Obviously we've got a nice thing going so far, as Wizards has seen fit not to show off anything outside of Elesh Norn, who we have already taken a good, hard look at. This time, we're looking at something a little less exciting on the rarity scale, which as a Pauper player, makes me very excited. It has applications as a breaker in the Swarm Aggro mirror, and is not a bad card when the opponent is light on removal. I present Suture Priest:



At first glance, it looks like Soul Warden and Blood Seeker got together and had an "illegitimate offspring" child. The downside is you lose Soul Warden's ability to give you some extra points from your opponent's creatures. The nice thing is the addition of the Blood Seeker ability, which should help out a LOT against decks like Elves or Quest, who typically have no way of interacting with a 1/1 creature outside of the combat phase. Suture Priest fits right into a shell with cards like Conqueror's Pledge, Elspeth Tirel, and others that provide a mass of bodies, which will recoup your early losses while generating pressure against your opponent.

In Pauper, the card is a great stand-in for Soul Warden in a deck that can already play 12 of them. Having recently played against the deck, I can tell you that Bant Tokens is real, and while still not quite refined enough to take on the Crypt Rats and company, it has a lot of game against decks that are built in a similar fashion. The deck is built around card]Scatter the Seeds[/card], Sprout Swarm, and Shared Discovery, because casting Ancestral Recall in Pauper is pretty brutal, especially in a deck full of ways to quickly dump those three cards right after they find their way into your hand.

As far as applications outside of Standard or Pauper, I can see Suture Priest acting as a nice buffer in Commander against decks built to abuse Worm Harvest or Nath of the Gilt-Leaf, but I don't see it generating much press in Legacy, and Extended doesn't really matter.



Our next preview is one that's up for speculation, as it still has a different watermark and set symbol, and Wizards has not confirmed its existence just yet. However, even with the set revealed as New Phyrexia, I can see this becoming part of the Grand Compilation, so sit back and enjoy Pristine Talisman:




The first thing that I see is a future replacement for Everflowing Chalice in Architect for Standard. The mana is right, and the life gain helps push it to players in a way that Mind Stone or the Signet cycle never got. Just using this little artifact to cast your spells actively makes it harder for an aggro deck to kill you. This fact alone merits its play, as aggro and aggro-control have seen a recent resurgence in Standard, thanks to Stoneforge Mystic and the Swords cycle.

Another common, and this one can go right into a number of decks, most specifically, my Eight-Post shell that has found itself looking at some mana problems as of late. Adding another two-drop accelerator that also acts like an extra Glimmerpost (for life gain, not the extra Cloudpost mana) is never a bad thing, and the ability to cast my spells faster without needing Cloudpost is something worth building into the deck. Turn four Mulldrifters are awesome, as are turn three Mystical Teachings, and plays like that start to snowball quickly.

The last thing I'd like to leave you with is an image. There's no text to go with it, nor is there any "real" speculation as to what it does, but I know it will get everyone excited, so I'll share.



Until next time,

Adam Spain
Roeher on MTGO and The Vortex
Roeher724 everywhere else

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