A Durdle's Guide to Ravnica - Green, Hybrid and Artifacts

The Timmy runs strong in me, almost as strong as the Johnny. I do love me some big beefy creatures turning sideways, and I love to ramp too. Return to Ravnica has some big shoes to fill with green losing Thrun, [card]Primeval Titan[/card], [card]Llanowar Elves[/card] and [card]Birds of Paradise[/card] to rotation. Let’s see if anything is looking to step it up!

[card]Axebane Guardian[/card]
A 0/3 guy with defender doesn’t look like much, does it? Sure it will block all the early dudes in Zombies, but it won’t kill them. What it WILL do is ramp AND fix your mana, even more so if you play something like [card]Tree of Redemption[/card] or [card]Gatecreeper Vine[/card] as well. Having two of these in play basically allows you to cast any spell you could want in Standard; it does say “any combination of colors” after all.

Aside from ramping to various huge spells, one thing I really want to try is to jam as many guys with defender in one deck as I can, and win off two of these and a [card]Door to Nothingness[/card]. Sure it’s janky, but come on…it would be hilarious.

[card]Deadbridge Goliath[/card]
Wow, another 5/5 for 4 that might not be good enough to see Standard play. If you had told me even 5 years ago that I would be saying that, I would have suggested that you stop licking toads. Goliath has no form of evasion and I don’t think even the scavenge is enough to make this widely playable. For the same cost you can get two creatures and 2 life, or for one more mana you can get a 5/3 and 5 life that leaves behind a 3/3 if it goes anywhere OR an 8/8 that makes something else huge for no additional cost.

Having said that, it’s not the worst thing you can do at 5 mana. If those counters go on something like a Sigarda, then you’re not doing too badly. I’ll give this a “wait-and-see” rating and probably try them with Jarad and [card]Corpsejack Menace[/card].

[card]Druid’s Deliverance[/card]
I know I am going to play this in Standard. I read this card as “Populate and occasionally save yourself from dying” and as a result will be looking at it as a cheap, non-targeted and non-creature-based way to do things with Séance, for example. You’re likely not going to want to cast this if you’re only getting a Spirit out of it, but a Beast or a Centaur seems fine. If you want to get REALLY silly and populate a Séanced [card]Craterhoof Behemoth[/card] token, you’re probably going to win. If you have some beefy tokens, this card delivers.

Of course, the Fog part of this should not be overlooked. Although it only prevents damage to you (leaving your planeswalkers and creatures to fend for themselves), that can sometimes be a blessing as it allows you to set up some favourable blocks and let the rest through. Sadly, TurboFog as an archetype isn’t as good as it needs to be right now with no [card]Howling Mine[/card] effect in the format (and no, [card]Righteous Authority[/card] doesn’t count). This saddens me, as I love that deck. You can bet I will try and make it work though!

[card]Gatecreeper Vine[/card]
Man, if only [card]Birthing Pod[/card] was still legal. I miss that card so much. It’s gone though, and for this card to creep through the gate of Standard playability a couple of things will need to happen. The first would be for the gates themselves to vine a way into decks. They are no shocklands but perhaps being able to search them out AND block a [card]Diregraf Ghoul[/card] or [card]Rakdos Cackler[/card] could be enough to earn them a shot. That they enhance your [card]Axebane Guardian[/card]s is likely not all that relevant; not many decks want that many creatures that can’t attack.

If you consider this a [card]Sylvan Ranger[/card] that blocks slightly better, it might just be good enough. I’ll be on the lookout for more gate-related shenanigans in Gatecrash to see if this does become more of a player.

[card]Mana Bloom[/card]
There has to be a home for this. I don’t know where it is yet, but there has to be one. It blooms you to 4 mana on turn 3, and after that it becomes sort of a mana annuity, giving you a chunk every turn until it needs refilling. The fact that it can give you mana of any colour might be relevant in some decks, but the quality of mana fixing available right now is such that we’re unlikely to need it very often. It does ask you to recast every so often but you can of course NOT cast it and instead hold it for turns when you have nothing better to do, or discard it to Liliana, Pack Rat, [card]Faithless Looting[/card]…

As marginal as those uses all sound, I think a more likely scenario is that [card]Mana Bloom[/card] sees some play in an Enchantress shell. I try to avoid talking about Legacy given my limited knowledge of it, but it seems like a card that draws you multiple cards for G every turn OR makes use of all your [card]Carpet of Flowers[/card] mana in one turn, might be worth a look. At the very least the foil of this is beautiful.

