Every workday ahead of the set's release, Insight is taking a quick look at a deck featuring new cards from the upcoming Innistrad: Midnight Hunt. Today, we're considering a card that may make it all the way to Legacy and prove a relevant update to one of the format's meanest combo strategies!
It's safe to say that Innistrad: Midnight Hunt includes one of the most powerful cards in a long time. People didn't immediately realize how powerful or was, and even noticing as quite strong, I didn't fully grasp how busted that card would turn out. So what is different about ?
Consider is a very different card in that it will never cause that dreaded "Omg I'm losing to Oko again" feeling. It cannot win games on its own. It is also a very small effect of which we have seen variants time and again over the years. Why would we get excited over such a simple card?
I consider myself an aestheticist. I really appreciate when Wizards finally manage to get a simple effect to the exact spot where it is powerful for its mana cost and yet not too powerful. , , and are all busted. on the other hand is a fine card, but playing with it and comparable cards for a long time you realize that there is a just a tiny bit more power to squeeze out of this kind of effect. I believe Consider might be hitting the sweet spot dead center, where it is as strong as it can be without causing trouble.
I might yet end up being wrong, though. The upgrade from Opt to Consider is actually considerable. Imagine replacing your Opt with Consider in a deck that runs or , or makes use of delve, delirium, or threshold. It is really not hard to picture that Izzet Phoenix in Pioneer is a much better deck for it. I love all that, but what I find even cooler is that Consider gives decks in Legacy a very efficient new way to win.
I've played quite a bit of Doomsday for my Vintage series. I always found Doomsday to be a scary proposition but learned that the deck is rather tame in Vintage. Legacy Doomsday on the other hand always kept looking like it was really hard to play. Replacing with Brainstorm or and with makes things difficult, you see.
Curiously Consider helps the deck out with a very efficient kill. The idea is: with Doomsday you put Consider on top of your library, second, and Lion's Eye Diamond third. Then you only need to draw the top card of your pile and have one blue mana available to cast Consider, get Deep Analysis into the graveyard, find and cast LED, and flashback Analysis off the LED mana. Smartly you will have put and as the final two cards, and voilà: victory!
Here's a sample list. I took a recent decklist from Kai Sawatari and squeezed in one Consider and one Deep Analysis.
| Doomsday, Future Legacy |
|---|
| Main Deck | Sideboard |
|---|
- 4
- 1
-
- 4
- 1
- 2
- 1
- 1
- 2
- 4
- 2
- 1
- 2
- 4
- 4
- 4
- 4
- 1
| | |
