Malfegor’s wonderful illustration captures the powerful feeling you feel when it resolves. Whilst not as large of a threat as Maelstrom Archangel, the ability fits the card well. The Madness and Hellbent mechanics seem to go hand in hand and with it’s semi-Wrath of God play, it clears the playing field and paves the way towards your opponent’s life total.
Playing with these cards in practice though, proved more difficult than expected. The addition of Conflux gave the players a vast range of powerful creatures at their disposal. It also, brought powerful creature removals.
Celestial Purge, Path To Exile and to an extent, Dark Temper destroys both of these cards. The Deathtouch mechanic from cards such as Tidehollow Strix and Pestilent Kathari are also additions to stave off both of my favourite cards from attacking. The sheer frustration caused by such low mana costing spells to answer my large questions are truly devastating.
Played in limited format, neither of these cards truly tip the game in your favour as heavily as many other previous powerful cards. Cards in previous sets such as Incremental Blight were very powerful cards that were difficult to recover from - even with removal in your hand. Other cards such as Unmake and Neck Snap really deflate your enthusiasm within the limited format.
However... that is not to say that there is no possible way to play with these two cards. Where there is a will, there is a way. Both of these cards create more dominance and a much larger threat in a multiplayer format.
Playing a sealed deck Two-Headed Giant format (one Shards of Alara Tournament pack and three Conflux boosters a side) and opening Malfegor on the first pack was difficult to contain my.... "excitement." I showed an unusual amount of exuberance when my partner casually opened up Maelstrom Archangel.
Constructing the decks were fairly simple - I had both the demon and the angel in my pile of cards to be used in my deck while my other head had the rest of the card pool! It was finally settled that I would carry the main brunt of creatures while my partner carried all of the removals and the early game creatures.
The first game started smoothly, both sides not requiring a mulligan and our opponent played first. I had four lands, one four drop creature and two five drop creatures. I had the correct colours for them as well. A Court Homunculus and a pair of land drops from our opponents’ side and then we drew.
Malfegor.
I did not manage to suppress my excitement, much to my partner’s annoyance... he repeated our opponent’s play and also played a Court Homunculus. After laying a mountain, I passed the turn.
I don’t think I was even paying attention until my opponent was snapping his fingers in front of my face and pointing down to his card: Tidehollow Sculler. It was an obvious choice that Malfegor had to go. Even though it was still possible for us to get the card back, the sheer pain felt when I had to reveal my hand and my trump card... was very depressing.
I continued playing with a very sulky demeanor, like a sore loser or a petulant child. With no cards in my entire deck with a casting cost of less than four, I had nothing to do but play the lands I was drawing into.
On the eighth turn, when I finally focused back into playing, I had the most mana of all the players. I had no creatures - they had been removed, one by one a turn after they resolved and I was the only player with a full domain effect. My partner had a Jhessian Balmgiver and he still had his Court Homunculus - our opponents hadn’t even bothered blocking or removing the pitiful 1/1. Instead, they had taken out every scepter, every artifact he played and still managed to swing in with evasive flyers. We were already down to 11 while our opponents were on 23. They swung with their evasive, exalted, 4/4 flyer.
I must remember to include Aven Squire in my mono White Exalted deck.. it was dealing the majority of the damage along with an Akrasan Squire and Guardians of Akrasa pumping it. A whole host of miniature creatures were on our opponents side - they seemed to have plenty of small creatures to block anything we had to throw at them. They had used Lapse of Certainty on our Path to Exile which was then Countersqualled when it was played again.
When our opponents played the 4/4 Tower Gargoyle... we knew it was all over. The potential 7/7 loomed over our pitiful life total of 7. We were to die a horrible death unless we somehow managed to get back Malfegor...
I drew into an island while my partner drew into a Dark Temper. Good times!! He proceeded to play the Dark Temper targeting Tidehollow Sculler but unfortunately, in response, our opponents played Lapse of Certainty. AGAIN.
Out of some sheer generosity or a merciful show of kindness, our opponents attacked with the Aven Squire instead, bringing us down to 3 life. They didn’t play anything at all and passed the turn over to us.
I draw my other favourite card. Maelstrom Archangel. This time, I felt nothing - I knew that with six mana untapped on both sides of our opponent and with so many creatures in the way, we were not likely going to win with just this creature - no matter how much I liked her, she was no match to block an incoming 7/7 the next turn. I look over to my partner whom was furiously cursing his luck that he drew a Volcanic Fallout.
This would deal 4 damage to us and even with the Jhessian Balmgiver preventing 1 damage, we would lose the game from inflicting lethal damage upon ourselves. We proceeded to round two.
This game fared no better - our opponents had beaten us to the punch with their own Volcanic Fallout at turn six or seven, destroying three of my partners artifact creatures then destroying Master of Etherium from the resulting toughness loss. I lost my Beacon Behomoth and Wooly Thoctar after a subsequent Dark Temper and Magma Spray. This game fared no better than the first and we were slowly beaten to the point of death by exalted creatures yet again.
When I finally managed to play Maelstrom Archangel in the third round (she’d been put back on top of my library three times - they had somehow managed to get a Lapse of Certainty in each booster!), she was quickly taken care of with a Celestial Purge after being declared to attack. Things fared no better with Malfegor - he was easily Cancelled out of the way.
Three games and three losses, we could not believe the amazing spot removal our opponents had managed to draw turn after turn. The sheer amount of answers they came up with each and everytime surprised both of us but it has made me realise that large, expensive creatures will always be in for a rough time wherever they’re played. Be it limited or constructed, they are not likely to remain aloft.
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