Spotlight: Skyshroud Claim

Skyshroud Claim is one of those ramp cards that's maybe on the maybe-list for every green deck. Heck, it's probably on the probably-list for every green deck.

Green is the color of "getting lands from your deck and putting them onto the battlefield." This does two things: ramps and color-fixes.

One of the rules of the game is "one land per turn." Getting around this rule is called ramping, because you are ramping up to have more mana available than you should so that you can cast bigger spells earlier than you should. Consider Rampant Growth.



Well, lookie there. It has the word "ramp" in its name. For the cost of two mana, one of which is green, you get to look around in your library for a basic land and put it directly into play tapped. It costs you some mana and a card, but it lets you put two lands into play on a single turn. On the next turn, you are now one land up from where you would have been. Get ready for the big stuff.

Color-fixing is where you might have a couple of different colors in your deck and you want to make sure that you have access to both of them by a certain turn. You can use a spell like Rampant Growth to guarantee that when you untap, you will be untapping a basic land that produces the color you are looking for that turn. In other words, you trade away a card in your hand and maybe even your entire second turn to make sure that you have the color of mana you need on the third turn.

Compare Rampant Growth to Nature's Lore, for example.



Both spells ramp, since they both let you put an additional land into play. But, while Rampant Growth only lets you get a basic land and put it into play tapped, Nature's Lore places no such restrictions. Instead, you only have to search for a Forest card and it doesn't even come into play tapped. You can use the land you get that turn to make mana. It costs two mana to cast, but gives you back access to one mana right away.

Why am I bringing this up? Well, Skyshroud Claim is a lot like two Nature's Lore spells stapled together. It costs four mana instead of two mana, and it gets two Forest cards instead of one Forest card. And just like with Nature's Lore, the Forest cards you get with Skyshroud Claim come into play untapped and ready for action.

Nature's Lore is better ramp than is Rampant Growth because you get to use the land right away. Skyshroud Claim, doubly so.

"But, wait mister," I can hear you say, "I can only get forests with those spells. What about color fixing?"

One of the beautifully frustrating things about this game is how technical it can be. You see, there's a big difference between a basic Forest and a Forest card.

A card has a "supertype." In this case "land." It's the thing that makes the card a land in the first place. Otherwise, it's just a piece of cardboard. But then it also has a "type." In this case "Forest." Some Forests are "basic" and some are not. These two Forests are basic lands.



These next two Forests are not basic lands.



They are still Forests, they just aren't basic lands. So, you can find them with Nature's Lore, but not with Rampant Growth. Makes perfect sense right?

You know what's even more beautifully frustrating? These two lands are not Forests at all, despite having the word "forest" in the name.



That's right. You would not be allowed to find these lands with Rampant Growth or with Nature's Lore, since they are not basic and they are not Forests.

But! There are several lands that indeed count as a Forest, but that tap for two colors of mana. Here are a few examples.



You can find these lands with Nature's Lore or Skyshroud Claim, no problem. As long as these are the lands you are looking for, Skyshroud Claim ramps and color-fixes, all in one neat package.

There are several other cards in green that do something similar to Skyshroud Claim. For example, if Skyshroud Claim is a double Nature's Lore, Explosive Vegetation is a double Rampant Growth.



Hunting Wilds is similar to Skyshroud Claim, except you give up the ability to get mana back right away for the option of kicking the spell and animating the forests.

Ranger's Path, on the other hand, puts the forests onto the battlefield tapped with no other options.



But none of those spells are Skyshroud Claim. Skyshroud Claim is in the sweet spot for Commander, ramping for two at a cost of four. Playing this spell early sets you up for seven mana on turn five, potentially fixing whatever color problems you are having along the way. If you draw it mid- or late-game, you still have a decent bump in mana.

Getting Needlessly Fancy With: Draw Spells

Tutor, Draw, and Manipulate.

When I'm building a deck, you can be sure that I'm going to consider all of these things. So, when I was reworking Lazav, I started making lists. It's easy to get carried away in the list-making portion of the deck-building process. I had dozens of Draw cards all fighting to get into the final deck, but none fighting as hard as the two newcomers from Khans of Tarkir.



Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time.

