MBS Previews 1-20

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Happy Thursday MTG peeps,

A slew of more cards (MOAR!) today featuring some rather impressive ones and some others more fit to serve it's existence at the bottom of a bird cage.

Let's run through 'em . . .

Sangromancer, 2
Creature - Vampire Shaman, Rare
Flying
Whenever a creature an opponent controls is put into a graveyard from the battlefield, you may gain 3 life.
Whenever an opponent discards a card, you may gain 3 life.
3/3

Awesome art is awesome. This is a very decent vampire that provides some excellent life gain. We are unsure just how often players will be able to see the benefits come through with the discard ability.
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Black Sun's Zenith, X
Sorcery Rare
Put X -1/-1 counters on each creature. Shuffle Black Sun's Zenith into its owner's library.

Most certainly the Bee's Knees - this card as well as the new Go For the Throat will have players wanting to sling black cards at the game table. We are thinking about a certain blue / black build which uses this and follows up with some sweet proliferate to knock down board threats.

Blue Sun's Zenith, X
Instant, Rare
Target player draws X cards. Shuffle Blue Sun's Zenith into its owner's library.

If you are looking for card draw tech, we suggest you don't stop your search with this Zenith. It is expensive and really can only be decent if a player had a decent source of mana generation which is traditionally outside of blue. If you had a load of blue mana to burn we suggest a massive fatty along the leviathan line.
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Inkmoth Nexus
Land, Rare
: Add 1 to your mana pool.
1 : Inkmoth Nexus becomes a 1/1 Blinkmoth artifact creature with flying and infect until end of turn. It's still a land. (It deals damage to creatures in the form of -1/-1 counters and to players in the form of poison counters.)

Solid land that will provide an opportunistic attack to land a poison counter or at the very least may provide a much needed chump blocker which won't get pwn'd during board resets. This also importantly adds another artifact to the board for all the metalcraft lovers out there.
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Knowledge Pool, 6
Artifact Rare
Imprint - When Knowledge Pool enters the battlefield, each player exiles the top three cards of his or her library.
Whenever a player casts a spell from his or her hand, that player exiles it. If the player does, he or she may cast another nonland card exiled with Knowledge Pool without paying that card's mana cost.

We really do not know what to say about this one here. Please pipe in and drop us a line if you can see something which may lend itselft to a deck here. For us, we consider it waaay to situational and not providing enough concrete advantages for the imprinted cards.
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Spine of Ish Sah, 7
Artifact, Rare
When Spine of Ish Sah enters the battlefield, destroy target permanent.
When Spine of Ish Sah is put into a graveyard from the battlefield, return Spine of Ish Sah to its owner's hand.

This is one odd duck. Altough the casting cost is a titch high do not let that inhibit your brewing up a deck with this in. We suggest some shenanigans using Venser to bounce and return for repeatable nastiness.
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Scourge Servant, 4
Creature - Zombie, Common
Infect (This creature deals damage to creatures in the form of -1/-1 counters and to players in the form of poison counters.)
3/3

Daarken is a very good artist who creates tip top card art. Unfortunately this awesome art is on a cr@ppy card like Scourge Servant. No constructed worthy and a low pick in a sealed pool.
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Core Prowler, 4
Artifact Creature - Horror, Uncommon
Infect (This creature deals damage to creatures in the form of -1/-1 counters and to players in the form of poison counters.)
When Core Prowler is put into a graveyard from the battlefield, proliferate. (You choose any number of permanents and/or players with counters on them, then give each another counter of a kind already there.)
2/2

meh. Nothing much to write home about here - certainly won't be making a scene at our kitchen table and we're not sure if it will even be a mid-pick for your limited pool. Having said that, the art from Dave Allsop is awesome and we would include it in a deck jsut for the art alone.
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Neurok Commando, 1
Creature - Human Rogue, Uncommon
Shroud
Whenever Neurok Commando deals combat damage to a player, you may draw a card.
2/1

This guys needs evasion to be of use - as this fella has shroud it will be very difficult to obtain the benefit of card draw upon damage. We suggest using Venser's ability as it does not 'target'.
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Go for the Throat, 1
Instant, Uncommon
Destroy target nonartifact creature.

This we can say will be a staple just as Doom Blade is and one of the best uncommons that we have seen in this set so far. We suggest you pick up a set. This will either replace Doom Blade in some builds or be riding shotgun along with Doom Blade . . Grave Titan decks has been given notice.
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Finally, don't forget to plan your purchases - we suggest you always support your local store (so ya have a place to go when you're skipping class) but if there isn't one in you neck of the woods, get a good on-line retailer whom you can put in your Mirrodin Besieged pre-orders.

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