Infiltrate!

Benthic Infiltator by Mathias Kollros

Blue-black was no doubt the color of ingest in BFZ (if we exclude exiling noncreature spells).Black has more powerful ingest creature, but blue has evasion ingest creature. Personally, I prefer blue's ingester because your processing will be guaranteed, while you can splash black's ingester in any black deck.

If you followed some articles about BFZ, you might encounter questions regarding ingest / processor ratio. Most processors are fine card without their processing ability, that's their plus, but unless you can trigger them, I think there are better alternative. Unfortunately, I also don't have a lot of clue about what the right ratio is, but I've seen people ingesting so many of my cards without doing anything about it (honestly, that still puts pressure, and having your bomb ingested is not fun). I myself feel that its easier for you to be overloaded with processors, but very few ingesters, that's why I consider blue's ingester, which have better chance to ingest multiple cards over few turns to be more valuable.

Well, good luck trying those "alternative" eldrazi theme in the set!

BFZ's Best of Brawls

This post come from a simple curiosity: is Tajuru Beastmaster a good card?

Some of you might already know do you like it or not, I got couple of it during prerelease but I was hesitant to put it into my library. I've seen people appreciate it, I've also seen people giving it bad rating. So, I tried to peek a little into the Gatherer, and sorts BFZ's cards by their power. I don't take note of rares because you won't see them often in limited.

1st: Breaker of Armies
2nd: Eldrazi Devastator 
3rd: Bane of Bala Ged, Ruin Processor, Plated Crusher
4th: Deathless Behemoth
5th: Tajuru Beastmaster, Ulamog's Despoiler
6th: ton of 4-power creatures

Breaker, Bane, Crusher, Behemoth, and Despoilers are uncommons, while Devastator and Ruin Processor costs 8 mana and 7 mana respectively, so the chances are, if you can put Tajuru Beastmaster early enough, it will dominate the battlefield as the biggest creature for a some turns (and, more importantly, as a defender, a role Territorial Balloth have in-tendency to fill), and he even have an upside of Ally synergy.

So yeah, I think he's good enough to fill that 6-drop slot in your next green draft deck. Of course there are nonrare alternative for that spot (with arguably different or better role), but for size, Beastmaster's the beast.

Waking Up with Scions

When I first thought of Awaken cards I thought "great, an effect and a body on the same turn!" Then I realized that if you cast Awaken with its exact Awaken cost, your elemental will "come to play" tapped, which kinda defeat the purpose of Awaken itself. You do get the creature, but you miss the tempo potential you could get, and it's kind of silly to miss a functional 4/4 creature for a turn.

So how to get around this? The obvious choice is that you cast Awaken when you have one extra land compared to the awaken cost. But having 6 land available in play is far cry from having 7 land available in play. It would be just too slow. This is where Eldrazi Scions become really useful, as they can substitute a land, allowing you to cast awaken with one less land, and your last land can immediately attack or block. BFZ seemed to be filled with various possibilities of playing with mana and lands, and that makes the plays very interesting.

BFZ Prerelease Rants: The Event

The first day of BFZ's prerelease already swooped in yesterday, and it's amazing! My local game store hosts the sealed tournament twice in one night, so most of us got two BFZ prerelease packs, and of course a lot of loot! My biggest loot was the Promo Ob Nixilis, and three other mythic. I managed to win four out of six matches so last night was a blast for me.

When I learn of BFZ's full spoiler, I know that Battle for Zendikar will reward you for playing synergetic strategies, and I love it. Magic Origins limited was simple and it was sweet, but I feel that BFZ's limited will be more than "choosing an available color", rather, you will be challenged to connect the dots and build a strategy that will completely blow your opponents.  BFZ's sealed was very fun, but I am eager to know how the draft will shape. For now, my mindset for doing a BFZ's limited is "choose an open strategy" rather than "choose an open color" and I hope I can pull that well.

Although I managed to win four out of six match, my two losses was the result of my inability to play magic in a higher complexity level, especially since that was when I was paired with another player who also does well in their first two matches. BFZ reveals a lot of areas of my gameplay that I can improve and I am excited to do more limited!

Lastly, I am starting to consider (just considering) playing standard, seeing how exciting it was to play BFZ's strategy-centric limited environment. Another reason was that BFZ's event deck seemed really cool as it was packed with powerful rares. I might try those when I got some profit from selling cards. 

Oh, another thing that I love is that I never felt that I really get mana flooded, like some writer said, between landfalls and eldrazis there are a lot of things that your lands can do. And battle between Eldrazi *is* a thing. I punched an opposing Bane of Bala Ged with my own Ruin Processor, and that, after all my experience playing monsters printed on top of cardboard paper, felt awesome as hell.

Well, see you next time!