Introductions and Explanations
This review is ordered as the cards appear on the MTGS visual spoiler (aka alphabetically). This is to make things easier for you to follow along at home. If you're looking for a specific card (one that was recently spoiled for example) good old Ctrl + F is just as handy as it's ever been. You don't have to scour the entire review to find it. I never evaluate every card because there's absolutely no reason to repeat "this card was designed for Limited" 100 times every set. I'll hit on what I consider to be the key multiplayer cards with an emphasis on the ones that you should make a concerted effort to acquire all things being equal. Bear in mind that all ratings discussed in this evaluation should be taken with a grain of salt. I'm not looking to pin down the perfect letter grade for every single card. I'm merely trying to provide you with a rough estimation of its overall worth.
Grading Scale: A: Oppressive cards with a relatively unique effects that figure to routinely dominate games in which they're left unchecked. Most of them are going to be insanely powerful "build-around-mes" that'll dramatically increase the overall power-level of any deck that they're slotted in to. These are format definers that can completely warp fledgling metas. Think Gray Merchant of Asphodel, Humility, Consecrated Sphinx, Primeval Titan, Repercussion. B: Formidable cards that don't offer anything truly unique and that aren't oppressive. People shouldn't have to bend over backwards in order to beat them but decks full of these won't just roll over to any old brew. Think Syphon Mind, Earthquake, Wrath of God, Fact or Fiction, Lurking Predators. C: Powerful cards that winning decks will want to play. They're not going to blow you away but you'll rarely be disappointed with their performance. A deck full of these won't crush a table but a solid foundation of Cs should be good enough to keep you competitive. Think Vampire Nighthawk, Clever Impersonator, Taurean Mauler, Thragtusk, Restoration Angel. D: Marginal playables that're unexciting to field. It's not that you can't or shouldn't play them, just don't expect them to yield impressive win %s. Most fun, cool, niche, build-around-me, etc. cards will fall into this category alongside the ones that you'll unhappily field given a lack of alternatives. I don't recommend playing Ds if you can avoid it and I strongly advise that you look for suitable alternatives if it's a realistic option. F: Weak cards that're unlikely to boast respectable win %s that probably shouldn't be played. +/-: Used to denote a better or worse N. That is, a B+ represents a strong B whereas C- implies a weak C. Cubeworthy: simple "yes" or "no" of whether or not I'd Cube with the card myself. That is, would I both put this card in one of Cubes and actively draft it a reasonably high % of the time with plans to maindeck it in a relatively "normal" Cube.
White
Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit: Syndic of Tithes is my baseline for affordable White 2 drops and I don't think that Bolster 1 is so much worse than Extort that you couldn't treat Anafenza as a relatively interchangeable alternative. I don't expect to see this card in EDH (too weak) nor would I advise playing it in Cube (too color intensive) but I could definitely see myself playing with her in Constructed. It fares well in Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx decks that want WW permanents on turn 2 and that're looking to curve out with creatures for the first 4-6 turns of the game. Nykthos is by no means a requirement though. I would gladly jam her into any creature-based deck, especially ones with Squadron Hawk. Bolster isn't an amazing multiplayer keyword by any means but it's free value and overtime it can definitely add up to a lot. I don't expect much from 2 drops not named Stoneforge Mystic to begin with and the effect is still relevant at most stages of the game. You're obviously not happy to draw this card on turn 8 but that's true for 99% of all White 2 drop creatures so that's hardly a strike against her. Feel free to play with this card if you manage to acquire some but don't make a concerted effort to gather them. She's a marginal playable at best.
Constructed Grade D+
EDH/Cube Grade F Not Cubeworthy
Hidden Dragonslayer: Intrepid Hero this card is not. Being a 2/1 lifelink means that it'll never be strictly worse or anything but if you're in the market for this effect then you may as well play with the card with a substantially higher power-ceiling. I think that Intrepid Hero is underplayed in general and I'm mostly using this entry as an opportunity to plug the card. It's not an inherent bomb that'll always be amazing but running 1 or 2 has a very low opportunity cost and the card has a lot of potential to swing games in a big way. Getting back to the Dragonslayer the power-level just isn't present for any multiplayer format. These kinds of cards aren't really 2-for-1s in my opinion because a 2/1 lifelink is trivial and paying 6 mana to conditionally kill a threat is a terrible rate. Both halves of the card suck and barely add up to a single card in my opinion. Please don't think of this as some amazing Flametongue Kavu style threat that will always provide good value for its cost.
