[MTG] Ixalan
Posted: Thu Aug 31, 2017 2:53 pm
So Ixalan is coming, the prerelease is in a bit over two weeks. And while it is hilarious that the set with pirates got piratted, we now see some high quality images and can start discussing combo potentials. We have not seen enough of the set to say whether any of the tribal decks will be good, and we haven't seen enough of the commons to say what the draft archetypes are going to look like. But as more of the set gets spoiled, we can have those conversations as well.
Let's hop in to discussing some of the madness. Not actual Madness, because Innistrad rotates when Ixalan comes out. But a set that promises Aztecs, Pirates, Dinosaurs, Atlanteans, and Vampire Conquistadors, there's plenty of just crazy stuff to go around.
OK, that's insane. The first thing is that if you play Hostage Taker on an empty board, the game ends in a draw because it cannot proceed to the next state as she is forced to take herself hostage whenever she enters play and forced to release herself whenever she leaves play. That self-interaction alone is probably going to force an errata, banning, or rules change. Because I cannot imagine anyone being happy with people being able to force a draw at will on the Pro-Tour with a one-card combo.
But even when you have other available hostages, she is still allowed to take herself hostage an unlimited number of times before you choose another valid target. And that means that she can generate an unlimited number of Enter The Battlefield triggers if you for some reason care about such things.
Oh, right. So there's a deck right now called Four Color Energy that generates energy and runs it through Whirler Virtuosos, Long Tusk Cubs, or Bristling Hydras to win the game. Hostage Taker slides right into that as a potential Turn 4 infinite loop. And her fail case is still that she's a Banisher Priest that can be kicked as a Dominate.
There are several ways for Pirates to make Treasure Tokens. And there are a few payoffs to using Treasure in various ways. Treasure Tokens do exactly the thing that Gold tokens did in Theros, and I don't know why they have a different name. It would shock me severely if there weren't more treasure generators and payoffs that haven't been released yet, and there are doubtless some intriguing things you can do with some of them. There are already a few ways to go infinite with Treasure as Annointed Procession doubles the amount of treasure you get whenever you get treasure and two Annointed Processions quadruple it and there is at least one card that simply lets you spend mana to make treasure which could potentially give you more mana out than you put in, repeat as necessary. But so far that seems strictly worse than the Eldrazi Displacer + Scions scams that are rotating out, and Jeskai Panharmonicon is a Tier 2 fringe deck at the moment.
The key I think is not going infinite in any particular way, but in generating a buttload of treasure through a variety of means and just having it around. That allows two things: you can either spend that treasure to ramp out ridiculous haymakers, or you can leave it around in piles to win the game with Mechanized Production.
Mechanized Production is a weird win condition where if you begin your turn with 8 artifacts that have the same name you win on the spot. But getting to 8 Treasure Token Artifacts in blue is looking to be trivial. The giant haymaker cards plan seems a little more dubious because the 10-cost game winning Ulamog is rotating out and I don't know that anything can fill his flooby flooby shoes.
So the big new Dinosaur mechanic is Enrage. Every time your Dinosaur takes damage, whether it be a single ping or a lethal blow, it does its Enrage effect. Obviously Ripaw Raptor is bonkers in that it's an on-curve beater that two-for-ones your opponent whenever it trades with an enemy creature or gets killed by a damage spell. But this is also a world with Walking Ballista.
So if you want to trigger your dinosaurs a lot of times, you can. And yes, there's a way to go infinite with that.
EDIT: Now available in English.
The translation of that Dinosaur is apparently when its enrage triggers, all of your other creatures get a +1/+1 counter. so if you spend a +1/+1 counter from your Ballista to shoot the Ankylosaur you get the +1/+1 counter back. You can do it 4 times on each player's turn without killing the Ankylosaur and get +8/+8 on all your other creatures each round of turns. +1/+1 synergies all stack of course, and if you for some reason have two Ankylosaurs in play you go inifinite and win on the spot. But if you have any board presence at all, it's pretty hard to imagine a scenario where you don't win very quickly.
So White/Black Vampires is supposed to be a thing. I don't know if it'll work as intended because we haven't seen all the tribal bits yet. But some of the pieces look like they'd work really well in Monument.
The Blue/White version of Monument looks like it's dead. The spirits that go in that deck are gone after rotation. The White/Colorless version is dead too, because the Eldrazi Displacer goes away. And it's hard to say if any version of the deck can survive the rotation of Hanweir Militia Captain and Westvale Abbey - since the cultists are the current premier payoff for going wide. But the core of the deck is still Monument, Aviary Mechanic, and Dusk to Dawn. You have the ability to make ridiculous amounts of 1/1 tokens and you have one sided board wipes that can also be played from the graveyard to refill your hand after your opponent board wipes you back. That stuff all still works.
And it looks like Black is providing some pretty juicy tech for go-wide decks. Certainly the ability to follow up an opponent's boardwipe with an 8/8 Flash for 2 mana is quite a bit of reach. You also have a quite odd secondary plan:
In addition to being playable as a multi-target Path to Exile that doesn't even target and gets rid of gods and boggles with ease - it can also be played on yourself. This means that if you have six Warrior Tokens but can't get through to your opponent's face, you can attack with however many you want, have them take up farming before blocks, and put all the rest of the basic lands from your deck into play. If you're doing to the Aviary Mechanic cycling trick to get X 1/1 Warriors every turn, that can help grind things out. But if for some reason you needed to Ramp to a 5 color, 14 mana spell that would be easy enough to do on turn 5 or 6.
