Magic Mike: Colour Co-ordination

With the pre-release of Journey into Nyx looming, I’m finding myself facing a dilemma:

I don’t know which colour to choose as my base.

Normally I’d just do what I did at the Born of the Gods event and choose the best my favourite colour to play as – Blue. After all, my Blue/White deck has done quite well, managing to win me three out of five games, with only two Gruul decks managing to best mine. Having a swatch at the spoilers, it doesn’t seem like a bad choice: flying is the ability du jour for Blue this set round and there aren’t many responses to it, plus the usual manoeuvres of countering enemy spells and returning creatures to their hands is always a handy ability.

However, after attending several drafts and discovering the most dominant metagame of the block, I’m considering plumping for White instead.  Enchantments are the name of the game in Theros and it seems like an unwise move not to follow the herd. Cards such as Leonin Iconoclast combined with the numerous Heroic enablers found in the colour would allow you to thin out your opponent’s army while buffing up your smaller creatures into terrifying threats. Adding things like Aegis of the Gods to the mix would completely nullify aggro decks against you and then of course, White is one of the colours needed to play the much-coveted Ajani, Mentor of Heroes and Athreos, God of Passage. With Michael’s advice, it seems like only the right choice to make. But then you’ve got Green. Sticking to the usual Green mentality of big creatures dealing big damage, it’s possibly the easiest colour to play, meaning I wouldn’t have to worry too much about fancy moves: all I’d need to do is get creatures in and attacking as soon as possible. The fact that it’s the colour with the most anti-flying spells is a bonus and some of the Constellation effects are useful. Creatures gaining trample whenever an enchantment you own enters the battlefield? Yes, please. If you’re lucky enough to pull a Pheres-Band Warchief and a boatload of other centaurs, you’ve more or less got yourself an extremely tough army of attackers and blockers. Add in a Karametra and (if you’re lucky enough) an Ajani and you’re more or less sorted.

Penultimately, you’ve got Red, the colour I was originally going to go for for two reasons:

1. The direct damage opportunities are ridiculous
2. I never play it.

While first looking at the spoilers, Dictate of the Twin Gods immediately caught my eye. Deal double the damage to all creatures and players no matter the source. What’s not to love? The sheer number of direct damage possibilities with Red cards would render it immensely valuable on the battlefield: you could Monstrify a Wildfire Cerberus and wipe out an opponent’s entire board or sacrifice Font of Ire and immediately remove half an opponent’s life total. Slap an Iroas, God of Victory into the mix and you’ve got nigh-unblockable double damage dealing army that can’t be destroyed. This sheer brute force might just be enough to win a few games.

Finally you’ve got Black, which further adds to its run of opponent creature destruction/neutering cards. Slowly sapping your opponents for life can greatly change the course of a game and Intimidate will come in extremely handy if you’re playing a non-black opponent. Combine some of the cards’ milling abilities with a card such as Graverobber Spider and you’ve got yourself a viable Black/Green deck and if you get Felhide Petrifer, you could have the ultimate Black/Red Minotaur deck. If you manage to pull and play cards such as King Macar, the Gold-Cursed and the infamous Worst Fears, playing Black could be the most unpredictable way to win a match.

But then Blue has the prerelease promo Scourge of Fleets, an essential addition to my beloved Kraken deck with some crackin’ artwork to boot.

I don’t know. I’ll probably do what I always do when it comes to deck-building events: panic until the last minute, build my deck around the wrong card and then get absolutely pumped.

Bring on the Journey.