Magic Origins preview

1. Avarcious Dragon

With four mana 4/4 flying - the new standard for usable dragons - Avaricious Dragon give you one more card per turn but force you to discard you hand at the end of turn. It's actually a walking Grafted Skullcap. What is Grafted Skullcap? you've never heard of it? Right, that's because it's never been used in serious decks since it first appeared in Urza's Saga set 17 years ago. I don't think this dragon will not be more active than Thunderbreak Regent in competitive decks after rotation.

Look at the visage of the guy wearing it.

Still, I made a deck around it:

GR reanimates

Creatures:

4 Deathmist Raptor
4 Den Protector
4 Flamewake Phoenix
4 Ashcloud Phoenix

4 Avaricious Dragon 

Others:
whatever you want (I am not quite in the mode right now)
Some lands

2. Starfield of Nyx

At the beginning of your upkeep, you may return target enchantment card from your 

graveyard to the battlefield.

As long as you control five or more enchantments, each other non-Aura enchantment you 

control is a creature in addition to its other types and has base power and base toughness 

each equal to its converted mana cost.

The first card appeared in my mind is Second Chance,


but the blue card is not reprinted in Modern and Enchantment deck is unlikely to be in Standard. Even though we decided to build around it in Legacy, its effect is conditional when compared to Opalescence.

But fun is limitless. Read the deck I made around this cards here.

3. Woodland Bellower

What does a six Mana Genesis Hydra give?  A 4/4 and the chance to get another 4 mana cost card provided that the card's one of the four cards on top of your library.
After it rotates, we can use this 6/5 beast giving you a card costs 3 or less mana for sure. It's not so bad as people think initially.
Plus, it's a more secure Devotion enabler than Genesis Hydra.

It almost guarantees the devotion of green gods.

After all, should we consider Bellower and Hydra two kinds of cards? When you have 6 six mana, you probably don't want to cast Hydra, then why don't we say "Hydra is a creature with seven or above cost"? On the other hand, Bellower fits in the slot of six mana cost and it helps devotion for a bigger Hydra. So, A green based deck may have both.

4. The planeswalkers

On TCG player.com, Nissa is now the highest priced planeswalker from Magic Origins. Indeed, Nissa is the only one among the five that can probably filp the turn she enters the battle field. Liliana has similar advantage but that card requires you to kill another non token creature, which is harder then playing a land.

Honestly, I don't like any of the planeswalkers because of their randomness. From the example of Garruk Relentless, serious events don't welcome cards relaying  too much on other factors of the game.

If I am forced to pick a planeswalker from this set, I will choose Jace. In spell heavy decks, he's a bit more independent to filp than Chandra, Liliana and Gideon, also faster than Nissa.



Read my Magic Origins buying list here.