Shadows Over Innistrad Draft Guide
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Shadows over innistrad draft guide Continue Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to my first article written specifically for Manaleak mtgUK. It is an absolute pleasure to be able to write for you guys and I sincerely hope that my ramblings are enjoyable and above all educational. My main goals with these articles will be to teach you lovely people about some misconceptions, misunderstandings and new things Magic: Gathering related. On that note, let's jump right into my first order theme: Madness Mechanics. Introduction So, the normal format of articles will be the same as this one, an introduction, some talking points, and then a summary of what I reviewed. A TL; DR, if you like. Now Madness Mechanics has been first released in The Odyssey Block, re- released in Time Spiral and most recently in Shadows over Innistrad. So this is by no means a new mechanic like Ingest or Devoid. It is an ability that has two parts, but effectively allows you to play cards from your graveyard at a different price. So let's dive right into the actual ruling. Madness is a two-part ability, a static effect (an effect that occurs no matter what) and triggers an effect. In this case the static ability from Madness is a card banished before it enters the cemetery, at which point the triggered ability allows you to decide to pay its cost of Madness and therefore play cards. In essence, it allows all cards that have Madness to play at instant speed, or technically speaking as if they flash. So if you want to give it up on the ultimate opponent's pitch, you can. It is important to take note, although it may not seem like a big change, that the keyword Madness has been changed, or updated, a bit with shadows over Innistrad. Until this year, both effects were triggers. When the Madness card was dropped, the player decided to throw it into exile, after which the player could either immediately cast the spell or place it in his graveyard. With the updated wording, the card first enters into exile (this can no longer effect), then the player can either cast the spell immediately, or put it in the graveyard. Now, in order for the trigger of Madness to occur, you have to remember two things. First, playing cards for its madness cost doesn't change its Converted Mana value (CMC). If I discard a card that costs 2GG and I pay 2G for its Cost of Madness, its CMC is still 4. Secondly, the map must be discarded. It should not be discarded in a certain way; You can give it up, or simply because you have too many cards in your hand. No matter what the reason is, Madness's ability still causes. What can we do with this information? Well, first of all, it effectively gives Creatures with Madness the ability to be thrown at instant speed. This means that you do it at any given time that instant could be Madness-ing's arrogant Wurm response to ad blockers can cover you back in a bad situation. This happens to be my favorite mechanic from any set, and so I have a random deck focusing on blue-green (Simic) Madness creatures. Check out the latest preview cards, prices and pre-order here! Inspired by when cards have been used in tournaments, the deck tends to control the game early by figuring out effective creatures with their cost of madness when opponents least expect it. So here's my Maindeck list: Sideboard Using This Deck, I've won quite a few games compared to other decks. Most opponents viewed it as just another control deck until I dropped the arrogant Wurm. Remember that this deck was popular in 2004. There is no guarantee that Madness Decks are going to take off as they did then. First of all, in our time the mechanics are much stronger than then. What about the Standard, do you know where he's going to live? In my honest opinion, I think people will underestimate the mechanics, or at least abuse it from the start. Looking at one of the simplest maps in the standard: Working with Jace, Vryn's Prodigy allows us to effectively change his ability to draw a card, reset the card to draw a map. Every time you get to effectively give up a card with Madness, you get the card advantage because you get both the ability, not just one, and the discard flaw is removed through synergy. So let's look at the effectiveness of the cards with their frenzy of spending... 4/3 with Haste for 5 isn't really very much. We probably expect it to cost 4, or have higher average power and durability. So really, if it was a vanilla card (one with no ability what it would be), we'd throw it in the trash and never look at it if it's the last pick in a bad round of the draft. However, if we look at its cost of Madness instead, we find that we get 4/3 to 3, with a rush. Savings of 2 whole mana and therefore a card that is highly effective. The closest we are to this map is the otherwise Scabb Clan Berserker. Most cards will become more efficient when using their Madness value. That's the whole point of ability and that's why it's so fun to play. Not many people tend to factor in the Madness value when they look at unused mana for a turn. Releasing the madness inside my last point will be a few examples of maps that allow you to use the mechanics of Madness to the fullest. To do this, I will look at the maps in a standard format and can look at the madness in the modern other time. The most outstanding example of inclusion, like Jace, the prodigy Of Irene. The drop is very strong in this kind of deck, especially since it turns into Jace, Telepath Unbound afterwards. There's also an excruciating voice that allows you to clean 2 cards if you discard one with madness. Epiphany redeemer also be strong, doing the same as the tormenting voice, but at instant speed for 1 total mana more. In Shadows over Innistrad, we get a few more ways to use Madness outside of the main route of the benefits map. The elusive Tormenter allows us to find ways to swing for 4 unblockable damages if we play our cards right (gettit?). Lightning Axe allows us to remove the creature quite nicely along with discarding, pore over the pages is a good method of lategame and finally Olivia mobilized for war can produce a good 2-for-1 with her ability. Obviously there are a lot more cards in the standard format after rotation that can be used, but these are just some of them that stood out to me as strong methods. The most recent thing I would like to point out is that the madness in sSandard is probably manifested in some form of red-blue-black (Grixis) form, as green and white do not thematically follow the concept of madness. Conclusion So, things that we hope to learn from my rambling: I actually got quite nervous writing this article. Madness is not a new mechanic and can lead to some fun interactions where you deceive people with your available mana. There are more Madness opportunities than people think. Remember that if your opponent forces you to fold, you can still activate Madness. Again, Jace, the prodigy Vreen, will probably be able to shine... Here you are, my first article for you guys. Please feel free to leave any comments you have (preferably positive) and tell your friends if you really like it. I have a podcast that I sometimes appear on, so if you want to check that out, its called Transformed Mana Cast. For your convenience I have included episode 2 of our Coverted Mana Cast podcast, I hope you enjoy it. Thank you all very much and I will see you in the next article. Joe Butcher Spoiler season is finally over and it's definitely intriguing. The shadows over Innistrad certainly seem to be one of the lowest power level sets for years - but that's not necessarily a bad thing! A lower power level gives a chance for cards based on synergy to be more likely to shine - and the shadows over Innistrad are packed with cards that, even if they don't have as much power in a vacuum, encourage players to build interesting and unusual decks. Not to mention that some of these cards are absolutely bursting with taste... Click here to view all the shadows above Innistrad singles and sealed products Today I'm going to count down my Top 8 favorite cards from the shadows over Innistrad, let you know why you should try to pick them up on the upcoming shadows over Innistrad Prereales and talk a little bit about how I see them fitting in Before we get underway, it's only fair (on itself) to provide a small waiver - any evaluation of the new card is necessarily done without the context of the entire format, format, as such there is plenty of room for error as previously unseen synergies arise, or apparently powerful maps turn out to be irreproducible, but the popularity of a particular response. All this is a very complicated way of saying that not only would I be able to leave with some of my scores of new cards, I would be shocked if I didn't have a few new cards completely wrong.