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This thread is for discussion of this week's Savor the Flavor, which goes live Wednesday on magicthegathering.com.

Wizards is REALLY opening up deck-design space with the new wedge legends!  Karador seems tailor-made for a Soulshift based spirit deck and now Damia seems, to me at least, designed to support a thresh hold/ madness EDH deck.  Thanks guys

P.S. One With Nothing!

Love this girl so much.  BUG is my favorite color combination, and now I don't have to pack the deck with all those pesky draw spells.  I ALWAYS have a full grip!  Also gives me a use for my Mindslicer .

I was thinking some graveyard recursion theme, but still.. bravo. Damia is going to be a lot of fun. 

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Modern MTG format supporter 

I want these, but does anyone play Commander on MTGO?  I dont want to waste money on cards Im not gonna use.

Cool card. Like the article says, anything that allows "draw back up to seven" is cool. Only problem is, if someone plays a Winter Orb or something like that and you don't have discard-enablers already, it'll take you a very, very long time to recover because you can only draw cards as fast as you can play spells...

Still, a good card for this format, and it looks fun. However, I'm more curious about something else in this article:

Plus, Damia is not just a fun new card in the blue-black-green "Devour  for Power" deck. That deck is more focused around the graveyard-feeding  powers of a legendary being called The Mimeoplasm than around the  tank-filling capabilities of Damia.

Really? I figured that the white-green-black deck was more graveyard-focused. That's what those colors have in common, after all, and Karador didn't hurt that impression. Are the decks really built around the commander so much that they ignore what the colors themselves do?

Man, now I am starting to want the BUG deck over the WBG deck.  The Mimeoplasm was already a pretty good card but add this card on top of that and the deck seems even better.  I really need to see the entire decklist though before I make any judgements.

Jun 8, 2011 -- 1:40AM, chucklezdaccc wrote:

I want these, but does anyone play Commander on MTGO?  I dont want to waste money on cards Im not gonna use.

Yes, they do.  There's a half-dozen or so Commander games going on at any point, so you don't have to wait more than a few minutes to get in a game. 

Thanks for your question, Justin!

This is a strange thing for Doug to say, considering he didn't answer the question at all.

She loves the Library of Alexandria.

Might actually get a couple of these for a casual Vintage idea or two. It's a shame about that cost though. Should have been either 6 mana or a 5/5. I suppose it works well for the pet format for which it was created, but it is an interesting idea well beyond that and it would have been nice to see it developed with a larger audience in mind.

Jun 8, 2011 -- 7:41AM, Hacimen wrote:

Might actually get a couple of these for a casual Vintage idea or two.

Dredge Reanimator?

I really don't have the pieces for a dredge deck unless I want to make a really awful one. But it would likely have to be reanimated to be effective nonetheless. That cost for that creature basically says "don't hardcast me."

I'll admit I got a kick out of the shameless 30 Rock quote in the beginning of the article.

And, um, damn. The RUG deck is still the #1 deck I plan on purchasing, but Damia is doing a mighty good job of unseating the WBG one from second place. I wonder what Ghave does. 

That is one awesome and sexy Gorgon! I didn't want to get into Commander but....crap, how much does a Kidney go for???

Jun 8, 2011 -- 7:57AM, Hacimen wrote:

I really don't have the pieces for a dredge deck unless I want to make a really awful one. But it would likely have to be reanimated to be effective nonetheless. That cost for that creature basically says "don't hardcast me."

She is part green.  Green is full of mana ramp and a fair amount of mana fixing.  Run some Llanowar Elves and Birds of Paradise and you should have little trouble getting her out.

Jun 8, 2011 -- 7:35AM, Feralsymphony wrote:

She loves the Library of Alexandria.

She also loves the Magus of the Library which doesn't cost upwards of $175.


Doesn't she seem a little to similar to Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur ?

Jun 8, 2011 -- 7:41AM, Hacimen wrote:

Might actually get a couple of these for a casual Vintage idea or two. It's a shame about that cost though. Should have been either 6 mana or a 5/5. I suppose it works well for the pet format for which it was created, but it is an interesting idea well beyond that and it would have been nice to see it developed with a larger audience in mind.

