From the Morgul Dale: Strategies of the Kamigawa BlockYeah, "From the Morgul Dale" has come to Kamigawa, so watch out and read my second strategy article!
Well, after a long, time, my first Magic the Gathering article is ready. Today, I'll be talking about some strategies of Kamigawa Block.
Legendary permanentsThere was a big change during Kamigawa Block, talking about legendary creatures. Before, "Legend" was an own creature type and when there was a "Legend" face up on the field, no player could play another "Legend" with the same name. But the rules changed, the. First, "Legend" isn't an own creature type but just a clarification, like "artifact creature", you have "Legendary creature" now. And also with releasing about 80 (!) legendary permanents in just one Expansion, "Champions of Kamigawa", the rule of playing legendary permanents was changed too. You are able to play a legendary permanent even if there's already one with the same name in play; you just remove both from the game. With that rule, you do not have to fear drawing a legendary creature the opponent controls, not being able to play it until the other creature was killed. But now, I'll come to my first creature type, Kamigawa was focused on:
SpiritsSpirits can be divided in a few parts, depending on their ability. First thing I'll be talking about, is the very nice effect "Soulshift".
When a Spirit with the "Soulshift X" ability is put into a graveyard from play, you may take a Spirit with converted mana cost X or lower from your graveyard to your hand. This makes chains possible, beginning in the early game, when playing a couple of cheap Spirits, they get discarded, and when you keep on playing more and more Spirits with Soulshift, you can get back creatures with Soulshift, which then pick another Spirit with Soulshift from your graveyard, which then picks another.. and so on. This is just the ideal case, which can happen often, but there's one little problem; you need very much mana to play all these spirits. As example, a usual creature with converted mana cost of 6 is a 6/6 creature. But when you add Soulshift, the creature costs 2 mana more! Also, it's very hard to find balance in your Deck, you just can't play the same number of Spirits of each Soulshift number, cus' you'll be dying in the early game.
The second category is the"Trigger-Spirits", which, whenever you play a Spirit r Arcane Spell, activate their special ability. You don't have to pay anything at all, and the ability can be something like making +1/+1 to himself or regenerating target creature. Now, combine the both Spirit strategies and you get a very powerful Deck, playing its creatures again and again and always getting an extra effect for free. But as mentioned before, to find a well-balanced Deck where both strategies work together is really hard, especially cus' you need another thing and that's
Arcane SpellsArcane Spells are instants and sorceries with the keyword "arcane" on them. As I told you before, these Spells can trigger ability when you have to right creatures in play, but there's one more big point, namely another keyword, called "Split onto arcane". Whenever you play an arcane Spell, you can reveal a Spell with the "Split onto arcane" keyword from your hand, pay the assumed mana costs listed in the card's game text and you get the ability of the Spell in addition to the normal Spell.
But if you read carefully, you'll maybe see the problem; again, this deck needs tons of mana to be able to Split all arcane Spells on the others and so on.
Te second problem is the same as above: it's nice to trigger all these Arcane Spells, but you'll still need creatures to win.
As for now, we'll leave this topic as it is, and we'll come to my favorite strategy and that's the:
SamuraiSamurai are mostly white creatures, which also have a pretty cool keyword: "Bushido". "Bushido" means that whenever the creature with "Bushido X" blocks or becomes blocked, it gets +X/+X until end of turn. I tried to calculate as how much you could add Bushido to the basic strength/ endurance of a creature, and I found out the following thing:
In an aggressive Deck, where you burn all the opponent's creatures anyway, you can add "0.25" to the basic strength/ endurance, cus' your creatures won't find often anyway.
In a usual aggressive Deck you can add "0.5" to the basic strength/ endurance of a creature, cus your creatures may fight sometimes but won't do more damage when getting unblocked.
In an absolutely defensive deck, you can add "1" to the basic strength/ endurance, cus' you won't attack with your creatures and they will always fight and gain their bonuses.
But to use the Bushido ability as much as possible, you'll have o use the new-key-worded ability of Kamigawa, Vigilance. Vigilance means that your creatures don't have to be tapped when attacking, meaning that they can block during your next turn. I could tell you more about these Bushido strategies, but it's time to announce the new strategy type, meaning:
MoonfolkMoonfolk creatures are all blue, and they have one thing similar to each other. It's the effect of the creatures that makes you return a land you control to its owner's hand. What seems very strange at the first moments can be one of the best things you can do, cus' the abilities you get by paying these costs are really strong sometimes. It's also useful when you've cards like "draw 3 cards and then discard 1 card from your hand" to discard the lands you don't need anymore. This strategy can be perfectly combined with one of the "Saviors of Kamigawa" strategies, the worst expansion of the Kamigawa Block, so here comes:
I-have-more-cards-than-you-in-my-hand-strategySounds strange, and actually is. The 3rd set o Kamigawa was all about having as many cards as possible in your hand, which makes you able to react on several things (especially when you're playing blue),but the main point is set on keeping them in your hand. Why the #$&*@! should you keep your cards in your hand instead of playing them? Is a +1/+2 boost for your creature worth of it?
Actually, it's not, but just think about the moonfolk-strategy. Bringing back your ands to your hand makes the number of cards in your hand bigger, and you're also able to play the cards you want. I never tried out such a Deck seriously, just one for fun and it's very hard to play, and even finding the correct combination of cards isn't easy at all.
I know that there are still so many strategies and tactics in Kamigawa, but for today, it's enough. So watch out the next part of "From the Morgul Dale"!
Topic: ARTICLE: Strategies of the Kamigawa Block (Read 3797 times)