So last week I played in a local 5 round event (went 3-2, lost last round playing for top 8, got 9th). I played a list similar to one I posted earlier, but with 2 lotus petals in the board (over ingot chewer and the 4th ichorid) and with +2 nether shadow and -2 prized amalgam. My reasoning is that even though amalgam insulates you against surgical in game 2/3, if your opponent goes after your self-reanimators with surgical, your amalgams can get stranded in the yard (happened to me a lot at an SCG classic a month or two ago). My thoughts:
- By rule 404.3, when you dredge nether shadow, you can move it to the bottom of the dredged pile (the 4-6 cards). This almost never mattered, since most dredges were not 4 creatures or more, and most shadow triggers had >>3 creatures above it.
- While I will often wait on discarding Ichorid in favor of a dredger/bridge/therapy, leaving it to a later looting effect or a self therapy, I found that I wanted to discard shadow earlier. This is probably not that different from the play style for prized amalgam, since it needs to see the other creature enter.
- Amalgam usually has a one turn delay if it dies (trigger Ichorid on upkeep or dredge Narcomoeba, trigger amalgam, put it in at end of turn tapped), the exception being if you sacrifice it to Dread Return. Often if I'm aware of how the turn will go (will Ichorid die in combat, what am I sacrificing to therapy this turn), I can get shadow back in the yard with 3 creatures above it, making it a small Ichorid that doesn't tax my graveyard. I found that I was less frustrated with getting shadow back that I usually am with amalgam in grindy games. Very much felt like a hybrid between Ichorid and Narcomoeba.
- I never played a game of anemic beats, so I never got to feel out whether being a 1/1 instead of a 3/3 mattered, nor whether the cheaper cost matters.
My plan is to keep testing Nether Shadow. I'm not sold on it being better/worse than Amalgam, but it does definitely change how the games play out.
Additionally, while I've been touting Dragonlord Kolaghan as better than FKZ, my round 5 game had the corner case where it was in fact much worse (of course, my op scooped to seeing the Kolaghan in the graveyard despite having an on board answer, was probably eventually dead to zombies regardless). Op had a Karakas (presumably much more popular game one with the resurgence of Reanimator and Sneak/Show), and bouncing the Kolaghan in begin combat would take the haste away from the zombie army, whereas FKZ's effect would persist through the eat-their-brains step. I think I'll keep playing Kolaghan since it is a black creature for Ichorid, but this was a strike against her.
