CardShark

Hello again, and welcome to The Mana Pool! Mike here again with a rundown of our second Shards of Alara Preview episode. Unfortunately, Brian could not join us because of other schedule obligations. Fortunately, we have a special guest. It's Jason (garthok84 of the forums), who had previously appeared to help us out in the Eventide prerelease aftermath, and he does not disappoint.

We start things off by taking care of a few things we missed the first time around. A new Cardshark Member Promotion for September appeared, hosted by one of our premium sellers, and it's quite spiffy. We have a few comments regarding the updates to the DCI Banned and Restricted List that were announced a week or so ago, as well as the announcement that States will start again in the U.S. in November, as well as Champs in Canada.

Then it's preview cards! Among them are revelations of three new keyword abilities, a Jedi, Doran 2.0, and a pants-wettingly powerful Planeswalker. The cards are great, conversation is good, and the episode isn't an hour and a half long. What is there not to love?

Thanks again for listening, and keep sending in your comments and questions. Who knows, maybe someday we can have a “mailbag” segment, like all the grownup radio shows. Have fun, and go play some Magic! Or listen to the episode. You know, whatever.

Cardshark Member Promotions:
http://www.cardshark.com/member_promotions.asp

Shards of Alara Visual Spoiler:
http://www.wizards.com/magic/tcg/articl ... ra/spoiler

Download this episode here: http://themanapool.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=376398
Email us at themanapool@cardshark.com
Send me an article at submissions@cardshark.com
Cardshark located at http://www.cardshark.com
RSS Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/themanapool

I must have missed a few episodes if we're already up to Episode 64.

One thing that I forgot to mention about the Caldera Hellion that's kinda cool is that it works really well in the mono-red decks that are running around currently, because it doesn't kill Ashenmoor Gouger or Demigod Revenge. And the creatures that were in the deck that would die, are all rotating out(Blood Knight, Sulfur Elemental, Magus of the Scroll).

So I mistyped something. Considering we recorded this last night and I managed to get it put together and uploaded in the same night, you're lucky it's not in gibberish.

Thankfully, Llorwyn and Shadowmoor have provided us with plenty of decent, cheap creatures that make good Devour food. Mmmm... Mudbutton Torchrunner...

EDIT: And now I have a deck idea. Just slap a regeneration shield on Wort, Boggart Auntie with Mad Auntie before playing the Hellion and you can recur your gobbled-up Goblins to help your big creature clean up.

I put capsule into the orb and it came up 6 times, so there should only be 3 cards in the shard cycle (sharkle?) due to each of them having Capsule in both their name and rules text.

As for the new mechanics...

- I didn't like the Exalted mechanic until I realized that it's a flavor thing. You've got a shard whose people send exactly one champion out to fight their battles, so it makes sense that it would result in a mechanic like this. Of course, the real reason it's interesting is because I want to see how the gameplay will reflect a fight between this shard-based combat style against one of the non-white shards where attacking en mass is the norm. It's very much a color conflict, so I'm sold.
- Unearth is kinda weird to me. I like the idea of guys clawing their way out of the ground for one last attack, though I have a feeling some people will be confused when they try to Champion one of them and their champ croaks as the Unearth removal happens before the champion's pseudo-cost. Seems to work well with Devour, though.
- Devour is pretty boring, though it's printed on a nice card. I'm glad they phrased it as "as it comes into" rather than "when it comes into" so you don't end up sacrificing a lot of guys just to have him get countered. It'd be cooler if you could actually use it as a sacrifice outlet and sac guys at any time for the counters, though obviously that'd make it too good.
- Blue = artifact creatures? Hello Scarecrone.
- More planeswalkers is always fun with gilder baern, though honestly I'm not going determine how awesome I feel they are until I see what this set has in terms of direct damage spells. If it doesn't have a boatload of shock effects, then sweet. If it does, then less cool but still significant. Either way, like Mike says, the red/green one practically says "Prevent some damage that would be going at you and maybe get something in the meantime", which is fine by me. If Bant is attacking your planeswalker with their one attacker per turn, then they aren't attacking you.
- 8 converted cost cycle is meh. I know they're cool but I'd really hate to have to choose between a really solid in-colors uncommon and one of these expensive and hopefully removable dragon/sphinx guys in my third pack of a draft. The Hellkite Overload has regenerate, but can you really afford that the turn you get him out? Removal is going to be even more important now specifically because each spell is harder to play than usual.

