We finally arrived at the end of the Saviors of Kamigawa Preconstructed Decks, which also means the end of Kamigawa decks in general. Now, just like with the Mirrodin block, we sadly do not leave with a bang, since WotC felt that yet another Spirit deck was needed. The “Truth Seekers” Preconstructed Deck uses White and Green with a focus on Spirits, as I have just said, and combines that with … well, other random cards basically. But see for yourself:
Creatures (27):
3x Ghost-Lit Redeemer (W)
2x Silent-Chant Zubera (1W)
1x Nikko-Onna (2W)
1x Rune-Tail, Kitsune Ascendant (2W)
1x Shinen of Stars’ Light (2W)
2x Moonwing Moth (1WW)
1x Eiganjo Free-Riders (3W)
2x Torii Watchward (4W)
1x Kami of the Honored Dead (5WW)
2x Dripping-Tongue Zubera (1G)
1x Shinen of Life’s Roar (1G)
2x Elder Pine of Jukai (2G)
1x Gnarled Mass (1GG)
2x Haru-Onna (3G)
2x Briarknit Kami (3GG)
2x Nightsoil Kami (4GG)
1x Bounteous Kirin (5GG)
Spells (9):
2x Spiritual Visit (W)
1x Terashi’s Grasp (2W)
1x Honden of Cleansing Fire (3W)
1x Kodama’s Might (G)
2x Vital Surge (1G)
1x Dosan’s Oldest Chant (4G)
1x Honden of Life’s Web (4G)
Lands (24):
11x Plains
12x Forest
1x Tranquil Garden
And I also have the marketing blurb from WotC, which should clarify the idea behind the deck. Here is what the company decided to go with:
With the “Truth Seekers” deck you’ll be loving life—it’s packed with spells and abilities that’ll raise your life total to the skies. The rest of the deck is filled with Spirits, and they have some nifty tricks up their sleeves. Many have “spiritcraft” abilities, which means they give you a benefit whenever you play another Spirit or Arcane spell. With this deck, that won’t be hard. The real cleverness begins when you start returning your own Spirits to your hand so you can play them again for more “spiritcraft” goodies! Eiganjo Free-Riders makes you return one of your white creatures to your hand each turn—in this deck, that’s a good thing. Pick up one of your Spirits and play it again to have Briarknit Kami put a +1/+1 counter on a creature and let Elder Pine of Jukai fetch extra lands. Even craftier is Haru-Onna. Its “spiritcraft” ability bounces itself back to your hand, where it’s ready to be popped back out—each time you play it, you draw a card! It’s best to take advantage of Haru-Onna‘s jumpy nature when your opponent tries to destroy it or just before it would die to combat damage. Although you can’t ignore your opponent’s early efforts to take chunks out of your life total, your best plan is to stall. There’s enough life gain in the deck from creatures like Ghost-Lit Redeemer to recover from damage you suffer early in the game, and once you start pulling off your Spirit-juggling act and playing spells like Dosan’s Oldest Chant, your life total should start climbing instead of falling. If you can get up to 30 life with Rune-Tail, Kitsune Ascendant in play, the legendary Fox Monk will transcend into Rune-Tail’s Essence, an enchantment that shields your creatures from all future damage! When your 1/1 Spirits can fearlessly block 10/10 creatures, your opponent doesn’t have many options left. To improve this deck, try adding more powerful Spirits, more exciting Arcane spells, or cards that help out both. For example, the Champions of Kamigawa set offers Yosei, the Morning Star and Long-Forgotten Gohei, while you can find Shining Shoal and Faithful Squire in the Betrayers of Kamigawa set. Why take damage ever again?
