I don't think I am going to do a set review for this set as there's really nothing I want to play in there. Maybe at some point.
I got two games in with Ephara tonight.
Game 1 was vs. Sram, Aminatou, and Mimeoplasm. Aminatou basically stole this game - I never drew an interactive spell and he combo'd off on turn 7 or so, and no one else was able to interact. Both he and Sram went really fast and Sram had nearly killed two of us - both had sol rings.
Game 2 was vs. Sram, Marisil and Mimeoplasm (two of the same decks). This game was crazy grindy. It went on for probably 15 turns or so. Sram got a pretty ridiculous start, killed Marisil on turn 6 or so, then started working on us - at one point I overloaded a rift in response to a grand abolisher, they discarded about 20 cards, then open the vault'd.
That open the vaults is when the game turned; they didn't hit a haste enabler so I was able to chain sweepers into victory; first
Winds of Abandon to get sram and puresteel out from under protection from everything, then capsizing my soulherder and casting
hour of revelation for 3, then recasting soulerder.
I eventually e-tutor'd for oblivion stone, oblivion stoned yet another pile of Sram stuff killing his other autoequip outlet (Hammer). This basically finally put a stop to him, and I started working on an
Elspeth, sun's champion win - had it at 6 and Mimeoplasm drops an Ostone. ugh.
So I go to plan b - pass the turn, discard body double to hand size, blink recruiter with soulherder to get venser. End step of Sram player I venser the ostone, forcing Mime to crack it.
I untap, muddle for Altar and kill them with karmic guide/double combo.
Hour of Revelation was a frigging allstar just as I expected, enabling me to gain massive amounts of tempo.
winds of abandon was quite good as well, sweeping the board while leaving me with a powerful presence.
Oh, I wanted to add that
Stonecloaker was nearly MVP this game; It did a bunch of things:
1) Kept Sram from resurrecting any good equipment with
nahiri, the lithomancer after I got
2) Slowed down mimeoplasm by eating creatures
3) stopped a bunch of fat non-trampling creatures from getting over by doing the block-bounce trick.
4) kept a planeswalker down by attacking it in the air
Oh, I also forgot what a showing
Windborn Muse had in this game. it kept the Sram guy off me for almost the entire game. He even had to burn a removal spell on a mirage Mirror that had copied it at one point, then burned another path on Muse after it had already done its work delaying.
I am pretty confident Muse is here to stay in this meta. The other time I saw it it was quite good too.
I feel like this deck is really just en fuego for the most part. When I am playing well and playing to win it can be really difficult to stop. Having the combo finish and all the control, and also being very resilient to my own control, is just very nice.