Both of these spells have been having their way with the various formats. Legacy, Modern, and even Vintage, have been testing them out. As it turns out, refilling your hand with cards for little mana is good. Who knew?

For the Commander format, in general, I don't like spending turns "doing nothing," even if it means that I get to draw a lot of cards. There are too many crucial turns where tapping out means that you miss all the action. However, refilling your hand is super important. With that said, here are my general rules for card drawing:

1) Instant speed is better than sorcery speed.

2) Things get dicey at about five mana.

2) I don't like "conditional" cards.


Okay, let's look at Treasure Cruise.



It's three cards for a single blue mana, if you can delve away seven cards from your graveyard. It's also Sorcery speed. The obvious comparison is to Ancestral Recall, except well, it's not Ancestral Recall at all, is it?



Ancestral Recall is broken. As an unconditional, instant speed, three-card-drawing spell for a single blue mana with no drawback or other requirements, it's not a fair comparison.



A better comparison is probably Concentrate or Brilliant Plan. Both spells are also blue Sorceries that draw three cards. Concentrate is four mana, two of which are blue. Brilliant Plan is five mana, but only one of which is blue. In other words, you're going to pay four or five mana to get three cards at sorcery speed with no other conditions or requirements. But, to get three cards with Treasure Cruise for the same cost, there's a condition. We have to do something extra.

If Treasure Cruise was simply a spell that allowed you to draw three cards for eight mana, it wouldn't be very good. Concentrate or Brilliant Plan would be objectively better. But! Throw delve into the mix, and we have something else entirely.

To make Treasure Cruise the same as Brilliant Plan, you need to pay five mana AND delve away three cards. To make it similar to Concentrate, you need to delve four cards.

So, Treasure Cruise is "better" when you have cards in your graveyard that you also don't mind removing from the game. This is rarely true for me. I like reusing things from my graveyard. I also don't like being at the mercy of someone who randomly throws out a Relic of Progenitus and catches me in the crossfire. Topdecking an eight mana draw spell sounds like a depressing way to lose.



Visions of Beyond is an instant speed draw spell with the potential of drawing three cards for a single blue mana. The condition is that a graveyard has to have twenty or more cards in it. If the condition isn't met, it still replaces itself by drawing one card instead. And, let's not forget that we are talking instant speed here. All this, and I still don't run Visions of Beyond as a draw spell - even in a deck with milling.



Dig Through Time

Dig Through Time isn't exactly a Draw spell, but it does leave you up one card since you put two in your hand. It's more of a Manipulate spell, except that it reaches deeper into your library than most. Not quite as far as a true Tutor, though. Before we go on, take a moment to scope out the sweet artwork on this card.



At a whopping eight mana without delve, Dig Through Time would be tough to justify. For the same mana, you could simply draw five cards off the top with Stroke of Genius, for example. But, like Treasure Cruise, throw delve into the mix and we have something else entirely.



The closest comparison is probably Impulse. Dig Through Time is like a double-Impulse, in a way. If you can delve four cards when you cast it, bringing the casting cost down to four mana, you would almost get a double-Impulse, except you would see one less card since you look at the top seven instead of eight. The question for me, then, is when would I rather have Dig Through Time than just running Impulse?

Almost never.

Impulse isn't conditional. It's also technically easier to splash or play off of a colorless mana source. Although it only gets me one card and only digs four cards deep, it's much further down the curve to cast, doesn't eat cards from my graveyard, isn't a terrible topdeck at any point in the game, and isn't vulnerable to random acts of graveyard hate. All this, and I'm still not running Impulse in my Lazav deck.

But wait, mister! I thought Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time are burning up the formats, even Commander?!

There's getting the job done and than there's going over the top. Every time I've been in a game where these spells are cast, the other spells I mentioned would have worked just as well. There are cases where using delve to reduce the casting cost of these spells lead to a stronger turn. There are just as many - and possibly more - cases where not having the cards to delve away make for a much weaker turn.

But which turns do we tend to remember and value? The ones where we did something spectacular? Or the ones where we did nothing?



