Favorite SoI cards so far?

Mainloop25

I haven't gotten a bunch yet, but I got Rare Diregraf Colossus. Man is he awesome. He is like a black Noyan Dar with the right deck combo. Starts off 5/5 for 10 but then gets 2/2 with every zombie. Combined with Undead Servant, Dark Petition, anything else that gets you zombies, i got him to 24/24 pretty quickly.

Made Liliana that much more fun to play.

AngryGerman

I bought a big box and got a creature called Soul Swallower. It's a 6/6 wurm with trample and at the beginning of your turn, delirium: This creature gains +5/+5.

I really like that it can make you take a new direction with green decks. Instead of building them so you make a whole bunch of green tiles, you want as few as possible. This is entirely dependent on how consistently you can trigger delirium, but I think it could work really well with Garruk.

tm00

Harness the storm + devil's playground or exquisite firecraft is hilarious, you just need to be careful about exiling the rest of the hand against red decks and liliana.

The werewolf that has a horse on the human side has been pretty cool too.

madwren

To the Slaugher is fantastic, but that's because it satisfies my "never got Ruinous Path" angst.

Irving

Ugh! Got a Big Box and no rares/mythics except the bonus one (an Always Watching). I'm interested to see if there will be enough good Zombies to make Cruel Revival playable. Maybe not, because the best Zombie synergy I can think of is Skaab Goliath and some guys who come back to the battlefield when they're destroyed - and that doesn't look fast enough to be really good. Anyway, since Cruel Revival returns the Zombie to your hand, it can't be reanimated...

Of the cards I got, Avacynian Missionaries may be interesting, because it appears to disable the creature permanently when it transforms (it doesn't say "as long as this is on the battlefield" or anything like that). If that's true, it might be a help against an AI that never replaces its creatures.

Also, Gone Missing is great anti-reanimation tech (for example, it gets rid of Akoum Firebird), but a little pricey and you can't really sideboard in this game. Murderer's Axe is a better Chitinous Cloak (which is great in the Zada deck or the Gideon reach + first strike deck), so that's cool.

Nitymp

Loving uncaged fury in my Koth deck

HomeRn

Irving wrote:

Ugh! Got a Big Box and no rares/mythics except the bonus one (an Always Watching). I'm interested to see if there will be enough good Zombies to make Cruel Revival playable. Maybe not, because the best Zombie synergy I can think of is Skaab Goliath and some guys who come back to the battlefield when they're destroyed - and that doesn't look fast enough to be really good. Anyway, since Cruel Revival returns the Zombie to your hand, it can't be reanimated...

Of the cards I got, Avacynian Missionaries may be interesting, because it appears to disable the creature permanently when it transforms (it doesn't say "as long as this is on the battlefield" or anything like that). If that's true, it might be a help against an AI that never replaces its creatures.

Also, Gone Missing is great anti-reanimation tech (for example, it gets rid of Akoum Firebird), but a little pricey and you can't really sideboard in this game. Murderer's Axe is a better Chitinous Cloak (which is great in the Zada deck or the Gideon reach + first strike deck), so that's cool.

Hold off on putting in Cruel Revival for right now, seems like it doesn't realize that it should be bringing them back into the battlefield - the new zombies that is...

Morphis

Cruel revival was always meant to return to hand.
It works like that in paper magic too.

I know that some new zombies are better if left in the graveyard, but overall there is a good chance it will be playable right now.

How much, we will see.

Mainloop25

Of the cards I got, Avacynian Missionaries may be interesting, because it appears to disable the creature permanently when it transforms (it doesn't say "as long as this is on the battlefield" or anything like that). If that's true, it might be a help against an AI that never replaces its creatures.

Using Avacynian Missionaries, in my experience i have found that the creature stays disabled as long as the AM is transformed.

http://decktester.com/Cards/Details/BeholdTheBeyond

Behold the beyond is very good in most decks, but it is pretty cruel with Ob's 3rd ability

paralistalon

Out of the cards I have so far:

Rise from the Tides- An 8/8 for 15 mana is really good, not to mention it's in blue and counts as a spell for added synergy with cards that trigger a bonus for each spell you cast.

Harvest Hand- A 4/4 defender for 13 seems like a bargain (compared to Guardian Automaton, a 2/2 defender for 11). The bonus is fun and gives some reason to take advantage of human tribal.

Anguished Unmaking- A 12 mana black/white rare spell that destroys your opponent's first creature AND destroys a support. Black finally gets support removal! You also lose 6 life which is nothing. I like this card because even if your opponent doesn't play supports, it's not a dead card, like Demolish.

Lambholt Pacifist- Out of all the werewolves I have so far (so no rare ones), this is the most efficient one and the only one I wouldn't cringe to put into a deck.

Paranoid Parish-Blade- With only 3 available creature slots, I really can't justify including a creature with less than 4 power (unless it has some crucial ability I need). A 4/3 for 6 is efficient, so I like it. It also gets +1/+0 and first strike with delirium, which is nice.

Tamiyo's Journal- This is the rare (and thus by MPQ rules, strictly better) version of Magnifying Glass. For the same 5 mana, you investigate EVERY turn. I didn't think I'd like it because I almost always draw more cards than I can ever use, but what makes it appealing to me is that each clue counts as a support, so for the price of one card, you can easily get 3 supports in play which makes it reasonable to play cards like Helm of the Gods and Walker of the Wastes, and I would love to try it out in a Tezz deck.

