When I first saw [Card]Faithless Looting[/Card], I knew it could be broken. [Card]Careful Study[/card] was already a solid card in Legacy graveyard decks, but Faithless Looting was Careful Study’s younger, better looking brother. He’s a little more reckless and less studious (being in a generally worse colour), but he’s a lot better at endurance sports.
What is better than drawing 2 cards and discarding 2 cards? Doing it twice. Not only that, but you don’t even have to do it the first time! With cards in Type 2 such as [Card]Forbidden Alchemy[/Card], [Card]Desperate Ravings[/Card], A different Faithless Looting, or [Card]Armored Skaab[/Card] (ok, ok, I’m stretching a little), Faithless Looting can be a free card, effectively, when it is played directly from the graveyard for the first time.
Well, that’s all well and good, you may ask, but isn’t Faithless Looting card disadvantage? The short answer is yes. There is a reason not every blue deck plays Careful Study. You only want it in a deck that can somehow use the discard as a benefit, or at least mitigate the fact that you are paying a card simply for selection. Reanimator in Legacy, as well as Dredge, likes having cards in the yard, so much so that both decks often play discard spells on themselves. Madness decks of old could play a Careful Study and discard 2 [card]Basking Rootwalla[/card]s, effectively paying U for 2 free pieces of cardboard.
I think that Faithless Looting will find homes in Standard, Modern, and Legacy. If there isn’t already a home waiting with dinner on the table for it, the card is so powerful that it can potentially create or change decks just to fit in. For example, take a gander at the following:
[Deck Title=Faithless Looting And Other Cards by Alexander Hayne]
[Lands]
4 Clifftop Retreat
4 Evolving Wilds
2 Glacial Fortress
2 Island
2 Mountain
4 Plains
3 Sulfur Falls
1 Swamp
[/Lands][Creatures]
3 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
1 Massacre Wurm
1 Phantasmal Image
3 Sun Titan
[/Creatures][Spells]
3 Burning Vengeance
2 Day of Judgment
3 Desperate Ravings
4 Faithless Looting
4 Forbidden Alchemy
2 Oblivion Ring
4 Thought Scour
4 Unburial Rites
3 Whipflare
[/Spells][/Deck]
While many people tried Solar Flare decks with a heavy reanimation theme, and [card]Burning Vengeance[/card] control decks before the release of Dark Ascension, none of them were successful. Faithless Looting is the missing piece of the puzzle. It does so many things in this deck. First of all, it digs you to answers or missing pieces. It also helps you discard spells like [card]Unburial Rites[/card] and Elesh Norn into your graveyard, where they are most useful. Less obviously, Faithless Looting lets you filter out situational cards, allowing you to run many more cards that are poor in certain matchups but excellent in others. It digs you deeper when you are searching for those cards because they are good, and it draws you 2 fresh cards and discards the useless ones when they are not good. The above list can discard [card]Whipflare[/card]s against control, for instance.
This deck is a hybrid Vengeance/Reanimator deck, and it functions well because both decks want a lot of the same cards. Vengeance is stellar against control, while often too slow against aggro, whereas the Reanimator portion has the opposite issue. With both, however, you can use Faithless Looting to have whichever plan is right for the matchup. [card]Sun Titan[/card] helps the deck by being able to return [card]Burning Vengeance[/card]s that have been milled into play, so that your [card]Unburial Rites[/card] gives you a threat that can’t be killed with creature removal against control decks. [card]Thought Scour[/card] works well here, filling your yard with goodies, though in testing I made a mental note to see if it couldn’t be replaced with something better. If you decide to play the above deck, I would recommend that your sideboard starts with 4 [card]Mental Misstep[/card], since all the graveyard hate cards cost 1 mana, as well as [card]Vapor Snag[/card]. I would also play some artifact removal for both [card]Grafdigger’s Cage[/card]s that have snuck through and [card]Sword of War and Peace[/card].
In Modern, one of my favourite decks also loves the addition of Faithless Looting:
[Deck Title=Looting With My Pyromancer by Alexander Hayne]
[Lands]
2 Cascade Bluffs
3 Island
3 Misty Rainforest
2 Mountain
4 Scalding Tarn
3 Steam Vents
1 Watery Grave
[/Lands][Spells]
2 Cryptic Command
4 Faithless Looting
2 Grapeshot
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Mana Leak
4 Manamorphose
2 Past in Flames
4 Pyromancer Ascension
4 Serum Visions
4 Sleight of Hand
4 Spell Pierce
4 Thought Scour
[/Spells][/Deck]
Pyromancer Ascension! Yes, Looting is insane in this deck. The deck was effectively murdered with the bans of [card]Rite of Flame[/card], [card]Ponder[/card], and [card]Preordain[/card]. This is a deck that really needs its 1 mana cantrips. Faithless Looting, along with working very nicely with [card]Past in Flames[/card](you discard the cards and then get to flash them back anyways), also helps to dig you to [card]Pyromancer Ascension[/card], as well as fill your yard with extra copies of spells in your hand, so as to power up the Ascension faster. [card]Thought Scour[/card] makes its appearance here as well, helping to dig to Ascension or [card]Manamorphose[/card]. This deck kills by copying lots of [card]Lightning Bolt[/card]s, or by casting lots of [card]Manamorphose[/card]s and card draw until you [card]Grapeshot[/card] them to death (twice, for value).
