Glissa Blade

[John Galli]

I was looking through some threads today and thinking about Glissa. I know Pat likes the card, and there actually seems like there could be some interesting action for it in extended. Sure, it's black, and the deck would have a fair amount of black, which is terrible against Mirran Crusader and Swords, but adding a white splash would help it get around some of that. For instance, a brew I whipped up-

Glissa Blade
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Glissa, the Traitor
4 Putrid Leech
4 Vengevine
4 Tidehollow Sculler
3 Stoneforge Mystic

4 Thoughtseize
3 Path to Exile
2 Executioner’s Capsule
2 Ratchet Bomb
2 Oblivion Ring
1 Sword of Feast and Famine
1 Basilisk Collar

4 Murmuring Bosk
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Twilight Mire
3 Marsh Flats
5 Forest
2 Swamp
1 Plains

[Travis Lannoye]

Nice try, but methinks she needs to stay in the EDH world for awhile. The reality is that there's too much cheap and reliable removal in the format (Path, Leak, Go for the Throat, Bolt, etc) to make a card like that playable right now.
- The Fae won't care about Glissa...they can block it all day with Blossom tokens, or counter it, or kill it with Go For the Throat.
- The Mystic decks will dig up a Sword of Feast and Famine, put it on any creature, and not care about Glissa. They can also Path it or counter it or kill it with Gideon or bounce it with Jace.
- Scapeshift decks might be a good matchup, since you have a lot of disruption against them, but Glissa won't be a part of that plan, and I'd actually board her out against Scapeshift because she won't really do anything to help you.
- Elves would be a good matchup because you have tons of removal.
- Anything with access to Lightning Bolt (Boros, RDW, RG Scapeshift, etc) will use it.

The reason that Sword decks are busted is that ANY creature is instantly a threat when it picks up a Sword. Look at the Caw-Blade decks. They run some of the wimpiest creatures around...1/1 Hawks, 1/2 Mystics, man-lands, maybe Elspeth tokens. They could care less if one of them got killed because they'll just put the Sword on another small body and be right back in business. Same with Faeries: they don't care if you manage to kill their Spellstutter or their Blossom tokens or their Cliques...they'll just stick the Sword on the new Blossom token that they make next turn and be right back in business as if nothing had happened.

Another way to look at it is with your Sek'Kuar deck and all the dumb 3/1 tokens that it makes. You don't really care if someone killed one of your tokens because you can just make more, and the token had a Sword on it, you could just equip your empty Sword to the next token you make and be right back in it.

If you're looking for new and exciting things to try out, I would recommend avoiding black/green as much as possible. If you are looking to do cool stuff with Swords, I would try to add lots of disposable bodies.

[John Galli]

well I'm not looking to try it out, just throwing a list up there. I disagree abit, I realize how caw blade works, but I don't think glissa's as useless as you describe and I don't think that the opponent "Dealing with Glissa" makes the deck moot.

I think this is something though better contested with actions rather than speculation, maybe if I have a funzies day I'd proxy it up.