Considering Uril

One of our playgroup members plays Uril, the Miststalker, a general which I touched briefly on myself before moving on. Playing Uril to get the most out of the general himself is extremely linear: Play Uril, put an aura on him, attack. It's not the most exciting process and your support suite is pretty much reduced to getting the mana to play your Uril, finding and playing Auras and removing a couple of bothersome permanents along the way.

Marc, the Uril player, asked me a couple of days ago to have a quick look at his deck and make some changes as it lacked a certain "Oomph!" More to the point, it wasn't winning and Marc likes to win. I honestly didn't change all that much in the deck, taking out some fragile creatures and useless Auras and adding in 12 cards in total: all Auras or Enchantress effects. It's no-where near a list I'd have considered refined however, almost immediatly, after a little pep-talk on my part about focusing on the strengths of the general and his interactions with useful auras, he started winning. In fact, in the 7 games he's played since the changes, he's only lost twice: a duel against a very tuned 1v1 Horde of Notions deck and a 6-man, 2-team game (where you could very easily argue that he did what he could to keep his team in it for so long)

A word on Marc as a player. Marc is extremely impulsive and just wants to get the cards out there NOW, rather than waiting for the opportune moment. He's also emotionally attached to certain cards and adverse to others which effects his deck construction if we're talking about building optimaly. In short, he's the EDH player to the Nth degree: It's all for the "Wows!", but he also wants to win doing it. He's involved in a lot of our cool plays so that's obviously all good times!

Playing 2HG alongside his Uril deck and across the table in 3-man team, chaos & 2HG, you can't help but notice that the simple strategy of Hulk-smashing with Uril is disconcertingly effective. He's no slouch at a 5/5 for 5. He has some of the best auras in Magic available in his colours as well as the enchantments to protect them and the cards to find those enchantments, it all slides together very nicely. Troll-shroud allows Uril to play Auras with relative impunity and anything which boosts his P/T in addition to his built-in boost is a real boon.

How do you answer such a monster? Deathtouch, sacrfice effects, bigger monsters, Wrath of God effects. Sure, we've seen a lot of options and most have some sort of solution readily available within the arsenal of Urils bag of Auras. Even Wrath effects can be countered by Indestructibility or Shield of the Oversoul. And now we have an all-purpose, all-singing, all-dancing solution to all the ills that ail Uril in the upcoming Rise of Eldrazi set. These two are taken from the Visual Spoiler:





The Totem Armor ability allows you to remove the Aura to replace the destruction of a creature, whether by damage or by a Wrath of God effect. As it's a replacement effect, not a regeneration effect, it nicely sidesteps the "cannot regenerate" clauses that are generally found on these cards. In standard, giving +1/+1 & First Strike or +3/+3 & Vigalence with a side portion of "hard to kill" is pretty sweet. In EDH, plonking either one of these on a Uril is Bad News Bears (tm). As hard as he is to destroy currently, post-Rise of Eldrazi will surely spell a new era in Uril being a huge pain in the rear. And that doesn't exclude the Uril player from running the Eldrazi himself! ;) I forsee a lot of work for Clone in the weeks ahead. An 8/8, first strike, troll-shroud, semi-indestructable merely by adding W? I'd buy that for a dollar! Or maybe less as this is a common. The larger friend is an uncommon.

To expand on these known cards into the realms of speculation, should this not be an exclusively white ability, we could be seeing them in every colour at each rarity at the very least. Should that be the case, what's in store for Uril at White Rare, Green common/uncommon/rare and Red common/uncommon/rare? Flying in White? Haste, Fire-breathing, First Strike in red or something even more spectacular? As for Green, I'd expect Reach and Trample in the common and uncommon slots. What does a Rare, Green Totem ability have in store for us? Marc is excited, me less so! ;)