[card]Wild Beastmaster[/card]
I have been a fan of [card]Champion of Lambholt[/card] for a while, and an even bigger one since I started playing it. Now that [card]Gut Shot[/card] and [card]Vapor Snag[/card] are gone (and [card]Unsummon[/card], [card]Dramatic Rescue[/card] and [card]Electrickery[/card] don’t appear to be ready to step up), I am an even bigger fan. [card]Wild Beastmaster[/card] plays very nicely with Champion in a deck playing [card]Gavony Township[/card] or any sort of anthem effect. Although combat tricks aren’t terribly popular in constructed Magic right now, she gets pretty beastly with them too.

Where to put this? Well if you want to try playing with [card]Collective Blessing[/card], that’s the perfect spot. I don’t know if the format is slow enough for a 6-mana enchantment as a finisher that needs creatures to stay alive (and early indications are that it will be a sweeper-heavy couple of months), but it’s worth a shot!

I just noticed that the art on [card]Wild Beastmaster[/card] is basically this:

Now I have to play it…

[card]Worldspine Wurm[/card]
Let’s start at the beginning: his name is Wurmrakul. This is not up for debate.

Sadly, neither is the fact that Wurmrakul costs 11. I mean sure, if you resolve him you’re probably going to win, as even if he dies you’re getting 15 power of trample to bash face with. He’s also hard to cheat into play (but not impossible…I can think of 8 ways in Standard). However, I know I will try and play this card multiple times.

Ramp strategies no longer have Primetime in Standard, but [card]Ranger’s Path[/card] and [card]Gilded Lotus[/card] are still around. Nobody is really arguing that once the card hits play, it’s bananas. The problem of course is getting it there in the first place. Then again Emrakul sees a lot of play and he costs 4 more mana, so let’s not rule it out.

For reference the 8 ways in Standard to cheat it out would be [card]Guild Feud[/card], [card]Descendants’ Path[/card], [card]Call to the Kindred[/card], [card]Omniscience[/card], [card]Unburial Rites[/card]/[card]Rise from the Grave[/card]/[card]Defy Death[/card] with [card]Hypersonic Dragon[/card]/[card]Alchemist’s Refuge[/card], [card]Primal Surge[/card], Jace 4.0 ultimate and [card]Counterlash[/card]. Did I miss any?

Thoughts on Green

Slim pickings here for everyone’s favourite fatty colour. A few cards that might be OK but really nothing special or that screams out “PLAY ME!” I guess after [card]Thragtusk[/card] (and to be honest, some of the best gold cards in the set), R&D figured that the other colours needed some love. When one of the only two cards I am for sure going to play is an 0/3 Wall…yeah. In fact with such a paucity of cards in green, we’re going to continue right on to hybrid, artifacts and lands.

[card]Azor’s Elocutors[/card]
If you didn’t immediately think TurboFog when you read this, I may have to have you elocuted. Every Johnny everywhere is salivating over the possibility of filibustering their way to victory, and I am no different. It says “you win the game” on it, right there! That means I don’t need to attack or anything!

I’m fairly azor that the best way to win with this is in a TurboFog shell. Unfortunately much of the Turbo has gone, leaving us only with the Fog. We do have [card]Otherworld Atlas[/card] and MAYBE [card]Righteous Authority[/card], but we want the ability to get the extra land drop. The combination of [card]Palisade Giant[/card] and [card]Ghostly Possession[/card] do make it somewhat easier to win by doing nothing, though [card]Dreadbore[/card] is still very much a card that will spoil your day. Of course you can also just take a couple of extra turns to get there faster. It’s a shame proliferate isn’t in the format any more though.

If this ever sees any real constructed play, it will be out of the sideboard against slow control decks in the hope that it takes them more than 5 turns to find and resolve a sweeper. With Miracles being a popular deck right now, that might be more realistic than you think.

