Magic Deck Vortex: CeliXia Files: Tournament worthy?

Welcome back to Celixia Files! This time around I hope to enlighten you all, especially those that are going to be in the Winter Break Tournament, on certain Celixia cards and combos to watch out for. While I won't be featuring 'combos' like in the combo section of MDV, there will be hints scattered throughout the article.

First up in today's Celixia Files is a top ten list for Celixia cards. This is really just for fun but I give you a little more info on each card as I go along. Some of you may disagree if you know anything about Celixia, but here I go.

This was quite a tough task for me as I designed the majority of these cards. After playing many a game against various people I feel I have a much better concept of the set.

It is based on my experience with designing the set and mostly from playing with it that I bring this list to you:

First up on the list we have Ephemeral Oasis. This card was actually designed by EinsteinMonkey, a member of the MDV forum, as a prize from one of the past contests I’ve held in the MDV forums. This card is a Regrowth for any color. Mind you, it is expensive, but in the late game it can really break your opponent by ‘Eternal Witness’-ing any card in your graveyard. Good job, Einstein! I would expect to see this in mono-color decks as well as some less color intensive dual color decks. We'll have to really see what shows up in the tournament.

This card was originally designed to only gain plus +1/+1 counters from damage dealt from +1/+1 counters… but as the set was developed (mind you too quickly) the ability changed. Now, whenever damage is dealt by it, at the end of that turn it gets that many +1/+1 counters. So say you have 3 +1/+1 counters on it and it's a 4/4. If you attack and it is blocked, you can double the counters on it.

It’s quite a powerful ability, if you ask me, and thus it deserves a spot on the top 15 Celixia cards list.

If only you could have seen this card before it’s current state – it was a powerhouse! I won’t describe how it was but how it is .. well, it is still good. To give any color, including black and blue, the ability to ambush and regenerate is an amazing thing. Especially when it only ambushes for 3 for a 3/3 creature with regeneration abilities. That’s, in itself, is amazing. Let not forget to mention it is like a Junkdiver (from Urza's block). When it goes to a graveyard from play, you may return an artifact card in your graveyard to your hand. I think ability just pushed the card from really good to 'uber' good.

I’ll be honest in saying I designed her with reference to Meloku, one of the current ‘real’ magic type two heavy hitters. Why is she so good? Check out her abilities. It’s like Meloku + Barrin, Master Wizard with a twist. Barrin was good. Meloku is good. When you mix the two you then have a means for power in a deck. And a nice finisher for mono-blue control decks!

For the record, Kala is one of the cards in Celixia that had her abilties changed about 10 times over the course of the two year design/development. I wanted her to be something cool and original.. and failed at every attempt. I caved in at the end to give her a similar ability to Meloku and Barrin.

This is an Orim’s Chant variant except that it prevents a bit more. This is a must in any white control-esque type of deck. And, it can give you the advantage during your own turn to prevent counters and other crazy combat magic.

Did I mention this can shuffle into your library after playing it if you only paid white mana? Well, it does. The 'beacon' ability is shown on one card in each color.. where if you paid only one colored mana to play the spell, it shuffles into your library.

Terrascape Spirit is said to be better than Sakura-Tribe Elder – you know, the insane mana fixing blocker creature from the Kamigawa block. Well, I guess he is.

He can sacrifice himself to regenerate another creature PLUS, when he goes to the graveyard he can search your library for a basic land and put it into play tapped. Awesome. I guess green needed a few quality creatures... and this was one of them. Go, Go Green Celixia Creatures!

This is another, what I’d like to think, hidden gem in the block. It untaps during everyone’s upkeep and untaps as normal during your untap step. This means that even if you tap it during your turn, it still becomes an available mana source during your opponents' turns.

This is great in any control deck or deck that uses mana during an opponent’s turn. That and it goes great in a Tidal Vortex deck (see previous Celixia Files). Tidal Vortex is quite a powerful deck considering it's using Tidal Vortex, a new variation of Energy Vortex (one of my favorite cards next to Triskelion).

It’s a hefty 1/5 for only three mana (1GW). That in itself is good. Add it’s ability to destroy an artifact or enchantment when a creature comes into play under your control.. and you have something worth gold in the Celixia Block. Mind you that you will need to pay 2 to do this, but it's amazing in a set of cards dominated by a few artifacts. Not really...

With powerful cards like Creeping Death, Stasis Orb and Syntek Mongrel… it’s a good ability. Mix that with the 1/5 body and you have gold. ... ?!

Originally this card just said, “Shuffle target permanent into it’s owner’s library.” After the set was reviewed a few thousand times before it’s official release earlier this year (wow- I’m making it sound like a real set… well, it isn’t), it was changed to an “Oblation meets Hoodwink” kind of card. Vaspan Waves is like the ultimate spot removal – for three mana you can rid your opponent of any permanent on the board, or you can set them back a turn with one less land. It’s great. It’s well costed. It’s number seven on my list.

While blue is one of the better colors in Celixia, red isn’t. (I didn’t make it that way on purpose). Arikahn Axefighter is red’s best way of saying “Ha!” to blue as he has Protection from Blue, Haste and a nifty ability that makes him bigger everytime a player plays a red spell.

