After Time Spiral was released I wrote up an article
detailing 25 Fun and Interesting Interactions with Time Spiral Cards. If you
haven't read it yet you can find it here:
http://www.cardshark.com/content/view_article.asp?article_id=4003.
Time Spiral Block has been very welcome after a powerful Ravnica block. Planar
Chaos does exactly what Time Spiral set out to do. It mixed up the format and
made Magic very chaotic. While Planar Chaos gives us black and white
Counterspells, a black Wrath of God, a red Giant Growth, and many other
oddities, it also gives us the chance to come up with new interactions with
these new cards. Here are 18 interactions I have found. While I did not search
websites to find these, some of them may have been talked about before. All I
did was find the same thing others may have found. And for the rest of the
interactions, I hope I can surprise you. Feel free to comment all you want on
the message boards about this article. Onto the cards:
1- Dust Elemental and Wrath of God effects- When you or your opponent cast
Wrath of God or any board sweeper, you can cast the Dust Elemental at instant
speed and return it and two of your other creatures to your hand to live to
fight another day.
2- Magus of the Tabernacle and Brine Elemental or Exhaustion- Make them pay to
keep their creatures and then punish them even more by not allowing them to
untap the land, possibly making them sacrifice even more creatures. The Magus
can also be fun in a deck with land destruction or bounce to force your
opponent to either lose creatures or have to replay them after paying for the
Magus cost.
3- Mantle of Leadership and any Fungus- Put the Mantle on a fungus, wait a few
turns then put some Saprolings into play pumping the fungus, then attack. This
one is a little obvious.
4- Retether and Auratog and Enchantments- Pump the Auratog by sacrificing your
creature enchantments then Retether them and repeat. This can also work out
great if you can just load up the graveyard with enchantments with Compulsive
Research or Wistful Thinking.
5- Calciderm and anyone of the following- Dust Elemental, Stonecloaker,
Stormfront Riders, Whitemane Lion- Big ol' Blastoderm lives even longer.
[Editor’s note: I looked it up, and none of the white “rescue” creatures’
effects are targeted. So even though the Calciderm can’t be targeted, it
doesn’t matter. Most excellent.]
6- Porphyry Nodes and any token maker- This will guarantee that you keep the
Nodes in play and when your opponent doesn't play a creature you make a token to
destroy. When they do put a creature into play you don't make a token. The
Nodes can also be used with Serendib Sorcerer to make sure their creatures are
always the lowest powered.
7- Body Double, a Discard spell, and a creature in a graveyard- You can discard
a big creature then copy it. Pretty self explanatory.
8- Dichotomancy and Gigadrowse- Suspend the Dichtomancy and when it is on the
stack you use Gigadrowse to make sure you are getting copies of all their good
cards. What also makes Dichotomancy neat is that it does not target so you will
be able to get a copy of their Calciderm.
9- Wistful Thinking and Plagiarize- Your opponent Discards 4 cards and you get
to draw 2 cards. And it's MONO BLUE!
10- Ovinize and Merfolk Thaumaturgist- If anyone plays this combo you better
beat them down or go home crying. Turn a creature into a 0/1 then switch the
power and toughness around and it dies.
11- Treacherous Urge and Body Double- Steal their best creature right out of
their hand during their turn and then on your turn copy it.
12- Null Profusion and Mesa Enchantress- You will almost always have an
enchantment to play allowing you to draw two cards for every enchantment. When
you can play no more then just keep two enchantments in hand.
13- Shrouded Lore and Withered Wretch- This can guarantee you that the new
Black Recollect will get you exactly what you want back. So you can play 8
Damnation or 8 Extirpate.
14- Shivan Meteor and Stuffy Doll- I know this one has been talked about but
who wouldn't want to say they dealt 13 damage to one of their own creatures and
had it live? [Editor’s note, not to mention killing an opponent at the same
time.]
15- Sulfur Elemental vs. Any White Weenie- This one is fun because they can
never play Sacred Mesa tokens or just about any playable white weenie. It's
also nice to have an uncounterable creature that can be played as an instant
again. And it's not legendary.
16- Boom/Bust with Flagstones of Trokair- This one has also been talked about a
bit. Use the Boom side to destroy one of their lands and your Flagstones, you
get a plains and come out 1 land ahead.
17- Pyrohemia and Soltari Priest- Just like the old Pestilence White Knight
Combo. Just add in Spirit Link to the Priest and you can be assured of not
losing to the Pyrohemia.
18- Necrotic Sliver and Grim Harvest- I love the Recover cards and this one
gets even better with the new Vindicate Sliver.
I had hoped to be able to find more but in such a small set with as many
reprints as there are it does become difficult. Just look forward to future
articles from me on the topics of: Black and White Slivers Revisited, Green
Beats, and Mono Black. Also look for my next article to discuss the topic of
Type 2 Peasant Magic. I am currently the King of Type 2 Peasant Magic at my
card shop, Flights of Fantasy, having won the only two tournaments they have
run so next week I will post my winning deck from this past month and I will
let you know how Planar Chaos will only make it better.
Planar Chaos will bring many new decks to the format including Mono Green, Mono
Black, and Slivers. These decks will replace TriskeTron and Dragonstorm. If
anyone has any suggestions on a future article you would like me to write about
just send me a line.
Billy Moreau
[email protected]