Inspired Aura

Posted on January 16, 2014

In this experiment, we investigate some of the previewed Born of the Gods cards and force our creatures to fall asleep and wake up over and over, taking advantage of their god-induced inspirations.

We’ve only seen a few cards with the inspired ability word so far, with one of them being a powerful effect on an expensive card and the other being a somewhat weak effect on a cheap card.

However, inspired isn’t really a new mechanic in Magic. There have been cards for years that trigger when they untap. Here are a couple.

The mechanic seems rife for abuse, especially the powerful effect of Arbiter of the Ideal. The first card that came to mind to take advantage of the effect was Pemmin's Aura, a card I already enjoy playing in various decks. Of course, untapping a creature for its inspired trigger isn’t quite as exciting when you can only naturally tap it once per turn anyway (by attacking, and thus exposing it to risk).

The next step is to come up with a card that will allow us to both tap and untap the creature so that we can perform the process repeatedly. Second Wind can do both, but it doesn’t actually let us do our thing any faster—Freed from the Real just does a better job and seems to be a great choice. For only , we can repeatedly reap the benefits of our inspired effects . . . even on non-ability-worded cards such as Fallowsage.

I would have left it there despite being a little disappointed at the mana-intensive requirement of the combo. Since I want to play white for this deck, our iterations could be greatly limited. However, I try to run some exhaustive Gatherer searches while deck-building, and I came across a card I’d never given much consideration to. Of course, that means I was really excited—I love finding perfect uses for normally-unused cards.

With Aura of Dominion, we can pay and tap any one of our creatures to untap the enchanted creature—which should be our inspired guy. What’s awesome is that there’s nothing restricting us from tapping that very same creature in order to untap it. Thus, for 1 mana, we can tap and then untap the enchanted creature, granting us “: Draw a card,” with Fallowsage, “: Gain 2 life,” with Oreskos Sun Guide, and “: Reveal something, put it into play, blah blah blah,” with Arbiter of the Ideal.

The possibilities don’t stop there, however. In a deck dedicated to inspired creatures, we may have more than one creature we want to tap and untap. So, for example, let’s imagine we can attack with our Arbiter because of its size and evasion but not with our Sun Guide because it would die to opposing blockers. We could attack with just the Arbiter, setting it up for inspired, but we will lose out on the 2 life. With Aura of Dominion, we could pay 1 and tap a Sun Guide after combat to untap our enchanted Arbiter, setting ourselves up for a 2-life gain after our next untap step—and then proceed with our normal combo outlined above.

These are a couple creatures that can play basic attacking-and-blocking roles while letting us gain immediate benefits from inspired creatures while granting them—or themselves—virtual vigilance. Reveille Squad is an odd Prophecy guy who can fire off a bunch of inspired effects . . . when our opponent attacks us. That grants all our guys virtual vigilance on his own, but only when we’re attacked, which our opponent will have complete control over. That means, if we’re ahead and able to attack, we probably won’t be counterattacked. In a close game in which we’re able to make an attack or two, the Squad will probably deter attacks, but when we’re behind, he probably won’t do too much unless we’re making risky attacks and hoping he’ll make up for it.

Dream's Grip is a sweet instant here—a pretty strict upgrade from Twiddle. It does the Aura of Dominion’s job all on its own, but only as a one-shot. It does, though, have the upside of being an instant-speed trick. With Fallowsage and no other tricks, Dream's Grip is just a 2-mana spell that says, “Draw a card.” With Oreskos Sun Guide, it just says, “Gain 2 life,” and with the Arbiter of the Ideal, it is an unreliable spell that may give us a relevant permanent at instant speed for 2 mana. We probably wouldn’t play the first two versions of this card, and the third version is unreliable. But as a spell that says, “Trigger target inspired ability,” we’ll have to see what else Born of the Gods brings.

However, that’s not the only way to use Dream's Grip. For example, imagine we attack with Fallowsage into an opposing 3/3. We can Dream's Grip, entwined, to untap the Fallowsage and tap the potential blocker. This lets us draw a card while getting in for 2 damage. And we even have the untapped 2/2 Fallowsage in case we need to chump-block. Also imagine we have just a tapped Arbiter of the Ideal and our opponent is about to attack with a couple 4/4s. At the beginning of combat, we can untap our Arbiter, gaining its trigger, and tap one of the 4/4s. That means our opponent probably won’t attack with the other 4/4—if we’d rather eat one of the 4/4s and don’t mind taking 4 damage, we can Dream's Grip instead after attackers are declared.

Wake Thrasher has a kind-of-inspired ability, though it triggers for every permanent we have that untaps. That means it combos well while we’re using Aura of Dominion with our other inspired stuff, and we can even just enjoy huge Thrashers the normal way with just normal untapping of our permanents.

Opposition is a powerful card that I’m reluctant to play normally, but it’s among the few cards that lets us tap any of our creatures whenever we want. Turnabout is another powerful card, though I’m less reluctant to play it normally—I love untapping huge numbers of permanents at once. Unfortunately, we do have to choose between untapping our lands or our creatures, but with a Wake Thrasher around, we can make it big all at once. With the one-of Opposition (in this list) and the one-of Turnabout, we have the potential for massive attacks. I kept them as one-ofs in this list, though, because that’s not really what the deck is about—but tapping and untapping, I guess, is a theme all its own.

This is also an exciting and sweet card for this deck. Reconnaissance is a perfect crutch for players who are normally scared to attack. If an unforeseen block occurs, if a combat trick messes up plans, or whatever else, Reconnaissance can just pull the creature back, ready to block. With any of our inspired 2/2s, we can attack and then immediately pull back, ignoring the defending player’s blockers situation and gaining the inspired trigger. However, there is an additional upside of Reconnaissance, which we’ll see in a moment.

Tromokratis is a pretty awesome new card. It’s . . . like . . . not super-great. But I really like it. It has hexproof a lot of the time, simulating its undersea existence. When it does emerge to attack the landlubbers, it loses its hexproof superpower, but as soon as it leaves combat, it delves back into the deeps. That means that, with Reconnaissance, we can feel pretty safe attacking with our massive Tromokratis. If anything happens, from Doom Blade to Ambush Viper to Aura Shards to Sunblast Angel off Scout's Warning, we can pull our Kraken back into the depths, out of combat, to regain its hexproof powers.

In this deck, Tromokratis has additional synergies beyond Reconnaissance. The Kraken’s second power is that it can’t be blocked except by all of the defending player’s creatures. That means that if the defending player controls a creature that can’t block for some reason—for example, if it’s tapped—our big guy will be unblockable. This means that either Opposition or Dream's Grip can make Tromokratis unblockable. And if you’re running Freed from the Real—instead of, or in addition to, Aura of Dominion—that can be used as well. Tapping just one of the defending player’s creatures does the trick.

"Inspired Aura"

Well, I hope you enjoyed this week’s inspired look at Born of the Gods and its sweet new Kraken. If you’ve ever wanted to tap and untap your Fallowsage over and over to draw a ton of cards—or put a ton of permanents onto the battlefield with an Arbiter that hasn’t even been released yet—this is the deck for you.

Andrew Wilson

@Silent7Seven

fissionessence at hotmail dot com