Who here thinks Hypnotic Specter was dangerous during it’s first three years on existence?

Who here thinks Nantuko Shade was a asset to Mono-Black Control decks during the Odyssey & Onslaught blocks?

Slav is like a killer combination of the two and because of this he deserves a nice spot in my top ten list. Expect to see quite a bit of him in the tournament.

Every game that I’ve played where I played Fal Than… I won. Fal Than is great. Not only is he a token generator but he is anti-black. He doesn’t have protection from black, but! While he is in play you can’t be targeted by black spells or abilities.

That’s uber great against black… which is (in my opinion) the best color in Celixia. He's also a nice 4/4 beatstick.. but I would be cautious of attacking with him against any deck that can ambush. There are some bigger creatures with ambush in the set than Fal Than.

Ah. More black broken-ness. Creeping Death is amazing. I’ve already talked about this card in the first Celixia Files, so I won’t go on and on about it this time. However, know that this card can single handedly shut down an aggro beatdown deck or even a combo deck that involves creatures.

As mentioned last time, expect to see this card in MANY a deck during the tournament. If being a nice combo card with Creeping Death wasn’t enough, the Stasis Orb is control’s best weapon. And mono-red burn. And white weenie. And… and… and.

Since it’s an artifact it fits into any deck type. It’s like Icy Manipulator crossed with the Orochi’s ability from the Kamigawa block. Awesome card. And it really lives up to it’s name.

Who would have thought that green got the number one slot in my list? If you don’t know what it does, it is a 0/1 Estos Creature for one green mana to cast that can tap for any color mana. OK. That’s Birds of Paradise minus flying. But wait! It also CAN’T BE THE TARGET OF SPELLS OR ABILITIES! Only mass removal spells can get rid of it (or other tricky spells like Infinity’s Edict). It is by far the best card in Celixia, and in a set that have gold cards, it owns.

That’s it for the top ten, I mean fifteen, list of Celixia… all brought to you by myself. If you are wondering the other cards that deserved a spot on the list but that didn’t quite make the cut, here you go: Themyst Cloak, Cranium Takh, Orbling Glider, Recycle the Dead, Toch'Nar Summons, Paradoxia Historian, Deny, Magneskelion, Ptah's Resolution, Natural Exchange, Mind Trap, Death Trap, Combust, Verdiestos, Timber Crawler, Encroaching Flames, Lavaglide Estos, Treetop Vore, Direknight, Toch'Nar Knight, Hathi, Xyxio Spellor, Crescent Bomb, Deter, Assassin's Influence, and Orb Devourer.

Crescent Bomb, Deter, Cranium Takh, Paradoxia Historian and Direknight are all examples of great cards in the set. Some of the other cards I’ve listed are efficient and/or comb-rific (like Natural Exchange, Recycle the Dead and Magneskelion). I think, at the very least, the above least will make the people in the tournament a little more aware of some of the cards they will be facing off against.

Last time I talked briefly about five cards: Creeping Death, Verdiestos, Stasis Orb, Arikahn Axefighter and Cranium Takh. This time I’m going to talk about a few other cards.

Syntek Mongrel
It’s not too often anymore that an artifact card is made with a regeneration ability. And Syntek Mongrel has it. However, it is this guys ambush ability that makes him a thread. For only three mana you get a 3/3. Who do you deal with it?

Since it’s ambush ability is it’s biggest threat, we will need some instant artifact removal. That and even if it dies it’s a threat because it can return an artifact card from the graveyard to it’s owner’s hand when it hits the graveyard.

Kala, Illusion Adept
She is what I like to consider blue’s finisher. With lots of card drawing and mana in the late game she becomes a threat on the board. Being able to discard cards (with some mana) to generate tokens, she is quite the adept. And these any little tokens. They a 2/2 flying illusion tokens! That’s cool. For you. Not your opponent.

She, by herself, without any cards in hand or without any illusions in play, isn’t very threatening. She’s only a 1/4 creature and that is nothing amazing. So how do you prevent her from doing her magic?

Slav, Nightstalker Assassin
As mentioned earlier, this card is quite the bomb in Celixia. How do you keep this guy from laying down the beats and the discard on you?

Here are some other cards you should watch out for, without out of the descriptions of the above few cards. I am not saying that these cards are any less potent, but I don't want to make this article too long. So, here are some of my additional comments.

Fal Than, Toch'Nar Lord
This guy makes tokens.. and is capable of making lots of them. Unlike Kala, it doesn't cost a card in your hand to generate a token, just two mana (WG). Use the same strategies I've outlined abaove for Kala to help defend against this Legendary Lord.

Paradoxia Historian
This guy is amazing in white weenie. He can dodge Ptah’s Resolution, is only hurt by a Detrimental Wave and can do lots of combat tricks. I would venture to say he is better than Blinking Spirit in a way. When you remove it from the game for 1WW, at the end of YOUR turn (not your opponent’s) it comes back into play with a +1/+1 counter. Note: These counters do not accumulate – this isn’t phasing. Always make your move against this guy when your opponent is tapped out… so that they can’t, in response, remove the Historian from the game and dodge one of your removal spells or abilities.

