Spoiling the Future

From what I’ve seen spoiled, Future Sight seems like the kind of set that can really affect Vintage.

Empty the Warrens was nice. It gave Gifts a win condition in one card rather than Tinkerlossus’s two. Plus, it let Belcher run completely without black.

Dread Returns gave Ichorid, already fairly fast, a combo finish. Of course Ravnica block’s dredge cards made the deck a possibility in the first place.

Gifts Ungiven is really the only card that made any kind of impact from the entire Kamigawa block. Umezawa’s Jitte gets played periodically, but no one seems to care as long as it’s not hitting them in the face.

Really, you have to go back to Mirrodin block to see any kind of serious format impacting cards. Trinisphere, Darksteel Colossus, Chalice of the Void, Crucible of Worlds, and more: all made a splash. Trinisphere was restricted. Colossus was once the most feared win condition in a number of decks. And Chalice and Crucible are at least three-ofs in Workshop decks and against combos.

Now, we have Future Sight.

Oh.

My.

God.

There is some serious playability going on here.

Nothing quite as format breaking as some of the forums will have you believe, but still, there are a lot of solid cards.

Probably the one you all know of, the one you’re all dying to sink your teeth into is Pact of Negation. New Force. A free counter that doesn’t require you to have another blue card in hand or a one-life cushion.

Wow.

You can have this power. All you have to do is spend five mana next turn so you don’t die. By which I mean, and I quote from the card, “lose the game.”

Pact of Negation
0 (!)
Instant
Pact of Negation is blue.
Counter target spell.
At the beginning of your next upkeep, pay 3UU. If you don’t, you lose the game.

Yeah. Sounds pretty good if you’ve got five mana to spend on your next turn. I mean, this is a pretty quality late-game counterspell, right. Clearly, Wizards finally figured out how to create a sorcery-speed counterspell. No longer will blue mages be able to hide behind their instants until end of turn. They’ll pay for spells during their own turn like the rest of us.

Of course, Pact of Negation is also okay if, say, you don’t have to worry about next turn since you already won the game.

Combo players in all formats are sportin’ at least five inches over this card.

PoNage doesn’t handle sorcery-speed combo hosers like Trinisphere quite as well as Force of Will quite yet, but it’s better than Misdirection at protecting your threats. It’s not card disadvantage? Okay!

Pitch Long will probably make a comeback this summer, as Pact of Negation replaces Misdirection. Not to mention the fact that non-blue decks like Belcher and Dragon can pretty much do whatever they want. No blue requiremet either.

For those of you whose decks aren’t quite prepared to win with a combo flourish, you might be more interested in yet another quality 1U counter to be recently printed: Delay.

Delay
1U
Instant
Counter target spell. If the spell is countered this way, remove it from the game with three time counters on it instead of putting it into its owner's graveyard. If it doesn't have suspend, it gains suspend.

Actually, Delay is pretty good against combo decks. I mean, I know, I know you want to play Yawgmoth’s Will right now, but I really want you to play it in three more turns.

There are a lot—a lot—of quality 1U counterspells right now: Memory Lapse, Remand, Mana Leak, Rune Snag, and now Delay. I’ve written about this before, but it really bothers me. It allows decks to splash for counters, non-blue decks, decks that shouldn’t have access to counters.

How different is “Counter target spell” with no extra text, from “Counter target spell” with some sort of drawback? There are a lot of spells that need to be played right away, not next turn when you draw it again, not the turn after when you can pay for the spell and any Snags you might hit. Having something like Mana Leak in your deck can have a psychological effect like that of three Spheres of Resistance. And if Remand is like Time Walk, Delay is like three.

Oh well. Whatever. It won’t keep me from using them.

Ichorid got some goodies as well.

The first one, Street Wraith, is actually for almost anyone brave enough to pay two life every once in a while.

Street Wraith
3BB
Creature – Wraith
Swampwalk
Cycling – pay two life.
3/4

Most importantly, it’s free cycling! That’s like a wildcard in your opening hand, but it effectively makes your starting life 12 and your starting deck 56 cards. Is that good? Well, in the long run, it will make a difference, but that’s in the long run. Per game, you’ll never see it.

Of course, it does make all of your topdeck tutors better. And it’s a free dredge enabler that removes to Ichorid and pumps Sutured Ghoul by three. Not bad at all. It helps cover Nether Shadow as well, for recursion purposes.

Oh, did I mention the fact that he swampwalks against Underground Seas and is bigger than fish creatures? If I were playing combo, I wouldn’t be too upset to hardcast this guy.

You have two requirements to use Street Wraith in an attempt to shrink your deck: First you have to be able to remove worse cards than “Draw a card” from your deck, and you have to be able to keep your mana, threats, and protection in similar ratios. Honestly, I don’t see this one taking off like others have suggested it will, but it will at least make a nice replacement for Chromatic Star in red-based Belcher decks.

