Welcome back to my neglected little column Paul’s Perspective, I apologize for not providing a more reliable column but sadly League of Legends has absorbed all my free time, without further ado lets dive right into my picks for Dark Ascension.

 

#10 MoonVeil Dragon

 

A powerful upgrade to the classic fire breathing dragon, pumping all your creatures obviously allows for an alpha strike with enough red mana. Dragons are a popular casual tribe and have a wide variety of support cards to make them bigger, power them out faster or ways like Kalia of the Vast to cheat them into play. This is a big fatty and lets all your creatures benefit from delicious pumping acting as a trump in stalled board states.

#9 Grim Flowering

 

An unlikely pick but the reasons are two fold, green is lacking in powerful card draw and this fits the bill nicely. The second reason is creatures die in multiplayer, a lot, between all the board wipes and attacking and blocking creatures die, this card allows you to benefit from these situations more than other players. Late game this becomes quite monstrous, drawing you five or more cards easily making it worth the mana investment.

#8 Lost in The Woods

 

Now this is a flavorful card combined with a bunch of forests and library manipulation effects such as Sensei’s Divining Top and Crystal ball, you can set up important fogs again and again. This card is especially good in Commander Decks running an obscene amount of forests such as Azusa. It also acts a semi political card forcing opponents to possibly send their attacks elsewhere due to the forests you may have lurking on top of your deck.

 

#7 Archangels Light

 

Normally I hate life gain cards unless they do something relevant besides gain life, this card assuredly falls into that category. Shuffling your entire graveyard into your deck allows you to reuse your resources again and again something that is really valuable in multiplayer and unlike a Feldons Cane or Elixir of Immortality, the life gain from this is truly outrageous. In commander games this is even better due to the larger deck size and larger graveyards, hitting at least ten cards with this is great anymore and your golden.

 

#6 Counterlash

 

Countering things is powerful, playing things for free is powerful, together perfection. Having a solid counter is great in multiplayer. The power of this card comes in the fact most players run creatures and by having some powerful creatures in your deck you can cheat them out, counter a BlightSteel Collosus drop an Emrakul. Six mana is a lot to hold back but the effect is more than worth it and its value in blue decks is self-explanatory.

 

#5 Alpha Brawl

I love wrath effects and this one just hits a single player wiping out a large percentage of that players army and making a not so subtle political move, this relies on an opponent having at least one large creature but that’s not too farfetched in multiplayer making this quite the powerful board sweeper and tool for making sure your opponents attack the player with an empty board.

 

#4 Vault of The Archangel

 

Deathtouch and lifelink two amazing abilities to have in multiplayer, life gain is amazing to sustain yourself and the threat of deathtouch is a rattlesnake ability forcing opponents to reconsider attacks and also allows for alpha strikes. This card serves a wide variety of uses offensively as well as defensively and slides into land slots making it an amazingly powerful addition to decks supporting its colors.

 

#3 Mikaeus, The Unhallowed

 

I am a bit biased this being my favorite card in the entire set, combine this with Evoke and Persists creatures for all sorts of fun shenanigans and the fact it is a No Mercy against humans is slightly relevant, a 5/5 Intimidate is also relevant but the undying and buff is really where this card shines. A deck based around this guy will find its way to Pauls Perspective eventually.

 

#2 Elbrus, The Binding Blade/ Withengar Unbound

 

Oh yeah a card made for multiplayer while the artifact costs a lot of mana for a minimal effect its quite powerful on unblockable, shadow, and other evasive creatures making transforming it easy. The flipside is obviously a powerful demon that can kill players in a few hits and then snowball and kill even more players as even a 26/26 flying trample intimidate is quite powerful. Obviously creature removal is still effective so slapping a Lighting Greaves on this bad boy seems like an awesome game plan.

 

#1 Sorin, Lord of Innistrad

 

Surprising or cliché? Sorin provides tokens to protect himself and they even have lifelink! Providing a buffer even when you are throwing them away to chump block. The emblem is pretty powerful in token based strategies and can give your army of creatures a leg up on opponents. The ultimate makes wiping the board of powerful creatures and planeswalkers a breeze even giving you something extra after a trimple Vindicate, this ability is obscenely powerful combined and with the token defense makes this the top card.

 

Once again thanks for reading and feel free to disagree about placements and inclusions and feel free to shoot me an email at PlatinumFUBU5@hotmail.com with criticism, advice, or your picks.