Welcome to the Daily Dose of Aether Revolt, where I talk about some of the great new preview cards from the next Magic set, Aether Revolt! Today I want to focus on a certain rarity of card, specifically Mythic cards. Mythic cards often fall into two categories.
First are the Mythic cards that are very playable and you want to have multiples of them in your deck. For example, cards like Gideon, Ally of Zendikar or Ishkanah, Grafwidow. Secondly, are Mythic cards that are so outrageous that you probably only want to have one usually due to the casting cost of the card and how narrow the playability of the card is. So, I’m going to breakdown some of the new Mythic cards from Aether Revolt and see what side of the fence they fall on.
Let’s first look at a card that reminds us of a certain seven mana costing artifact called Platinum Angel, here is Exquisite Archangel.
There have been a lot of Mythic angels over the years including Angel of Invention from Kaladesh. Exquisite Archangel brings us a very uniquely designed card that basically gives you a reset on the game if you lose. This card will have a big fat target on its head, as instead of focusing on damaging you they must first worry about finding a way to kill Exquisite Archangel. If my opponent has this card and is at three life, I’m not dealing those last points of damage to help them gain 17 life. True, they lose their 5/5 Flying creature, but unless you have a very dominating position on the battlefield, you are basically saying that you are doubling your opponent’s life total. Since it does cost seven mana to cast, I can see this as being played as a one of, but I don’t see multiple copies of this card showing up in a deck anytime soon.
VERDICT: One of
Next, I want to preview a nice large green creature that can do some major damage if it gets the chance to attack. Here is Aetherwind Basker.
Often, cards that involve the Energy mechanic require a lot of Energy cards in the deck to be playable. Aetherwind Basker is not one of those cards. Is this card better if you have lots of Energy cards? Of course, it gets better. Do you need other Energy cards to make this card playable? Not at all. Most often when you get to play this behemoth of a creature you will have 3-5 creatures already in play. So, by the time you get around to attacking the following turn, you are going to have 6-10 Energy available to you. That means you can make this Trample creature deal a lot of damage, very quickly. I think that green will have lots of ways to get this card out quicker than on turn seven. Green decks are known for having a high creature count and I think green will have lots of ways to build up Energy as well in Aether Revolt. This card lines up as a card that you can build a deck around and have more than one copy of it to put some fear in your opponent’s eyes.
VERDICT: Multiple
Lastly, I want to look at a card that harkens back to an ability that is usually seen on blue spells. Let’s look at Indomitable Creativity.
This card to me is like the "Price is Right" game Plinko. Whether you choose to destroy your artifacts and creatures or your opponents, or some combination of the two, there will be a lot of chance that comes into play with this card. For each permanent you destroy, you get one back at random from the top of the deck. Most of the time you won’t know what is on top of your deck, and you certainly won’t know what your opponent has on the top of their deck either. I do understand that ideally you would play the odds of destroying their higher than average power cards, and destroy your weaker than average cards. Still I don’t like taking a chance in dropping the Plinko chip and it landing in the $0 slot. I’m sure that some players will love the chance aspect of this card, but I’m not really a large risk taker, so this card is definitely not for me.
VERDICT: None of
So, as you can see, I decided to add a third category in the end, but that just speaks to how unknown Mythic cards can be when you open them up in your booster pack. Mythics were not always meant to be the most powerful cards in the game, but more likely unique cards that work well when decks are built around them. Some Mythics are more versatile then others and sometimes they get left out of your deck.
Thanks for reading today’s Daily Dose of Aether Revolt. Keep on joining me this week as we preview more great cards from Aether Revolt as we start to see some of the last remaining cards to complete this set.
