Eventide: Blue-Red

Finally back to Eventide! Today I'll be talking about Eventide's blue-red cards. Blue-red is a difficult color pair to place, because they don't really have much holding them together. In Guildpact, of course, they found unity in the Izzet guild and Replicate, but in Eventide they're just a bunch of weird monsters. However, each Eventide color pair does have one or two clans or creature types that shows up more than once. For blue-red, these are the Noggles - strange, donkey-faced gremlins that are basically pretty silly. Still, blue and red overlap in so few places that their combination ends up being very weird indeed.

Despite being odd, blue-red has plenty of good cards. Their Avatar (Dominus of Fealty) is a 4/4 flying that steals things. That is, "at the beginning of your upkeep, you may gain control of target permanent until end of turn. If you do, untap it and it gains haste until end of turn." Not bad. This guy can steal not only creatures, but ANY permanent. If you have some sort of sacrificing outlet (Greater Gargadon being a popular one in Standard), you can basically just destroy one of anything each turn, for free. Of course, you can also use what you steal, either to smash the enemy's face in with his own dudes, or to snag a particularly useful enchantment (like Mana Reflection or Thought Reflection).

What's more, his Liege (Mindwrack Liege) has good synergy with him. The blue-red liege is actually more expensive than the Avatar, costing 6 mana. However, his ability is quite good, and combines well with the Dominus. For 4 blue/red mana, he allows you to put a red or blue creature into play. This means you can play the Dominus (or other Mindwrack Lieges) more cheaply, AND with flash. Pop in a Dominus at the end of an opponent's turn, and you get to use him immediately. There are also plenty of other red and/or blue creatures in Eventide and Shadowmoor that cost more than 4 mana.

The blue-red aura (Clout of the Dominus) is pretty sweet. It gives haste to red and shroud to blue, all for 1 mana. On creatures like blue-red's Hatchling (Shrewd Hatchling), this can be a deadly combination, giving you what amounts to a 6/6 with haste and shroud for 5 mana, with the potential to become an 8/8 unblockable with shroud. Not an easy guy for your opponents to deal with.

And speaking of unblockable, blue-red has several other (mostly) unblockable creatures as well. The blue-red Mimic (Riverfall Mimic) becomes a 3/3 unblockable whenever you play a blue-red spell, and Noggle Bandit can only be blocked by defenders (of which there are only a few in Eventide).

There is also a fair amount of flying in blue-red. The 1/1 Stream Hopper is a great way to get damage through early (and even more so with Clout of the Dominus), and Call the Skybreaker is a great way to get damage through late. The Dominus also has flying.

Blue-red has a bunch of other cards that are quite interesting, some of which are throwbacks to old Izzet cards. Unnerving Assault is like Schismotivate, but spread across the whole team, and Nucklavee hearkens back to Izzet Chronarch. Others incorporate some of the few effects that blue and red share (as Mark Rosewater mentions in a recent article), such as swapping power and toughness (Crag Puca, Inside Out) or copying spells (Mirror Sheen). Noggle Bridgebreaker makes you bounce your own land, but this could even be useful with Retrace.

But one of the coolest blue-red cards in Eventide is Crackleburr. This stretchy lightning-fox is the only card with both a tap and an untap ability. If you have any two other blue-red creatures, they can hook up with Crackleburr, do the Wave, and start seriously messing with the enemy's creature line, as long as you have the mana. Just four mana is enough to deal 3 damage to each of two creatures, and bounce two more. I urge anyone playing Crackleburr to bring some friends along so that they can do the Wave with you whenever you use both of his abilities in a row. Not only will your opponent's creatures go flying, but he will be intimidated by your strange ritual. Maybe do the Electric Slide too.

There are, of course, a few blue-red cards that I didn't mention, but they're not especially cool. (I don't like the Hedge-Mages, for instance. I just don't like them.) But I'll show them to you anyway: Noggle Hedge-Mage, Noggle Ransacker, and Talonrend (who is technically blue but has a blue-red ability). Discarding cards at random? No thanks. Talonrend is actually pretty cool, but rather expensive.

Anyway, that's it for blue-red. Although they don't really have much unity, they do seem to enjoy being unblockable, and switching power and toughness, and they have a stretchy lightning-fox, which has gotta be worth a lot. Right? ...Right...?