Global Grade D Not Cubeworthy
Myth Realized: I'm a fan of 1 drops that still have value on turn 8 but this one doesn't quite qualify in my mind. I like the fact that it's a cheap + resilient threat which adds Devotion and I like that it's an inexpensive Enchantment for the Enchantress decks but at the end of the day it's an evasionless creature that dies to removal. It plays a similar role to that of Luminarch Ascension/Sacred Mesa but it's significantly more vulnerable and takes a lot longer to ramp-up when drawn late. Given that your average White deck won't have enough noncreature spells to fuel this thing I can't really think of a home for it. Obviously you could play in in Blue decks filled with cantrips and such but you still run into the problem of having this thing being blanked by blockers and killed by removal. I like the concept of the card and if it were slightly more powerful then I could have seen myself getting behind it but as it stands I don't think that it's especially playable. The power-level is too low for EDH period and it's a marginal playable in the other formats at best.
Constructed/Cube Grade D
EDH Grade F Not Cubeworthy
Ojutai Exemplars: A Blinking 4 mana 4/4 with lifelink and first strike sounds powerful enough to consider fielding this guy. Isochron Scepter and such are real cards and it even triggers off of things like Oblivion Ring. I don't think that an average White deck will be interested in this guy but a Boros/Jeskai spell-based deck could probably use them as a resilient blocker. My personal problem with the card is that I don't think that fair, spell-based decks are very good in general and a 4/4 for 4 isn't even close to being a real card. Since I'm not willing to work for an above-average 4 drop I don't see a compelling reason to try and make this card work.
Global Grade D Not Cubeworthy
Profound Journey: At 7 mana you have to be recurring endgame bombs to get any legitimate value from this thing. It's nice that it can buy Enchantments and whatnot back but ultimately it's not better than things like Emeria, the Sky Ruin, Karmic Guide, Reveillark, Sun Titan, Angel of Serenity, etc. on average. It's just not consistently powerful enough to warrant its 7 CMC price-tag. At the end of the day I would actively put this in my opponents' decks because I would much rather play against this than any good White finisher. 2-for-1s lose a lot of their luster on turn 7 when you could just be Mass Calcifying players out of the game. I'm going to give it a slightly higher rating that I might otherwise because this card does have the potential to be very good. It might only swing games 5% of the time (random number, don't read too much into it) but that's still better than a slew of other cards that virtually never will. Some % of the thing this thing will completely turn a game by recurring a True Conviction and an Avacyn, Angel of Hope (or whatever).
Global Grade D+ Not Cubeworthy
Secure the Wastes: Welcome to the saving grace of White in DTK; a simple-yet-effective token producer that works at instant speed. Decree of Justice and White Sun's Zenith are both staples in token-based White decks and I don't see any reason why this one wouldn't also see play. Given that you're probably fielding Anthems such as Intangible Virtue, Spear of Heliod and Dictate of Heliod alongside it this is a fantastic combat trick that trumps Wraths and messes up combat math for anyone trying to race you. It's also superb at fueling things like Hour of Reckoning which can really put the hurt on in the mid and lategame. Still, the strongest aspect of the card is just how blatantly pushed it is. Paying 3 mana for a Raise the Alarm isn't great but everything beyond that is stellar in my mind. 4 mana for 3 bodies at instant speed is easily playable and it only scales up from there. In that sense there's basically no scenario in which this is a dead card that sits in your hand and rots (a problem that White Sun's Zenith can have). It's highly playable in every major multiplayer format and I strongly recommend acquiring them.
Global Grade C+ Cubeworthy
Sunscorch Regent: I've come down a lot on Forgotten Ancient and I don't foresee myself being excited to jam a weaker version that costs more mana into my lists. The evasion and lifegain are obviously swell bonuses but they'll never change the fact that this guy is just another big, dumb 5+ CMC creature that dies to removal at no benefit. If you're looking for a generic playable that won't cost you any money then it's certainly reasonable but don't expecting miracles from this type of threat. I'd rather play with things like Archon of Justice or Increasing Devotion that're significantly more difficult to profitably interact with. That being said I still kinda like playing with these kinds of cards in Cube and EDH because they have a fairly high power-ceiling. In formats where you need to go big or go home it sometimes pays to have cards that can just naturally enhance themselves without any effort or further investments. In that sense I don't mind these kinds of cards even if the best versions of the best decks probably won't want to play them. There's enough going on here that you should probably grab some copies of these once they inevitability make their way to bulk bin.
