The Premium Planeshift Preview (Part 1)
**[Ed. Note: I'll be in New Orleans this weekend for the Grand Prix, but updates will resume on Tuesday, including the conclusion of Fletcher's popular series on Sealed Deck. Until then, have a great weekend, and good luck in all your events!
Scott Johns]
When Invasion was about to come out, I was asked by the Sideboard to do preview articles and handed the text of the cards I was to preview well in advance of the pre-release. I got to look at really exciting cards like Fact or Fiction and Teferi's Moat , as well as what turned out to be not nearly as exciting cards like Aura Shards and Teferi's Response . I did the friendly strategic preview, praising all the cards and exploring their applications. In a happy co-incidence, I was even able to be honest while doing this because the cards I was given to preview actually did look really good at the time, although Fact or Fiction definitely seemed a little bit too good. Then a horrible thing happened. I wasn't asked back to help with Planeshift. I'm not mad or anything. I certainly understand it. In fact, it's kind of refreshing. Because I'm writing on Mindripper, my hands aren't tied. For some reason the Sideboard doesn't like it when I call R&D "morons" or call cards they're about to print "useless" or "horrible mistakes" or call a new ability a "gimmick." It's dismaying.
There's some bad news too, as always. In this case, it's the total lack of early card information. That makes this edition rather tame, since these are the cards they do want you to know about. As soon as someone pulls together a real spoiler, I'll give out the inside information on every format except block. In the meantime, there are some cards that are already known. So far they use the ability known as Gating. This ability follows the same principle as all the other concepts of Invasion. It takes a few cards from the past that mostly just sat in people's collections, strips the ability off of them, attempts to make the cards actually good and then names the ability so that instead of each card saying "enchanted creature gets +3/+0" it can say "Powerup: 3" and then give the card reminder text that says "(A creature with Powerup: X gets +X/+0)" because that's somehow clearer. The only thing is that this time the name of the ability doesn't actually appear on the cards. Still, WotC has made sure that everyone knows that when cards are returned to hand as the cost of putting new ones of the same type into play it is known as "gating." The lands got even better treatment, already being referred to as the "Dragon Lairs" due to their help in casting the relevant Dragon Legend and named after the relevant large flyer. I guess that's a good thing, we wouldn't want to sit around not knowing what to call them.
If nothing else, it definitely gives us something to call the lands. Otherwise they would probably have ended up being Planeshift Lands, which would then have been shortened to Shift Lands. That name's not bad, actually. They represent a shift of land type, they shift colors, they're kind of shifty. It's also a handy reminder of what set they're in. No one forgets what set the Visions Lands are from. Actually, it's more likely they will end up being called tri-lands. The lands from Visions are actually the first set of Gating Lands. While it's hard to forget what set the Visions Lands are from it's very easy (and probably not a bad idea) to forget what they do, so here's one of them at random after Oracle was through with it:
Land
Jungle Basin comes into play tapped.
If Jungle Basin would come into play, return an untapped Forest you control to owner's hand. If you do, put Jungle Basin into play. If you don't, put Jungle Basin into its owner's graveyard.
T: Add 1G to your mana pool.
These lands required giving up two mana for one turn, one from the land played and one from the land returned. In exchange, Jungle Basin produced two mana for one card, meaning that after its controller ran out of lands to play he would have an additional mana every turn. The only historical attempted use in a real deck that I know of was the use of the red land in an early prototype Mirage-Visions constructed deck to help recurse Hammer of Bogardan. Every so often players tried to use them, but they turned out to mostly be a "skill tester," which means that if you see one played against you your skills aren't going to be tested all that much this round. They were in many ways the perfect card, crippling the opposition, putting the opponent in the proper frame of mind and giving him a nice ego boost all at once. The only problem was on the occasions when they worked. The lands were a big gamble, but if they weren't punished and the time loss didn't matter effectively the controlling player ended up with an extra land. This definitely generated a feeling of "why must I lose to this idiot?" whenever they worked out.
What made these lands so bad? After all, they produce two mana from one card. The problem is they are slow and inconsistent. The land that returns to hand must be the corresponding basic land, which made these lands horrendous in decks with multiple colors. Otherwise, it would be easy to get stuck with a Jungle Basin and two Mountains. That left one color decks, where they were worth thinking about for a little while, but even there they were simply too slow. Part of that was the competition at the time from Thawing Glaciers and later Wasteland , both of which made these lands look horrible. Beyond that, the loss of time involved here was simply too crippling for real decks. If one was played on turn two the entire second turn would be completely lost. If it was played later on and mana was still needed the effect would probably be even worse. If the land was bounced or destroyed it would be a crippling time loss. In exchange, the extra mana only came into play once the deck ran out of lands to play. Since then, Magic decks have gotten much better and their mana bases and curves even tighter.
