Welcome all to another exciting edition of the Daily Dose of Amonkhet where today I’ll be showing you a deck involving two new cards. One of these new cards is a removal card that is sure to see some play thanks to having Flash, while the second card involves one of the Gatewatch, Gideon.
Currently there is a certain Planeswalker called Gideon, Ally of Zendikar that's making quite the impact on the Standard metagame. There have been rumblings of wanting to ban Gideon, Ally of Zendikar and many players call it the best card currently in Standard. Those are some large shoes to fill if you are going to be printing another Gideon, but I think they’ve provided players with a good alternative once Gideon, Ally of Zendikar rotates out of Standard.
Before we talk about the new Gideon though, let’s have a look at a removal spell similar to cards we’ve seen before such as Stasis Snare and Banishing Light. Here is Cast Out.
What Cast Out does, is take the removal power of Banishing Light and combine it with the instant speed of a Stasis Snare. Being able to hit any non-land permanent means it can deal with any creatures, vehicles, and Planeswalkers in its way. Four mana is a fair amount to pay for this spell, but it will deal with every permanent in the format. Being able to play Cast Out at instant speed will allow you, for example, to hold up four mana on your opponent's turn and allow you to either cast Cast Out, Disallow, or Glimmer of Genius. That allows you to tap out less and have more versatility for your removal, and I haven’t even talked about the fact that it can cycle the card for one white mana as well. This means you shouldn’t be afraid to play multiple copies of this card or worry about having too many of them too early in the game.
Now it’s time to talk about Gideon. Move aside Gideon, Ally of Zendikar, and welcome Gideon of the Trials.
Wow! Just wow! Let’s break down what Gideon of the Trials brings to the table. To start off you get 3 loyalty counters for the low cost of only three mana. Over the history of Magic, there have been mostly powerful Planeswalkers at three mana cost. Liliana of the Veil, Dack Fayden, Jace Beleren, and Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver just to name a few. Now, let’s have a look at its three Planeswalker abilities:
[+1]: Until your next turn, prevent all damage target permanent would deal. – The power of the word “permanent” is what makes Gideon of the Trials so powerful and hard to kill. This means you can prevent damage from Vehicles, like Heart of Kiran, Planeswalkers, like Gideon, Ally of Zendikar and lands, like Needle Spires. The versatility on what you can use this ability on will make it very hard to kill it.
[0]: Until end of turn, Gideon of the Trials becomes a 4/4 Human Soldier creature with indestructible that's still a Planeswalker. Prevent all damage that would be dealt to him this turn. – Once again, we get a Gideon that can attack in for some indestructible damage. Being a 4/4 instead of a 5/5 like Gideon, Ally of Zendikar does make some difference, including the fact that it can be killed with a Grasp of Darkness. Either way, any Gideon that turns into an indestructible creature is hard to deal with. Maybe a nice card like Cast Out could deal with it.
[0]: You get an emblem with "As long as you control a Gideon Planeswalker, you can't lose the game and your opponents can't win the game." – This ultimate (can you call a 0 ability an ultimate?) is quite interesting in the fact that emblems cannot be removed in any way. This means that for the rest of the game, any Gideon Planeswalker, including this one, becomes a Platinum Angel in addition to its Planeswalker greatness.
Now that we’ve seen the power of these two cards, why not see how they would look in a deck together. Here's a little deck I’ve put together called Jeskai Superfriends.
This is a deck where Planeswalkers rule the day and will be your path to victory. Being able to stop multiple attackers with Gideon of the Trials and Dovin Baan is good one-two punch that will protect your Planeswalkers. On top of having the Felidar Guardian and Saheeli Rai combo, Felidar Guardian can also be used to blink any of your Planeswalkers to use them twice or creatures like Thraben Inspector or Torrential Gearhulk for more value. I think this would be a fun deck and I look forward to testing it out later this month.
What deck ideas do you have for Gideon of the Trials and Cast Out? Let me know in the comments below! Thanks again for joining me as I previewed a couple of new white cards that will see some play at your local FNM very soon. Join me again tomorrow as I continue to delve into all that Amonkhet should offer. There is still a ton to come our way, so let’s see what the rest of this brings to us!
