Hey all! I hope you enjoyed Part 1 of this two-part series on the Dark Ascension spoilers (so far; as of the writing of this article, there are 78/158 cards spoiled). Today, we’re going to be looking into more of the spoiler. By no means is this the last time I’ll talk about Dark Ascension spoilers, but this was meant to be one article originally, and my excitement about the new set bled over into the 6000-7000 word arena, so I decided to split it up into more palatable smaller versions.
So let’s back into it, shall we? Let’s take a look at the mechanic that Wizards is obviously trying to push with Dark Ascension:
Tokens
I’m going to start with Gather the Townsfolk, as I think there’s a deck that would love this card that isn’t necessarily a tokens deck. What deck, might you ask?
Creatures (18)
Lands (21)
Spells (21)
I’ve wondered the same thing Sam apparently did: why can’t you run Champion of the Parish and Delver of Secrets in the U/W Humans deck? They’re both super aggressive one-drops, and they’re both Humans, ergo they should both go in the same deck.
Right?
Wrong…
The problem is, the two are diametrically opposing cards in regards to the type of deck they want to be in. Champion of the Parish wants you to run a bunch of dudes (in this case, Human dudes/dudettes), while Delver wants to be an only child in a deck full of spells. How do you bring two Humans from opposite sides of the tracks together? How do we Save the Last Dance!?
As we see here, Sam accepts that his Delvers and Champions aren’t going to be super all-stars, but together they are good enough of the time (with Snapcaster Mage and Doomed Traveler) to constitute running both. As you can see, he had to build with both in mind, having enough spells and creatures to make both reliably good.
Sam also apparently had the same thought as I did in regards to how good Doomed Traveler really is in Standard right now. I too want to be running the Travelers!
However, Gather the Townsfolk allows us to have both of our one-drops be a Wild Nacatl on turn two!
What sucks is that it’s a sorcery, but decks already run Invisible Stalker on two mana in the Delver decks, and this allows you to run Champion of the Parish, which gives you some insane “nut draws.”
What does this new deck look like? (Well, not much different than what the old deck looked like, actually, but let’s take a look.)
Creatures (18)
Lands (11)
Spells (31)
Obviously this is mostly a port from Sam’s list, but I’d want a card like Mortarpod coming out of the sideboard if I’m trying to be this aggressive. I may just be wrong, as Sam did very well with the deck and really liked the ‘Pod, but this is another deck that is on my radar for the StarCityGames.com Standard Open: Richmond (in addition to the Burning Vengeance deck from Part 1). I really think Gather the Townsfolk puts this particular build of U/W Delver over the top. Keep in mind that Invisible Stalker is also a Human, which led me to think about going up on equipment and taking out Geists in favor of Stalker (though this is obviously bad, so I decided against it).
The other token cards lead down another path altogether though. You know what else takes us down that path?
Yes, big daddy Sorin himself. If this guy were purely white, as in similarly costed to Ajani Goldmane, you’d have another 60-70 dollar planeswalker in my opinion; he’s similar to Elspeth in a short-print set (in that Dark Ascension is like Worldwake and will have an artificially low print run due to only being drafted for three months), and with a more palatable mana cost, Sorin would be off-your-rocker crazy. As it stands, he’s just regular ol’ insane, though the casting cost is still pretty prohibitive.
In Standard, we only have Isolated Chapel to fix the mana necessary to run a Sorin (though Shimmering Grotto and Ghost Quarter play a backup role here in a pinch). Obviously we can just run enough basic Swamps and Plains to hit our mana requirement, but that hurts us early on when we need to hit specific colors on time.
Since almost all of the important spells for a token deck are going to be white, we’re going to obviously be a base-white deck splashing black for Sorin and the flashback on Lingering Souls. What are the white cards we should take a look at?
Gather the Townsfolk
Lingering Souls
Midnight Haunting
Timely Reinforcements
Increasing Devotion
Doomed Traveler
Blade Splicer
Hero of Bladehold
Geist Honored Monk
Elspeth Tirel
Honor of the Pure
Intangible Virtue
Shrine of Loyal Legions *
*Yes technically you could run it in any color, but you generally play this in a white deck, obviously.
