themagicmaelstrom 14400 IN CNAME magicinsydney.wordpress.com. The Magic Maelstrom Blog: Come Hide With me, Let's Hide, Let's Hideaway

Friday, May 29, 2009

Come Hide With me, Let's Hide, Let's Hideaway


“You may play the removed card without paying its mana cost if you attacked with three or more creatures this turn.” Windbrisk Heights is MASSIVE in Standard these days; usually it means GG when activated. But what about the other Hideaway lands? They aren't so easily activated; Windbrisk Heights can be activated with a simple Spectral Procession.

After your opponent attacks with the Spirit tokens, you don't know what to do: do you take the three, do you block some of them, or do you block them all? Almost every option has dire consequences, as you can lose either creatures or life to any number of spells; Overrun, Glorious Anthem and Zealous Persecution are just a few examples. The other lands are a lot more difficult to activate, and can therefore only be used in certain decks.

Shelldock Isle is near-impossible to activate without either a draw deck or a milling deck. If you are playing this land in Standard, build a milling deck around it; Sanity Grinding, Jace Beleron and Isleback Spawn are all key milling cards, and are all legal in Standard. Combined with a bit of Black for creature removal and access to cards like Mind Funeral and Nemesis of Reason, and you've got a very workable deck. Just watch out for White Weenies; that is a very bad match-up for a deck like this, but not an unwinnable one.

Howltooth Hollow hearkens back to the days of Dissension, when the Red-Black Rakdos Guild showcased the Hellbent ability, which activated if you had know cards in hand. Of course, while this may have been the key to your deck, other players would consider it to be a drawback, especially in the early game. The Rakdos Guild capitalises on this by emptying both your opponents and your hand simultaneously; therefore, the Hollow will be able to be activated in the early game when used in a deck like this. Flip a Hollowborn Bargherst with it, and your opponent will be easily tempted to clear his cards of the table right there and then. Perhaps this will be your next Extended deck? Just watch out for a mirror match-up.

Spinerock Knoll is perhaps the easiest to activate after the Heights; it works in Burn and Zoo decks, that can rack up the damage quite easily. In a mono-red deck, however, it can be quite hard, as red's large array of 1-toughness creatures aren't expected to last very long! It works well in Block format, as part of a combo: rack up the 8 lands, play Soulbright Flamekin, Ceaseless Searblades and Flamekin Brawler, then next turn, activate SF three times. You could reveal any number of cards: Incandescent Soulstoke comes to the front of my mind. The best bit? You can dish out another dose of Trample-y goodness to your opponent next turn, and even activate another Knoll if necessary.

Last, but certainly not least, the third-hardest to activate: Mosswort Bridge. This won't be one that will get activated early on in the game; include this in a mono-green deck for a late-game one-turn kill with something like Overrun. The thing that puzzles me is that the Lorwyn-Shadowmoor block doesn't really have a place for this card: there aren't any decks, or cards, that come out of those sets that focus on building up an army of massive creatures. Only in Shard's of Alara block's Naya decks will this card really be useful. But do you really want to win that easily? No, because it's boring, and we don't play to be bored, now do we children? Ahem. The only way you're going to activate the bridge in a Lorwyn-Shadowmoor block deck is by building up an army of green Elf tokens, and we all know that Elves, even when they are more complex, are still very, very simple, don't we?

So yes, the point. Windbrisk Heights is definitely the best Hideaway land (ok, the best land period) in Standard right now, but the others are (mostly) very workable. It is not hard to activate a Knoll or a Bridge in Standard, and the Hollow really shines in Extended. Shelldock Isle is made for a specific deck type, one which was not explored very much in its block, but cards from the Alara block make a deck built around it very worthwhile. I'll leave you with something to ponder: since Windbrisk Heights is so easy to activate, and its at the top of Standard at the moment, does that mean that the Magic game is been dumbed down as of late, to accommodate for the younger generation? Hey, it happened to PC gaming.

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