Just last week I tried building a deck around
Sages. It was Bant colors, and all creatures.
Once the Sages gets going you draw cards like a
champ and flood the board, but there are some
inherent problems here. For one, the Sages lock
all your noncreature cards, including lands, out
of you ever drawing them unless you include some
sort of out. And the only out I can think of is
Skyward Eye Prophets, which is expensive and
slow. Second, the more noncreature spells you
run, the less effective the Sages become. The
fewer noncreature spells you run, the harder it
is for you to do anything reactive to your
opponent-- you're basically just playing
creatures. And third, all those extra creatures
don't really help if your opponent has a
board-wipe spell. It seems promising, but it
just doesn't live up to expectations.
Here's a card that demands to be played - who
wouldn't like to replace drawing a card with
drawing three cards? It even tells you outright
what sort of a deck it wants. Say . . . wasn't
there a land in Conflux that also encouraged you
to play as many creatures as possible? Somebody
should look into that.
Constructed:
I just got done playing in a PTQ in Austin Tx
with 265 other players. That was a story to tell
at another time. Anyways this is a cool card for
a all creature deck, because you will not be
able to draw other spells or lands. This would
be great against Turbo-Fog or a Sanity Grinding
deck.
Casual &
Multiplayer:
It would be interesting to see a blue green Elf
deck for a change.
Limited:
Good solid creature for it's stats, but you lose
most of your removal spells to always going to
the bottom of the deck and extra lands. If you
fill you deck with alot of good creatures than I
would use or pick this card. But I would not
recommend that.
Overall a ok card for more on the fun side.
Constructed: 2
Casual: 3
Multiplayer: 3
Limited: 2
Later
Miguel
Paul
Magic The Gathering COTD: Sages Of The Anima
Welcome back today we have an interesting U/G
Elf Wizard from Alara Reborn. Sages Of The Anima
is a creature card that helps to promote heavy
creature builds. The problem with this lies in
the fact of the abundance of creatures more
playable then Sages. Any deck focused on
intensive creature interactions has less
expensive creatures it would more than likely
rather play. Sages ability to net you insane
card advantage however can not be ignored,
getting up to two additional cards a turn
especially creature threats you can rush the
board with or hold onto is a truly advantageous
ability that rewards packing your deck with
creatures. In current Standard I don’t see this
card making to big of an impact on the metagame
not only is it expensive it requires a
combination of colors only Bant could truly
exploit, yet Bant decks have an alarming amount
of quality cards available to them that this
card I feel may not see any play in Standard
until after rotation. In Extended, Legacy, and
Vintage the creature nabbing advantages of this
card are not needed and are superfluous. In
casual and multiplayer the ability for a
green/blue mage to manipulate his or her library
and draw into an excessive amount of creatures
to keep a presence on the board should not be
undervalued. A respectable body attached to a
killer effect and Elf and Wizard creature types
could propel this card into certain casual decks
that could realistically run a high creature
count and overwhelm opponents with advantage. In
limited the ability to reliably get your hands
on more creatures could provide an asset and a
liability as it may push your other powerful
cards to the bottom of your library. Limited
this card is a gamble if you have enough solid
and bomb creatures to justify running it, it
could be a powerful card.