Global Grade C- Cubeworthy
Overall Grade: D Closing Thoughts: If DTK had never came to pass White mages wouldn't have lost any sleep over it. The only standout playable is Secure the Wastes with everything else being marginal filler that we could have easily lived without. I suppose that Sunscorch Regent deserves a bit of a nod as well but I personally don't put much stock in 5+ drops that interact unfavorably with removal. I'm largely unimpressed with the rest of White's haul and I wouldn't expect the set to have much lasting impact in any format.
Blue
Anticipate: I haven't had an opportunity to talk about cantrips in a while so I may as well use this as an excuse to cover a few broad topics. Cards like Preordain and Anticipate are solid playables in every Blue deck in every format. Not only do they they smooth your draws and help you dig into the strongest cards in your deck but they also require absolutely no support in order to function optionally. They also offer additional minor benefits such as enabling Treasure Cruise and/or triggering Prowess but let's ignore that for the time being and stick to the basics. These cards are infinitely superior to alternatives such as Brainstorm (and Ponder to a lesser extent) if your deck doesn't have access to a critical mass of cheap shuffle effects such as Fetchlands and Tutors. Brainstorm, on its own, is a draw 1 for 1. That's completely unplayable and makes it one of the most overrated casual cards in the game. If you can use something like Fabricate to shuffle 2 useless lands/cards away with it then you have a worthwhile effect but if you're just drawing the same cards that you put back then you haven't significantly changed anything. Given that many players don't own all of the awesome Fetchlands and Tutors and given that you still should play with cheap cantrips I highly recommend acquiring things like Preordain and Anticipate that don't require any support in order to function. You can blindly jam them into any Blue deck of any format and consistently expect to get full value from your spell. Anticipate, at 2 mana, is clearly a step below something like Preordain but by no means does that make it terrible. A huge % of your decks won't have many 2 drops to begin with so the difference in mana isn't always that significant. The fixing really does go a long way to giving you consistently powerful draws and enables you to avoid playing marginal cards. To the people who don't think that these cards are good in formats like EDH I hope that you'll take this opportunity to reconsider your position on the cards. After all, they're good in EDH for exactly the same reasons that they're good in Constructed. At the end of the day very few cards in your list are better than your Cyclonic Rift, Rite of Replication, Fact or Fiction, Bribery, Diluvian Primordial etc. and drawing into spells that aren't on that level is just plain worse than hitting your 10/10 bombs as frequently and consistently as possible. Rather than fielding a bunch of marginal filler that you'll inevitably draw you can simply jam a bunch of cantrips into those slots and dig your way into the cards that actually matter (while hitting your land drops along the way). This is especially relevant if you're playing with combos because at some point you'll want to stop hitting things like mana rocks and Counterspells in order to assemble them. For all these reasons and more you really do want to be playing with cheap cantrips in your Blue decks as opposed to fielding marginal garbage that help you hit 100 cards. Drawing your best cards in a favorable order is just so much better than playing with a bunch of filler that can't compete with your strongest threats and/or combos.
Global Grade C- Cubeworthy
Blessed Reincarnation: I'm only rating this card so that I don't have to answer questions about why I didn't rate it. I think that it's complete and utter trash in every format and would never even consider playing it. If you want to screw around and have fun, by all means, play these kinds of cards. What you do with your time and money is up to you and I'm certainly not going to tell people how to have fun playing games. Still, in the context of "is this card actually good" it gets a resounding "NO!" from me. In a world of powerful "enters the battlefield" triggers these kinds of removal spells fail on multiple fronts. Not only have your opponents already extracted value from their finishers but they're also likely to hit something that will provide them with even more. Sure, some % of the time you'll exchange a Mortivore for a Satyr Wayfinder but there's absolutely no reason to treat this like a random Swords to Plowshares effect with minimal drawback. It even costs 4 mana which is utterly ridiculous.
