Category: Blog

New M12 Planeswalkers

We finally have pictures of all three of the new Planeswalkers in M12. It’s been a long time coming and we’ve had a fair amount of speculation, especially following our spoiling of the new art for all three, but now we’ve got official confirmation from Wizards on the text for all three upgrades to our old favorites.

First, we have the new Jace. This is Jace 3.0, or Jace, Memory Adept. We showed you this card last week, but for those of you who haven’t seen him yet, leave us a comment and let us know what you think.

Next we have Chandra, The Firebrand, a fantastic new brew for Chandra, one of my favorite planeswalkers. DJ wrote a great article on her last Friday, be sure to check it out.

And finally, the moment you’ve all been waiting for. We finally have Garruk 3.0. He’s bigger and badder than ever, still a beast-maker, but also a pretty beastly source of card advantage – something Green often struggles with.

I know that this post is brief and to the point, but we want to know what YOU think. Comment to let us which planeswalker you’re looking forward to in M12 and why. Then, check out our podcast for our in-depth analysis of the planescape of M12.

July 3, 2011
Casual Friday – Feel the Heat

Planeswalkers are some of the coolest additions to Magic and each new set comes with a few of these game-changing cards. We have come a long way since they were first introduced in Lorwyn. While those first five planeswalkers were reused in multiple sets, it seems their time is over. The release of M12 is just weeks away and none of those old cards are in it. Ajani and Liliana will be replaced with Gideon Jura and Sorin Markov from the Zendikar block. The remaining planeswalkers, however, are getting brand new cards that show off more of their abilities. The latest planeswalker revealed for the new set looks to be one of my favorites for M12: Chandra, the Firebrand. M12 won’t be released for a while yet, but I’m not wasting any time thinking of awesome ways to make use of the new Chandra.

The mana cost of Chandra, the Firebrand is one of the most awesome things about this card. It only costs 4 mana first of all, so she can get out on the field pretty quickly. She also only costs 1 red mana, so it is pretty easy to play around with colors in a deck that is built around Chandra. In other colors and even a little in red it is very easy to get Chandra out early. With a Dark Ritual she can be ready to ping opponents as early as turn two!

The pinging is pretty great as a first ability. It’s much improved over the earlier Chandra, allowing you to deal damage to creatures as well. Llanowar Elves and Lotus Cobras are no match for red burn, but who wants to waste a burn spell on such creatures? Chandra easily takes them out one-by-one, slowly taking down a deck with a lot of creatures for mana ramp. Also like any proper planeswalker card in the core set, this abilities works well with any of her other themed cards. It can pump up Chandra’s Spitfire and bring back Chandra’s Phoenix.

Chandra’s second ability is definitely where casual players can get the most fun. 2 counters lets you copy the next instant or sorcery you cast. This ability can double any instant or sorcery, it doesn’t even have to be red! Although even in red there are a ton of awesome ways to make use of this ability. A simple Lightning Bolt becomes 6 damage, but if it were a volt charge that’s 6 damage plus 2 counters on Chandra as well as any other things worth proliferating. For even more damage you can add a Fire Servant. With that out, something as simple as a Goblin Grenade can end the game! Geosurge copied can give you 14 mana, plenty to cast some huge creature spells, perhaps Emrakul? In terms of outright removal, the most fun card for this has to be Chaos Warp. You can take out some threats on your opponent’s side of the board or hope to polymorph one of your own permanents into some kind of game-ending dragon.

It’s possible to play around with Chandra’s second ability forever, but when it comes time to end the game, her ultimate can get the job done in any format. For 6 counters you can deal 6 damage to 6 different players/creatures. The best part about this new ultimate is that it is more useful in multiplayer games. You aren’t just picking on one person, dealing 10 damage to everything they own. It’s less damage, sure, but it can reach everywhere. You can deal some damage to opponents directly, maybe taking some out of the game, while dealing some other threats. 6 damage should be able to take out all but the biggest creatures in green, and you would still have mana open for some extra burn.

Red burn is going to have yet another great card to show opponents why it’s called Red Deck Wins. Chandra looks like she will be great for both standard competitive decks as well as some imaginative casual decks that want cool effects and big spells. She is certainly my favorite planeswalker of the new set. What do you think of the newest version of Chandra?

July 1, 2011
Top Dorks – You Should Hear the Lunchroom

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June 28, 2011
6/26/11 Podcast – Jace, M12 Spoilers, Graveborn, and Battlepacks!

The guys from The Casual Planeswalker talk about Jace, M12 Spoilers, and more in this weeks Podcast!