[Deck Title=Loot? You’re Dead]
[Lands]
4 Blackcleave Cliffs
2 Blood Crypt
2 Graven Cairns
1 Lavaclaw Reaches
2 Overgrown Tomb
2 Swamp
1 Tectonic Edge
4 Twilight Mire
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Verdant Catacombs
[/Lands][Creatures]
3 Haakon, Stromgald Scourge
4 Tarmogoyf
[/Creatures][Spells]
3 Burning Vengeance
2 Death Cloud
4 Faithless Looting
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Life from the Loam
4 Liliana of the Veil
3 Nameless Inversion
3 Raven’s Crime
4 Smallpox
[/Spells][/Deck]
This deck, which existed pre-Dark Ascension (and seems sweet), gains a lot from the addition of Faithless Looting. The basic idea is to assemble one of 2 engines: Loam + Crime, Haakon + Nameless Inversion, or to just play a big [card]Death Cloud[/card] and recover better than them because of Loam. Burning Vengeance works very well with either engine, since playing either Crime or Nameless from the graveyard will give you a free shock. Looting is excellent because it helps dig you to either engine, and also works very well with Loam, either by dredging into it, or discarding excess lands. It’s also another way to get Haakon into the graveyard, and it helps pump your Tarmogoyfs.
In Legacy, the same decks that played [card]Careful Study[/card] will now play Faithless Looting. Dredge will likely cut the creature enablers, such as [card]Putrid Imp[/card], for the spot, and probably become straight UR. Many Reanimator decks were already splashing red for side boarded [card]Pyroblast[/card]s, and this gives them another reason. You can even [card]Entomb[/card] for Looting! (though I don’t really see why you would) I would recommend against playing Dredge at this particular moment, as everyone is super excited to try out their new shiny toy in [card]Grafdigger’s Cage[/card], and you kind of get hosed pretty hard by that card. In a couple of months, the novelty will have worn off any I think most people will ultimately realize that, while a powerful card, the Cage is not as good as many of the other options available, mainly because it will shut down some of their cards as well as costing them a card. However, if you feel like playing Magic while not really playing Magic, go wild!
[Deck Title=No Loot For You!]
[Lands]
4 Cephalid Coliseum
4 City of Brass
4 Volcanic Island
[/Lands][Creatures]
1 Flame-kin Zealot
4 Golgari Grave-troll
2 Golgari Thug
4 Ichorid
1 Iona, Shield of Emeria
4 Narcomoeba
1 Sphinx of Lost Truths
4 Stinkweed Imp
[/Creatures][Spells]
4 Breakthrough
4 Bridge from Below
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Careful Study
3 Dread Return
4 Faithless Looting
4 Lion’s Eye Diamond
[/Spells][/Deck]
One of the big advantages Looting has over Careful Study is how it works with [card]Lion’s Eye Diamond[/card], the ‘fixed’ Black Lotus. (has anyone else ever noticed that even the ‘fixed’ power 9 seem kinda broken?) While getting to 3 mana is not usually on the agenda for a dredge deck, with Lion’s Eye Diamond (LED) it suddenly becomes much more likely. This deck can potentially kill turn 1, with a hand like:
[card]Lion’s Eye Diamond[/card]
[card]Breakthrough[/card]
[card]Golgari Grave-troll[/card]
[card]Volcanic Island[/card]
any other 3 cards (seriously)
Play Volcanic, Cast LED. Cast Breakthrough with X= 0, and then holding priority, sacrifice the LED to add 3 red mana. You will discard your hand, and then Breakthrough will resolve, and hopefully you can dredge Grave-troll into some more dredgers, hitting a Faithless Looting along the way, and maybe a [card]Narcomoeba[/card] or [card]Bridge from Below[/card]. Then you discard the 4 cards you dredged from Breakthrough, and Flashback the Looting to dredge even more. At this point, you should be able to [card]Dread Return[/card] [card]Flame-Kin Zealot[/card], produce tons of Zombies from your bridges, and attack for the win.
The Lion’s Eye Diamond version of dredge used to run [card]Deep Analysis[/card] as the flashback card-draw spell to use LED mana, but it was useless when in your starting hand (if you didn’t have an LED). Faithless Looting, on the other hand, is always good!
Now that’s how you loot in 3 different formats, and those decks are only touching the tip of the iceberg. I’ve seen T2 zombie decks run Looting to discard [card]Gravecrawler[/card]s and even [card]Vengeful Pharaoh[/card]s! Modern decks based around [card]Past in Flames[/card] and rituals will probably gain in popularity. Even [card]Splinter Twin[/card] might play some copies to get rid of excess combo pieces and dig to whichever piece is missing. And perhaps some new legacy deck will arise, using some card I have probably never even heard of (maybe courtesy of Felix Lapan, who is now looking for a new deck.)
Until next time, may you keep raking in the loot!
Alexander Hayne is the 2012 Pro Tour Barcelona champion. He also finished 2nd at GP Montreal in 2011.