Hardened Drana

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Happy Monday MTG peeps,

We hope all have had a great weekend.  We don't want to be a Debbie-downer but we had to be out of town for a family event and could not get to to OMG! Games here in Barrie to take in a Battle for Zendikar PreReelase.  Very sads - we know - but hey - we'll definitely be there for the Frinday Night Magic Release.   Which brings us to our next problem . . . what to play?

This is a rather exciting time for Magic the Gathering players as everything is unproven which means that anything can go as Battle for Zendikar enters standard constructed.  One particular card which caught our attention early on was Undergrowth Champion -

 

We've got a thingy for Hardened Scales and when that card came out, we had it paired with Abzan Falconer and High Sentinels of Arashin for a few short weeks of counter party fun.  Unfortunately, although we loved the build, we dropped it after some disappointing results against the standard meta-game.  When Undergrowth Champion was previewed, we already started brewing - and - we waited.  We were to let the pre-order price settle down from the atrocious $8 mark to at least six clams - but no - instead it doubled in price.  We then re-evaluated the card against Managorger Hydra and after some long thoughts, felt that we would rather have a set of Managorger Hydras in the list and dropped any idea of the Champ.  Then, we saw this lovely card - 

 

We think Drana, Liberator of Malakir is the bee's knees and a critical addition to our soon-to-be built decklist of Abzan Counters.  We've roughed out some cards already we would like to see in the mix . . .

Our focus now is to scrap some cash together to pick up some the the Khans of Tarkir fetchlands we don't have as well as some of the very lovely new Zendikar Battlelands (Tangolands, whatever), to create a solid mana-base and just drop Drana into a shell of a list we already have pretty much laid out on our games table.  We hope to be off to the races with this list or at least something very similiar to that of Ross Merriam's list (linky to StarCityGames article) with a week or two after the release.  This will be of course only one of a few lists the MTG Realm playgroup will want to have - the other members are already yattering about a Black-Red Eldrazi control thingy, which is next on the drafting board.

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