Magic the Gathering

Casual

EDH-Wake continued

By Dale Lovelace ⋅ February 8, 2010 ⋅ Post a comment ⋅

The Super­bowl is over and my Colts lost. Its ok, I used the time dur­ing the game to find 15 cards in my Rhys, the Redeemed deck to be replaced by World­wake cards. Man, this set rocks!

This week we’ll start up where we left off last week with some of the best cards for EDH in World­wake. Let’s take a look at the non crea­ture World­wake spells I think we’ll be see­ing in EDH decks everywhere.

Amulet of Vigor just screams combo! Let’s see what goes well with this card… Come into play tapped lands love Amulet of Vigor, espe­cially Selesnya Sanc­tu­ary and the other bounce lands. Team this up with Root Maze to insure you are the least pop­u­lar player at the table. With Azo­ri­ous Chancery, Ruin Ghost and Tide­force Ele­men­tal you have infi­nite land­fall. Add Lotus Cobra for infi­nite mana.

The Zendikar block seems to have a lot of token gen­er­a­tors, and Bes­tial Men­ace may be one of the best. 6 power, 3 crea­tures for 5 mana and one card! I’m busy get­ting this in every green deck I have.

Is every color going to have a Wrath of God soon? For {2}{R}{R} Chain Reac­tion should get rid of all those pesky crea­tures. It’s not quite Wrath, as pro-red gets around it, but I believe Chain Reac­tion is as close as Red will get these days.

Dead Reck­on­ing offers some good util­ity in a grave­yard tutor with some crea­ture removal as an added bonus.

I have this love/hate rela­tion­ship with Coun­ter­spells. Mostly I love them when I play them and hate them when some­one coun­ters my spell! Dis­pel has a def­i­nite place in my EDH decks, if for no other rea­son than coun­ter­ing Coun­ter­spell.

I’m reserv­ing judg­ment on Trea­sure Hunt until I’ve tried it a few times. With Sensei’s Divin­ing Top this card could be good. If I ever get around to build­ing the 75 land deck I’ve been con­sid­er­ing this will be auto include. Give this one a shot and get back to me, it seems good.

While there were some great Mul­ti­kick crea­tures we went over last week, there are also some excel­lent non-creature Mul­ti­kick spells in World­wake.

How can you beat Comet Storm? We just love X spells in EDH, and we just love Mul­ti­kicker spells in EDH, so how about a Mul­ti­kicker X spell? Make it an instant as well? Red gets a great late game direct dam­age spell.

While red is best at direct dam­age and got that for a Mul­ti­kick X spell, green’s strength is in big bad crea­tures, hence Strength of the Tajuru. X +1/+1 coun­ters on the tar­get num­ber of Mul­ti­kicked crea­tures. This is also an instant, so makes for some excel­lent com­bat tricks. I just love these spells that let you use all of your mana late game.

Zendikar brought us Traps, and World­wake con­tin­ues the Trap series of cards with a few beauties.

I just love Ric­o­chet Trap! I’m a big fan of Swerve, and this just one up’s swerve! Don’t for­get that you don’t have to tar­get the blue spell if you pay the trap cost.

Sling­bow Trap makes the cut for me. Green crea­ture removal is hard to come by. Even ignor­ing the trap cost I like Sling­bow Trap.

Zendikar also intro­duced Quests, an enchant­ment with a goal. World­wake doesn’t dis­ap­point with some great new Quests.

Quest for Renewal is a cheaper Seed­born Muse for crea­tures that’s harder to remove. Team this with Omnath, Locus of Mana and a few mana elves and get pre­pared for one big Strength of the Tajaru!

How many crea­tures does Quest for Ula’s Tem­ple hit? Accord­ing to Gath­erer there are 41 crea­tures with the crea­ture types Kraken, Leviathan, Octo­pus, or Ser­pent. Some of those include Deep-Sea Kraken, Denizen of the Deep, Gro­zoth, Inkwell Leviathan, Ked­erekt Leviathan, Lorthos the Tide­maker, Simic Sky Swal­lower, and even Wrex­ial, the Risen Deep! I think I can find enough Kraken, Leviathan, Octo­pus, and Ser­pents to make this quest worth my while.

I’m really excited about Marshal’s Anthem! Give all your crea­tures +1/+1 plus it lets you bring a crea­ture to your hand for every 1{W} you pay when you cast it. Late game Marshal’s Anthem can net you a ton of cards!

Prior to World­wake there was only one card that I thought should be in every EDH deck out there, and that was Reli­quary Tower. Sol Ring and Sensei’s Divin­ing Top are almost always auto include, but not for every deck. Bojuka Bog should be in every EDH deck that runs black, period. This card is so good. It’s almost too good. Remov­ing grave­yards is always a good abil­ity in EDH, and since it only costs a land com­ing into play tapped, why not?

We love Sol Ring and Mana Vault. Ever­flow­ing Chal­ice is going to cost you more for the same level of pro­duc­tion as those guys, but man can you ever make a big Ever­flow­ing Chal­ice! Teamed up with Sol Ring and Mana Vault… Wow!

So short of turn­ing your Chameleon Colos­sus Col­or­less, Eye of Ugin is not going to reduce the cost of any­thing until the next set comes out. For now it can be a great every turn tutor for the many Arti­fact heavy decks out there. Even pay­ing 7 for a tutor isn’t that out­ra­geous late game. Get a huge Ever­flow­ing Chal­ice out for a lit­tle help!

While Hal­i­mar Depths, Sejiri Steppe and Smol­der­ing Spires are no Bojuka Bog, if you are play­ing a deck heavy in their respec­tive col­ors with no advan­tages to play­ing the basic lands, i.e. no High Tide, abil­i­ties of these lands should be well worth the cost of a land com­ing into play tapped.

It’s not Waste­land and it’s def­i­nitely not Strip Mine, but with 100 card decks Tec­tonic Edge can def­i­nitely find a place in a deck that runs land destruc­t­ing lands. This was a really good move from Wiz­ards, and a nice fair piece of LD.

Well, that’s all I got to say about that… World­wake may not be great for Stan­dard, but this looks like one of the best sets for EDH I’ve seen. I don’t see any cards that will cre­ate new arche­types, but plenty of great addi­tions. I don’t think there is a deck out there that can’t be bet­ter with a few World­wake cards.

This Sat­ur­day 2/13/2010 I’m start­ing a new EDH league at Wiz­ards Cup­board in Semi­nole, Florida [Ed. Note — Not Semi­nole County as I had pre­vi­ously edited it to say]. Signup begins at noon and the tour­na­ment starts at 1:00PM. Be sure to come by and see us!

Dale Lovelace is a DCI judge from Tampa, Florida. He loves casual and "weird" Magic formats, including Elder Dragon Highlander. He'll talk about EDH, those other formats and some seriously cool things you can do in and around Magic the Gathering.

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