-Username17
Let's hop in to discussing some of the madness. Not actual Madness, because Innistrad rotates when Ixalan comes out. But a set that promises Aztecs, Pirates, Dinosaurs, Atlanteans, and Vampire Conquistadors, there's plenty of just crazy stuff to go around.
OK, that's insane. The first thing is that if you play Hostage Taker on an empty board, the game ends in a draw because it cannot proceed to the next state as she is forced to take herself hostage whenever she enters play and forced to release herself whenever she leaves play. That self-interaction alone is probably going to force an errata, banning, or rules change. Because I cannot imagine anyone being happy with people being able to force a draw at will on the Pro-Tour with a one-card combo.
But even when you have other available hostages, she is still allowed to take herself hostage an unlimited number of times before you choose another valid target. And that means that she can generate an unlimited number of Enter The Battlefield triggers if you for some reason care about such things.
- EDIT: This was so insane that WotC errataed the card with almost a month to go. Now it's "just" a Banisher Priest where you can buy the Exiled creature onto your side and keep the creature after they kill the hostage taker. Expensive, but amazeballs in power level. Probably wants to live in a Sultai Ramp deck, but will also get boarded in by Blue/Black control decks of all flavors because if your opponent boards out the small creature removal it's Cast Out with upside and more upside.
Oh, right. So there's a deck right now called Four Color Energy that generates energy and runs it through Whirler Virtuosos, Long Tusk Cubs, or Bristling Hydras to win the game. Hostage Taker slides right into that as a potential Turn 4 infinite loop. And her fail case is still that she's a Banisher Priest that can be kicked as a Dominate.
There are several ways for Pirates to make Treasure Tokens. And there are a few payoffs to using Treasure in various ways. Treasure Tokens do exactly the thing that Gold tokens did in Theros, and I don't know why they have a different name. It would shock me severely if there weren't more treasure generators and payoffs that haven't been released yet, and there are doubtless some intriguing things you can do with some of them. There are already a few ways to go infinite with Treasure as Annointed Procession doubles the amount of treasure you get whenever you get treasure and two Annointed Processions quadruple it and there is at least one card that simply lets you spend mana to make treasure which could potentially give you more mana out than you put in, repeat as necessary. But so far that seems strictly worse than the Eldrazi Displacer + Scions scams that are rotating out, and Jeskai Panharmonicon is a Tier 2 fringe deck at the moment.
The key I think is not going infinite in any particular way, but in generating a buttload of treasure through a variety of means and just having it around. That allows two things: you can either spend that treasure to ramp out ridiculous haymakers, or you can leave it around in piles to win the game with Mechanized Production.
Mechanized Production is a weird win condition where if you begin your turn with 8 artifacts that have the same name you win on the spot. But getting to 8 Treasure Token Artifacts in blue is looking to be trivial. The giant haymaker cards plan seems a little more dubious because the 10-cost game winning Ulamog is rotating out and I don't know that anything can fill his flooby flooby shoes.
So the big new Dinosaur mechanic is Enrage. Every time your Dinosaur takes damage, whether it be a single ping or a lethal blow, it does its Enrage effect. Obviously Ripaw Raptor is bonkers in that it's an on-curve beater that two-for-ones your opponent whenever it trades with an enemy creature or gets killed by a damage spell. But this is also a world with Walking Ballista.
So if you want to trigger your dinosaurs a lot of times, you can. And yes, there's a way to go infinite with that.
EDIT: Now available in English.
The translation of that Dinosaur is apparently when its enrage triggers, all of your other creatures get a +1/+1 counter. so if you spend a +1/+1 counter from your Ballista to shoot the Ankylosaur you get the +1/+1 counter back. You can do it 4 times on each player's turn without killing the Ankylosaur and get +8/+8 on all your other creatures each round of turns. +1/+1 synergies all stack of course, and if you for some reason have two Ankylosaurs in play you go inifinite and win on the spot. But if you have any board presence at all, it's pretty hard to imagine a scenario where you don't win very quickly.
So White/Black Vampires is supposed to be a thing. I don't know if it'll work as intended because we haven't seen all the tribal bits yet. But some of the pieces look like they'd work really well in Monument.
The Blue/White version of Monument looks like it's dead. The spirits that go in that deck are gone after rotation. The White/Colorless version is dead too, because the Eldrazi Displacer goes away. And it's hard to say if any version of the deck can survive the rotation of Hanweir Militia Captain and Westvale Abbey - since the cultists are the current premier payoff for going wide. But the core of the deck is still Monument, Aviary Mechanic, and Dusk to Dawn. You have the ability to make ridiculous amounts of 1/1 tokens and you have one sided board wipes that can also be played from the graveyard to refill your hand after your opponent board wipes you back. That stuff all still works.
And it looks like Black is providing some pretty juicy tech for go-wide decks. Certainly the ability to follow up an opponent's boardwipe with an 8/8 Flash for 2 mana is quite a bit of reach. You also have a quite odd secondary plan:
In addition to being playable as a multi-target Path to Exile that doesn't even target and gets rid of gods and boggles with ease - it can also be played on yourself. This means that if you have six Warrior Tokens but can't get through to your opponent's face, you can attack with however many you want, have them take up farming before blocks, and put all the rest of the basic lands from your deck into play. If you're doing to the Aviary Mechanic cycling trick to get X 1/1 Warriors every turn, that can help grind things out. But if for some reason you needed to Ramp to a 5 color, 14 mana spell that would be easy enough to do on turn 5 or 6.
-Username17