Shard of Broken Glass, Murderer's Axe- I love cheap spells that have a lasting effect. If I'm playing cards like Prism Array where I'm refilling my hand every turn, I want to be able to dump my hand in time to refill it the following turn. I'm not lucky enough to have Noyan Dar, but if I did, I would load a deck full of these spells along with Day's Undoing.

Interesting mention- I did get Thing in the Ice, which is a mythic. Basically, after it's in play you have to cast 4 spells or supports to transform it, then it becomes a 7/8 that bounces all non-horror creatures to their owner's hand. It's an interesting alternative to Crush of Tentacles (even though they're both mythics, I'm still calling Thing the poor man's Crush). If you have a deck full of horrors, you get to keep your creatures, although I haven't found many decent horrors. Stitchwing Skaab isn't horrible. I tried playing Kessig Dire Swine, which it turns out might actually be one of the worst creatures released in the game so far! There's also that gargoyle if you can get it to trigger first. Interestingly, even though Thing in the Ice states that it cannot block, it still gets hit by berserkers, which often triggers it for free. NOTE: DO NOT cast a second Thing in the Ice before it transforms!

shteev

Here's a few more commons and uncommons that I really like:


Town Gossipmonger: Activate 1 is a very small number, so you'll need a good way to trigger it, but when it flips this is a very efficient beatdown creature.

Magnifying Glass: Really great in Chandra. I love the fact that if you're drawing too many cards it leaves some of them on the board so you can draw them later

Trail of Evidence: Oh my gosh. Serious card draw and support protection in my Kiora deck, and I've seen people do ludicrous things with this in Tezzerret.

Mainloop25

Yes, Trail Of Evidence finally makes Tezzeret's 3rd ability formidable, and all the card draw is pretty nice.

Avacynian Missionaries are a good addition to my white decks since I don't have Hixus or Suppression Bonds.

Mastering Red, I wasn't expecting to like Mad Prophet or Gibbering Fiend as much as I did. Not staples by any means, but pretty solid uncommons.

Morphis

For me so far is behold the beyond.

This card is just awesome.
It has many applications for black:
- card draw. You can get up to 6 cards drawn.
- mana gain. You can get up to 30 mana, net mana gain of 15(it's less only if you do not discard some cards cause of madness).
- there are a good number of good/great cards that cost 6 or less for black, meaning you can cast it the turn you draw it
- discard your hand. This is useful for reanimation decks, for zombies that come back on their own and for madness
- ob nixilis ultimate? Oh yeah!

I think it is probably the equivalent of exert influence for black or quite close.

Any black deck can use it to good profit.

shteev

Morphis wrote:

For me so far is behold the beyond.

This card is just awesome.

Maybe too good? I mean Day's Undoing is an incredible card, and Behold the Beyond is a whole lot better than that... it even discards so you can take advantage of graveyard synergies.

Still, it's nice to see that blue doesn't get ALL the broken cards.

Morphis

shteev wrote:

Morphis wrote:

For me so far is behold the beyond.

This card is just awesome.

Maybe too good? I mean Day's Undoing is an incredible card, and Behold the Beyond is a whole lot better than that... it even discards so you can take advantage of graveyard synergies.

Still, it's nice to see that blue doesn't get ALL the broken cards.

Yes this was the second card I wanted the most in the set.
The first being the hydra.
Looks like kiora needed a little more boost in card quality

shteev

Maybe they're going to start ramping up broken black cards because Sorin is coming

Pqmtg-

shteev wrote:

Maybe they're going to start ramping up broken black cards because Sorin is coming

I think it's more like black is no longer being **** when it comes to powerhouse cards.

tm00

Black is still getting low cost minions very slowly, however.

Gnarlroot trapper and sludge crawlers are the only two below 6 mana and sludge crawler got its cost reduced when they buffed the ingest cards.

Morphis

tm00 wrote:

Black is still getting low cost minions very slowly, however.

Gnarlroot trapper and sludge crawlers are the only two below 6 mana and sludge crawler got its cost reduced when they buffed the ingest cards.

7 mana 6/6 that heals 3 not good?
10 mana 5/5(at least) zombie defender not good?
Most creature cards below 8 mana are not worth playing anyways.
Also it would be absolutely unfair to give black creature efficiency on par with the best other colors have... Cause black can gain a LOT of tempo with super cheap removals.
Now it has access to at least 2 removals that cost 5 mana(3 removals IMO including ruinous path but some could not agree cause of awaken cost).

Black is getting in a very good spot this expansion...

tm00

That's why I said it is getting them very slowly.

below 10 mana you have :
mindwrack demon, from under the floorboard, priest of blood rites, and some 4/4 for 9.

Just pointing out what might be intended to be the black weakness since from 9 mana onward you need 3 matches or 2 matches including one of your main colors.

Morphis

I don't know....
I think I play cheap creatures only in my ally deck, to trigger rally effects.
In any other deck any creature under 8 mana better be absolutely insane or great synergy wise to deserve a spot.
The 3 creatures limit just do not allow the zoo like approach so every single creature need to have a good impact on the game.

So this "weakness" of black does not really come In play.