I guess what I'm saying is that Fact or Fiction costs $0.50, is an instant, and typically gives you back three cards for four mana. If you need to break the table open, it's easy to ask one of the other stuck opponents to make the split. I end up with five card piles this way a lot of the time. And, the "drawback" of losing some of the cards to your graveyard is easy to build around. Putting cards into your graveyard to use later is much easier than taking cards out of your graveyard to never use again.

We have most of the best spells from the history of Magic at our disposal. By all means, if Treasure Cruise, Dig Through Time, or any other spell fits the theme of your deck or creates synergy that pushes whatever you are trying to do, run it! But don't forget that there are turns where you do nothing. And doing nothing sucks.

Do less nothing.

Fate Reforged Spoiler: Ugin, the Spirit Dragon

We must have been good this year, because Wizards decided to show off a new card from the upcoming Fate Reforged set. The new planeswalker card is Ugin, the Spirit Dragon. Let's break this down.

At eight mana, Ugin had better pack a whollop. That's a lot of mana to be throwing down for a single spell, so we are looking for a big game impact. Ugin does not dissapoint.

He comes in with 7 loyalty counters, which makes him beefy to begin with. The first loyalty ability is +2 Ghostfire. Colorless bolt for three damage, bringing him up to 9 loyalty on the first activation. His second loyalty ability is -X and seems like it could be savage in a lot of relevant situations. Exile everything under a certain number, except for colorless stuff. His last loyalty ability is -10 and pushes all my buttons. Draw cards and free stuff!

Before we get too far into this, let me just take a moment to say that this card is flavorful and awesome. Look at the art! I have a soft spot for big colorless cards like this. The Eldrazi are ridiculously epic. Ugin lives on the same street as the legendary Eldrazi, but in a slightly smaller house. With no pool.

For eight mana Ugin's second ability is the one that we are really looking at. It's the ability that comes down and breaks the game open. The problem is that for one less mana than Ugin, you can run Karn Liberated or All is Dust.

All is Dust doesn't exile things, but it does a good job of taking care of business right then and there. It leaves behind colorless stuff, similar to Ugin. And it can't be dialed in. But more often than not when I want to sweep the board, I just want to sweep the board. No funny business.

Karn Liberated is really, really, really strong. The similarities from a design standpoint between Ugin and Karn are there. Planeswalker. Colorless. High mana cost. High loyalty count. Karn pluses to exile a card from hand. Ugin pluses to do three damage. Karn minuses to exile one permanent. Ugin minuses to exile a bunch of permanents. Karn ultimates to restart the game, potentially giving you a huge advantage. Ugin ultimates to give you a new hand, a new lease on life, and potentially a huge advantage.

The Eldrazi story line includes Ugin and Bolas, of course. Check out the artwork side by side and the mirror image of the ultimate ability on both planeswalkers. There's more to this story. I can't wait to find out what it is.

Archenemy Commander: Nicol Bolas

Commander is a format that can take on different dimensions depending on how you want to play. If you follow the deck construction rules for the format, you end up with fun multiplayer mayhem, but that's not the only way to play the game.

I'm a big fan of multiplayer formats. Sure, the individual games tend to run on the long side, but there's more flexibility in how the game proceeds from turn to turn. It's different than in a two-player game where the lines of play are more clear. That's where Archenemy comes in.

In Archenemy, it is one vs. many. To balance the scales, the person playing the Archenemy gets a special Archenemy deck with some sweet, sweet cards. These "scheme" cards are full of flavor and can be very powerful. If you want to fight off multiple players at once, you need a little something extra. Like this!



In the spirit of the Commander format, I put together an Archenemy scheme deck consisting of exactly one of every scheme card available. (It took a while to collect all of these, but it was worth it!) In other words, the scheme deck followed the "only one copy of a card" rule and was 50 cards in total, much larger than the required number of 20 schemes for a typical Archenemy deck.

From there, I just had to build a Nicol Bolas Commander deck. I was compelled. To my mind, Nicol Bolas is THE Archenemy. The schemes fit perfectly with the deck. Reading the schemes aloud was easily the most fun part of mixing these two formats.

So, it was Bolas as the Archenemy vs. Ezuri and Teneb, piloted by Chris and Luke.



Game on.

In this format, the opponents of the Archenemy take turns at the same time, stepping from phase to phase together. But, they do not share a life total or mana, and they cannot block for one another. This makes the format only a little slower than a two-player battle, but way faster than a typical multiplayer game. The objective is clear: kill the Archenemy or be killed.