Even if Damia isn't playable, I think several of the cards that have been previewed so far might be worth playing outside Commander. Sewer Nemesis and Skullbriar, the Walking Grave both look like they would be horrifying in a dredge deck. Trench Gorger is an alternate win condition for a High Tide deck. I think the right dredge, threshold and/or reanimator deck might be able to make a place for Karador, Ghost Chieftain. And Ruhan of the Fomori might be the only card in Commander decks that's actually better in one-on-one games than in multiplayer: in multiplayer, it's a weakness that you can't control who he attacks, but in one-on-one, once you've cast a 7/7 for only 4 mana, you're always going to want to attack the same person with him anyway.

Heavy arbalest my foot.  Damia wants a thornbite staff through which she can spam death rays for 2 mana, or better yet, use the staff with the arbalest.

That was one of the best Serious Fun articles I've seen yet. Just one question: why was it put in the Savor the Flavor section?

I like how he goes from saying: 

You will need high-impact cards that will help you survive the inevitable pummel-fest. It is a format where timid wrist-slappers need not apply. Every card you draw needs to make a big hurt or help you endure one. Ideally, every card you draw works on multiple axes, helping you to advance the fight on one front while staunching the bleeding on two others.

 to advocating cards like Psionic Gift and Heavy Arbalest  

I feel like the most broken card with Damia was left out: Dream Halls . You can resolve this very early, (turn 2/3 if you're lucky), drop Damia and have cocounterspells in hand to protect it or just cast a Time Stretch and go to town

I would just like to post the words that escaped my mouth when I read Damia's draw card ability: "Holy !"

Obviously, one of those words is not appropriate for children. Let's just say it rhymes with the little black thing used to score in hockey games.

Jun 8, 2011 -- 4:40PM, Captain_Evil wrote:

I feel like the most broken card with Damia was left out: Dream Halls . You can resolve this very early, (turn 2/3 if you're lucky), drop Damia and have cocounterspells in hand to protect it or just cast a Time Stretch and go to town

In response to your Time Stretch I'll see you a Stranglehold (here until Gatherer updates). Just tickled about that card.

Huh. Remember when these articles used to be about actual flavor? When a previewed legend would come with a whole story attached, a whole idea of who they were and what their abilities meant in terms of the world? When the author would write more than a single paltry paragraph about the art before moving on to the TOTALLY AWESOME ABILITIES?

In short, remember when Matt Cavotta used to write this column?

This article is a perfect example of why I never read this column anymore. It has nothing to say about flavor. It's just Little Dougie filling space with love an affection for card abilities. And even when he gets an opportunity to actually address a flavor question, he just sort of wanders off on a tangent and totally fails to even address the point of the e-mail. I really expected an article about a legendray creature to have something to say about that legend beyond "Oooh, she's intellgient and mysterious and dangerous! Isn't that so cool?!"

I mean, come on. It can't be that difficult to write a flavor column. Jenna Helland manages consistently, as does Brady, and Cavotta before them. Doug Beyer almost never pulls it off. Surely there's someone on the Creative Team that can do better than this.

I'm with Keeper. A lot of the previewed legends hint at greater flavor, never elaborated upon. Some of them have stories suggested at in their boxes, such as Kaalia (vengeance for what?) or Karador (who tried to uncrown him, and what was he king or chief of?), but others are screaming this, as their very names tell us there should be more, like Edric, Spymaster of Trest. Flavor on the non-Legend cards tend to refer to the Legends, but the Legends are not apparently all in their own universe. Inquiring minds want to know.

Jun 8, 2011 -- 5:42AM, goblinrecruiter wrote:

Thanks for your question, Justin!

This is a strange thing for Doug to say, considering he didn't answer the question at all.

You might have missed the second paragraph.

But as we do more planeswalker cards, I think we'll come to see the  flavor of some of these printed variants in another way, too. Jace is a  mind mage and Chandra is a fire mage. In each of their cardboard  incarnations, they have put on display mechanical abilities that match  their mystical profile. In those cases, I see them less as chronological  stages of the character and more as the same planeswalker showing up  with different magical arsenals prepared.

Bolded for your convenience.

That barb being handled, I must begrudgingly agree with Keeper.  Rarely do I find myself reading the StF column as often as I used to.  Don't get me wrong--the Planeswalker Guides are excellent and are fine works in that space, but it's during the lull between sets that can be a bit lackluster.