By now you all know that Saviors of Kamigawa is shaping up to be a mighty fine set for Constructed purposes. At least one card that I know of has already hit the $20 mark here on StarCityGames.com, and I'm sure more are to follow. But I'm not here to talk about that. No, instead it is time again for my Type 4 set review.

But first, a few words about Richmond. Wow, that was my worst Power 9 ever. I scraped another car's bumper, scrubbed out in two rounds, then proceeded to come up empty in the prerelease. Aside from all that, however, I had a great time, and I want to thank Star City for putting these events on, Josh Reynolds for putting up with nearly two dozen people in his house for two nights, and Greg Hoover for being such a class act in general. Now, on with the review.

Epic Spells
Enduring Ideal, Eternal Dominion, Never ending Torment, Undying Flames, Endless Swarm
The big new thing on the block is the marquee mechanic of the set: Epic. These huge spells promise big returns once they resolve, but their mana costs and other limiting factors will probably keep most from constructed play. So how do they stack up in Type 4? It's difficult to say. There is no doubt that the Blue one is the most powerful, as Bribery and Acquire are both generally high picks in a draft, but the inability to do anything but steal a permanent from an opponent's deck may prove to be too limiting. After the Blue one, it goes downhill. The Red one provides a nice Kaboom! effect, but it may not act fast enough to keep your opponents from slaughtering you. The Black one is similar, but even slower. Endless Swarm leaves you very vulnerable to Wraths, and again may just not work fast enough.

This leaves Enduring Ideal, which is the most interesting one. Type 4 has a number of very powerful enchantments, and getting one into play often provides headaches for the other players. The problem is that a number of the best ones (such as Soothsaying, Holistic Wisdom, and Yawgmoth's Agenda) want you to be playing other spells. Effectively using Enduring Ideal requires careful drafting, and there is no guarantee you will be able to pull it off. I have difficulty believing that this card would be anything worth talking about if it was actually used.

The Cream Filling
The best cards of the set for Type 4.

Arashi, the Sky Asunder
As a creature, Arashi is a good beater with a solid ability. As a Hurricane variant, Arashi avoids the Arcane Lab rule while wiping out every flier on the board. As both, he earns a spot as one of the best Type 4 cards in the set.

Death Denied
Instant-speed mass graveyard recursion. This is a marvelous card for recovering from a wrath, or just calling up reinforcements for the troops on the board. While this spell doesn't put the creatures directly into play, it does give you a steady reserve of threats and allow you to extend a bit more than you otherwise would.

Descendant of Masumaro
Though probably less good in the early game, Masumaro's progeny promises to be a very strong threat later on as hands start getting meager. Since you get to choose the opponent which determines how many counters you remove, careful play can result in him getting very large indeed.

Descendant of Soramaro
I hear stacking your deck is some good. Soothsaying is already considered one of the most powerful cards in Type 4. While this card is a creature and hence more vulnerable, the ability still makes him amazing.

Hail of Arrows
There aren't many instant-speed wraths (I count one, maybe two if you include Inferno). This is a great one-sided wrath that can easily become a very nasty surprise. It may be restricted to just attacking creatures (and hence those of one opponent), but generally those are the ones you most want to get rid of anyway.

Homura, Human Ascendant
This guy may actually be too good. A 4/4 you don't want to block, if he dies he comes back and gives all of your creatures firebreathing. This is very risky, but it's possible that the fact it involves two types of permanents and a triggered ability to work may be enough to balance it out. Use at your own risk.

Jiwari, the Earth Aflame
As a creature, Jiwari is a mediocre beater with a solid ability. As an Earthquake variant, Jiwari avoids the Arcane Lab rule while wiping out every non-flier on the board. As both, he earns a spot as one of the best Type 4 cards in the set.

Murmurs From Beyond
The only reservation heard about this card is that the best card ends up in your graveyard. In Type 4, all of your cards are good so this is not a problem.

Overwhelming Intellect
When most creatures have casting costs at five and up, Overwhelming Intellect promises to give you a full hand while stopping a threat. Just be careful not to deck yourself off of Darksteel Colossus.

Twincast
No one would deny that Fork is an excellent card in Type 4, so why wouldn't two be even better?

The Golden-Yellow Pastry
Not as good as the cream filling, the outside of a Twinkie still tastes pretty good.

Feral Lightning
Attacking with three creatures is not as reliable a way of halving an opponent's life total as Searing Wind, particularly when you create them at sorcery speed, but it's still nine damage from one spell, which is worthwhile.