Global Grade F Not Cubeworthy
Clone Legion: A lot of people are going nuts over this card and for the life of me I can't understand why. It's 9 mana and it doesn't do anything special from what I can tell. For that kind of investment I'm expecting something that basically reads "you win the game" and that's not what I see when I look at it. As someone who plays a lot of Cube and EDH I can safely say that I would gladly put this in my opponents' decks over any of the legitimately good Blue win conditions (of which there are many). If this thing copied every creature in play, ok, sure, then we'd be talking. You'd have a real card at that point. As it stands there's just no way that this card will win the game outright for you unless things are already going your way. I'm obviously not discounting the fact that you'll probably get to abuse a bunch of "enters the battlefield" triggers but this is a far cry from kicking a Rite of Replication. Realistically I see it as a small portion of Insurrection (sans Haste) or Rise of the Dark Realms that, for whatever reason, doesn't cost less mana. People always claim that these cards are "good in EDH" but I certainly wouldn't play with this card myself nor I would mind if others did. It's way too fair for a 9 drop to rustle my jimmies. Still, hey, I am totally willing to be proven wrong about this one. I fully expect to have it cast against me (a lot of people in my circles are buzzing about it) and if I routinely get crushed by it then I'll be more than willing to admit that I was wrong about it. I legitimately want these kinds of cards to be good but at 9 mana I just don't see it.
EDH Grade C-
Constructed/Cube Grade D- Not Cubeworthy
Contradict: I've played with and against Dismiss, Cryptic Command and Decree of Silence enough to know that this is a playable Magic card. It's not exciting by any means and 5 is a lot more than 4 but I do think that most Blue decks should play some number of counters and I wouldn't fault anyone for electing to use this one. It'll obviously never be the top-tier option but virtually any cantripping Counterspell is playable to some extent in my mind.
Global Grade D Not Cubeworthy
Dragonlord's Prerogative: Blah blah blah, blah blah blah, Opportunity. Sold! Blue has always had a bit of a soft spot at 6 CMC since it has the worst Titan and Soul by far and since your average player can't afford Consecrated Sphinx you're basically left with Deadeye Navigator or bust. This thing is another awesome Blue 6 drop with a new unique name which is always relevant for Cube and EDH. Again, I strongly advise that you ignore all of the worthless text and focus on the fact that it's a second copy of Opportunity for you to fool around with. 4 for 6 at instant-speed is a solid rate making this is a strong spell to be resolving in the mid-to-lategame.
Global Grade C Cubeworthy
Icefall Regent: Dungeon Geists et al. aren't unplayable threats but they've never been staples in multiplayer either. They're not big enough to seriously threaten life totals, they die to removal and they elicit hate. I know that they might seem good in EDH since they can keep a busted Commander tapped-down but I've never seen one of these live long enough for that to be relevant. Icefall Regent is no different in my mind and Frost Armor isn't going to convince me otherwise. It's still going to die if people want to kill it and a 4 power flyer for 5 isn't going to race anyone down in the interim. Ultimately I think that this version is almost strictly worse than Dungeon Geists and since I've never really seen that card over-perform I don't see how this one possibly could.
Global Grade D Not Cubeworthy
Illusory Gains: As obvious as it sounds I'm not someone who enjoys giving my opponents meaningful options. Cards like Trade Secrets and Fact or Fiction are fine because, let's face it, there's basically no scenario in which their decisions matter. My problem with a card like Illusory Gains is that I'm always envisioning the worst-case scenarios in which you steal something relevant only to have it traded away for a Satyr Wayfinder or whatever. Your opponents do have complete control over what you take with it after all. Now, the upside of this card is obviously that it can be a Mind Control that reads "your opponents can't play creatures." The average use-case for it probably lies somewhere in between that spectrum but it's reasonable to assume that this will prevent some of your opponents from casting meaningful threats for a turn or two once it resolves. I've since come to the conclusion this is another card that's just plain going to have to be played against me before I can give it a educated rating. Every time they print a new and relatively unique card like this you really do have to see the card in action yourself before you get an idea of how powerful it is. We've obviously seen cards similar to it in the past (such as Perplexing Chimera) but most of them granted some amount of personal control over the effect ("may" instead of "mandatory"). You made the decisions; not your opponents. Illusory Gains is significantly weaker in that sense which is why I'm dubious to play it. I'm too conservative to pull the trigger and field these kinds of cards myself but I could easily see it being a bomb in practice.