Today’s Lineup

Check out Jace Spoiler and our other M12 Spoilers

Kite Shield

Swiftfoot Boots

Spirit Mantle

Onyx Mage

Reassembling Skeleton

Phantasmal Bear

Phantasmal Dragon

pongify

turn to frog

unsummon

propaganda

Ghave Killer Combo Article

M12 spoilers

Graveborn Premium Deck

Battle Packs

Crew:

Zach Good
Brad Osborne
Joshua Fassett
Leroy Phipps
DJ Clark

June 27, 2011
In Command – New 2-color Commanders

The New Commander decks have given us 51 new cards spread across five different Commander decks with 3 different 3-color commanders. These decks also had one new 2-color legendary creature each with some cool new abilities. These creatures also make great commanders, if you take the time to make a deck that only includes their two colors. Here are some suggestions on how to create a fun deck using some of these new commanders.

Skullbriar, The Walking Grave – When I first saw this guy, I thought he would make a great commander. He is just going to keep getting stronger every time you play him because as long as you keep giving him those +1/+1 counters he is going to be crushing your opponent. He’s cheap and has haste so you can get him out on turn 2 and swing, immediately turning him into a 2/2. You’re opponent may not have any way to defend against Skullbriar for a few turns which just allows him to get bigger. Even if he does die at some point that’s no problem because he just keeps all those counters! Hopefully by the time he is destroyed then he will be worth the extra 2 mana needed to play him again.

If you build a deck around Skullbriar, it is only natural that the goal should be to win by dealing 21 damage with him to your opponent. Within green and black, the only colors available to you, there are plenty of ways to boost his power or give him abilities to keep applying the hurt. Brawn
Brawn, from his original Commander pre-con comes to mind as an easy way to give him trample along with Buried Alive
Buried Alive to bring it straight to the graveyard. Power Matrix
Power Matrix looks like a pretty neat card to add here, allowing you to give any creature +1/+1, trample, flying, and first strike.

A great card to give trample would be Cytospawn Shambler
Cytospawn Shambler. As a 6/6 he’s a pretty big creature and you can easily give Skullbriar trample with its ability. The coolest thing about this creature is that it has graft. If you’re ever playing Skullbriar again, you can move a counter from the shambler to him. Creatures with modular would also be a great addition to a deck with Skullbriar. You’re free to leave them as blockers or sacrifice them for other abilities then move their counters onto Skullbriar.

With a focus on Skullbriar being the only creature attacking, there isn’t much use for any others. With something like Attrition
Attrition, you can sacrifice your useless creatures to get rid of some on your opponent’s side of the field. It also makes mass removal less of a problem if you only have to worry about one creature. If you equip him with something like Darksteel Plate
Darksteel Plate, all you have to worry about is getting him to hit your opponent’s life. An easy way to do that is to simply have artifacts like Whispersilk Cloak
Whispersilk Cloak that make him unblockable. With just a couple cards out you can begin racking up commander damage very quickly.

Edric, Spymaster of Trest – I’m excited to have such a political creature as a commander. As long as he is out there then there is some major incentive for your opponents to attack each other rather than yourself. Why not continue that trend and try to get everyone at each other’s throats rather than against you. Heartwood Storyteller
Heartwood Storyteller seems like another crazy card to use with Edric, giving your opponents more cards if they like when you play a spell and, of course, giving yourself cards when anyone else plays a spell. With so many cards being drawn by everyone, Multani, Maro-Sorcerer
Multani, Maro-Sorcerer can get really powerful. Cultural Exchange
Cool Card is also a great political card allowing you to exchange creatures between any players, or just take stuff for yourself. To add some control that would pit opponents against each other Zur’s Weirding
Zur’s Weirding can allow any player force another not to draw.

If your opponents start to get the idea that you aren’t their best friend, there should be plenty of control to make sure they regret going against you. Propaganda
Propaganda from the Political Puppets deck will ensure that your opponents have to pay to attack you. From that deck there are also great blockers including Guard Gomazoa
Guard Gomazoa and Fog Bank
Fog Bank. There are also a number of spells like Snakeform
Snakeform and Pongify
Pongify to take care of any threats your opponents control by turning them into harmless little snakes or monkeys.

Those creatures should be no problem for the big green guys that you should include in the deck. There are plenty of creatures in blue and green that have power and toughness equal to the number of cards in your hand and hopefully you will have plenty. Overbeing of Myth
Overbeing of Myth and Aeon Chronicler
Aeon Chronicler are also able to get you even more cards every turn! If you can get rid of your maximum hand size of 7, or perhaps use Praetor’s Counsel
Praetor’s Counsel, these guys can be huge.

