M.O.S.T. - Merieke, Opposition, (Survival), Tradewind Rider

[pettdan]

I enjoy your reports too, Demonic_pact! I'm travelling since a month back but wanted to comment on some new cards for us such as Brightling and Arcane Artisan. More on that later. Also, the banning of Deathrite is probably good news for us. Pile is weakened, we can again play Meren and experiment with Scarab God, Loyal Retainers and Necrotic Ooze. I'll continue playing Leylines in the sideboard for the fast graveyard based decks and I suggest you consider it too, if there is an increase in those.

I'm interested in testing Nicol Bolas, the Ravager too. I think I'll be playing 3 BoP's and 2 Nobles to start with, post-Deathrite, so the dragon should be castable too (not only vial-able). I like that it's a flying 4/4 for cmc 4, it comes with card advantage, it's a great late game mana sink and it's a tutorable planeswalker, kind of. And the weakness vs Karakas is kind of mitigated by it becoming a discard engine if they start bouncing it (with Vial in play it is a good exhange for us; with Vial you can also easily outplay the Karakas with hardcasting plus vialing on the same turn). I think it benefits from being played next to Knight of the Reliquary, Karakas and Gaea's Cradle but it might be hard to fit all of those into one list.