A Time for Heroes

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We were toying with the idea of a casual level-up deck for the past few days. We had originally some serious concerns about levelling being too mana-expensive or just too slow - but - we like a challenge, more so if we can tweak out a (somewhat) budget deck out of it.

One challenge was that most of the levellers hit the battlefield as functional beaters for very little mana, but now present you with quite a few critical decisions during the following turns. Whether you play a new creature, or neutralise board threats (removal / spell counter), or invest your mana levelling up the critters you have out.

Some cards to consider is Time of Heroes. This card works well with other level up boosters such as Venerated Teacher and Training Grounds, which will enable you to dump level counters on your critters rapidly so they will grow up to be considerable board threats (you'll be such a proud father / mother). Another consideration for your mix is Champion's Drake which also does not level up but will certainly enjoy the synergy of your levelled creatures.

As for the expense part of it, Training Grounds is certainly a solid answer by giving you the Wal-Mart discount of 2 colourless mana off the price of all activated abilities of creatures you control. The only drawback here is that this will not reduce the mana cost to less than one. Not too bad at all.

The goal is to be able to play and keep alive cards such as Student of Warfare, Caravan Escort, Hedron-Field Purists, Kabira Vindicator, and even the defense oriented Ikiral Outrider to be able to put a dent in your opponent's life and hopefully win you the game.


One method of 'cheating' additional counters into play is using Kor Skyfisher of perhaps Narrow Escape to bounce Venerate Teacher back into your hand to play it again for its very lovely comes-into-play ability - rinse and repeat our friends.

You have a LOT of choices with regards to filling the ranks on your level-up deck.

Just ensure you have appropriate defenses in place to protect your leveller army. We are thinking along the lines of a blue / white deck : which way would you go ? > drop us a line or comment below.

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Level UP!

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Hello again MTG peeps,
We hope that all who made it out the Rise of the Eldrazi pre-release this weekend had a blast and hopefully pulled a good card pool. Unfortunately, we were unable to get out but did hear from a few of you already as how things went.

We were surprised to hear how many of you did well in the tournament with blue-white levelers. To that end, we did a quick re-examine and revisit on some of the cards mentioned. Indeed, some of them are rather good . . so good it moved us to construct a hypothetical casual standard deck featuring this new mechanic.

Blue-White Leveler
(click to enlarge)

First off, in order to save your bacon, it would be nice to move some of your critters out of bolt range. For that we have the uncommon Time of Heroes, which gives creatures you have already with a level counter on it a nice +2/+2.

Next, we need to ramp things up a bit to get those sweet leveler abilities on deck in double time. For that, we have Venerated Teacher which, when he comes into play will drop two level counters on each level up critter you have on the field.














Although Venerated Teacher is great, we're kinda greedy. To double-dip on his ability, we've though that either Narrow Escape or Kor Skyfisher will do nicely for a rinse and repeat effect to multiply those level counters (too bad Gilder Bairn isn't in standard anymore).

As for the remainder of choices, some damage prevention is always nice to help your little levelers grow into fatties - for that we went with Shieldmate's Blessing to keep a theme within the block. We've always loved the disruption we spread with Spreading Seas so this was an auto-include in this as well.

There are quite a few nice creatures with level up in this set which we are certain will win some games. As we are in blue and white, we went with creepy fish-guy, Skywatcher Adept, the island-walker, Hailmar Wavewatch, the sneaky Hada Spy Patrol, the flying Merfolk Lord, Coralhelm Commander and for finishing off, the lifelinking / indestructible Transcendent Master.

Have loads of fun experimenting with builds with this new set - drop back soon as we continue doing some casual construction.
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