Ghost-Lit Cards - Redeemer, Stalker, Raider, and Nourisher
These cards all provide decent effects while evading the Arcane Lab rule, a sign of a good card. You may even want to play the Stalker as a creature to get repeated use of its ability. Sadly the Ghost-Lit Warder is useless for Type 4.

Hidetsugu's Second Rite
I can't say I know how frequently a player ends up at exactly 10 life, but at instant speed it's got a fair chance of happening when you can play this. A solid finisher, this is especially cute to play as a follow up to Urza's Rage or Searing Wind.

Iname as One
The creature type restriction keeps this from being one of the best cards, but the ability to search up a Dragon Spirit or Myojin and put it into play makes this 8/8 creature powerful indeed. Evading the Arcane Lab rule is always good, and in general cards that allow you to break it are quite good.

Kagemaro, First to Suffer
Kagemaro will likely sit at around 4/4 or 5/5, and kill things of that size. While this leaves many creatures untouched, it does provide a way of killing troublesome ones like untargetable creatures and 8.5 Tails.

Kitsune Loreweaver and Moonwing Moth
Infinite toughness blockers are nothing to laugh at.

Michiko Konda, Truth Seeker
Michiko is a very neat creature. She will likely serve as a kind of Moat, preventing your opponents from attacking you until she is destroyed. As she isn't a very big threat herself, she (and hence you) will likely be largely ignored for quite a while.

Miren, the Moaning Well
This land merely allows you to get one last use out of your creatures as they head to the bin by letting you gain a fair amount of life. This also has fun interactions with cards like Corpse Dance and "Ach! Hans, Run!"

Sakashima the Impostor
Another Clone variant, Sakashima fits somewhere between Clone and Vesuvan Doppleganger in terms of her versatility. What's most interesting about her is that she can allow you to copy Legendary creatures, since she retains her name.

Sekki, Seasons' Guide
This guy is a very solid threat in the same vein as Symbiotic Wurm. My hunch would be that Symbiotic Wurm is better in general, but combined with the right cards Sekki is capable of producing a prodigious number of tokens (since the number of generated tokens is independent of the number of tokens actually on Sekki).

Soratami Cloud Chariot
The Cloud Chariot basically makes your guys immune to combat. This in itself would make it a strong card, but it also allows your Darksteel Colossus to stand in the way of Akroma, and that's some pretty savage beats.

The Wrapper
I'm not going to eat it.

Erayo, Soratami Ascendant
If you can flip him, Erayo becomes a real house. The problem is that he requires at least four people to be playing for you to even have a chance at flipping him, and even then it's unlikely that it's going to happen. I just don't see him ascending enough to justify using him.

Godo's Irregulars
While the Irregulars are capable of killing anything that blocks them, who's going to bother? They'll just get taken out by the first wrath that comes along.

Kaho, Minamo Historian
Kaho's ability is quite powerful, but he has to live long enough for you to use it. You take a risk up front by removing those spells from the game, but almost every removal spell in the stack can kill Kaho, and your opponents will have plenty of time to do so before he loses summoning sickness.

Presence of the Wise
At sorcery speed, it just won't cut it.

The Shinen - Star's Light, Flight's Wings, Fear's Chill, Fury's Fire, Life's Roar
Despite the fact that the Shinen break the Arcane Lab rule, the effects they generate are really just too small to be worth it.

Sadly, the Kirin are also probably just not good enough to make it in a normal Type 4 stack. The fact that they only trigger on Arcane spells or Spirits is just too restrictive. If you want to use them, you should take a look at creating a Kamigawa block Type 4 stack like Jacob Orlove wrote about a while ago.

As always, it's quite possible that I've missed some hidden gem, so feel free to discuss this review in the forums. Before I go, there's a new way of drafting a Type 4 stack which eliminates a lot of the time involved in Rochestering it.

The Type 4 Booster Draft
To do a Type 4 booster draft, just separate your stack into piles which each contain a number of cards equal to twice the number of players (for example, 6 players would have packs of 12 cards), then have everyone grab one and start drafting. Draft the packs as you would do any other booster draft until you run out. This gives a reasonable guarantee of balancing the stacks between all players, and is much faster than Rochester. I experienced it for the first time over the weekend in Richmond, and it was a great way to do Type 4.

Until next time,

-David Kleppinger
Klep on The Mana Drain
dr.klep@gmail.com