Good Gamery News – December 2008 
Good Gamery Discovers Trove Of Spoiler Cards Sent By WOTC
Over the last few years, Good Gamery has failed the greater Magic community. Spoilers are the only reason for any Magic website to exist, and we have been conspicuously lacking in that regard. Unsurprisingly, this has led to a lot of rumors about the reason for this lack. These rumors have ranged from the longstanding public feud between Mark Rosewater and the mysterious PMO Guy, born from Rosewater’s failure to give the “Northwest Nod” at a Magic tournament, to a belief that our preview article for Quag Sickness was too powerful for Wizards of the Coast to accept. We believe that with a recent discovery, this question can finally be laid to rest.
Several days ago the sysadmins of Good Gamery moved the site onto new server architecture. While executing the move, they located a series of e-mails lost in the site’s spam folder. Within those e-mails were the preview cards for every core set after Magic 2011. As an attempt to make up for our carelessness, we will be presenting the preview articles that should have been released.
Birds of Paradise is one of the most iconic green mana producing creatures in the history of the game, rivalled only by Boreal Druid, the card that coined the term “mana elf”. From the beginning of the game, Birds of Paradise was a way for green decks to access a different color of mana, allowing them to play good spells.
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Caw-blade, since the creation of the Type 2 format, has been designed by Wizards of the Coast as the overwhelingly dominant deck. While originally Caw-blade consisted only of islands, additional sets have been printed to add more cards to the deck. There have been a number of missteps in the ascendance of Caw-Blade, with the most famous example coming from the first attempt to print the Blade portion of the deck as an equipment card in Darksteel. A mistake led to a different strategy proving superior, which was only fixed through multiple sets of widespread bannings.
Despite these setbacks, Caw-Blade has finally been released in its final version with the replacement of Stoneforge Mystic and Jace by Birds of Paradise. The entire deck has been fine-tuned by the Future-Future League as the most efficient way of getting a sword dropped on the opponent’s head by a bird, managing to do so on turn 3 through the readoption of Birds of Paradise. Magic: the Gathering has been finished.
Faith’s Reward is a cruel card, well within white’s theme of inflicting unending suffering. By dragging all of your recently-dead permanents away from their peaceful slumber in your graveyard onto life’s uncaring battlefield, Faith’s Reward denies your cards even the most fundamental of dignities: the right to determine the time and manner of one’s death.
For the kitchen table enthusiasts who want to explore this theme firsthand, we suggest a deck like the following, with the caveat that the deck in no way belongs in a tournament:
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It is said that the the light from the heavens is ephemeral yet eternal. In your wanderings you can experience the unceasing nightmare of Faith’s Reward and its cousin Second Sunrise perverting this beautiful dichotomy. The fetchlands and Elsewhere Flask represent the act of travelling, and the joy you gain from visiting these places, which can fundamentally Reshape your life. But part of a journey is that it has to end, and by dragging these cards back, those memories are tarnished. The smell of a field full of Lotus Blooms, which are beautiful in their short lives, turned into a cheap and tacky thing. In the depths of night, far away from anything or anyone else, the skies are Wondrous. Chromatic Sphere and Star are similar, but by trying to freeze light, you destroy its purpose. And Conjurer’s Bauble ensures that the illusion will never end. I don’t know what the Grapeshot means though.
We were very excited when we noticed that we received Liturgy of Blood as a spoiler. Limited removal spells are always hugely anticipated, and as is well known, increasing the cost of a card raises its power as well, making Liturgy of Blood an overwhelmingly good spell.
In order to properly understand the excitement we feel from Liturgy of Blood, we suggest players try drafting the following deck at their local FNM:
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In this deck, Liturgy of Blood fills a very important role in limited by killing creatures, as most experts would be able to attest. But beyond that, there are many synergies that the discerning drafter will be able to pick up on.
Liturgy of Blood can be used with Corpse Hauler to destroy one of your opponent’s creatures and get back one of your own. While it can also be used to destroy one of your own creatures and bring it back, such an activity would be nonsense. Even if it would add an additional creature to your graveyard for Shadowborn Demon.
If you combined Liturgy of Blood with a second copy of itself, it is suspected that it would be possible to destroy two creatures. While this has not yet been proven conclusively, early results using Murder are promising.
Additionally, the mana from Liturgy of Blood can be used to activate the ability of Air Servant, provided that you have sufficiently distracted your opponent beforehand. And there may be yet another possibility!
Huh.