So here are a few suggestions for two of the little new commanders. Next week I’ll have some ideas for the other 3. What do you think of the 2-color legendary guys? Are they good enough to have a deck built around them?

June 26, 2011
Killer Combo – “Join Them, Beat Them”

Throughout this week we’ve been giving you Killer Combos that directly involve the primary commanders of the five new pre-constructed decks which debuted last weekend. We’re continuing that trend today with Zedruu the Greathearted, commander of the “Political Puppets” deck. We’ll finish up tomorrow with “Devour for Power”‘s The Mimeoplasm.

If you haven’t already, check out our review of “Political Puppets”, then you’ll see exactly what Zedruu is up to and why.

“Political Puppets”, as we mentioned in our podcast this week, lived up to its name at the Commander Event. The goal of this deck is to lull your opponents into a false sense of security while you secure yourself a superior board position, ensure that you are gaining life and drawing cards at an absurd rate, and draw one of your game-ending cards, like Insurrection
Insurrection.

While Zedruu is a great way to accomplish this goal, Bazaar Trader is going to get you there even faster. While the goblin appears to do almost precisely the same thing as Zedruu (though Zedruu can hand off ALL permanents and do so multiple times per turn) there is one key difference between the two. Bazaar Trader’s ability reads “target player”, while Zedruu’s specifies “target opponent”.

This means that if you’ve taken control of a creature via Dominus of Fealty (or for any other reason), Bazaar Trader gives you the option of “regifting it” to yourself. For example, if you’ve grabbed someone’s Avatar of Woe
Avatar of Woe with the Dominus, Bazaar Trader’s can target YOU as the player and the Avatar of Woe as the creature and give you the avatar permanently (or at least indefinitely).

So, not only does Bazaar Trader speed up what Zedruu already does, but he’ll give you a way to make creatures you’ve borrowed for a turn into creatures you control for the duration of the game.

June 24, 2011
Casual Friday – The Touch

With the banning of Jace, The Mind Sculptor
Jace, The Mind Sculptor and Stoneforge Mystic
Stoneforge Mystic in the next week the Standard environment is going to be going through a lot of changes. While I don’t play a lot of Standard Constructed decks, I may be tempted to experiment with some new decks and try them at FNM. One card I was really interested in when I saw it was Caress of Phyrexia. It’s a bit on the expensive side and can be a bit dangerous, but achieving compleation was never an easy process. There are a few tricks that can turn many of its drawbacks into advantages for you!

The most noticeable thing about this card is that it is very similar to Sign in Blood
Sign in Blood with both card draw and loss of life. These cards can also be used on any player in order to give you cards or to hurt your opponent. Caress of Phyrexia gives an opponent 3 poison counters, nearly a third of their life! This is clearly a card that belongs in an Infect deck.

The goal is simple for a card like this: get your opponent to 7 poison counters, then surprise them with this card! This is one of the few non-creature cards that adds poison counters directly. It can get the last few counters on your opponent if they’ve set up a wall of blockers that your Infect creatures can’t get around. With some early Plague Stingers
Plague Stinger and Glistener Elves
Glistener Elf it should be pretty easy to get up to 7 counters by turn 5 when you can play Caress of Phyrexia for the win.

Of course, if you aren’t able to finish your opponent, they’re up three cards. Why not use it on yourself? Those three poison counters are the most dangerous part about this card. If you’re up against an Infect deck then there are very few times when adding some more counters to help them out would be beneficial to you, even if it gets you 3 cards. With that it mind I think Caress of Phyrexia would be a pretty good sideboard card to use on yourself if your opponent is not playing Infect.

For those that would like to try a deck built around Caress of Phyrexia, there are a lot of neat combos to give yourself the upper hand in any situation with this card. A great card to use with Caress of Phyrexia is Consecrated Sphinx which will ensure that you wind up with card advantage even if you use this card on your opponent. They may be drawing the 3 cards with the associated drawbacks, but with the sphinx in play you’re getting 6 cards for yourself! Adding blue would also allow you to use Blighted Agent
Blighted Agent to get in some unblockable poison-counter generation. Regardless of what deck you’re up against, the Agent is a ten-turn clock – they need to have a response.

