Born of the Gods Pre-release weekend re-cap, an interesting phenomenon, and a new deck!

Born of the Gods Pre-release weekend re-cap, an interesting phenomenon, and a new deck!

                Pre-release weekend is over, and I must say, the format was pretty fun. I got to play 3 sealed events and a 2HG with my team-mate Ariel Adamson. Players everywhere finally got to play with the cards and get a feel with how powerful they might be in constructed formats. Cards like; Xenagos, God of Revels,  Mogis, God of Slaughter, Courser of Kruphix, Hero of Iroas and many others. I had the opportunity to play with some of these, and while great in the limited format, it’s still hard to tell whether or not they’ll pan out in standard constructed. There’s been a lot of discussion over the playability of these cards already, but it takes effort and time into play-testing to really see if these cards will work.

                But I digress! I want to talk about the weekend events and which cards actually did work in the format. When it comes to Born of the Gods, there really aren’t many great bombs at the rare quality. However, there are some that come to mind as exceptionally good. I had the opportunity to play with two Gods from the set and both were great! I ended up with a white/blue Heroic deck with Hero of Iroas in one of my flights. The pool came with 2 Hopeful Eidolons and 2 Nyxborn Tritons among others that got me a 4-1 record, losing only to my team-mate Ariel in the 4^th round. Hero of Iroas is a limited bomb that gets out of control fast. It’s scary to commit so much to one creature with the chance your opponent could have a simple removal spell for it and get some good 2-for-1’s or even more out of you, but with the bestow creatures falling off and staying in play, you really weren't losing much.

                In the same event, I ended up pulling Phenax, God of Deception. Because I also pulled a Temple of Deceit, I decided to throw him in my white/blue deck. He won me 4 games that night, because like I said in my last article, he is pretty much the end all for this format. I wish I could have committed to Blue/Black more to be more consistent with him, but it worked out fine when I saw him. On top of that, I also saw the Archetype of Imagination. This guy was as good as I expected him to be. There are lots of removal spells that answer him efficiently, but he was still awesome and it made for awesome finishers.

                I’ve decided that black is the worst color for the format so I stayed away from it as much as possible so I didn’t get the chance to play with Drown in Sorrow or Bile Blight, in fact, I never even saw a single Bile Blight in any of my events. However, I did get to play with Mogis, God of Slaughter as a splash for a white/red deck I piloted in a 2HG event on Sunday. He came with a pair of Read the Bones that made the black splash more worth it, and it was! I only got to play him once, but we were able to put our opponents’ health so low, that they had no choice but to start sacrificing their creatures on their turns. It was a very solid ‘nail in their coffin’ as it were. However, I realized that if we didn’t already have good control over the board, he wouldn’t be very effective at all. They could just take a few points of damage and keep swinging for the win. This makes me feel that he won’t be very great in standard since he feels so much like a ‘win-more’ kind of card, but still very fun nonetheless.

               

The limited hype phenomenon!

Over the years, I’ve noticed a… thing… occurring at limited events. I’ve actually been guilty of it myself and you might have too! Here’s the deal. You go to your local game store for a fun night of draft with some buddies. You end up pulling some decent limited bomb and happen to pull it out every single game and go undefeated. In all the glory and praise, you give credit to your bomb. Then you start thinking… “This was so good and so much fun, I should build this for constructed!” You build it, show up to FNM, and get destroyed. Then you immediately bail on the idea and start building a real deck. Hey, it happens. The most annoying part of all of this is, Xenagos, God of Revels is that card right now. I'm not saying this card won't shake up standard, because I believe it will, but people are generally hyping him a little too much from what they saw in a limited environment. I saw a ton of people open him in their sealed pools and no one would trade them to me afterwards. Pretty much everyone I asked to trade said the same thing; “No way, I think I’m gunna build Red/Green!” The dumb part was I obviously wanted to build Red/Green myself, but I had already planned on the deck list from watching the spoilers and teching against the current meta and their new additions. Apparently, we’ll be seeing a lot of R/G Monsters at FNM this week…

Enough complaining on my part! Among all of the hype, we managed to pick up 4 Xenagos, God of Revels, enough for myself and fellow team-mate Donovan Blayney to run two in our near-identical G/r Devotion deck. It actually turned out to be more difficult to get Courser of Kruphix so I ended up pre-ordering some for pick up at my local game store, usually something I try to avoid, but oh well!

The New Deck!!!

While spoiler season was going, I was watching with a diligent eye. My team and I were busy hashing out ideas and testing the exciting new cards. Since two of us were hyped on G/r Devotion, we decided to squeeze in the new God, so without further ado, here’s the awesome deck Donovan and I designed for FNM this week:

G/r Devotion;

Lands: 24

11 Forest

2 Mountain

3 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx

4 Stomping Ground

4 Temple of Abandon

Creatures: 29

4 Arbor Colossus

4 Burning-Tree Emissary

2 Courser of Kruphix

3 Kalonian Hydra

3 Polukranos, World Eater

2 Skarrg Guildmage

4 Sylvan Caryatid

2 Sylvan Primordial

3 Voyaging Satyr

2 Xenagos, God of Revels

Planeswalkers: 7
            3 Garruk, Caller of Beasts
            4 Xenagos, the Reveler

Sideboard:

2 Courser of Kruphix

4 Domri Rade

4 Mistcutter Hydra

1 Polukranos, World Eater

4 Skylasher

This deck is mostly the normal Green devotion deck you’re used to seeing around with the splash of red for Xenagos. This list might not be “Tier-1”, but it’s explosive and way more fun to play than Mono Black has been, for me anyway. We still have to see how it plays out at FNM this Friday, but I have high hopes. The Xenagod will make for some(probably expected) blowout plays. Having access to tramplers in the form of Kalonian Hydra, an already ‘Must-deal-with’ threat, makes Xenagos’ pumps very scary. There are only 3 copies of the counter-happy hydra so I decided to add in Skarrg Guildmage. His ability to give everything trample could be as game-ending as Xenagod himself, but paired together, are really a force. At two mana to cast, he’s easy to throw in a few copies, however, I don’t really want to see him in the first 4-5 turns and he gets better the longer the game goes, so 2 copies is where I settled. His other ability of turning lands into 4/4’s(8/8 hasters with Xenagod), is another powerful synergistic ability in this deck, allowing for better game 1’s against control decks. I expect great things from him!

The only other thing I should mention is the sideboard. I’m hesitant on the 4 Skylashers, and they’ll probably turn into Gruul Charms or… something. Donovan says they are really good against mono red where they can trade with a lot of their 2/2’s and keep their devotion count low as well as being great in the Mono Blue match-up and U/W control as well. Since this archetype is Donovan’s field of expertise, I tend to listen to him, but I still like to build towards my own play-style, so we’ll see how I feel after FNM.

Well, that’s all folks! I hope you enjoyed the read and had a great pre-release weekend, even if the super bowl was disappointing(for fans of both teams). Be sure to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for all the latest updates and content! 

DannyO