Global Grade D+ Not Cubeworthy
Living Lore: This is a cool card but not one that I would expect to see played in any multiplayer format. It would obviously be unplayable if it had to deal combat damage to a player but given that you can't even block it there's a small glimmer of hope that it might make small waves at kitchen tables. The dream scenarios when playing with these kinds of cards usually involves fielding them in lists with loot spells such as Forbidden Alchemy and Fact or Fiction at which point you can recur some game-ending spells like Clone Legion or Enter the Infinite. The reason why these kinds of decks aren't utter nonsense is because even when you miss you can still just recur your Fact or Fiction (or whatever) and that's still completely fine. That safety-valve alone means that this kind of card can only ever be so bad. This is especially true when you factor the scenarios in which you do recur and cast something silly like Insurrection to completely stomp the table. Now, I understand that this guy dies to removal but when it comes to 4 drops I'm usually willing to live with that. The "it dies to removal" also only carries so much weight in multiplayer because if everyone is playing with powerful threats then there's absolutely no way for people to answer them all individually. Still, even with all that in mind I don't think that the average use-case for this guy is good enough to justify his inclusion in the vast majority of your lists. I still like to give these kinds of cards slightly inflated ratings because they do have very high power-ceilings. The prospect of casting a 4 mana Primal Surge (or whatever) is appealing enough that I don't like relegating these kinds of cards to the "trash binder."
Global Grade D+ Not Cubeworthy
Mirror Mockery: I think that this card is God awful barring some sort of unforeseen combo applications. Casting this on an opposing creature is a horrendous version of Pacifism and casting this on your own critter leaves you vulnerable to removal. In that sense I don't see why you would ever play this over any number of amazing Clones. Cards like Phyrexian Metamorph, Clever Impersonator and Sakashima the Impostor can all guarantee an ETB trigger themselves while also consistently providing you with a relevant body to attack/block with as well. They also require basically no setup because, let's face it, we're talking about multiplayer. Your meta has to be pretty freaking warped if people aren't playing with good creatures in their decks. While I'm always on the lookout for powerful, cheap spells to flesh out my lists I just couldn't imagine a scenario where I'd sleeve this thing up. If someone can think of something cool to do with this card, feel free to share with the rest of the class because I'm unable to conjure anything up.
Global Grade F Not Cubeworthy
Profaner of the Dead: Cyclonic Rift is a windmill slam first pick in draft and anyone who's ever had it cast at EOT in EDH probably knows that it's stellar in that format as well. It's also bonkers in Constructed, especial when it's powered-out by things like Cloudpost or Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx. While Profaner of the Dead is significantly weaker than Cyclonic Rift it still strikes me as a very powerful Magic card. It's much more conditional in the sense that you need a Myr Battlesphere or whatever to pitch to him but I can't think of many better plays to make when you have a nice board. I know that I'm the first person to harp on people for making tempo plays in a multiplayer setting but these realistically don't qualify. When you bounce your opponents' entire boards it's so ridiculously easy to kill the vast majority of them before they can recover. Cyclonic Rift obviously has the advantage of also bouncing fast mana, Enchantments, etc. but I wouldn't want Wizards to keep printing cards on that power-level. In that sense I'm happy to see something that's powerful-yet-fair coming down the pipeline. It's entirely possible that my judgment is clouded and that this is much closer to an Evacuation than a Cyclonic Rift (given that you have to pitch a big dude) but I'm more than willing to give him a shot in every multiplayer format. The upside of having a 4 mana "Plague Wind" is so high that it seems silly not to give him a go and see how he fares.