– Saviors of Kamigawa “Truth Seekers” Theme Deck Product Description
WotC went full circle as it seems, since we end the journey through Saviors of Kamigawa with another terrible deck. Sure, if you ever manage to transform “Rune-Tail, Kitsune Ascendant” into it Enchantment form, you can block bigger Creatures easily; assuming that the opponent does not simply destroy the Enchantment. But what fascinates me the most is the choice of cards they featured for their marketing blurb: “Eiganjo Free-Riders” as a Creature that forces you to bounce White Creature is, just as they said, not always bad, but I would rather build around it with trigger effects that do something rather than waiting to have a board that can actually provide advantage with “Elder Pine of Jukai” or “Briarknit Kami“. They then went on to talk about “Haru-Onna” of all things at length, which is terribly expensive for no stat-line worth mentioning. Sure, the card can bounce itself just as any other “…-Onna” card does, but focussing on them is a terrible idea in my opinion. And then WotC uses some random cards that can heal your life points as a “Stall” mechanic. After that, I have an easy answer to “Why take damage ever again?“, because the opponent will clubber you senseless due to you not setting up any opposition. But let us go the entire way, shall we?
The healing is done by the following cards: “Ghost-Lit Redeemer“, which is actually not a bad card, “Silent-Chant Zubera“, which gets more efficient with more “Zuberas” when dying and therefore might not heal as much as you would like, “Bounteous Kirin“, which enters the field as the last card in the deck most of the time, “Honden of Cleansing Fire“, which will hardly heal you at all, “Vital Surge“, a bad healing spell with Splice onto Arcane but almost no targets to use that ability, and “Dosan’s Oldest Chant“, which is terrible pay-off for five mana. Why all that life gain? Well, to make “Rune-Tail, Kitsune Ascendant” go live, which is not the worst option I have heard of but with only one copy is certainly not the most consistent strategy either. The rest is mostly the normal Spirit stuff: “Shinen of Stars’ Light” can give First Strike via Channel and may save one of your Creatures, while “Shinen of Life’s Roar” can force opposing Creatures to block in an unwanted direction. “Torii Watchward” is an overly expensive Creature card, as is “Kami of the Honored Dead“, “Briarknit Kami“, and “Nightsoil Kami“. “Dripping-Tongue Zubera” is mostly in the deck to improve “Silent-Chant Zubera“, but with only two different “Zubera” cards it is unlikely you are ever going to see them do crazy stuff. For those self-bouncing Spirits, the deck contains both “Nikko-Onna” and “Haru-Onna“, neither of which I would run. To round this off, we have “Elder Pine of Jukai” to gain more lands, “Gnarled Mass” for absolutely no good reason because the card is terrible, “Moonwing Moth” which is similarly terrible but is not even a Spirit, and one copy of “Eiganjo Free-Riders” to bounce more Creatures with but not really consistently or with any really good targets. There are almost no other Spells in the deck aside from what I already mentioned, but here is the rest of those: “Spiritual Visit” is nice but cannot really splice into anything, because there is only one copy of “Terashi’s Grasp” and one copy of “Kodama’s Might“. Lastly, they needed to put in one “Honden of Life’s Web” for very slow token production. I will make the conclusion for anyone wanting to play the deck short: If you want a Spirit deck with the color White included in it, do yourself a favor and look at the Innistrad cards rather than buying this Preconstructed Deck.
The price level of the “Truth Seekers” Preconstructed Deck is similar to that of “Spirit Flames” from last week. On Cardmarket, at least at the time of writing, you could get the deck for a minimum of 14.00€, while the cheapest offer I have seen on Ebay costed 39.00€. So, what are the singles worth? Well, we have “Bounteous Kirin” sellable for about 0.10€ with a price trend of 0.32€, and “Rune-Tail, Kitsune Ascendant” with a price trend of a surprising 1.87€, meaning that you should be able to get 0.50€+ for the card. You might also be able to sell both “Honden of Cleansing Fire” and “Honden of Life’s Web” for around 0.10€, but other than those cards I have not seen really valuable options in the deck that would make the purchase reasonable from a card sellers perspective. As such, “Truth Seekers” is neither a deck that I would suggest you buy to play it, nor one that I would recommend as a money-making opportunity since any price above 5€ less too expensive in my opinion.
Cubic Creativity 