Locations
Well, spoiler season is upon us, my favorite time in Magic. Core sets in particular I always look forward to, so I can see what sweet cards from the past I get to dust off and battle with once again. While M12 does indeed have many awesome blasts from the past coming back, today I want to focus on some of the brand-new cards that have been thus far spoiled. The first two cards I want to look at are Sphinx of Uthuun and Rune-Scarred Demon:
Creature – Sphinx
Flying
When Sphinx of Uthuun enters the battlefield, reveal the top five cards of your library. An opponent separates those cards into two piles. Put one pile into your hand and the other into your graveyard.
5/6
Creature – Demon
Flying
When Rune-Scarred Demon enters the battlefield, search your library for a card, put it into your hand, then shuffle your library.
6/6
Here we have two 7-mana dragons that have an enter-the-battlefield ability that harkens back to a powerful card from Magic’s past, Fact or Fiction and Demonic Tutor, respectively. I wouldn’t be surprised if this proved to be a cycle, though if this proves to be the case, I’m really hoping Aegis Angel isn’t White’s representative. It seems that Wizards has gotten the memo that no 6-mana creature can be played so long as the Titans are in the format, so it looks like they’ve tried to make some crazy 7-drops between these two and Garruk’s Horde. The Sphinx and the Demon pass the all-important “do I still get value if they use a 2-mana removal spell to kill my giant monster” test. Cards like this get even better if you can cheat them into play somehow, and with the buzz on the street that Innistrad is going to be a graveyard-themed set, I wouldn’t be surprised to see some aggressively costed reanimation spells.
Speaking of graveyard strategies, have you seen Vengeful Pharaoh? I can totally see this ruining an aggro deck’s day, especially if you have some way of getting them in your graveyard early. Like, I dunno, Zombie Infestation or Fauna Shaman? If they have any First Strike creatures, Pharaoh gets even better, since he can eat a man before it hits you. Chandra’s Phoenix is another card that works well with the “dump cards in your own graveyard” plan, though it has a much lower impact on the game, and requires a lot more work to activate than say, Bloodghast. If they reprint Dread Return (how sick would that be?), then I can see Reanimator decks turning to the new Red haster, but don’t hold your breath. The new Jace goes a long way towards enabling a graveyard strategy, and is pretty good in control mirrors to boot. I can leave this task to better brewers than I, but I’m sure a deck exists that can abuse these cards.
As a brief aside on planeswalkers, it looks as though M12’s cast will be completely revamped. The old and tired Ajani Goldmane and Liliana Vess have been retired in favour of Zendikar heavy-hitters Gideon Jura and Sorin Markov. Jace Beleren has been beefed up to Jace, Memory Adept, and Chandra Nalar has been beefed down to Chandra, the Firebrand. The only one we haven’t seen yet is Garruk. Poor Green. Every other color has had multiple good planeswalkers. Other than Garruk, Green has had Nissa Revane and Sarkhan Vol. Barf. Green has been stuck with the same old Wildspeaker since 2007. Not that he’s bad, mind you. In fact, I have fond memories of grinding into Nationals with turn-two Fertile Ground, turn-three Garruk, untap two lands, Jace Beleren, draw a card, go. But it’s time for a change. I, for one, would like to see Green get a decent planeswalker for once.
I also want to touch on some cards that won’t be returning. While doing some sleuthing, I’ve determined that the following cards aren’t coming back in M12:
This of course isn’t a comprehensive list, but rather a list of cards whose absence is actually relevant for Standard. Baneslayer Angel hasn’t been good in a while, but in a world without Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Stoneforge Mystic, was poised to make a comeback. Squadron Hawk is the opposite, as the Angry Birds have dominated Standard for months now. They are much less threatening without Stoneforge Mystic acting as their slingshot, so they will have faded away long before they have rotated. Of the Leylines, only the White one was seeing play, but Leyline of the Void was going to be one of the best tools to fight any incoming graveyard decks. Now decks will have to make do with Surgical Extraction. Cultivate/Duress/Lightning Bolt have all been replaced with similar counterparts, so their loss won’t be felt as deeply as some of the others.
As of the time I’m writing this, there are still fifty cards left to be revealed, so there’s plenty of room for awesome new cards and sweet reprints. Personally, I can’t wait to dust off Solemn Simulacrum, and if I get to say “Carrier has arrived” while casting a Pentavus this year I’ll be pretty happy. As always, feel free to leave me a comment. If there’s anything in particular you want me to talk about in a future article, please post!
Until next time,
Nassim Ketita