Global Grade C- Cubeworthy
Shorecrasher Elemental: Woohoo! A good Blue creature that costs 3 or less mana! It's not quite a Boros Reckoner but I'll take something that can legitimately threaten opposing creatures looking to get into the Red Zone. Not only does it eat smallish critters for breakfast but the Blink enables it to blank anything that doesn't have Trample as well. It also means that you can't really get blown out by removal if you pump this guy up unless you're playing especially fast and loose. I love the synergy that this thing has with Thassa, God of the Sea and Master of Waves (it's an Elemental) and I can't wait to build a deck that fields 4 of each. The pseudo-vigilance is also nice and makes this thing feel like a mini Aetherling. Lategame you can sink a ton of mana into it if needed which is always going to be better than doing nothing. This isn't some insane bomb that will dominate games and it's probably too weak for EDH but if you're someone like me who's always looking out for solid bodies that you can cast on turns 1-3 then it certainly qualifies. It's too color intensive for Cube though so don't worry about picking up a copy for your own. I want to stress that the reason why I like this card so much is because it gives you the ability to sink mana into it. That is, you are not required to go full-on Shade with it early on. Feel free to run it out as a 3/3 for 3 and continue to curve out if that's what your hand wants to do. Smacking someone for ~5 is "fine" but that's now how you win a multiplayer game (usually). Still, again, if you do have spare mana or if you do draw this late it has a real body and real text that can potentially be relevant. Finally, I want to stress that it's a cheap, meaty body which is something that Blue sorely lacks in my mind. It has access to plenty of solid, inexpensive threats but basically none of them can tangle with anything bigger than a 2/2.
Constructed Grade C
EDH Grade D-
Cube Grade F Not Cubeworthy
Silumgar Sorcerer: A creature-based Remove Soul/Cancel hybrid strikes me as a playable Magic card. Being a creature means that it's significantly easier to find and recur which makes it substantially easier to abuse. Animar, Soul of Elements, Crystal Shard, Temur Sabertooth, Prophet of Kruphix, Seedborn Muse, Deadeye Navigator and more can all transform these kinds of answers into soft locks that prevent your opponents from ever resolving meaningful threats. I do realize that Mystic Snake and Draining Whelk exist and that neither requires a sacrifice but this is still the cheapest Counterspell creature that I'm aware of. It's not a bomb that you'll play as a 4-of in all of your decks but pitching Coiling Oracles and Wood Elves (or whatever) to counter real threats seems like a very powerful effect in my mind. You obviously have to work to make this better than a Counterspell but the payoff is there I'm willing to work for it. I fully expect this card to be played in competitive Simic decks.
Global Grade D+ Not Cubeworthy
Skywise Teachings: Talrand, Sky Summoner style Constructed decks have always struggled immensely to compete in removal-rich metas. They perform adequately insofar as their Guttersnipes or whatever are alive but once those get picked-off they're typically reduced to piles of do-nothing cantrips with zero meaningful defense. Skywise Teachings isn't a slam-dunk saving grace for those archetypes but if nothing else it's a resilient threat that transforms cantrips and such into real spells. I wouldn't recommend playing 4 or anything but fielding 1 or 2 seems reasonable to me. I don't think that these kinds of cards are especially playable in EDH/Cube period, the power-level just isn't there, but they are reasonable when you can build a streamlined deck filled with cheap cantrips, rituals, tutors, etc.
Constructed Grade D
Cube/EDH Grade F Not Cubeworthy
Stratus Dancer: A 3/2 flyer that counters a spell that you can also run out on turn 2 as a blocker seems like a "something." The reality of the matter is that some people play in exceptionally aggressive metas that necessitate curving out so I could envision a world in which this card is played. I wouldn't advocate sleeving it up and treating it as a generic playable or anything but Blue doesn't have amazing 2 drops in general so I wouldn't be flabbergasted to see this thing flipped up at some point in my lifetime. Eh, then again, I think I'm stretching too far with this one. I just want Blue to have more solid 2 drops and this thing realistically doesn't qualify. Your meta would have be swimming (soaring?) with flyers for a 2/1 flyer for 2 to be a real Magic card.
