Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Johnny: Reveillarking back and forth

Since it's been spoiled, people have been going gaga over the 4/3 flying elemental named Reveillark. Particularly because of Reveillark's very potent "when I leave play" ability.

With that in mind, do me a favor and imagine that you have a sacrifice outlet in the form of a suspended Greater Gargadon, a Nantuko Husk, or even a Mirror Entity that you intend to use to set your all your creature's power and toughness to zero. Got that in your head? Good.






Okay, now that you have those elements, check out the possible interactions that Reveillark has with either of the cards that are pictured below it.






Yes, you can go infinite with it.

As long as you can maintain a sacrifice outlet, you can endlessly recur a creature from your graveyard into play. This allows for Soul Wardens to gain you infinite life, for Mogg Fanatics to kill people for you, or for singleton Merrow Witsnipers to deck people. Nevermind the possibility of seeing a returning Martyr of Sands, a back-from-the-grave Mulldrifter, or a Venser gone mad.





Furthermore what's nice about the Reveillark combo is that it's flexible enough to allow you to take your deck in different directions.

Choosing Saffi as a Reveillark partner allows you to go either green/red/white or green/white/nlack. Red and green gives acces to burn, acceleration, and other ways to sacrifice your creatures - Thermopod for infinite mana anyone? Black, can help out in the tutoring and disruption department. It can also help with getting stuff from your hand to your graveyard. Who thought Oona's Prowler could be used primarily as a discard outlet instead of a 3/1 for 2 beater?

Body Double on the other hand, let's you bleed into counterspell/control territory - something that's always nice.

Surfing around the mtgsalvation forums, I ran across a list that somebody got from a Japanese tournament. The mix of 75 cards bellow supposedly managed to snag top 8.

Creatures:
4 Mulldrifter
4 Mirror Entity
4 Reveillark
4 Riftwing Cloudskate
3 Bonded Fetch
3 Body Double

Spells:
4 Prismatic Lens
1 Mind Stone
3 Condemn
3 Momentary Blink
4 Wrath of God

Land:
5 Island
4 Plains
4 Adarkar Wastes
4 Wanderwine Hub
3 Faerie Conclave
2 Calciform Pools
1 Urza's Factory

Sideboard:
2 Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir
2 Draining Whelk
2 Sower of Temptation
1 Stonecloaker
3 Teferi's Moat
1 Mystical Teachings
4 Flashfreeze

Amazingly, going the Body Double/Mirror Entity route seems to have simplified things given that you can stack so many copies Mirror Entity's ability with X=0.

All I'm waiting for now is for someone to experiment with a more aggresive Blue/Red/White version that uses the Elemental tribe for Smokebraider and Incandescent Soulstroke based acceleration, that has Elemental Harbinger to search for stuff, and Greater Gargadon for inevitability. Yes, it may not be efficient, but the point is, the combo is so open, that it can go that route. Amazingly, WoTC printed all the tools to do so.

And here people were complaining that combo was dead.



Anyhow, those too "Spikey" to bother trying to assemble the pieces to get the combo going, relax, Momentary Blink still loves Reveillark. You see, what's ultimately nice about Reveillark is that it doesn't have to go infinite to get you the win.

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