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...?
Showing posts with label blue. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blue. Show all posts
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Eventide: Green-Blue
As of yesterday's post, six more cards have already been spoiled, one of which is red-white. So before getting into today's discussion, I'd like to mention the newest red-white card briefly.
This card reinforces what I mentioned in the last post: red-white's emphasis on first and double strike makes power boosts especially useful for them. Well, this new card is an enchantment that does two (completely separate) things. First of all, when it comes into play, you can pay X and put that many 1/1 red-white Goblin Soldier tokens into play. This gives you more dudes that can get pumped by Balefire Liege, or just chump block. But the second ability of the enchantment is amazing: pay r/w, and ALL red and/or white creatures you control get first strike until end of turn. For simply one mana a turn, most or all of your guys get first strike; and if you have stuff to pump their power, like Balefire Liege and Nobilis of War, you could have all your attacking guys be 5/3 first strikers, or bigger. Man I love red-white.
Anyway, today I'll be talking about the green-blue cards in Eventide. Green-blue is another color combination I especially like, and the one that I feel reflects my personality the best. (I might truthfully be closer to white-blue in some ways, but I prefer to distance myself from white-blue's cold and controlling nature.) Anyway, on to the cards!
Green-blue is hard to place flavor-wise. In Dissension, they were biologists and their unusual creations, but in Eventide, they're just various weird dudes such as Selkies. Some of them are cool, though. Their Avatar is basically Aeon Chronicler, but with the card drawing while it's in play. That is, its power and toughness are equal to the number of cards in your hand, and it lets you draw an extra card each draw step. This means that you have to be careful of what you play to avoid making it too small, but even if its potential for combat isn't fully utilized, its card drawing is still extremely powerful. That said, I would certainly be happy to get this guy in a draft or a sealed deck and would probably try to play him if I could.
His corresponding aura isn't especially synergistic with him, but it is a great aura for evasion. It gives vigilance for green (somewhat off-color) and flying for blue, which can be great for any meaty dude. Or, a dude like Cold-Eyed Selkie, which is a green-blue Eventide creature that lets you draw a card for each point of combat damage it deals to players. It's a 1/1 with Islandwalk for 3 mana, but if you give it +2/+2, flying, and vigilance, it can fairly reliably get 3 points of damage through AND let you draw THREE CARDS whenever it connects. This, in turn, pumps your Overbeing (the Avatar), allowing for significant quantities of ownage. So although the aura doesn't directly synergize with the Overbeing, it certainly can do so indirectly.
The green-blue Liege is pretty awesome too. It's a 4/4 for 5 mana, which on its own isn't even that bad, but it pumps all your other blue and green creatures, and allows you to UNTAP ALL OF THEM DURING OTHER PLAYERS' UPKEEPS. This means, essentially, that all your green and blue creatures have vigilance. Furthermore, they can use tap abilities twice as often. There aren't many green-blue creatures in Eventide with tap abilities (in fact, there aren't any, yet), but there are certainly green ones and blue ones, as well as those in Shadowmoor (such as Presence of Gond). Even so, just a simple equivalent of vigilance is great, especially for colors that don't usually have it. A tiny bit redundant with the aura, but it's not that big of a deal.
Now that I've covered the three main cycles (there are others - the Hedge-Mages, the Hatchlings, the Mimics - but they're not nearly as unique or interesting), there are several other green-blue cards that are definitely worth talking about. One extremely cool one is Gilder Bairn. He lets the untap symbol creep into green; by paying 2 and a green or blue and untapping him, he basically doubles the number of every counter of every type on target permanent. That's ANY type of counter: +1/+1, -1/-1, charge, age...what have you. He can make a Goblin Bomb go off many turns sooner; he can make your Solarion ridiculously huge; he can chip away at anyone with a -1/-1 counter; basically, he is super great. There's a green card in Eventide that would be ridiculously powerful with him, but it has shroud, so he can't target it. But that's for later.