Direknight
Direknight is best when you don’t hard cast him. You want to almost always save him for his ambush cost. (If you opponent is playing discard you may want to cast him). Anyway, if you are up against an opponent with the knight in his hand… plan to be annoyed. For one white mana the knight can ambush your attackers and remove on of them from combat. That’s awful efficient for a white weenie card. To deal with the Direknight, have some instant removal ready, like Death Trap, to rid the ambusher while he is one the board.

Mykar Wizard
I never saw how great the Mykar was until I saw her in action. Given all of the shuffling effects in the set she really makes great use of it. If a player has shuffled their library this turn, you can tap her and pay UU to draw a card. In most situations, this means you can tap her almost every turn. Between the shuffling enchantments, the legendary land abilities, Crystalscape Orb and Terrascape Estos… you won’t have any problem finding a shuffled library every turn.

I would like to thank you for reading this far through the article. As I’ve mentioned before I am very excited to see Celixia being played in a tournament setting. I am trying to give all of the tournament players (and players who use Celixia casually) a little information to help them in the tournament.

Why tournament, you ask? (Assuming you haven’t been the MDV in the past four weeks or something)

- Celixia Winter Break Tournament -

General Info about the Contest:
This will be a Celixia Block tournament using only Celixia Cards. The games will take place during winter break - between 12/19 and 1/?. I encourage everyone to sign-up for the contest in this thread.

Rules and Guidelines:

Anyway, it can only include cards from the CELIXIA custom set. Celixia Visual-Text Spoiler.
Each player should be a member of the forum, if possible.
When the tournament commences it will be your responsibility to set up a time to play against your opponent. If you are having trouble doing this, please let me know immediately. Each game will be best out of three except for the final match which will be best out of 5 (possibly 7).
The games start on Monday 12/19 unless there is a problem somewhere along the way.
You must email your decklist and your decklist code to magicdeckvortex(at)hotmail(dot)com by 12/18. We will be using MWS (Magic Workstation) to do the tournament. Your email containing your deck should be titled like so: [deck title] Entry for the Celixia Tournament [Extended for the people with finals this week.]
The Tournament will be in a modified Swiss format. Note: I may change this.

Prizes:

The winner will get to design a cycle of uncommon or common cards for one of the next two sets in the Celixia Block (Celixia, Powershift, Equilibrium).
The top three will get a custom title if they don’t have one already.
There may be other prizes yet to be determined.

References:

Celixia Visual-Text Spoiler
Celixia Visual Spoiler
Magic Workstation.
Celixia Text Spoiler
Celixia 101 - article about mechanics in the set.
Celixia 101.2 - article about mechanics in the set, part II.
Celixia Files I - article about decks and power cards.
Celixia Files II - follow up to the first Celixia Files II. Less decks. More discussion of cards and a top ten list.
Importing Celixia into MWS (info provided by Lionden_56):
- Now that the Text Spoiler is out, everyone with Magic Workstation can play with Celixia cards! Here's how:
  1. Check out the Celixia Text Spoiler.
  2. Then, right click on the link that says, "Download the text file" then save it.
  3. After that, load up MWS.
  4. Go to View--Library Mode (classic) Make sure you have a card in the top base highlighted, and click tools--Analyze/Add/Remove sets.
  5. Click Add new Edition
  6. Edition name: Celixia (obviously) Edition Key: CEL
  7. Click Get data from text spoiler.
  8. Click the envelope by path to spoiler, then find the file on your CPU.
  9. You'll need to change a few things in the bottom fields.
  Card Color--change to Color
  Type and Class--Type
  Mana cost--Cost
  Card Text--Rules Text
  Card #--Number
  Pwr/Tou--Pow/Tgh
  10. Then click next.
  11. Change Tourny to: None, and click add addition. It should add it to your master list.
  12. BE SURE TO SAVE YOUR BASE AFTER IMPORTING!!!
  If not you'll have to do it all over again.
Celixia Card Images. Zip File #1. Zip File #2 Right click on both of the Zip Files to the left/above and 'save as'. To get these into your MWS, you want to do the following things.
- 1. Unarchive both zip files.
  2. Make a directory in your MWS pics folder called "CEL" and copy all of the images to it. The folder should look something like this: "...\Magic Workstation\Pics\CEL"
  3. Once all of Celixia images are in the Pics\CEL folder, go into MWS. Go to Tools, Preferences, Image View and then click on the Full Images.

Currently, there are 19 people signed up. I need all decks including deck codes emailed to magicdeckvortex(at)hotmail(dot)com by the end of 12/18 (Sunday - tomorrow!). I would prefer you are a member of the forum so that other members of the tournament can contact you easily to set up a game.

If all decks are submitted by then, the games will start on Monday, 12/19/05.

If you haven't signed up for the tournament yet, please do. We have a lot of people already but more could only be better.

With that all said, I leave you with a deck I designed while writing this. If anyone plays a varient of it in the tournament, it should do well.

P.S. I didn't have time again to thoroughly proofread this article, so I apologize in advance for the lack of more links and any glaring grammatical errors. If only I didn't have to work today. :(