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This thread is for discussion of this week's Latest Developments, which goes live Friday morning on magicthegathering.com.

something like Primal Command, SUMMONER'S PACT, Beseech the Queen, Liliana Vess, or

Umm.. no.

Classic!

What I thought interesting about Faerie Macabre is the dramatic tension between the two ways to use it. If I play it to use it as a 2/2 flier, then I can no longer use its anti-graveyard ability. That card forces me to make a strategic choice.

I also wondered how many newbies would understand that its "Discard Faerie Macabre: Remove up to two target cards in graveyards from the game." ability had to be played while the Faerie Macabre was in hand. Some might mistake "discard" for "sacrifice" and think that the ability works while the faerie is in play. In many other games, "discard" means to put in the discard pile (graveyard) regardless of where the card starts from. Check out the mistaken wording on the Alpha/Beta/Unlimited/Revised editions of Tranquility: "All enchantments in play must be discarded."

Well, I said Legacy, but I want a caveat for that. It's my favorite format, but I think that sometimes the decks it produces are a little too good to just play and have fun with.

When I build a deck, I normally try to start with something that I can try to build a block deck with, or something that just crosses two sets (not necessarily standard). Like I've been working on another a Silver deck that gets to exploit the god-awful goodness of Mindlash Sliver. When trying to figure out how to keep the bodies flowing, I realized I had four Oath of Ghouls from way back in the day. That also opened up Tempest and Legions block slivers.

As another example, I wanted a red/black Shadowmoor deck, but I kept feeling like it was missing cheap cards. I liked what I liked a lot, but I was left with only ~20 cards in the deck plus land, and that's not a deck because I need ~16 more. I turned to Ravnica's red/black theme and was happy with the result.

I always started in block, and looked at those cards first, but when I needed something that wasn't around I branched out to the other sets. Sometimes a deck ends in block, like the Kithkin Deck (I've considered adding a few kithkin rebels). Speaking of Rebels, I still have a rebel deck that comes and goes (now that it's in white card sleeves and has it's own box it's probably staying).

BTW, I'm still trying to build a mercenary deck. Why are there so few mercenaries?