Normally when a new Magic: The Gathering set is about to come out, we here at VG30 pour over the cards and try to determine which ones are going to be the ones that you're going to want to to try to look for in your packs for a pre-release. This time we had a lot of trouble trying to figure out what would be the best cards. The set feels balanced enough so that any well executed strategy could win. It became a question of best utilizing the cards in your packs as opposed to going in with a plan.
So instead of speculating what will win, we're going to post up the strategies that we saw win in the pre-release. Some of these were used by the VG30 staff, some of these stomped all over us. Either way, here's what you're going to want to try to put together in the future.
White / Blue
White and Blue went together great in limited. Creatures with evasion are always a big plus in limited, but some of these just became downright silly.
Angelic Overseer by itself it a great card. If you manage to combine it with a human, it becomes unstoppable. If your human happens to be unstoppable too...
It made things just wrong. Speaking of the Invisible Stalker, a favorite tactic of the weekend was getting this uncommon, and combining it with another uncommon for a devastating effect:
Trepanation Blade combined with evasion turned into short games. It wasn't uncommon to see Invisible Stalkers swinging for 7+ damage a turn when equipped with this little beauty. And if you weren't killing them with damage, you were slowly milling their lives away.
Mindshrieker was like a combination of a evasion creature with the Trepanation Blade on it, and was easily one of my favorite pulls of the weekend. The ability to mill away at your opponent and get buffs for getting rid of their best spells is amazingly fun for you and frustrating for your opponents. One poor soul that faced the Mindshrieker made the mistake of pacifying it, only to have it mill all of his cards away a few turns later instead. Maybe mill can make a comeback.
Black
Black wasn't without its own power. Cheap creatures with flying and bits of removal littered about made black something you had to seriously consider a threat.
Screeching Bats are uncommon and easy to get your hands on. For 2B you get a 2/2 flyer, and for a single mana more, you can turn it into a 5/5 bomb come your next upkeep. It's not a bad deal, and bombs like this are what win games.
Other cards that did a lot of damage like the Rotting Fensnake worked as great removal tactics:
And then were easily followed up by low cost removal solutions for big creatures:
Black wasn't without its own bombs, either. Take for example the Phyrexian Arena Demon, as it was so often called over the weekend:
Cards like this made you look at black very carefully before deciding on your colors.
Red / Green
If you weren't playing White / Blue, you were likely looking at Red and Green a bit, maybe taking one and splashing it with another color for its removal options, but Red and Green are where you really saw your transformers.
I didn't think much of the Mayor when I first saw him. Then I saw him transform and pump out 3/3 wolves every turn, with little that I could do about it. The Mayor is a beast, and worth looking at carefully should you be lucky enough to pull one. He goes great with cards like...
The Darkthicket Wolf was declared by many to be the best "bear" in the set (meaning a 2/2 for 2 cost). Put him out on turn two and then pumping him to 4/4 on turn 3 was a common tactic, and gave you something to do with your mana while you were trying to transform your werewolves.
Werewolves like the 2/3 Instigator gang that transformed into an effective 8/5 attacker with trample for a mere four mana. Some werewolves are better than others, but the rare ones are just brutal.
Artifcats
There's a few artifacts that are really worth mentioning and should have been instant picks for anybody playing any color.
The common Traveler's Amulet found its way into every single one of my decks over the weekend. Mana fixing for the most part took rare land cards to perform, or this one drop, one cost trinket. Worth every mana.
Juggernaut's are always devastating bombs, but this one is special. For four mana you attack with it every turn that it is untapped. Either your opponent is going to let it hit him for 5 damage, or he's going to chump block it with a smaller creature. That's ok, as soon as the smaller creature dies, your juggernaut untaps, ready to be a blocker and attack again the next turn.
Blazing Torch is also back, and is a must include if you pull one. Direct damage and removal isn't real common in this set, so artifacts like this are downright dangerous.
So that's how things looked for us for the pre-release. We have another release going on in a couple days, and maybe you can take some of this knowledge and do something with it. You never know when a couple uncommon cards will win you the game.