So now we have a new set of gating lands They all look like this:
Land
Darigaaz counts as a lair in addition to its land type.
When Darigaaz's Caldera comes into play, return a non-lair land you control to your hand or sacrifice Darigaaz's Caldera.
T: Add B, R, or G to your mana pool
I'm not sure why anyone should be worried about players returning lairs to their hand, since this seems on first glance to be a really bad idea. Still, I'm sure there was a good reason to deny players ways to get funky with their mana very early on at the cost of great long term stunting of growth. Regardless of that minor problem, the question is how good these lands are. Will they see play, and if so will players use four of them? This time, the lands definitely have their advantages. The turn a tri-land comes into play it costs no mana. It is only the turn after it comes into play that it stunts mana growth. This means that if the Caldera is played when its owner is out of other lands to play then it comes into play more or less for free as long as mana doesn't need to be saved for the opponent's turn. The only other way it hurts is if either something is punishing the playing of lands like Ankh of Mishra or a needed land is drawn on the next turn. Those seem like perfectly acceptable risks.
The question ends up boiling down to when the Caldera is going to be needed. If the primary off-color spells are instants that are cast when they come up on the mana curve then this is a horrible choice. A good example would be a W/U deck that wants to use Dromar's Caldera to splash black for Tsabo's Decree. Assuming it is important that Decree be cast as an Instant, the Caldera is pushing the Decree back to turn seven. On the other hand, suppose that same deck wanted to splash black for Dromar, the Banisher . The Banisher is a creature, so if Dromar's Caldera is the sixth land played it won't be a problem. That, however, is if everything is going according to plan. If the sixth land played was a basic Swamp it also wouldn't be a problem. What happens when the Caldera is needed earlier, either because there are no other lands available or its colored mana is required?
Again this is going to come down to a large extent to the type of spells being cast. Suppose this W/U deck is full of Merfolk, and has a ton of two casting cost creatures. Having the Caldera ready for turn two to insure the right color of mana is going to be very helpful, especially since the deck will likely have eight creatures with the cost of WU: Galiana's Knight and Meddling Mage . In fact, if the deck can operate on two mana for several turns without trouble and is in no particular rush to get to four mana then the Caldera becomes ideal. In general, the worse the mana curve of the deck the better the Caldera will be. Suppose this same deck also had creatures worth playing that cost three and four mana. At this point, dropping that turn two Caldera is going to be troublesome. It becomes like buying insurance. The Caldera insures that the mana will be there, but it also means that it won't be there as quickly. A lot of the time an unneeded Caldera can be saved for the last land without trouble, but keep in mind that the Caldera would instead be a colored land if it were not a Caldera. That's when a Caldera will hurt the most, outside drawing multiples: It takes the place of what would otherwise be the only source of a color needed early, which forces land development to be stunted.
In summary, when not drawn in multiples the new tri-lands (Calderas?) should end up helping more often than hurting in the right kind of deck; there are a few situations where they hurt a lot, but they should come up less than the situation where they provide needed colored mana. Decks with perfect mana curves and low color requirements or color requirements in all their colors that must be met early on in a tight curve should avoid them, as should decks that need to play lands every turn early in the game and use them for instants in order to keep pace. Other decks can probably benefit from sine number of tri-lands, very possibly even if only using two of the three colors. In decks relying on all three colors consistently, they are a must in decks where the drawback isn't crippling unless there is some other plan for multi-colored mana that makes them unnecessary. The last issue is how worrisome it is to draw them in multiples. That also depends on the deck, but in general copies beyond the first one are probably going to end up being pretty much useless when they're needed most unless it provides additional needed colored mana. That means playing four copies is very dangerous. My first take on this is to play from one to three depending on how the benefits and costs interact with the sphecific deck.
But these five lands are not all, for there are other cards that have been revealed. First, there's a really big creature:
3RG
Rare
Creature - Wurm 7/7
Trample
When Shivan Wurm comes into play, return a red or green creature you control to its owner's hand.
That's pretty big. Given that most green decks will have Llanowar Elves and Birds of Paradise to help cast such monsters in the first place, there's a good chance there will be something to return. At 7/7 with trample having to recast another creature is a small price to pay. The only creature this doesn't work with that is likely to be in the same deck is Chimeric Idol . The only problems are reliability and reacting to Wrath of God effects. Reacting is an issue because after a Wrath it would take at least six lands (five with a Bird and a Fires) to put Shivan Wurm on the table before the opponent can untap. To cast it at all requires another creature that will get onto the table. That generally means either a mana creature or something so small it isn't considered a threat; by dealing with all the other creatures the opponent deals with Shivan Wurm . On the flip side of that, Shivan Wurm is a great test spell against Wrath or Rout based opposition, because it pressures them while avoiding overcommitement. If it is countered, no harm done. If it isn't, the other creature is brought back safely. Things get even better with creatures that get used up like Blastoderm or have coming into play effects like Uktabi Orangutan .