So as we can see, there is more than enough to sustain us in white as it pertains to a Tokens deck. Why would we venture out of this color into a multicolor deck then? What other options could we include in our deck to make it better by splashing another color?
Well, we can go ahead and rule out red, as Jor Kadeen, the Prevailer isn’t really what we’re looking for here (though Hero of Oxid Ridge seems decent). Same goes for blue, as we’re not looking to make an inferior Delver deck. We’re looking to make a superior Tokens deck. That leaves green and black:
Gavony Township
Garruk Relentless
Mana Dorks (Birds of Paradise, Avacyn’s Pilgrim)
Green’s big draw is Gavony Township. Left unchecked, the land-that-could will simply take over games. While Moorland Haunt is another great land, in a deck like Tokens that relies on non-creature spells to produce a lot of its tokens, it’s not going to pull the weight that a Gavony Township would. Garruk Relentless is another great card and is the four-mana planeswalker that we would include if we were going with green as our color of choice. We wouldn’t run Primal Hunter simply because we have Elspeth Tirel at five mana, and she fits much better in the shell than Primal Hunter. Lastly, green can also get out of the gates quicker than any other color due to the mana dorks as well.
Sorin, Lord of Innistrad
Lingering Souls (Flashback)
Moan of the Unhallowed
Vault of the Archangel
Here we see the big new addition to the fleet of battlecruisers. Sorin is going to be the basis for many-a deck in the next couple of years in Standard (we’re focusing on Standard right now; the applications in Modern require their own article series!). Wizards is obviously pushing the tokens archetype and in the process is pushing it towards a W/b color base. Sorin makes sure of it.
A quick aside on Sorin; I honestly feel that his price tag will remain between 40-50 dollars as long as he’s in Standard. Control decks will almost always be Esper in some way, either U/W/b or U/B/w because splashing a third color to include Sorin seems more than worth it. Token decks will warp their manabase to include him. Everyone who’s even remotely close to being able to cast Sorin in their deck will warp their manabase to include him as long as his power level can make up for the amount of inconsistency the manabase will cause. Let’s just say I believe his power level is high enough to constitute a lot of manabase warping.
Think about it; Elspeth, Knight-Errant was insane because she could come down on turn four (earlier in certain decks) and defend herself immediately while bumping her loyalty up. Sorin does that as well; only this time, you can’t just ignore Sorin if you’re close to winning with an aggressive deck. There were times when I was playing Jund back when Elspeth was Standard legal in which my board presence was so overwhelming that I just powered through the little bit of defense Elspeth provided. With Sorin, not only do they get a dude, but that token also gains them life. Now, if that token has any kind of pump effect attached (Intangible Virtue, previous Sorin Emblems), now you have a token threatening to kill your action while gaining life and still not costing its controller a card.
That’s not even getting into how great the instant-emblem ability is.
Back to our discussion at hand though. Sorin is the reason to go into black as secondary color. You could make an argument for the flashback cost on Lingering Souls, but Birds of Paradise already takes care of that for us in the green version pretty well (you don’t need to worry about always having black to actually cast the card, only flashing it back). Vault of the Archangel is similar on power level to Gavony Township, but in my opinion if it was just about lands with abilities, Township would still win out.
The real question here is: would replacing Garruk Relentless with Sorin, Lord of Innistrad improve our tokens deck?
The answer, in my opinion, is a tentative “yes.”
If color requirements were no issue, I’d go with Sorin every time. Permanent emblems, increasing loyalty while adding to your board presence, lifelinking tokens… these are all bonuses for Sorin. The one knock on Sorin is that prohibitive mana cost, and in this department Garruk wins hands down. One green mana is astronomically easier than hitting black and white, plus green provides great mana fixing as well. We don’t get that in black.
