| The first reveal we have this morning is Rubblehulk. This card fits somewhat with the abilities of Borborygmos Enraged as it deals with land. With this card, if you discard it (what appears to be the Bloodrush keyword), an attacking creature gets +X/+X for the turn where X is the number of lands you control. This looks pretty cool. Either a creature with power and toughness equal to the lands you control, or a three mana pump spell... For people who like Red/Green, this looks like a really good keyword for you. Based on the two revealed Gruul cards so far, they appear to be solely land based. |  |
 | The second card is Firemane Avenger. So Battalion is the keyword for Boros, and you get to fully utilize red and white abilities in this card. When it attacks with two other creatures, target creature or player is dealt three damage (red), and you gain three life (white). So based on this, I'm assuming Battalion involves a creature attacking and requires a couple more creatures to attack as well... I'm not so sure the 3 damage and 3 life gain is involved in each creature with Battalion of it. These keywords seem a bit more complex than the RTR keywords... Nevertheless, imagine three of these under your control at the same time attacking... That's 9 damage wherever you want and 9 life gained, PLUS the 9 total damage dealt in combat. Pretty awesome! |
| Orzhov's keyword Extort comes from Treasury Thrull. So first the keyword: You cast a spell and pay white or black mana, and an opponent loses one life and you gain one. Perfect black/white flavor. If you have several creatures with Extort on the field, and you pay that one White/Black mana, you gain a nice amount of life, while making your opponent lose a good amount. Assuming the ruling on Extort executes individually (like Exalted executing separately for each Exalted creature). So I mean the one mana covers all instances of Extort and you don't have to pay per instance... We'll see where this goes... Now to the card itself: So here you have a great ability of returning an artifact, creature, or enchantment when Treasury Thrull attacks. Not deals damage, but attacks. Pretty awesome... |  |
| Our last card today is Whispering Madness. Cipher, the keyword for Dimir is found on this card... Personally, I'm not big on the whole "discard hand and draw" since I build decks based on cards I typically need to pull out and play, not where I lose the good cards and draw cards that aren't so great. Although, maybe Laboratory Maniac might be good here... Anyway, on to Cipher: so you "encode" a spell with Cipher on a creature, and when it deals combat damage to a player, the creature's control can cast a copy of the spell. Personally, I wouldn't use this card, and I especially wouldn't use Cipher with this card, unless I just plain didn't have any cards in my hand and my opponent does... I will say, Cipher looks good for my Blue/Black unblockable deck... |
| Creatures 4x Drainpipe Vermin 4x Typhoid Rats 4x Ravenous Rats 4x Pack Rat 2x Griselbrand Artifacts 2x Ring of Xathrid Land 20x Swamp Other Spells 4x Tragic Slip 2x Undying Evil 2x Murder 2x Ultimate Price 4x Stab Wound 2x Sever the Bloodline 2x Destroy the Evidence 2x Exquisite Blood | Sideboard 2x Undying Evil 2x Ultimate Price 2x Murder 2x Destroy the Evidence 3x Killing Wave 2x Ring of Xathrid 2x Elixir of Immortality |
| First, we have the Enter the Infinite. This card let's you draw your entire library, keepit until your next turn, before you have to discard. This is perfect for a self-mill deck including Laboratory Maniac (Innistrad) so you play this, then play all four from your hand the next turn when you draw the card you put back as the one card in your library. | |
| Next we have Hellkite Tyrand. This looks to be an awesome card since you can gain control of artifacts from your opponent with it when you deal combat damage to them, and on top of that, if you control 20 artifacts, you win the game. I don't know how much it will be used in Standard format play since the Scars of Mirrodin block is now out, but it might be more for Extended or Modern format. This is probably a snap judgment given that I don't know what a majority of the cards in this set are, nor what comes in Dragon's Maze or any of the M14 and block after... | |
| The third revealed card is one of our guild leaders, Aurelia, the Warleader. It appears the Boros guild is going to have something probably to do with double strike as their keyword since Aurelia allows for two combat phases, one after the other, in which you can untap and attack with your creatures again. For a converted mana cost of 6 with 2 and double red and double white, for a creature with flying, vigilance, and haste plus a 3/4 with this ability, it's great, but more of a late game card. Hopefully there will be more cards for Boros that will help hold off opponents. Although I could see some possibilities that could happen with a Naya (Red, Green, White for those that don't know) deck... | |
Our fourth card is a second guild leader, Borborygmos Enraged. This costs 8 mana! 4 plus double Red and double Green. He's also a 7/6 trampler and when you deal combat damage with him, you reveal the top three cards of your library and put all land cards revealed into your hand and the rest into your graveyard. At 8 mana, I don't think you'll need too much more land, so it's a nce touch to be able to discard a land card and have him deal three damage to target creature or player. | |
| Next, we have one of the two planeswalkers from the set as our fifth previewed card. Meet Domri Rade, a red/green planeswalker (1RG specificly). His first ability is to let you look at the top card of your library and if it is a creature, you reveal it and put it into your hand. Other cards go back on top of your library. While it doesn't say that, when you look instead of draw, it typically goes back unless there is an ability or purpose for you to keep the card. The second ability just lets you have two creatures fight each other. I believe there is a green card from Innistrad or Dark Ascension that does something similar to that ability. The third ability gives an emblem that allows all your creatures to have double strike, trample, hexproof, and haste. Domri seems like a planeswalker specific for a particular deck... I don't see much of a combo between this and any card right now, but there are stll many more cards to be revealed. There could be an interesting RUG mill deck with Borborygmos Enraged and Domri Rade... I'll have to experiment... | |
| Second to last, we have Simic Fluxmage and we learn of the Simic keyword... Evolve is the name and adding +1/+1 counters is the game. When you play a creature with a greater power OR toughness than Simic Fluxmage, Simic Fluxmage gets a +1/+1 counter. So this works with any card with Evolve. And Simic Fluxmage has the ability of moving a +1/+1 counter from itself to another target creature. This is looking good. I could see some interesting combos with this and perhaps Blessings of Nature (green Avacyn Restored miracle card) in a deck... Maybe a good amount of defender creatures as well (Doorkeeper and Axebane Guardian from RTR, for example). This is looking good... | |
| Fathom Mage, the seventh and last spoiler so far, is a great combination of blue and green all bundled into a nice rare. First of all, we have the keyword Evolve sitting on this nice 1/1 creature. This shouldn't be hard to drop a creature with greater power or toughness, that's for sure. So the adding +1/+1 is the green ability (think Blessings of Nature as mentioned with Simic Fluxmage), while drawing a card each time a counter is placed handles the blue aspect. Simic is so far looking to be a pretty good guild... |