Anyway, since there are plenty of -1/-1 counters in the Shadowmoor block, this guy will probably be used mostly for accelerated removal in Limited, but his applications in other formats will surely see much wider use. The number of possible hilarious combo decks with Gilder Bairn is quite large indeed. But enough about this guy. He's cool and all, but not as cool as Spitting Image.
Spitting Image does something green-blue did a lot in Dissension: make dudes into copies of dudes. However, this one doesn't just reshape other dudes, it CLONES them. Spitting Image is a green-blue sorcery for 6 mana (2 colored) that allows you to put a token into play that's a copy of target creature. This has many applications. You can clone dudes that are super cool to make them even cooler, like Primalcrux. You can kill any legendary creature. You can reuse a guy with a neat comes-into-play ability. There are lots of things. But best of all: IT HAS RETRACE. For the uninitiated, retrace allows you to replay the card from your graveyard by discarding a land in addition to paying its mana cost. By the time you have 6 mana, it's reasonable to imagine you might have some extra land in your hand that you don't especially need; so what better use than to make ANOTHER Primalcrux? Retrace isn't one of my favorite mechanics, but on expensive cards, it is nothing to sneeze at.
There's also a card that does something recognizably green-blue: a 3-mana instant that turns a dude into a 1/1 Snake with no abilities until end of turn, and you draw a card. Always useful, especially with the proliferation of abilities in Eventide, and rather dangerous ones at that. There's also a card that gives all your guys flying and grounds all the opponent's guys; a 2/1 faerie that doesn't fly but can become a 3/4 flying as long as your enemy has a creature with flying; a 6-mana enchantment that puts tokens into play whenever you play a green or blue spell; and one more card that has yet to be spoiled.
So in conclusion, although green-blue isn't especially aggressive or focused, it has some reasonably good evasion, some neat combat tricks, and a slew of unusual or surprising abilities that will trip up your opponents at worst, and overwhelm them at best. I can say that I am proud to have these guys representing me and my personality, and I would be equally proud to draft them. There are enough good and synergistic green cards in Eventide (like Primalcrux, and also Primalcrux, oh and did I mention Primalcrux?) that I might even recommend using many of these green-blue cards in a mono-green deck. For Primalcrux. Man that guy is awesome. But I'll talk about him another time. That's all for now!
This card reinforces what I mentioned in the last post: red-white's emphasis on first and double strike makes power boosts especially useful for them. Well, this new card is an enchantment that does two (completely separate) things. First of all, when it comes into play, you can pay X and put that many 1/1 red-white Goblin Soldier tokens into play. This gives you more dudes that can get pumped by Balefire Liege, or just chump block. But the second ability of the enchantment is amazing: pay r/w, and ALL red and/or white creatures you control get first strike until end of turn. For simply one mana a turn, most or all of your guys get first strike; and if you have stuff to pump their power, like Balefire Liege and Nobilis of War, you could have all your attacking guys be 5/3 first strikers, or bigger. Man I love red-white.
Anyway, today I'll be talking about the green-blue cards in Eventide. Green-blue is another color combination I especially like, and the one that I feel reflects my personality the best. (I might truthfully be closer to white-blue in some ways, but I prefer to distance myself from white-blue's cold and controlling nature.) Anyway, on to the cards!
Green-blue is hard to place flavor-wise. In Dissension, they were biologists and their unusual creations, but in Eventide, they're just various weird dudes such as Selkies. Some of them are cool, though. Their Avatar is basically Aeon Chronicler, but with the card drawing while it's in play. That is, its power and toughness are equal to the number of cards in your hand, and it lets you draw an extra card each draw step. This means that you have to be careful of what you play to avoid making it too small, but even if its potential for combat isn't fully utilized, its card drawing is still extremely powerful. That said, I would certainly be happy to get this guy in a draft or a sealed deck and would probably try to play him if I could.
His corresponding aura isn't especially synergistic with him, but it is a great aura for evasion. It gives vigilance for green (somewhat off-color) and flying for blue, which can be great for any meaty dude. Or, a dude like Cold-Eyed Selkie, which is a green-blue Eventide creature that lets you draw a card for each point of combat damage it deals to players. It's a 1/1 with Islandwalk for 3 mana, but if you give it +2/+2, flying, and vigilance, it can fairly reliably get 3 points of damage through AND let you draw THREE CARDS whenever it connects. This, in turn, pumps your Overbeing (the Avatar), allowing for significant quantities of ownage. So although the aura doesn't directly synergize with the Overbeing, it certainly can do so indirectly.
