[Single Card Discussion] Karakas

[Quistnix]

The introduction
I'm a magic player with a lively interest in Vintage, but due to budgetary reasons I'm restricted to playing casual. During the creation of a casual UW Fishlike deck I decided to cut one plains for a Karakas I had, because Wastelands are non-existant over here and the card added some style. After testing a couple of matches I started to think some more about it and noticed some major advantages.

I'd like to say I have hardly any serious playing experience in Vintage, and most of this post will be purely theoratical. I'm not trying to tell everyone to play Karakas, but I do hope to make people think about this card and discuss it.

But first for those of you who don't know the card:


Errata'ed text:
Karakas
Legendary Land
T: Add W to your mana pool.
T: Return target legendary creature to its owner’s hand.

The pros:
1) Uncounterable
2) Wrecks Oath's double angel team (pre-board)
3) Creates colored mana
4) Saves Kataki's, Isamaru's and other creatures
5) Many random advantages

The cons:
1) Non-fetchable
2) Wasteable
3) Legendary

So what I'd like to ask: Has Karakas been tested in for example UW Fish? If so: why didn't it turn out valiable? If not: might it find a place?

[UR]

It saw some play back when Oath was popular but usually Maze of Ith is strictly better. I hadn't looked at saving your own legendary guys yet, but they don't really die very often in game one and only to cards like Pyroclasm in the later games (unless ofcourse you are playing a deck like Goblins). So I don't know if it you can justify Karakas in a format with Wasteland in it while the advantages aren't that great.

[Kelris]

I think the effect is a bit too narrow to be played in an unknown metagame, but in a metagame as you describe, if your list is already running a basic plains it's a reasonable choice, saving kataki and buying a few turns vs oath (if it has angels instead of the simic fattie) is never a bad thing.
The biggest problem i see is that UW fish decks typically have only 1 plains, so replacing it with karakas would hurt the mana base as it's not fetchable.

[brianpk80]

Quistnix,

Nice post.  Karakas was in fact an excellent card for UW Fish before the release of Dissension.  I ran two maindeck in my older UW/r Fish build, as the legendary status was almost never a problem.  A non-exhaustive list of popular targets (some that you already mention) were:

Akroma, Angel of Wrath
Spirit of the Night
Razia, Boros Archangel
Kataki, War's Wage
Karn, Silver Golem
Isamaru, Hound of Konda
Erayo, Soratami Ascendant
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker

...and a few less popular ones that came up occasionally:

Reya Dawnbringer
Eladamri, Lord of Leaves
Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary
Memnarch
Ambassador Laquatus (in the rare instances where he was animated as a blocker absent a Dragon)
Squee, Goblin Nabob (again, in rare instances where he was hardcasted as a blocker)
Visara the Dreadful
Champions of Kamigawa Dragons (Yosei, Kokusho)
Rorix Bladewing
Sliver Queen / Sliver Overlord
Eight-and-a-Half Tails
Braids, Cabal Minion
Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind

There was also a brief period where a deck based on Leyline of Singularity and Karakas was being tossed around and it probably combos pretty well with Starke of Rath in formats other than Vintage.

However, after Dissension, the main target for Karakas (Oath) got a huge boost and began incorporating Simic Sky Swallowers into both the sideboard and sometimes maindeck.  Dissension also enabled Oath to branch out into yet more combo-oriented directions with Tidespout Tyrant so Karakas was further weakened.

If, as you mention above, you have little or no Wastelands in your meta, I could see including one Karakas to give an added edge to aggro-Oath in game one, to save Kataki and Isamaru from mass removal (as well as keeping your opponents' copies off the board), and to randomly win games against certain Reanimator strategies.  There are a lot of new legends in Time Spiral, some of which may filter into our format at some point.  I can see Ith, High Arcanist being used in the sideboard by UW Fish in a low-powered aggro-heavy metagame.  Karakas is not what it once was but it's not bad for the price.

Good luck,

-Brian (BPK)