Not playing in my playgroup on a regular basis means that my "magic-brain" will fall into hibernation, thus less Magic related content getting released. Nonetheless I decided to wake it up for a very fancy Spoils of Victory, since this one card I'll be talking about will probably replace Geist of Saint Traft as my Azorius-colored Commander, so let's have a look:
Oh lord, I love it... him! Not only is the art super gorgeous, but the ability is also super interessting to build around. You might be able to tell just how excited I am...! To even add some excitement, a whole new mechanic got introduced in Battle for Zendikar that goes very well with Noyan Dar ... "Awaken" (as this goes live there's proably been spoiled more of these cards, I just wanted to include some examples):
A deck centered around Noyan Dar will of course heavily focus on protecting and working around lands, so all these Awaken cards feel right at home. Oh and did I mention that casting one of these for Awaken while having Noyan Dar on the board will result in either a 7/7 land or a 3/3 & a 4/4 plus the spell effect... Value!
That leads me right to one of the more interessting things of Noyan's playstyle: You can either spread the counters and create a whole lot of smaller landcreatures making it easier to get through damage OR amass them on one land to stay little more protected against Wrath-effects. I lean more towards the conservative side, especially since my meta isn't exactly light on board wipes.
Funny enough, wiping the board is one thing this deck should - in theory - be really good at. Here's one card for each of our colors that only cares about "nonland" permanents, so all these will leave the board empty except for our animated lands (if you click on the picture you'll get the whole query of cards):
Now of course, sometimes your animated lands will get hit by something, be it said Wrath or a spotremoval. This means the deck should have means to protect them or at least ensure a steady supply of them:
Especially the fact that there is a deck that actively wants to play Darksteel Garrison is hilarious. And it's not only protecting the land from harm, it also boosts its power and toughness by one - remember that you can block with the land and then tap it for mana to get the trigger!
Next up the deck will need some more fancyness in the landcreature department... How about these ones:
Noyan Dar sets the P/T to 0/0 and then adds three counters - effectively making them 3/3s. But if you "overwrite" the power/toughness setting ability of him, the land will grow even further. In these cases you'll end up with flying 5/5s or a 5/8 Lifelink. I'm not entirely sure if I got the rules correct here but in the case of the Frostwaker targeting the land again with Noyan Dar will set it back to 0/0 making it a 6/6 but it will keep flying... I THINK! The Wind Zendikoned land should stay 2/2 if I am not mistaken and the Genju-land will revert back to being a land with counters on it. (That's all very deep in the rules of Magic and it could be completely different aswell...)
Whatever the case, the cards are very solid to insane in the deck so I'd play them. Which means: Snow Covered Basics for Frostwaker are necessary! (at least one deck I'm not tempted to buy Battle for Zendikar Full Arts for, hehe)
Alright, awakening normal lands is fun and all, but there are a few really sweet lands to animate (click the picture for the full list):
Darksteel Citadel is of course an All-Time favourite to animate due to its resiliancy against removal, but Colonnade and the Nexus definitely do pack some more punch and add evasion on top of that. Very good nice, one could say! Additionally I believe that overwriting Noyan Dars 0/0-setting will result in the creature becoming a land again at the end of turn providing some additional safety - the +1/+1 counters still stay on there.
Looking through the synergetic cards of the deck, you'll notice that many of them are enchantments or artifacts. Luckily white offers a huge selection of cards that do something with enchantments, be it returning them from your graveyard or tutoring for them out of your library, same goes for blue and artifacts:
Personally I'd try to keep all of them Instants and Sorceries (Hanna is just so good that I couldn't resist) so that they can trigger Noyan Dar at the same time.
That should pretty much cover everything directly or indirectly related to lands for the deck. The only thing left to do now is add some more cards to trigger Noyan Dar, so let's get some more sweet "utility" Instants and Sorceries up in here... but to be honest, the best way to trigger him is probably running a standard control-shell of counterspells, removal and drawspells, especially cheap cantrips that help you find "dat synergy".
 |
| All these rogue cards... |
See y'all 'round!
Keine Kommentare:
Kommentar veröffentlichen