More Eldrazi Previews, Because MOAR!!!! Part 1

 I've got another exciting set of previews for you all today!

*What do you get when you mix Gifts Ungiven with Green?
*A recent card type makes a re-debut thanks to the Eldrazi.
*Mick's obsession for Bear-related stuff may pay off soon.
*A Planwswalker that doesn't add counters to itself?
*A Planeswalker that becomes a creature!?
*

All that...after the Jump!

I'd like to bookend this set of previews with our two Planeswalkers in the set. So first off...

(Preview pictures are all courtesy of www.dailymtg.com . Any other pictures used come from www.magiccards.info)

THE TEASE: A Planeswalker that doesn't add counters to itself?

THE CARD:

Not only is he another re-do similar to Ajani Vengeant, he's also the first without a "+" Loyalty Ability.
"WHY!?"
Because he's Sarkhan THE MAD! He's not doing things for his own preservation; he's willing to kill in order to advance, even if it means killing himself.
So what do these 3 abilities do for you when set up correctly?

+0 Ability: This is Dark Confidant's ability. Reveal the top card, deal damage to you equal to its converted mana cost. (Except Sarkhan will do the damage to himself.) I've only recently come to discover the power behind Dark Confidant and let me say, this ability is nothing to sneeze at! Especially if you can find a way to splash some Black into an otherwise mono-Red deck, I think you'll find a ton of use for him on this ability alone.

-2: Sacrifice any creature, and that creature's controller puts a flying 5/5 Dragon onto the battlefield. Sounds potentially bad, right? I mean, you're trading one creature for another. But think about it from an advantage standpoint.

With a card like Sprouting Thrinax, you can make the math of a sacrifice be 1=4. You trade the 1 Sprouting Thrinax for 1 5/5 Dragon token and 3 1/1 Saproling tokens! With Bloodghast, 1=2: Your one Bloodghast now for a 5/5 flying Dragon and the 2/1 Bloodghast back  Now also consider you start neo-Sarkhan with 7 loyalty counters and you could do this a total of three times for 3 5/5 Dragons!

The last one's a doozy.

-4: Each Dragon creature you control deals damage equal to its power to target player.

At first it doesn't seem that great. At best, you use his -2 ability once, then use the -4 to deal 5 damage and neo-Sarkhan's done except for 1 Dark Confidant activation.
But also remember one of the better Dragons we have, and it's still in Standard.

On Turn 5, cast neo-Sarkhan and turn Sprouting Thrinax into a 5/5 Dragon. Turn 6, cast Broodmate Dragon to make a total of 2 Dragons of 8 total power, then use Sarkhan's ultimate ability. 13 damage in two turns, and nothing has attacked yet!

Again, the downside is he can't "power himself up", but he comes pre-equipped to go ultimate off the bat if need be. And quite honestly, you don't need any extra loyalty to take full advantage of the new version of the fun Dragon Planeswalker.


THE TEASE: Gifts Ungiven in Green?
THE CARD:

Like Gifts Ungiven, this may be a diamond in the rough...and that's what'll help its initial price.

Basically you search for 4 different lands, your opponent picks 2 to discard, and the other 2 go to your hand.

But you're in Green, the color that can get lands back for practically nothing. Is it really a bad thing to get rid of two lands?

Plus, it thins your deck and gets rid of fairly useless land draws and helps you set up your Landfall cards more easily. And in formats like Commander or 100-card Singleton, this is 4% of your deck thinned on one card.

And I'm sure someone will come up with something. It's just a matter of time. ;)

THE TEASE: A recent new card type makes its return thanks to the Eldrazi.
THE CARD:

So we have our "Wrath of God" of the set...and it re-introduces a card type from a few years ago.

Tribal, as you remember, adds creature types to non-creature spells. That also means that anything that helps those creature types could help Tribal spells/permanents (depends on the wording: "Eldrazi spell" is different from "Eldrazi creature spell", for example).

So for 7 mana, this may or may not be as good as you'd want. But if you factor in some Eldrazi helpers, you should be able to get it much cheaper:

See how I snuck in another preview there? ;)

Two Eldrazi Temple + 1 Eye of Ugin = 1 more land and mass extinction ensues!

This also gets around Regeneration and Indestructiblity since each player sacrifices their colored permanents.

Worth it, even at 7 mana?


4 Down, 3 To Go! I'll do those preview in the next post. I hope you take the time to enjoy these until the next post.