We had a few setup turns where Luke was digging for lands and Chris kept throwing out Elven threats. I was able to get my draw engine started early, so I had a grip of cards and never missed a land drop. Around turn 8, I cast Rite of Replication with kicker into a Immaculate Magistrate, making 5 copies. I could have targeted Peregrine Drake to make a bunch of mana and empty my hand, but I sensed a board wipe on the horizon.



Sure enough, Luke throws down a Phyrexian Rebirth to clear the board and ends up with a 16/16 token for my troubles. Chris puts his commander out. They pass the turn.



I had back-to-back Recurring Insight the turns before, so my hand was full. I flip my scheme card and it is A Display of My Dark Power, the mana doubler. With 9 lands and a Sol Ring, I was making 16 mana that turn and it was off to the races!



Sepulchral Primordial grabbed some sweet creatures. Molten Primordial grabbed some more sweet creatures. And, that was that.

If I didn't flip the mana doubler scheme right there, I'm not sure how it would have ended. Even without the mana doubler, I could have dropped the Molten Primordial and took out Chris or Luke, so the odds were certainly in my favor.

Bolas wins!

Playing Archenemy Commander is a blast. I strongly recommend it. You get the tasty flavor of Commander, mixed with the speed of a two-player duel, and the insanity of the Archenemy scheme cards. In some ways, it's more forgiving for new players since they can play together on a team. And, it can help to even out decks with different power levels since the Archenemy deck adds variability.

Plus, the schemes are downright awesome.

Tiny Leaders: Like Commander, Only Smaller

A game of Commander can take a while.

I am lucky enough to have a core group of gaming friends that will test out new formats, so when I came across Tiny Leaders I knew we needed to give it a try.

You can read all about the Tiny Leaders format here, but basically take everything in Commander and slash it in half. Decks are 50 cards instead of 100. Life totals are 25 instead of 40. Well, that part isn't quite half. There's no special Commander damage. Oh, one more thing. This is the big one. No spell in your deck can cost more than 3.

In other words, everything is smaller. Tiny, even.

The format is intended to be played one-on-one, best two out of three. But, we like multiplayer, so we decided to test it out in a group game.



Chris cut down his existing Ezuri deck, turning it into a formidable elf steamroller. I was worried about this from the get go and considered building a black deck with lots of removal as a counter-strategy, but ended up building a different mono-green deck to get some use out of cards that I typically don't play. Darren swapped Oloro out for Sydri from the preconstruct and sliced the deck down to size.

We played two quick games, back-to-back. They played out thus:

Ezuri, when left unchecked, is a savage beating.

I mean, Ezuri is strong in the larger Commander format if left unchecked. It's no surprise that he is good - and possibly better - in a format where nothing costs more than 3 mana. Chris was in double-overrun territory both games. I won the second game only because I was able to put enough power on my forestwalking Mirri to deal the last point of damage before the turn where I would have been elf steamrolled.



Based on our limited testing, the good part about the format is that the games can be much quicker than in Commander. If you don't have time for a full Commander game, this format is an option that captures some of the feel of Commander, only smaller. The other cool thing is that different cards become "the best," requiring new deckbuilding strategies.

But it wasn't all roses.

Granted, we didn't play the format the way it was intended in one-on-one battles, so take all of this with a grain of salt. It felt like the 3 mana limit made things too tiny. Not only does this cut off a lot of cool Legendary Creatures that could be used as your "tiny leader," but it also makes the cards available for deckbuilding feel too limited. Once I pulled all my good green cards that fit the limit, I had pretty much used up all my good green cards. Between the smaller "leader" pool, the limited casting costs, and the small deck size, it feels like many of the best decks build themselves.

But don't let that stop you. Go Tiny Leaders!

Trying new formats is a great way to test your deckbuilding skills and to breath some new life into your collection. The limits we place on the format are usually what makes the experience interesting. Would Commander be as cool if you could play 4 copies of a card in your deck instead of just 1? Probably not. If you already have a Commander deck, you might be surprised how easy it is to chop it down to size and give Tiny Leaders a try.