One of my favorite novels of all time is Mitch Albom’s The Five People You Meet in Heaven. If you haven’t read it, I highly suggest you pick it up here. This article will be the first of a five part series paying homage to this book as applied to the Magic player. All people are primarily works of fiction.  Each week I will be writing about one of these five people and how they each are a small but critical piece to our vast community. Each week will be a different color representing a different person, this week will be blue.

BLUE, THE NEW MAGIC PLAYER

We are all interconnected in some way; our actions big or small can dramatically affect other people’s lives and experiences.

The artist hustle isn’t easy. Back in the day (way back), infamous goblin renderer Pete Venters produced some amazing MTG images for use on promotional products. Unfortunately, the gig never fully materialized, and he wasn’t paid, but the images are, luckily, here for us to enjoy. Venters is publishing these paintings for the first time to celebrate Magic’s twenty-year anniversary. For purchasing availability information, see the end of this article.

A lot of people seemed to enjoy (arguing against the merits of) my last Top 5 of Everything listicle, so let’s do that again. This time, we have The Top 5 of Everything Theros. Because, you know, lists!

Top 5 Most Flavorful Cards

If it has a Wikipedia entry, you’re on the right track . . .

5. Akroan Horse – Trojan Horse

4. Chained to the Rocks – Prometheus

3. Hundred-Handed One – Hekatonkheires (Seriously, that’s what they’re called.)

2. Colossus of Akros – Colossus of Rhodes

1. Rescue from the Underworld – This happened a few times, notablyTheseus and Hercules/Heracles made trips to the underworld.

Now that I've had a chance to play some Theros Standard, I've learned one key thing.

The mana really sucks.

I know that's not necessarily something new. A lot of people have discussed how the loss of an entire block is going to hurt the easygoing three-color mana bases we used to know and occasionally love. The thing is that I didn't exactly believe them. I thought that maybe they were being overdramatic. The mana couldn't be that bad.

It turns out that I was right. Sort of. The mana actually isn't that bad. You can assemble the right colors you need for your tricolor list. It's just pretty painful to do so. I mean that both literally and figuratively. Playing the full twelve shock lands means you will deal a lot of damage to yourself, but it's very hard to play a tricolor list without them. In the last Standard format, we could just play eight or ten shock lands and get away with it because of the buddy lands. Not anymore.

In fact, every three-color deck I have built thus far has struggled with the inherent pain in assembling your colors. Either you're a turn behind because you're playing all of your lands tapped or are putting your opponent a turn ahead by dealing six damage to yourself. Thragtusk isn't around anymore. Twenty life is like a drop of rain in the desert. It evaporates quickly.

In Theros Team Sealed, you are going to be faced with the decision of making small sacrifices in the power level of specific cards in your deck to enhance the power of other cards in your deck. Let's say you open a pool where you want to build a black deck with a bunch of black devotion cards. Maybe your pool has something like Erebos, God of the Dead; Mogis's Marauder; Abhorrent Overlord; a couple copies of Disciple of Phenax, and a couple Gray Merchant of Asphodels. While this would be a pretty rare and welcome occurrence in a normal Sealed tournament, this is much more common, although still very welcomed in Team Sealed.

Let's suppose you decide to pair your black with green in this instance. Towards the end of building, you are deciding whether or not to include a card like Felhide Minotaur. As a 2/3 for 2B, it's not a terrible card, but it's certainly nothing to write home about. In this case, you are probably better off including it than something like Nessian Courier. Nessian Courier is a better card—a 3/3 for the same price—however, sacrificing a single point of power to make all of your devotion cards better is almost certainly worth it.

This point is obviously somewhat extreme because the two cards are so close in power level, but I think that the cases of playing the card that favors your devotion over a better card of another color could be far more extreme than that. Just remember when you are evaluating cards in these situations to make sure you are weighing the cards as a piece of your entire deck rather than just card versus card.

Last weekend was GP Detroit and I finished in 16th place with Jund featuring Chandra, Pyromaster. The deck was also played by Reid Duke who finished in 2nd overall—1 card off the final list I played. This was the first time I was actually excited to play Modern and I loved my deck, I don’t think I would change a single card and I highly recommend it for anyone moving forward with Modern Jund. Here is what I played:

Scry is one of the best mechanics of all time. It rewards proper sequencing and deck construction, and it reduces flood and helps hit land drops.

Over time, repeated scrys will leave a pile of undesirables on the bottom of your deck, increasing the density of gas in your draws. With a single shuffle, all of that hard work comes undone.

Scry value goes up along with the variance in card quality. Combo decks love scry because they typically need one type of card to complete the combo while the rest of the deck becomes closer to useless. In Puresteel, I ran a critical mass of artifacts to ensure early metalcraft. After that point, my deck was still filled with those weak enablers like Flayer Husk and Accorder's Shield[. Preordain felt like a draw three because it bottomed all the air and dug me closer to the few cards that mattered.

The Value of Scry

In general, adding scry 2 to a card is worth about a mana. Consider these comparisons:

U: Draw a card (not worth it)

U: Draw a card, scry 2 (worth it)

R: Shock (kinda worth it)

1R: Shock, scry 2 (very worth it)

Based on this reasoning, Omenspeaker strikes me as not worth it. A format would have to be very aggressive for a one-mana 1/3 to be a worthwhile investment, but that is possible with the amount of playable 2/1s. In LSV’s set review he compares the card to Augur of Bolas and finds it wanting. Scry 2 is worse than a card, and the loss of [cad]Restoration Angel[/card] makes a big difference when evaluating enters-the-battlefield abilities.

At some point, a deck will want Omenspeaker, but the card won’t be a tournament staple like Augur was.

Sign in Blood saw a decent amount of play, and Read the Bones should be a solid role-player. Add a mana and scry 2 gives us the same power level but at a different spot on the curve. I expect to study many a skeletal fragment over the next season.