The real question is whether a 7/7 creature with trample is the right choice out of all the expensive options out there right now. At that price with the extra mana cost of bouncing another creature Shivan Wurm is at the point where it has to compete with Elder Dragons. It's just as big as a Dragon and it Tramples, but it lacks Flying or an activated side effect. Rith in particular has a very attractive ability. Two-Headed Dragon is more competition, with its already exploited advantages of being non-red, flying and really hard to block. But does being a 7/7 go a really long way? You bet. Expect to see this card being tested in Fires type decks a lot, and don't be surprised if it sticks around in multiples.
There's just one problem here, and this calls for at least a mini-rant. A lot of cards recently have not exactly been subtle about what strategy they are intended to aid, and this is one of them. Aiding the quest for colored mana is fine, even if the hints about the dragons are right there in the card titles. But there's no question where Shivan Wurm is supposed to go. It's no coincidence that both draft decks and constructed decks are almost uniformly two or three allied colors right now, with one basic strategy for each combination except for W/U which has two. The mana makes opposing colors impossible, and the cards push each of the strategies with reasonable mana into a standard model that doesn't really allow all that much variation. The good news is that those ideas are in balance, the cards are currently interactive and fun to play and there's a lot of skill in Standard. But the cards that make it into Constructed play are mostly chosen for and costed for that purpose, and I hope that there are cards in that group which allow both draft and constructed decks to take the road less traveled and use opposite color decks. Shivan Wurm isn't a card I'm unhappy to see, but giving the natural decks such bombs to throw makes it even harder to compete with them. I'd rather not have my decks preconstructed for me, even if I have to go figure them out.
The next card up is another card that goes right into one of the standard decks:
1GW
Uncommon
Creature - Cat 3/4
You may play Fleetfoot Panther any time you could play an instant. When Fleetfoot Panther comes into play, return a green or white creature you control to its owner's hand.
This one has a lot of nice and evil uses, many of which were pointed out by Darwin Kastle in his preview article on the card. Under Sixth Edition rules this card is a nightmare for the opponent. It comes out on the end step, it blocks out of nowhere, it saves creatures about to die and creatures that have been targeted, it resets fading creatures and those with coming into play effects. The only weakness is that it cannot be the first creature brought into play. As long as the deck contains enough non-gating creatures to reliably have one on hand, this is a natural edition to almost any W/G creature deck. There are only two valid excuses that I know of right now, in addition to the fear that the deck simply does not contain enough creatures worth returning. One is that there are a ton of other amazing creatures for such a deck, and this is certainly valid; Noble Panther and Chimeric Idol are stiff competition. The other worry is that bounce will be used to gain too much time advantage, but that can be worked around by using this on creatures that are about to be bounced. If nothing else the potential to get into the opponent's head is amazing. There's a little bit of the suspicion that this is just another card with an ability that is great on paper but not worth the risk in practice given the options, and previous cards of this type have ended up that way, but this one looks like the real thing.
The last card is:
2R
Uncommon
Creature - Wizard 2/2
Kicker 1B
Kicker G
When Thunderscape Battlemage comes into play, if you paid the 1B kicker cost, target player discards two cards from his or her hand.
When Thunderscape Battlemage comes into play, if you paid the G kicker cost, destroy target enchantment
Once again this requires allied colors to be worthwhile. Both kicker costs are very nice abilities, although the base creature they are on is rather lousy. The fundamental problem for the green ability is the traditional sideboard versus maindeck dilemma. Thunderscape Battlemage in a R/G deck isn't devastating enough against enchantments to sideboard but isn't strong enough when they don't show up to maindeck either. In the end there are better things to do. If the deck becomes R/B or R/G/B then things get much more interesting. At five mana for two cards and a 2/2 the black kicker makes a very decent card, especially if backed up by blue. If there's some obscure way for the deck to get green mana every now and then so much the better. Of course, those that remember Abyssal Specter know it was worthless in Constructed, but that was a much stronger and faster format and while Flying is nice, being castable in a pinch for three mana and costing one mana less is better. The key is to recognize which ability is worth using. As an additional note, if there is a cycle of such Battlemages then the blue one is likely to be better at this.
- Zvi Mowshowitz
** [**](#top)