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Sarkhan Vol - by A. Newby

Submitted by Uncle Ho on September 8, 2008 - 01:52

Let’s talk about the recent preview card from Shards of Alara, Sarkhan Vol. For those of you who don’t know what it’s abilities are…

2RG, Planeswalker
4 Loyalty Counters

+1: Creatures you control get +1/+1 and haste until end of turn.
-2: Gain control of target creature until end of turn. Untap that creature. It gains haste until end of turn.
-6: Put five 4/4 red Dragon tokens with flying into play.

I remember when I read about Mythic Rares (the new rarity for Magic that will be introduced in Shards of Alara), Mark Rosewater (lead Magic designer) assured me that these Mythic Rares, even though they are harder to get than normal rares, wouldn’t be tournament-staple cards and merely be limited to Dragons and other flavourful cards. Well, Mark lied to me because he printed Sarkhan Vol as a Mythic Rare.

First of all, this card is a mere 4 mana. Llanowar Elves or Birds of Paradise also accelerate it to turn 3. Needless to say, it comes into play pretty fast. When it does, it comes in with 4 loyalty counters. Now, let’s take a look at the power of each ability.

The first ability is reminiscent of Ajani Goldmane’s second ability, except this time, you add a loyalty counter. I don’t really care what deck you are playing, but chances are if you are playing red and green, you’ve got a creature or two in your deck. This ability is just plain strong because of the surprise element alone. Most decks have trouble dealing with surprise right away. Also, since you add a counter, the card is immune to Flame Javelin, which is one of the strongest burn spells and best ways of dealing with Planeswalkers right now. The reason Flame Javelin isn’t amazing against it is because when you play the card, you can activate the first ability right away without passing priority to your opponent. It’s a little trick of the stack. You play the card, and if your opponent has no responses, it resolves. Right after it resolves, you receive priority to do whatever you’d like before your opponent has a chance to do anything. So, when you activate Sarkhan Vol’s first ability, as a cost, you put a counter on him, and THEN his ability goes on the stack, which is the first point since you played him, that the opponent gets a chance to burn him, but since he now has 5 loyalty counters on him, it’s tough for the opponent to burn him away.

The second ability is essentially Threaten. Threaten is a great card in general and works especially well with Greater Gargadon, which is also red. The –2 also means that you can activate it right when Sarkhan comes into play, not making it any slower then actually playing Threaten. I don’t think there’s much more explanation needed to see why this ability is good.

The last ability is a little bit insane. Just a tiny bit. You put into play not one, but FIVE 4/4 Flying Dragons. Not only is this an even 20 damage on your next turn, but this also gives you a solid defence for your Sarkhan if you didn’t kill him in the process of making the dragons. You don’t have to be much of a genius to see why this ability is absolutely devastating.

I was reading a forum, and one person mentioned how, even though its Mythic Rare and it will be expensive, you don’t want to be playing 4 copies of a Planeswalker anyway since it’s legendary.

Well, imagine this. You’ve gotten your Sarkhan Vol up to 6 loyalty counters. Your opponent is still at 20. On your first main phase, you remove 6 counters from Sarkhan and create five 4/4 Dragons. Sarkhan goes to the graveyard because he has 0 counters. You then play Another Sarkhan Vol. You add one counter to it, bringing it up to 5 loyalty. Your Dragons now become 5/5s and have Haste. You attack for 25 flying damage. You did that all in one turn, for only 4 mana. THAT is why you play 4 copies of Sarkhan Vol.

I personally think this card is going to be a tournament staple for Standard. It’s so incredibly powerful and difficult to stop. I really don’t think the Mythic Rares idea is very good at all. It’s going to make playing competitive Magic for ME a lot harder since I have to invest more money into it. What do you guys think of Mythic Rares or Sarkhan Vol or anything regarding what I’ve talked about?

Written for Two Headed Dragon by Andrew Newby

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