some sort of enabler in the set.
| Stitcher's Apprentice |
| Cost: 1U |
| Creature -- Homunculus |
| 1U, T: Put a 2/2 blue Homunculus creature token onto the battlefield, then sacrifice a creature. |
| 1/2 |
Here we have a pretty unusual effect that does nothing much by itself, but should be remembered when looking at cards that care about a creature either entering or leaving play. I don't think we want to be concerned with keeping the Homunculus creature in play; two mana is a lot to be "upgrading" another creature into a 2/2, but it is kind of a sacrifice outlet if required.
It could play well with Mentor of the Meek (2U, T: Draw a card), although this seems more of a limited interaction than something to construct a deck around. The main thing to look out for are the Morbid cards, as this serves as a regular enabler for them.
| Bloodgift Demon |
| Cost: 3BB |
| Creature -- Demon |
| Text: Flying |
| At the beginning of your upkeep, target player draws a card and loses 1 life. |
| 5/4 |
The price is certainly right with this card, and a four toughness black creature is going to be resilient enough on the battlefield. Being realistic, the ability is always going to target us unless the opponent is on one life, but simply surviving one turn replaces the card investment. Multiple turns of extra cards should put us far in front, and the life loss doesn't carry much risk if we're attacking for five each turn.
Bloodgift Demon joins a solid selection of options for a black deck right now, but there isn't a whole lot to recommend it above the others. The main advantage is that most of the action is at the four and six mana spot on the curve, so this nicely avoids a lot of direct comparisons to Grave Titan or Phyrexian Obliterator.
| Diregraf Ghoul |
| Cost: B |
| Creature -- Zombie |
| Text: Diregraf Ghoul enters the battlefield tapped. |
| 2/2 |
This is a nice evocative card - the zombie is slowly rising from the ground before trying to get us. Entering the battlefield tapped isn't really a drawback in constructed where blocking is a secondary consideration, but it will inevitably come up at some point. This is the replacement for the leaving Vampire Lacerator, and will depend on the support for black and/or Zombie cards as to how much play it sees. If there is a deck for it, this will be a very strong first turn play.
| Liliana of the Veil |
| Cost: 1BB |
| Planeswalker -- Liliana |
| Text: +1: Each player discards a card. |
| -2: Target player sacrifices a creature. |
| -6: Separate all permanents target player controls into two piles. That player sacrifices all permanents in the pile of his or her choice. |
| Loyalty: 3 |
Now here we have a card that is interesting to try and work out. This is the first black planeswalker to cost less than five mana, and only the second ever three mana planeswalker following the venerable Jace Beleren.
Planeswalkers have traditionally been most at home in control decks, where they can be protected while slowly grinding out card advantage. A lot of the time this has been because they are somewhat overpowered, such as the much debated Mind Sculptor or the original Elspeth, and just provided a better threat than any creature could for the control deck's aims.
Liliana does not fall into this pattern so obviously, and in fact takes at least three turns before putting you up even one card using standard metrics. Observe:
| Turn one: | Play Liliana (-1 card total) |
| Use the -2 ability (+1 card, +0 cards total) |
| Turn two: | Use the +1 ability (+0 cards, +0 cards total) |
| Turn three: | Use the -2 ability (+1 card, +1 cards total) |
But with this play sequence Liliana is now in the graveyard (note that this does not count as -1 card as we already counted the loss of a card when playing her). To continue generating an advantage the pattern has to be changed to -2, +1, +1, and even then that assumes that the opponent is unable to attack her loyalty in some way.
So from the first look it seems that Liliana is an unexciting card. To really get value from her we need to change the impact of the +1 ability to benefit us more than the opponent. How can we do this?
One way is to be drawing multiple cards a turn, say through a Bloodgift Demon or Consecrated Sphinx. This only helps when we have unwanted lands or other cards to throw away, or we would be happy just to have the extra cards in the first place. Liliana does not interact well with wanting to keep open counters or removal on the opponent's turn then.
What if the cards we're discarding still remain valuable in the graveyard? Then we can remain at parity while denying the opponent a card. Something like Bloodghast or Vengeful Pharoah would certainly qualify - in fact Liliana would be a complete boss in the current standard Vampire decks. Flashback cards may also come into play here, especially if any are printed with cheap flashback costs.
The third way is to have an empty hand at the time the ability is activated, making it fully one-sided. This seems more suited to an aggro approach where we can play out our hand before dropping Liliana. It is also interesting how her abilities line up quite closely with Smallpox, which suggests that a strategy of using cheap black creatures backed up by disruption could be viable. Just as Bloodghast and Abyssal Persecutor leave the scene; isn't it always the way?
So what can we conclude? Liliana is not a powerhouse that slots into any deck that could cast her, but she does have a lot of promise in a strategy that can fully take advantage of her abilities. Keep an eye out for the right pieces being revealed as the spoiler season continues.
| Reaper from the Abyss |
| Cost: 3BBB |
| Creature -- Demon |
| Text: Flying |
| Morbid -- At the beginning of each end step, if a creature died this turn, destroy target non-Demon creature. |
| 6/6 |
This seems to be one of the flagship cards from the set so far, and it certainly looks the part. The main limitation on the Reaper is how much play Go for the Throat is seeing at the time, as one of the only widely played spells that deals with it. There are a couple of ways to build around the ability that suggest themselves.
The first is to play the Reaper as the top end of a mid-range aggro deck, using early aggression to get the opponent low on life before dropping the Reaper to deal with the final few blockers. Note that it triggers at the beginning of each end step, so having one creature die in combat on the turn you play it gets one kill, and having another with a sacrifice effect (such as Fume Spitter) to use during the opponent's turn will net a second.
Another way to go is as the finisher in a control deck, using it to double up each removal spell. In either case, it will quickly generate a large advantage if the opponent is unable to deal with it.
In each case the key question is whether it does the job better than the existing six drop options of Grave Titan and Wurmcoil Engine. For the answer to be yes, it may come down to the flying ability being the trump, or the Demon creature type providing added value.
| Screeching Bat |
| Cost: 2B |
| Creature -- Bat |
| Text: Flying |
| At the beginning of your upkeep, you may pay 2BB. If you do, transform Screeching Bat. |
| 2/2 |
| ** |
| Stalking Vampire |
| Creature -- Vampire |
| Text: At the beginning of your upkeep, you may pay 2BB. If you do, transform Stalking Vampire. |
| 5/5 |
The vampire-turning-into-bat-turning-into-vampire trope, smashed out of the park. This is a transform version of Sengir Nosferatu from Time Spiral. The card curves nicely from turn three into turn four transform and attack for five. Why would you ever want to transform it back?
Oh, right... the vampire doesn't have flying.
This might not be a deal breaker, and a 5/5 attacking on turn four is preferable to a 5/1 (see Civilised Scholar). I think sinking two turns of mana into this only to see it's throat gone for would set us too far back (even given the irony of that play).
The main strike against this card could well turn out to be that it is not a Vampire when cast, so Bloodlord of Vaasgoth will not affect it.
That's covered the white, blue and black cards now, the next update will look at the remaining cards of interest so far.
Steve