Ichorid also got a mana-producing land that dredges:

Dakmor Salvage
Land
Dakmor Salvage comes into play tapped.
T: Add B to your mana pool.
Dredge 2

It might see some play as a one- or two-of, at least in testing, for a little while. It’s not a land you want to see in your opening hand necessarily, except that it dredges. Coming into play tapped is drawback in every format but especially in Vintage, where every mana counts so much.

Of course, who cares about that when you have these:

Bridge from Below
BBB
Enchantment
Whenever a non-token creature is put into your graveyard from play, if Bridge from Below is in your graveyard, put a 2/2 black Zombie creature token into play.
Whenever a creature is put into an opponent's graveyard from play, if Bridge from Below is in your graveyard, remove Bridge from Below from the game.

Nacromoeba
1U
Creature – Illusion
Flying
When Nacromoeba is put into your graveyard from your library, you may put it into play.
1/1

Nacromoeba is obviously a dredger’s dream, and Bridge from Below has synergy with dredge, Ichorid, and Cabal Therapy.

Apparently with these two cards, Ichorid went from a fringe aggro-combo deck with a sometimes protected turn-three victory to a Cabal Therapy you four times, put some ungodly amount of 2/2 zombies into play, flashback Dread Returns for a gigantic Sutured Ghoul with haste two-turn combo deck.

Fortunately, Ichorid still rolls like sushi to Leyline of the Void, otherwise you’d probably see Bazaar on the restricted list come fall.

Of course, all of this means nothing when there’s a Yixlid Jailer in play.

Yixlid Jailer
1B
Creature – Zombie Wizard
Cards in Graveyards lose all abilities.
2/1

If it shut down Yawgmoth’s Will instead of Recoup, it might see a lot of play. At best, though, it’s a sideboard card against Ichorid that comes in too as a blocker against Fish.

My favorite card spoiled from Future Sight, though, is, of course, a Fish prospect:

Aven Mindcensor
2W
Creature – Bird Wizard
Flash, Flying
If an opponent would search a library, that player searches the top four cards of that library instead.
2/1

Despite the reportedly heavy three mana cost, doesn’t this card seem good against, I don’t know, Vintage? Fetchlands, Grim Tutor, Gifts Ungiven, the four or five restricted tutors, Land Grant, Extirpate, Jester’s Cap, really the only decks this does nothing against are Fish and Stax, and against these it’s a permanent that swings and blocks for two.

And it has flash.

And it flies.

I’m envisioning a UW Fish deck that runs all five Moxen in an attempt to play this early and often. It might be put into a Bomberman skeleton, but I think it will probably be more of a Sullivan Solution-type deck. I know I’ll be testing it.

There are a few more cards I’m interested in seeing in action as well, but you’ll have to look them up yourself because it’s almost two in the morning and I’m tired. I always check Salvation’s spoilers since they’ve never led me too wrong before. Anyway, here’s my list from the bottom up:

1. Dryad Arbor – A land that can be fetched with Land Grant and is a 1/1 creature? Interesting. Could be decent in Belcher’s sideboard or as a faux Mishra’s Factory in Fish.
2. Sliversmith – He facilitates Welder by putting one big artifact in the graveyard and one little artifact in play. Sounds like a Stax card to me. It’s totally affordable too at two mana.
3. Magus of the Vineyard – Wishable mana source in Belcher.
4. Storm Entity – Wishable beater in Belcher. This actually has some potential maindecked as well. I’m surprisingly excited about this card.
5. Magus of the Moon – Better than Blood Moon. I can see a new archetype being built around this as a fringe Fish-type deck. Maybe not.
6. Magus of the Abyss – These Magus guys are cool. Anyway, if Blax is ever going to have a chance against aggro decks, it’s going to need this guy. He’s 4/3—that’s huge!
7. Augur of Skulls – Man, if this guy was 1/2 or 2/1, I’d be all over him like David P. Baum on poopcake. As it is, two cards is still a lot for someone to discard. Unfortunately, this guy probably won’t even warrant testing.
8. Nix – Meh. It counters Pact of Negation, I guess. Not to mention Force of Will, Black Lotus, etc.
9. Foresee – Oh, man, if this card was an instant, it could compete with Fact or Fiction. Of course, Fact or Fiction isn’t played that much anymore anyway. Interestingly, this is the verb form of the card Foresight.

So, yeah. And all those cards were just possibilities in Vintage. There are lots of solid cards for formats that don’t require cards to compete with 13 years of accidental development. Future Sight promises some serious goodies for Vintage players.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to pick up some of these goodies at the prerelease this weekend, but I know how it goes. Elizabeth and I will get some cruddy dollar rares and unplayable commons. Sigh. I guess we’ll just have to put a win together with those. Whatever it takes.