Another debate for these types of decks would be the five-mana slot. We have three good options:
Geist Honored Monk
Elspeth Tirel
Increasing Devotion
Which is better for our deck? I’m not sure honestly. I don’t know how often we plan on flashing back Devotion, but at the same time, it does give us five bodies to take advantage of our pump effects. Elspeth is similarly great, even though it “only” provides us three bodies at a time; it’s also a recurring threat that can also clear the board/gain us life in a pinch. Basically it gives us more options, and having more options is almost always a good thing.
Geist provides us with three bodies, one of which is a large vigilance creature. While a fine option, I actually think the other two are superior. Testing will allow us to figure out which works best, but since we’re already running one planeswalker that’s interested in protecting itself in both colors on four mana, why not curve out with another planeswalker to add to the arsenal?
So let’s look at what the two decks would look like and see if black is legitimately an improvement over green as white’s bro-mate in crime:
Creatures (12)
Planeswalkers (7)
Lands (13)
Spells (28)
Creatures (12)
Planeswalkers (7)
Lands (14)
Spells (27)
Are these the optimal builds? Most assuredly not. Just some thoughts I had about the decks moving forward.
In the G/W version, we don’t really need Doomed Traveler, as we’ve got Birds, and we’re looking to get out of the gates quicker anyway. Since both decks are running Shrine of Loyal Legions and an off-color planeswalker that produces tokens, Honor of the Pure loses some of its luster, while Intangible Virtue is still insane.
Final verdict? I still have no idea. I’d have to get in and start playing with the new cards to figure out first what the optimal builds are and then which “optimal build” is better. Plus, there are almost 80 cards that we haven’t even seen yet in the spoiler, and with how hard Wizards is pushing tokens as a viable strategy, I’m sure we haven’t seen the last of the goodies to go with Sorin, Lord of Innistrad!
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Finally, before I let you guys go, I wanted to talk about a couple of other cards I’m liking in the set:
So, I guess we’ve solved the debate about “Wring Flesh vs. Virulent Wound,” eh? Seriously, if the format still calls for such a card, this one blows both of those out of the water. The differences between the two were so minor that an argument could be made for either. They killed one-toughness dudes while not providing much else for a deck like U/B Control.
However, the upside on Tragic Slip is that it can take down any creature in Standard. Yes, including Blightsteel Colossus if that’s what your opponent is into.
Nothing much else to say, just wanted to include this for all of the people in the comments who were arguing about which is better. However, if the format is still such that a card like this is necessary, there’s another card that would be awesome in such a format:
[author name="Forge"]Forge[/author] Devil
This card seems innocuous at first, unassuming even. This guy in a red deck can take out an opposing Delver of Secrets, Stromkirk Noble, Champion of the Parish, Grim Lavamancer, and more, but here’s the big benefit I see: he negates the card advantage provided by Doomed Traveler. Sure, there’s now a 1/1 flying on the field, but you don’t have to worry about removing the front end of the Traveler, only the back end.
Lastly, before I go for this week, I’ll say that I think it’s awesome that there are uncommon lords for each of the “big tribes” in Dark Ascension: Zombies, Vampires, and Werewolves. Once again, I’m loving the flavor of this set, and they’re pushing it even more. I think the upside on Immerwolf makes it feasible to run Werewolves, as shipping the turn without playing anything becomes a legitimate play (seeing as they can’t just flip it back). I also think there may be something to the new Zombie lord (Diregraf Captain), as you have a recurring creature in Gravecrawler and only need a sacrifice outlet to make it happen. You would also have the new anti-Kitchen Finks (Geralf’s Messenger) as another card that you wouldn’t mind sacrificing to your sac outlet (I’m looking at you, Grimgrin, Corpse Born!) while also shocking your opponent (again).
That’s all for this week. Hopefully by this time you will have seen a picture of me holding up a trophy from this past weekend, but if not, know that I probably had a blast at StarCityGames.com Open: Washington DC (as I always do) and look forward to the first event with Dark Ascension being Standard legal, SCG Open: Richmond!
Until next week,
@mikemartinlfs on Twitter
Shoctologist on MTGO