Alright, you're going to have to explain the finer points of some of that stuff, because I feel like I'm missing something. What exactly is the conflict between Champion and Unearth, and what do you mean by "get countered" when talking about the hypothetical alternate version of Devour?

Well, say you try to champion an unearthed creature, here's what I think happens. Feel free to correct me if I'm misunderstanding it.

You play Changeling Hero. It is not countered. When it comes into play, the triggered ability "When this creature comes into play, sacrifice it unless you remove another [object] you control from the game" is placed on the stack, with you naming Unearthed Eggplant as the object to remove.

This is where I get confused. The word on Unearth says that you remove the creature from the game if it would be removed. Champion would be an effect that removes in, so it would have to remove itself as a replacement for the Champion removal. Given this means you didn't fulfill the "unless" clause for the Champion trigger, wouldn't you now sacrifice your Changeling Hero?

I could just be misunderstanding how the replacement effect works with the word "unless".

Anyway, regarding the devour, if you had to sacrifice the creatures as an additional cost when you pay for the creature (like a kicker) then you'd lose them for nothing if the creature was countered. If you had to remove them as a comes into play ability, then you'd have to play stack ordering to make sure the Devour resolves before the firespout-y effect or it would kill itself. By saying "as it comes into play", you don't have to deal with either situation.

Okay, now I'm following you on the Devour.

As for the Champion thing, the (implied?) replacement effect on what happens to the creature when it leaves play only affects where it ends up, not where it was intended to go. Your champ's Champion ability triggers, and you have to choose a creature to remove from the game. "Okay, that one", pointing to your unearthed guy. So you start removing him from the game, and then the Unearth ability "redirects" him to the removed from game zone. You did what you were supposed to (sent someone to the RFG zone), so you keep your champ. What I don't know is whether or not the unearth guy would come back if the champ left play. It still ended up in the RFG zone, but got waylaid by another effect. Since the abilities will be together in Standard for a whole year, I'm pretty certain that issue will get handled in an FAQ or Ask Wizards feature at some point.

I'm not sold on the whole Champion and Unearth interaction that you gave there. I thought Unearth's effect was a replacement, so instead of removing the creature from the game for the Champion effect, it would get removed for the Unearth effect, so then you won't have Championed anything and your guy will die, sorta like bouncing the creature they're about to Champion. But I could be wrong I suppose, I'm not the rules guy.

I sent it in to Ask Wizards (if only to find out if it comes back due to the second Champion trigger), though they tend to not reply to questions about mechanics before a set is actually released. At least, that's how it's been for me in the past. Not that they've ever actually answered my questions...

Let's just say this whole Ask Wizards Classic thing seems to me like they just wanted to answer one less question a week.

The issue with Champion and Unearth seems to be resolved by the notes for Dreams of the Dead in the Masters Edition 2 FAQ.

Dreams of the Dead
{3}{U}
Enchantment
{1}{U}: Return target white or black creature card from your graveyard to play. That creature gains "Cumulative upkeep {2}." If the creature would leave play, remove it from the game instead.

* If a creature returned to play with Dreams of the Dead would leave play for any reason, it's removed from the game instead -- unless the spell or ability that's causing the creature to leave play is actually trying to remove it from the game! In that case, it succeeds at removing it from the game. If it later returns the creature card to play (as Oblivion Ring or Flickerwisp might, for example), the creature card will return to play as a new object with no relation to its previous existence.

Awesome, I'm so glad they fixed that issue. Now just remember to print this out and take it with you in case the judges are stupid.

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/A ... aily/mr340
Troll Shroud reference by Mark Rosewater