Swamp Gas

Wilds of Eldraine releases in a little over a week, and I think few people are as excited as me for this card to enter the card pool:  If any of you know me, seeing more than two colored pips in a card's mana cost gets me all warm and fuzzy for the days when "Gary" was name whispered respectfully across the FNM tables. It signals power, focus, and a true home in mono-black.  Beseech the Mirror also signals another bit of interesting play: toolbox gaming. While it's much clunkier and single-use than something like Birthing Pod, the ability to search and instantly cast the best high powered spell for the situation can be the difference between close loss and overwhelming victory. But there's a lot of cardboard out there--what are our best options? Today, I'd like to review a collection of 4 mana targets for Beseech that exist in the current Standard format. While not comprehensive (I don't think any of us are really considering Bat Whisperer), I hope to prov

  The landscape of Standard seems like it's going to shift mightily in the next two weeks. Wilds of Eldraine is bringing a Mary Poppins Bag of goodies to experiment, brew, and gallavant off into the sunset with. But with all the hype around such things as the Virtues, Adventures, and Beseech the Mirror, I'd like to have a discussion today about a card that, while written off as jank material for jank combos, could be a role-player in the new format (and the lame-duck one we've got for the next week or so): Archfiend of the Dross. Why was it written off? Well, it's very simple. It's a 4 mana mono-black bomb that puts the opponent on a clock and generally finishes games. Mono-Black has already had something like that for a long time, and I almost don't have to actually name it: Sheoldred. Sheoldred v. Archfiend Preface:   By no means   am I suggesting over the course of this discussion that a) Archfiend is strictly better card than Sheoldred, b) you should always