While getting 6 cards is great for you, it may not be worth it if you’re giving cards to your opponent. The solution to this problem is easy: Nobody draws cards! When I first saw Caress of Phyrexia I was really excited for its interaction with Omen Machine. Omen Machine does not allow anyone to draw, ever. If you use Caress of Phyrexia on your opponent then they are stuck with losing life and gaining poison counters with no benefits. With this combo both players run the risk of becoming slaves to the Omen Machine. There are a couple ways around this, however. You can’t draw, but you can look at cards and then put them into your hand. Shrine of Piercing Vision
Shrine of Piercing Vision is a great little artifact that will keep getting stronger with each turner, allowing you to dig deeper into the deck to find what you want.

While it seems straightforward, there are many ways to make use of Caress of Phyrexia. I think the best way to use it is against your opponent, with tricks to give you the upper hand if you don’t win the game right there. This is also a very versatile card which is able to defeat your opponent in 3 different ways! When else have you been able to empty their library, bring them to 0 life, and give them 10 poison counters all at the same time? Maybe Caress of Phyrexia can be a worthwhile addition to your FNM deck this week!

June 24, 2011
M12 Planeswalkers – Jace Has Been Spoiled!

Last week we brought you what we think/hope will be the new Garruk.

Along with that mock-up, we showed you the “confirmed” artwork for the new Jace and Chandra incarnations.

Now, we have absolute assurance that the art we showed you was indeed a spoiler of what you’ll get in M12, but we also have confirmation of Jace 3.0, or as you’ll call him henceforth, Jace, Memory Adept.

Here is the picture that we have, along with a text rendering of his abilities:

Jace, Memory Adept – 3UU
Planeswalker – Jace (Mythic Rare)
+1 Loyalty – Draw a card. Target player puts the top card of his or her library into his or her graveyard.
0 Loyalty – Target player puts the top ten cards of his or her library into his or her graveyard.
-7 Loyalty – Any number of target players each draw twenty cards.

Loyalty 4

There he is! What do you think? Is this a more fair replacement for Jace, The Mind Sculptor? Does it seem strange to print a third Jace when Wizards just banned the second? Leave us a comment and let us know your reaction to this announcement.

June 24, 2011
Top Dorks – In With The New

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June 23, 2011
Killer Combo – “Infinite Regress”

Commander, for those of you who are new to the game, is a casual format that used to be called by its player-given name: Elder Dragon Highlander. Anyone who isn’t up on the old-school terms should learn that Elder Dragons were a series of tri-color legendary dragons in the creatively titled MTG expansion, Legends. The “Highlander” part of the name refers to the movies and TV series about Connor and Duncan MacLeod, two immortals engaged in a time-and-space spanning competition to be the last (immortal) man standing. A major “catch-phrase” from the Highlander storyline was “There can be only one!”, which is how it came to be associated with what is now the Commander format.

What’s really impressive about Riku of Two Reflections is the fact that his ability violates the spirit of the format in a pretty major way. He allows you to copy spells and creatures, providing you with a way to have “multiples” of cards in a format that fundamentally forbids it.

I’m sure that most people who played “Mirror Mastery” this weekend realized that there is almost no “bad way” to use Riku’s ability. If you’re casting a spell, you would rather have two of it than one – though in same cases the second would be redundant. However, as the decklist suggests, Riku’s ability is best employed when you can copy a creature with a great “comes into play” (now, “enters the battlefield”) ability.

While I won’t claim that any one sorcery, instant, or creature is the “best” to copy with Riku, I’ve got a couple ideas about cards that would be especially fun for him to multiply.

First, if I could copy any non-mythic rare creature in Standard, I think it would be Chancellor of the Forge. The Chancellors were sort of a lackluster cycle for New Phyrexia, but I think his comes into play ability would be killer in this particular setting. The triple red in his casting cost makes him difficult to play in a more mana-limited setting, but part of the beauty of this combo is the fact that once you’ve paid his RRR, you only need GU to pay for Riku’s ability.

Chancellor of the Forge will give you a fistful of Goblins (according to the number of creatures you have in play), doubling the number of creatures you control. His token-copy will then hit the battlefield and will double that number again. Because most Commander decks contain multiple board wipes, an army of tokens isn’t likely to live long, but the Chancellor’s little buddies have haste so you’re much more likely to get in one good attack.
I also think that Riku would make a great addition to a Legacy or Commander deck designed to mill your opponent. While it may not be entirely consistent with the strategy of “Mirror Mastery” out of the box, his ability to copy cards like Archive Trap, Traumatize
Traumatize, and other mill staples would greatly accelerate the process of eliminating your opponents library.

That’s all for today’s Killer Combo. Let me know what other ideas you have and look forward to our post on Kaalia of the Vast
Kaalia of the Vast tomorrow.

June 22, 2011