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Trick’s Thoughts on Alara Reborn spoilers

By Trick Jarrett ⋅ April 16, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment ⋅

• Dragon Brood­mother — Holy crap. Really? This card is amaz­ingly cool. The them­ing is awe­some, and it’s quite rea­son­ably priced at 6 mana. Then every turn you’re get­ting at least a 1/1, or more if it devours some of its sib­lings (or even the mama herself.)
  
• Lavalanche — Quite a pow­er­ful card but the 3X cast­ing cost (3 mana in addi­tion to X) makes it quite expen­sive as far as X spells go. Also it’s a Sor­cery which is not sur­pris­ing, but it would be sick as an instant.
  
• Jenara, Asura of War — 3 mana for a 3/3 flier? Hell yes. Oh wait, she is pumpable? Holy crap. Def­i­nitely expect to face her in Zoo and other matches.
  
• Defiler of Souls — Now this is an inter­est­ing card. It’s not amaz­ing, it’s a 5/5 flyer which is stan­dard when it comes to ‘drag­ons’ in Magic. I use ‘drag­ons’ here as a generic term to mean this type of crea­ture, a fat­tie with fly­ing. The abil­ity is quite inter­est­ing as it obvi­ously won’t affect ANY crea­tures from Alara Reborn.
  
• Sphinx of the Steel Wind — Akroma the arti­fact. And I love the fla­vor text, very nice.
  
• Ether­caste Knight — This card is good and will see play, but it’s not bro­ken. As a two drop it’s got the magic cast­ing cost, but a 2/4 in com­bat isn’t great. But if this were paired with Doran… interesting.
  
• Pale Recluse — I’m not super impressed with this card. I love the land­cy­cling, but oth­er­wise it’s noth­ing spec­tac­u­lar. Prob­a­bly see lim­ited play to help with mana, or as a late drop. I don’t see it really hit­ting off in constructed.
  
• Marisi’s Twin­claws — I’m a sucker for double-strike. This looks like fun. And again I say, what if this was paired with Doran…
  
• Bitu­mi­nous Blast — I really like the Cas­cade mechanic. The fact you can in the­ory play 2 spells, one deal­ing 4 dam­age and other being what­ever you dig for, is really tempt­ing. And I can just see it being quite fun with cards that allow you to stack the order of your deck.
  
• Aven Mimeo­mancer — This crea­ture is going to be a house in lim­ited. Eva­sion abil­i­ties (Flight) are always great tools in lim­ited, and for this one to turn your army into an Air Force, it’s going to be rad.
  
• Sages of the Anima — This card is too expen­sive to be earth shat­ter­ing but it’s really good. I’d rather they had made it cheaper with some sort of draw­back. We’ll see if this really hits home, but I don’t think it will.
  
• Thought Hem­or­rhage — Cra­nial Extrac­tion++. I like it. Pun­ish them for hold­ing the spell and then take all copies away from them. Very sexy.
  
• Soulquake — This one has very inter­est­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties with come-into-play and leav­ing play effects. It screams for John­nies to find some way to abuse it. We’ll see!
  
• Knight of New Alara — Expect this guy to see some play, espe­cially with Naya and Zoo. The pump and pos­si­ble multi-pump makes him very awesome.
  
• Jund Hack­blade — Meh. Cool but noth­ing amaz­ing. 2/1 for 2. Noth­ing spe­cial. 3/2 for 2 on turn 3, noth­ing special.
  
• Neme­sis of Rea­son — Didn’t we see this in Ravnica? Now it’s just on a stick. Note that it’s when he attacks, it’s not depen­dent on dam­ag­ing the oppo­nent at all. That makes it pretty good. And as a 3/7, in lim­ited he’s going to be awesome.
  
• Spell­bound Dragon — Now this is a nifty guy. Attack­ing allows you to dig for a card and in turn pump him with a spell you’re will­ing to get rid of. Now unfor­tu­nately it can also be a draw­back or a hin­drance from attack­ing as you may not want to dis­card anything.
  
• Unscythe, Killer of Kings — Now this is a fla­vor­ful card. It kills guys and turns them into zom­bies for you. Quite awe­some. Back in the day a card like this would have a fla­vor­ful draw­back, like each zom­bie made you lose 1 life a turn or some­thing. These days? Pshaw. Draw­backs are so five years ago!
  
• Ter­mi­nate — An old favorite returns! This is going to be BIG.
  
• Thrax­imundar — Again, very inter­est­ing and very fla­vor­ful. A 7 mana 6/6 which gets big­ger, gains you card advan­tage, and has haste. A big fat fat­tie for lim­ited. And quite likely to be awe­some in con­structed. And a card I think I’d LOVE to build an Elder Dragon High­lander deck with him as General.
  
• Time Sieve — What could go wrong! I mean it does require the sac­ri­fice of five arti­facts to use the abil­ity BUT this is the sort of card where play­ers are chomp­ing at the bit to find some way to abuse. Time Walk is too pow­er­ful as a sin­gle use instant. Time Sieve is also only 2 mana, but it is also pos­si­bly reusable. Con­sider an arti­fact deck, or a deck fea­tur­ing the arti­fact lands from Mir­rodin. Yeah… this could be sick.
  
• Med­dling Mage — Not offi­cially announced, but it’s all but con­firmed thanks to the Orb of Insight. This is also going to be awe­some to see him back in Stan­dard. As far as crea­tures go, he’s one of the most pow­er­ful. You’re going to hear the argu­ment (or be mak­ing the argu­ment) ‘but he dies to every­thing’ and I say — Shove off. So do plenty of other crea­tures and they still some­how man­age to effect the game.

And then there’s our exclu­sive spoiler card, Fi.… oh you almost got me. I nearly told you how awe­some our Leg­endary card was for tomor­row! Be sure to come back tomor­row and see what GOLD card we’ve got to show you!

– Trick

Trick Jarrett is the host and founder of ManaNation.com, he writes, edits, covers, and spoils Magic for a living. Playing it whenever he can manage to find the time. He is engaged to a lovely woman who refuses to learn Magic, and they have a cute cocker-spaniel puppy who is all too eager to play Magic.

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