Discussion Forum

News "Flash" .....
Be careful playing against red and blue mages. The newest release from MtG, New Phyrexia, has some interesting card interactions. Deceiver Exarch provides a deadly combo which is even all the more deadly because it can be cast with "Flash" at the end of an opponent's turn. This means the player can wait until it is safe to cast it at the end of their opponent's turn and then have all their mana available to cast the second part of the combo - enchanting the just cast Deceiver Exarch with the red enchantment, Splinter Twins!!. What really makes this combo deadly, is that each token copy of the original enchanted copy also has haste. And making this deadly infinite loop combo even more perplexing to "answer' is that Deceiver Exarch's toughness is +4. That makes it near impossible to destroy it before it becomes enchanted. Counter Magic Spells will become even more in vogue as it will be absolutely necessary to stop this combo. Black mages may be able to remove one of its pieces and then use Surgical Extraction to remove all the copies from a player's deck.
This combo is even more deadly than the interesting combo revealed in the new variant of the white aggro deck called "Soul Sisters" just written about in the column "Building on a Budget" at www.wizardsofthecoast.com.
One other news alert: Red Deck Wins has added the red based Shrine artifact from New Phyrexia with absolutely deadly results as these decks have been eating up the store credit the last two weeks at FNM. The shrine combined with the Red Planeswalker employed in the deck can spell a quick doom, especially if a first turn Goblinguide has hit for 4 points of damage on the first two turns. It is difficult to win a match if you do not win the dice roll/coin toss and get to play first and have an answer for a first turn Goblinguide.
WotC's designers and the DCI evidently want the matches to end very quickly after the tedious block of u/w planeswalker's decks that used up most of the time in a match to win game one- leaving an uninformed and uninitiated player in a quandry if they thought that just because they got the u/w player's life total very low that they should play the first game out to the very bitter end!! Many of those matches were won 1-0-0.
Knowledge is deadly, but fatal to you only if your opponent has it, but you don't!