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by Tim Reilly
A Trip Into Volrath's Stronghold After going to the Stronghold pre-release in Boston, buying my first packs of Stronghold, reviewing the spoiler, and building my first deck with Stronghold, I am writing this article to give my first insight into the new set. The set contains some startling (read: ba-roken) new cards and many other possibilities. One of the bigger suproses is the inclusion of tourney-worthy walls (no, this is not a dream, just pinch yourself and see that it's true), but we will get into that later. Black got a a bunch of things from Stronghold, fortunately most of of these things are not disappointments. Abandoning its traditional 17/23 flying trample 12cc fatties, black takes an even more devious turn and explores the crueler side of black. In my opinion, two of the most cruel and unusual cards are Bottomless Pit and Megrim. Bottomless Pit, which causes each player to randomly discard a card in their upkeep, shuts out control decks and other card-holding decks. Megrim deals 2 damage to your opponent whenever he or she discards a card. Not only will discard be hard to deal with, it will also be deadly. Two other notable cards that wok well together are Grave Pact, which makes everybody else sac a creature whenever one of yours goes to the graveyard, and Mortuary, which stick any creature that goes to the graveyard on top of your library. Combine this with a creature that your want to die, like every necro-players friend Bottle Gnome, and you got three life and making your opponent sac a creature, while getting the little guy back next turn. Black's new wall, Wall of Souls, is another excellent card, especially for two mana. Wall o' Souls does a damage to your opponent for every damage it has dealt to it. It is excellent with the white en-Kor, which are discussed later in this article, back giving the damage to the wall and then back at your opponent. Blue got lots of stuff that is, well, blue. A new counterspell, Mana Leak, which is a triple force spike for 1U. This suits Propa'Orb perfectly, by either countering their spell, or depriving them of their saved mana. Evacuation is blue best attempt so far at mass-creature removal, by unsummoning all the creatures on the board. Mind Games is also a Propa'Orb card, because with some medallions, you can simply tap your orb before your turn, buy it back, untap your lands during your turns, and then let your opponent get nailed down by the Orb in his/her turn. Reigns of Power is another very blue card, by allowing you to switch control of creature with your opponent until end of turn. Spindrift Drake, Cloud Spirit, and Silver Wyvern all provide blue with some decent creatures. Blue wall, Wall of Tears, unsummons the things it blocks at the end of turn. This either A) prevent those little weenies from attacking you or B) make your opponent's big fattie not bother you for a while. Either way, it is good for Tradewind fodder and is welcome in my blue decks. Green, although not having too many strong cards in this set, does have a few strange and abusable ones. Awakening is a beautiful card when paired with blue, because it untaps everybody's creatures and lands at the beginning of every turn. No longer does the blue wizzard have to hold back its precious blue counter-mana, and instead allowing him to plop down the flying fatties and still stamp DENIAL on all of his/her opponent's cards. Another interesting card is Constant Mists, which is a fog with a buyback of sac a land. This tends to lead to a painfully long meta-game, where the opponent can't attack and the happy little green player snickers away. Hermit Druid and Mulch, while being a little bit awkward, are fantastic with graveyard twiddling, as they both give you land from the top of your library while trashing everything else. This spike family is an interesting addition, by moving counters around, or sacrificing them for life. Volrath's Gardens is a card that lets you tap you creature during your turn to gain two life, and is quite useful. Easily one of the best cards in this set, or even the tempest block, is Wall of Blossoms. This all-to-handy wall is 0/4 and lets you draw a card when it comes into play. Not only does it have place is boomeranging trade decks, but it is immensly useful in speed by giving you a blocker and replacing itself, all in one. Red, I am sorry to say got completely gypped. With the Flowstone family being complete junk (ex. flowstone blade is a firebreathing that instead of giving +1/+0, it gives +1/-1), red is left with some mediocre cards and three shining commons. The first is fling, which lets you sac one of your creature to do the damage to any target. Hit your opponent with your Ball Lightning for six, then sac him to do another six. The other two are moggs. One is Mogg Flunkies,which is a 3/3 for 1R that need only to have another creature attack with it. the other is Mogg Maniac, which gives the amount of damage it takes to any target, and works beautifully with the en-Kors. Sadly, red was the only color that managed to actually have a bad wall, a miserable 4/1 first striker that is all-too pingable. Oh-well red, maybe in Exodus. On a much lighter note, White pulled itself from a boring old color to a new and engaging color with much potential in a single set. It got the en-Kors a fabulous race of creatures that can give the damage they take to anything you control, make then very hard to kill. It got the god-like Pursuit of Knowledge, with by merely skipping three draw you are able to draw seven cards, enough to make any player convert to the white way. Sacred Ground is sure a novelty, it is an anti land-destruction card (yes it is possible, just keep reading)! Whenever you lose a lose to an opponent's spell, it goes right into play. Smite is a card that destroys a blocked creature, almost (but not quite) replacing Swords To Plowshare in T2. White's wall is the lovely Wall of Essence, which gains you a life for every damage it takes. Another card that works perfectly with the en-Kors. Youthful Knight, a 2/1 first striker for 1W is cheap and good in white weenie. The slivers, all gold, are fairly lackluster. The two noteable one are Crystalline Sliver, which makes all the slivers untargetable, and the sliver Queen, which is a humongous 7/7 for WUBRG, making it good in either rainbow sliver deck or in re-animator decks, where it can be put directly into play. The artifacts are equally disappointing. The only two good one are Ensnaring Bridge, which makes creatures with power greater than the number of cards in your hand unable to attack, and the Mox Diamond, which you must remove a land card from your hand when you play it but can produce any color mana. The sole land in stronghold is Volrath's Stronghold, which brings dead creature into your hand for 1B. Overall, Stronghold is a fairly good set, and much improved art. I expect some of the new cards to make a difference in tourney play, and I enjoy playing with these cards.
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