The green-blue Liege is pretty awesome too. It's a 4/4 for 5 mana, which on its own isn't even that bad, but it pumps all your other blue and green creatures, and allows you to UNTAP ALL OF THEM DURING OTHER PLAYERS' UPKEEPS. This means, essentially, that all your green and blue creatures have vigilance. Furthermore, they can use tap abilities twice as often. There aren't many green-blue creatures in Eventide with tap abilities (in fact, there aren't any, yet), but there are certainly green ones and blue ones, as well as those in Shadowmoor (such as Presence of Gond). Even so, just a simple equivalent of vigilance is great, especially for colors that don't usually have it. A tiny bit redundant with the aura, but it's not that big of a deal.
Now that I've covered the three main cycles (there are others - the Hedge-Mages, the Hatchlings, the Mimics - but they're not nearly as unique or interesting), there are several other green-blue cards that are definitely worth talking about. One extremely cool one is Gilder Bairn. He lets the untap symbol creep into green; by paying 2 and a green or blue and untapping him, he basically doubles the number of every counter of every type on target permanent. That's ANY type of counter: +1/+1, -1/-1, charge, age...what have you. He can make a Goblin Bomb go off many turns sooner; he can make your Solarion ridiculously huge; he can chip away at anyone with a -1/-1 counter; basically, he is super great. There's a green card in Eventide that would be ridiculously powerful with him, but it has shroud, so he can't target it. But that's for later.
Anyway, since there are plenty of -1/-1 counters in the Shadowmoor block, this guy will probably be used mostly for accelerated removal in Limited, but his applications in other formats will surely see much wider use. The number of possible hilarious combo decks with Gilder Bairn is quite large indeed. But enough about this guy. He's cool and all, but not as cool as Spitting Image.
Spitting Image does something green-blue did a lot in Dissension: make dudes into copies of dudes. However, this one doesn't just reshape other dudes, it CLONES them. Spitting Image is a green-blue sorcery for 6 mana (2 colored) that allows you to put a token into play that's a copy of target creature. This has many applications. You can clone dudes that are super cool to make them even cooler, like Primalcrux. You can kill any legendary creature. You can reuse a guy with a neat comes-into-play ability. There are lots of things. But best of all: IT HAS RETRACE. For the uninitiated, retrace allows you to replay the card from your graveyard by discarding a land in addition to paying its mana cost. By the time you have 6 mana, it's reasonable to imagine you might have some extra land in your hand that you don't especially need; so what better use than to make ANOTHER Primalcrux? Retrace isn't one of my favorite mechanics, but on expensive cards, it is nothing to sneeze at.
There's also a card that does something recognizably green-blue: a 3-mana instant that turns a dude into a 1/1 Snake with no abilities until end of turn, and you draw a card. Always useful, especially with the proliferation of abilities in Eventide, and rather dangerous ones at that. There's also a card that gives all your guys flying and grounds all the opponent's guys; a 2/1 faerie that doesn't fly but can become a 3/4 flying as long as your enemy has a creature with flying; a 6-mana enchantment that puts tokens into play whenever you play a green or blue spell; and one more card that has yet to be spoiled.
So in conclusion, although green-blue isn't especially aggressive or focused, it has some reasonably good evasion, some neat combat tricks, and a slew of unusual or surprising abilities that will trip up your opponents at worst, and overwhelm them at best. I can say that I am proud to have these guys representing me and my personality, and I would be equally proud to draft them. There are enough good and synergistic green cards in Eventide (like Primalcrux, and also Primalcrux, oh and did I mention Primalcrux?) that I might even recommend using many of these green-blue cards in a mono-green deck. For Primalcrux. Man that guy is awesome. But I'll talk about him another time. That's all for now!
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