[card]Blistercoil Weird[/card]
I don’t have much to say here except that I want to play this with [card]Dual Casting[/card]. It’s not an infinite combo with a ritual (the copy is not cast and therefore doesn’t untap the Weird) but with a bunch of them it can make a lot of mana and a very big creature in a hurry.

[card]Deathrite Shaman[/card]
So I really like this card. Like, a whole lot. The thing is I like it a fair bit less than my cohost Travis and my good friend and teammate Mark. I think we’re looking at a card that could be good in three formats – in Standard it eats [card]Gravecrawler[/card]s and Angels of Serenity as well as things that get targeted by [card]Snapcaster Mage[/card], in Modern it eats fetchlands to ramp you and can severely stifle your AggroLoam opponent’s gameplan, and in Legacy it does a little bit of all of that.

Three abilities on a one drop, all of which are useful, is pretty darn strong. The price of foils tend to suggest that people agree with my thoughts of this being playable across formats, even if he’s not a build-around. I guess being in such high demand might help make up for the loss of his friend Yoric.

[card]Nivmagus Elemental[/card]
It’s not often that Wizards can come up with a completely new and unique design these days. We’ve never seen anything like it before, and consequently it’s hard to figure out if the card is good or not. My gut feeling is that it is, simply because you can conceivably attack for 5 on turn 2 and force your opponent to have the removal or lose fast. It’s very eggs-in-one-basket, but then red aggro often is.

One thing that has been mentioned is that ol’ Nivmagizzle is a hard counter to the [card]Hive Mind[/card] deck in both Legacy and Modern, though it can also be played in those decks. It might also be playable as an alternate wincon in Storm decks when the opponent is likely to side in [card]Leyline of Sanctity[/card]. If we want to build around it, we’ll need to go with as many one- and two-drop spells as we can manage, preferably cantrips. I wish I could figure out if that would actually be good though…

[card]Azorius Keyrune[/card], [card]Golgari Keyrune[/card], [card]Izzet Keyrune[/card], [card]Rakdos Keyrune[/card], [card]Selesnya Keyrune[/card]
I think all the Keyrunes are playable, but there are for sure some that are better than others. The Rakdos one is seeing the most play right now as it holds off almost the entire Zombies deck as well as Centaurs, Beasts and [card]Thragtusk[/card]s. I’m also playing the [card]Izzet Keyrune[/card] in my Grixis Control list, as I tend to keep the board empty and the ability to loot while dealing damage helps me find my bombs faster.

The others have their uses – evasion, the ability to take down any blocker, pure beef – but the creature side is more of a seldom-used bonus than an actual reason to play the card. I have yet to see a foil one, but I would imagine they look pretty sweet.

[card]Chromatic Lantern[/card]
Back when I started playing Magic, I quickly grew to love non-basic lands. Particularly high on my land list of lust were [card]City of Brass[/card], [card]Undiscovered Paradise[/card] and [card]Reflecting Pool[/card], followed by [card]Thran Quarry[/card]. Tapping for ANY COLOUR of mana? That’s awesome!

I was in love with [card]Chromatic Lantern[/card] from the moment it saw the light of a poorly-lit room at a party. It lets me do so much! I can play five colours even though we only have half the shocks! And it ramps me too? Sign me up for four!

Well, maybe not. You still have to draw them, and they sure are a tasty target for things like [card]Abrupt Decay[/card] and [card]Sundering Growth[/card]. While [card]Chromatic Lantern[/card] fixes your mana you cannot rely on it to do so; that’s asking for trouble. Having four of these is NOT a substitute for a properly tested and considered mana base. Rather we should consider them a hedge against bad draws and reliable ramp from 3 to 5.

Shocklands and Guildgates

I didn’t review these because everyone knows that the shocks are amazing in constructed while the gates are more for limited and Pauper. There might be some slower decks in Standard that run a couple of gates for more smoothing of their mana, but I think they will be few and far between.

We’re almost at the end of this epic journey through Return to Ravnica, with just the gold cards to go! I hope to have that done this week, but thanks for sticking with me!