Infernally Delicious

So, legally or illegally, I’ve been checking on the Dissension spoilers pretty regularly. I think it shows promise. I have a feeling too, that blue is about to get insane in a lot of formats.

Azorius Guildmage is going to be a quality creature for UW Fish in Vintage, and the Simic Guildmage might lead to a further use of UG Fish or WTF, though hasn’t been spoiled, as of yet. Also, Hussar of the Courts is such a well-designed card. It would be so much better if it were 2/2, but I guess we can’t have everything. It’s still either a pretty good sorcery draw spell or a pretty good sorcery draw spell attached to a free creature.

Hussar of the Court 2U
Creature - Vedalken Knight
Vigiliance
When Hussar of the Court comes into play, look at the top 3 cards of your library. Put one of them into your hand and the rest on the bottom of your library.
When Hussar of the Court comes into play, sacrifice it unless you paid W to play it.
1/3

The Simic and the Azorius will probably make blue usable in just about every deck, but it may continue to not be the focus of decks. My theory is that once Standard will start leveling itself out and at the top there will be a URG deck and a UBW deck that have similar strategies of playing either control or aggro. I suppose it remains to be seen, of course, and really I know nothing about Standard besides what I pick up from reading other websites. Also, those are probably the decks I would build, probably URG because of Burning Tree Shaman.

Plus, split cards are back! Hopefully something as useful as Fire/Ice.

Actually, I really like the idea of the Rakdos “We Hit So Hard We Don’t Have To Play Good Magic” Guild. I’m pretty sure bringing Grafted Skullcap into play in a Rakdos deck is game over. Most of your Hellbent gets activated and you (and only you) get to draw an extra card per turn. I mean, I guess Yawgmoth’s Yarmulke’s not really in the format right now, but it should be because it’s broken with Rakdos.

For those of you who don’t know, Hellbent is the Rakdos Guild keyword. It gives spells and creatures extra effects and abilities when your hand is empty. It’ll either be retarded good or just plain retarded, depending on the kind of enablers they have with it. Lots of useful discard effects will make it broken, as will a Grafted Skullcap or Necropotence variant that lets you control your handsize and make Hellbent and your draws work for you.

I guess Phyrexian Arena’s pretty good too, but since you’re playing black and red, I bet you’ll end up sacrificing and losing a lot of life to do cool stuff, which makes the Arena (and Necropotence and Yawgmoth’s Bargain for that matter) suddenly not very good at all.

I’d probably run Dark Confidant and Darkblast, just to be sure, because swinging for two with your draw engine is hot.

The other big news coming from Rakdos is Infernal Tutor:

Infernal Tutor 1B
Sorcery
Reveal a card in your hand. Search your library for a card with the same name as the revealed card, reveal it, and put it into your hand. Shuffle your library.
Hellbent - If you have no cards in your hand, search your library for a card and put it into your hand. Shuffle your library.

This is clearly a mana-combo enabler. That is, in Vintage it allows you to find another Dark Ritual to go off if you have cards in hand, or it allows you to find Yawgmoth’s Will (hopefully with Lion’s Eye Diamond or Black Lotus in play) for the win.

As soon as it gets used for that kind of brokenness, it’ll get restricted, probably along with Grim Tutor, which I still think will hit the skids sooner or later.

This is a list that was posted on TMD. Its creator, Tin_Mox5831, says of it, “I was comboing out on Turn 1 so consistently that I literally had chills at one point!” so let that be your guide to this card.

Black Lotus x 1
Mana Crypt x 1
Mana Vault x 1
Sol Ring x 1
Lotus Petal x 1
Lion's Eye Diamond x 1
Chrome Mox x 1
Mox Jet x 1
Mox Sapphire x 1
Mox Ruby x 1
Mox Emerald x 1
Mox Pearl x 1
Elvish Spirit Guide x 4
Bayou x 2
Land Grant x 4
Dark Ritual x 4
Cabal Ritual x 4
Chromatic Sphere x 4
Helm Of Awakening x 4
Night's Whisper x 4
Duress x 4
Tendrils Of Agony x 2
Yawgmoth's Will x 1
Grim Tutor x 2
Infernal Tutor x 4
Necropotence x 1
Imperial Seal x 1
Vampiric Tutor x 1
Demonic Tutor x 1
Memory Jar x 1

That beast has two lands in it. Personally, I’d drop the Necropotence for Yawgmoth’s Bargain, but this list does look incredibly solid, like a bodybuilder encased in plaster. It’s even Mono-B (well, except for Land Grants and Elvish Spirit Guides, but they don’t count), which makes it that much better!

Seriously, this deck makes me giddy.

Infernal Tutor could also help out prison decks, though. Imagine playing moxes, Infernal Tutor revealing Chalice of the Void, dropping Chalice 0 this turn, and next turn dropping the second Chalice at one, two or three. First you killed their acceleration, then you killed their outs. That’s a quality play if you can make the Chalices and the tutor go through. Moreover, since Stax usually drops its hand pretty quickly in favor of permanents on the board, this will be a Demonic Tutor a lot of the time.

Control decks, as a rule, want to have lots of cards in their hand. Even if they’re not counters, they want it to look like they have counters so their opponent is less likely to just throw something out there. This makes Infernal Tutor, well, kinda bad for control decks.

At the same time, if you don’t have any cards in hand, the tutor will find you the answer you want. And if you do have lots of cards in hand, you can always show that Force of Will or that Mana Drain, so they know you have it, and then go find another one! Think: “I have two Forces in hand, do you think I have two other blue cards too? I just might.” Or “Now I have two Mana Drains, one to drain your spell and the other to pitch to Force of Will.”

Aggro decks, known for redundancy in all formats, will basically be allowed up to eight copies of their best threats and answers as they can cast Infernal Tutor for, say Mishra’s Workshop, drop one shop this turn and one shop next time, and go to town. Plus, once you dump your hand of creature fat, this just goes and gets you more.

When you come right down to it, Infernal Tutor is everything that Gamble wasn’t. Both are good at finding redundancy with a full hand, but Infernal Tutor just gets better once your hand is empty, whereas Gamble just feeds Goblin Welder.

Basically, Infernal Tutor will get played in Vintage and Legacy until Wizards realize that they printed its mana cost just a bit too low and restrict it or ban it as necessary. Sometimes, it will just be fair, but when it’s swingy, oh man will it swing.

In Standard, I don’t know. Tutors are usually less valued because there so little restriction and not a lot of combo prevalence. Things you need a lot of, you just play four of, and things you don’t want to see that often are two-ofs or three-ofs. With cards in hand, you get more creatures or better answers, readying yourself for a finisher or preparing to recover from a swept board. Without cards in hand, you get a much needed finisher or setup piece like Gifts Ungiven, the last part of an Urzatron, Wildfire, or the missing part of a Desperate Guildmage combo deck, which could totally appear now that it has really good cheap tutors to help find stuff.

I suggest that it start like this

4x Izzet Guildmage (Yes, it is.)
4x Desperate Ritual
4x Lava Spike
4x Infernal Tutor
4x Blood Crypt

I’m sure you know how it works: Splice Ritual on Lava Spike and Replicate an arbitrariliy large amount of times with Izzet Guildmage until your opponent is dead.

You just have forty more cards to go. Go!

I’d help, but I don’t know anything about the rest of the black and red cards in Standard right now. Try Glacial Ray; that seems pretty good. And is Diabolic Tutor still in there? That would probably be okay, though the double black might scare me off.

Anyway, you know what you are doing, make your time.

Move Zig.