Report Blog Entry
In the earliest sets in Magic, there were very few cards that drew cards, especially at lower rarities, so in the Progression Series, essentially an evolving sealed league, card draw is few and far between. There are the ocassional ways of refilling your hand at rare, with Ancestral Recall, Time Twister, and Wheel of Fortune, and ways of drawing additional cards every turn with Jayemdae Tome and Library of Alexandria, but you're not even likely to open any one of these cards, so most decks have to play using only their starting hand and their draw for turn. This is exaspirated because of cards like Hymn to Tourach which can get rid of 2 cards from the opponent's hand.
Then in come Cantrips
Ice Age (originally released 03/06/95) introduced a new mechanic: Slow Cantrips, cards that had effects and drew cards during the upkeep of the next turn. These cards allong side Brainstorm and some others make having a steady supply cards in your hand a lot easier. Some of these cards could gain card advantage by saving a creature in certain situations, like Heal, exiling a card from a graveyard, like Headstone, dealing 1 damage, like Flare, or even countering certain spells like Burnout. Even if these cards aren't gaining card advantage they offer utility to do specific things without going down on cards Barbed Sextant can fix your mana even in a Tron deck, Panic can allow you to attack without an opponent's creature being able to block. There are also Cantrips which allow you to manipulate what cards you or your opponent draw, like Portent or Lat Nam's Legacy, which like Brainstorm can give you Virtual Card Advantage, getting rid of dead cards and getting more useful ones.
Other draw cards in these 3 sets include Inheritence (at uncommon) and Casting of Bones (at common) in Alliences which each draw cards when creatures die, the former at the cost of 3 mana when one dies, the latter is an aura that draws 3 and then discards 1 of them when the creature it's attached to dies.
Which Cartips should you play and how many?
Other draw cards in these 3 sets include Inheritence (at uncommon) and Casting of Bones (at common) in Alliences which each draw cards when creatures die, the former at the cost of 3 mana when one dies, the latter is an aura that draws 3 and then discards 1 of them when the creature it's attached to dies.
Which Cartips should you play and how many?
This depends on a number of factors, what colours are you playing, do you have any way of shuffling your deck, how many creatures are you playing, what does your curve look like, do you have any other sources of card advantage, etc..
In White, Lightning blow is good at turning combat in your favour, giving a creature first strike for {1}{W} at instant speed, while being a slow cantrip. Heal is similarly useful for saving your creatures in combat, but in more niche applications, but it can also be used to prevent a damage to your life total, and it doesn't require there to be a creature on field in order to draw. Formation is decent, being able to gain surprise banding on blocks can be useful but it is less useful than first strike in most situations. Inheritence is also a good source of repeatable card advantage.
Brainstorm is good, but it becomes much better if you have some way of getting the cards you put back off of the top of your deck. Portent is probably the best Blue cantrip at this stage of the game with the ability to go 4 deep, put it can lock you into bad cards if you don't shuffle. Ray of Erasure can get rid of cards put on top by other cantrips, or set up graveyard based strategies, and Updraft allows a creature to gain flying and attack in, or block other flyers.
In White, Lightning blow is good at turning combat in your favour, giving a creature first strike for {1}{W} at instant speed, while being a slow cantrip. Heal is similarly useful for saving your creatures in combat, but in more niche applications, but it can also be used to prevent a damage to your life total, and it doesn't require there to be a creature on field in order to draw. Formation is decent, being able to gain surprise banding on blocks can be useful but it is less useful than first strike in most situations. Inheritence is also a good source of repeatable card advantage.
Brainstorm is good, but it becomes much better if you have some way of getting the cards you put back off of the top of your deck. Portent is probably the best Blue cantrip at this stage of the game with the ability to go 4 deep, put it can lock you into bad cards if you don't shuffle. Ray of Erasure can get rid of cards put on top by other cantrips, or set up graveyard based strategies, and Updraft allows a creature to gain flying and attack in, or block other flyers.
In Black, Casting of Bones is card advantage if it can resolve its effect, but exile based removal and removal as it's being cast can get around it. Mind Ravel is a powerful way of depleting your opponent's resources while maintaining your own. Headstone is one of the ways of controlling graveyards so far, if your opponent is on a reanimator strategy.
Red has Flare which can kill a decent suite of creatures, and it worst can deal a damage to the opponent if dead, Gorilla War Cry which can give your creatures menace which can make attacking for game a lot easier, and Panic, which has similar uses preventing one creature from blocking.
Green gets Pyknite which is a 3 mana 1/1, but getting board prescence and a draw is pretty big, and Renewal which can fix your mana.
Black Blue has Diabolic Vision a card that allows you to look 5 deep for a card for only 2 mana.
Green gets Pyknite which is a 3 mana 1/1, but getting board prescence and a draw is pretty big, and Renewal which can fix your mana.
Black Blue has Diabolic Vision a card that allows you to look 5 deep for a card for only 2 mana.
And there are a number of artifact cantrips that any colour of deck has access to Barbed Sextant and Urza's Bauble among them.
As for how many cantrips to play, up to 8 the slower nature of these cards to their non-card drawing counterparts is offset by the consistency gained, however as you play more you start cantriping into more cantrips more often, now with regular fast cantrips this is reasonably okay, paying a bit extra for another spin of the wheel, but with slow cantrips, you want to be drawing cards that do something on your next turn, and not even later in the game. I don't think there is much of a reason to go past 12 copies of different cantrips at this stage.
Comments
Displaying 0 of 0 comments ( View all | Add Comment )