Constructed/Cube Grade D-
EDH Grade F Not Cubeworthy
Youthful Scholar: When I first read this card I was very excited about it. Jamming him on turn 4 seems like a totally reasonable play in basically any multiplayer setting. That being said the more that I thought about it the more that I realized that he isn't actually very good as a generic threat. Drawing 2 cards is sweet but tacking it on to a death trigger makes it significantly weaker than it otherwise could be. Taking 2 is a very real option if you ever try to get aggressive with him in an attempt to manually kill him off. A 4 mana 2/2 unblockable threat isn't a card that most decks should fear. Moreover, I highly doubt that many people will care about attacking in to one. My opponents can feel free to play as many 4 mana Sorcery speed "draw 2 cards, gain ~4 life" cards as they desire. Now, being a creature obviously means that he's better than that but I'm still not sold on this guy just yet. In the same way that Reef Worm is playable but unexciting as a generic 4 drop I'd expect this guy to share all of the same problems. You can choose to ignore them if you want but realistically you don't even have to a huge % of the time. Now, obviously these kinds of cards rise in stock dramatically in decks with dedicated sacrifice outlets. If you do have things like Attrition and Flesh Carver then they gain a ton of value. Still, that doesn't really say much about the card now does it? Any card can be powerful when supported but I mean what's the realistic best-case scenario for this thing? A Concentrate? Given the choice of working for a Concentrate or just plain playing Concentrate (which isn't even an amazing card to begin with) it's not exactly a difficult decision to make. Until shown otherwise I'm going to give this guy a conservative rating because I don't think that you can play him without support at which point you're working for a Concentrate. What I will say is that I'd be more than happy to be proven wrong about him. I would love for Blue to have more strong playables at the lower CMCs.
Global Rating D Not Cubeworthy
Overall Grade: D+ Closing Thoughts: Blue came out better than White in DTK with a small number of worthwhile playables. Mono-Blue Devotion got a big boon in the form of Shorecrasher Elemental and Dragonlord's Prerogative is a windmill slam across all formats. A big portion of the EDH community is buzzing about Clone Legion but I'm not sold on that card just yet. Until I start losing to it on a consistent basis I wouldn't go out of way to play with it. The card that I'm most conflicted about is Illusory Gains given that your opponents have (more-or-less) complete control over it. I don't think that it's playable but I'd be happy to be proven wrong about it. The rest of the set is relatively unexciting but there are some semi-interesting options that'll have some niche applications. For example, I fully expect Silumgar Sorcerer to see some amount of play in either EDH or Constructed and I'm hoping that Youthful Scholar will pop up outside of sacrifice-based decks and Azami, Lady of Scrolls EDH.
Black
Corpseweft: It's hard not to like this card. If X weren't automatically doubled then it'd obviously be worthless but granting a Walking Corpse "Kicker" to every creature that gets milled and/or dies is kind of hard to overlook. The effect is also much better than that in the sense that it can easily produce 4/4s, 6/6s, whatever when needed. That being said these kinds of cards do carry significant drawbacks. They're useless early on, terrible in multiples and they put a lot of strain on your engines. You can only support so many of them for so long before you run out of resources to fuel them. For those reasons and more I don't recommend playing a ton of these in your lists. The first is usually very good and second is fine but anything beyond that is going to hinder more than help. In EDH you're obviously locked into playing one and only one and I don't recommend playing with this kind of card in Cube. It's just too hard to make it work when you can't sculpt a perfect deck.
Constructed/Cube Rating D
Cube Rating F Not Cubeworthy
Damnable Pact: At first I was kind of down on this card but I'm starting to like it more and more. It has 2-3 modes in the sense that it can be used as a burn/mill spell to kill a player off if needed and X draw is usually playable in Multiplayer. Still, this is significantly worse than the Blue ones given the life requirement. That may sound silly to some people, especially in the context of EDH, but it really is true. Unless you're playing Oona, Queen of the Fae as your general infinite mana doesn't always translate to game win in EDH. The ability to draw your entire deck with no questions asked is very relevant when that occurs as it realistically ensures victory for you. DP cannot reliably be used to draw your entire deck so it's less good than you probably think in those big mana Black decks. You're probably a favorite to win if you can resolve one after generating a lot/infinite mana but that'll obviously depend on the contents of your list and your life total. Anyways, beyond that I don't think that it's an especially powerful draw spell in a vacuum even though I do like how it functions in high mana environments. Cards like Sign in Blood and Night's Whisper are strong because they can be cast early on to smooth your draws. Meanwhile, paying 4 to draw 2 with DP is horrendous and something that you'll probably never want to do. Once you hit the midgame your options are things like Skeletal Scrying, Phyrexian Arena, Syphon Mind and Promise of Power which are all significantly more powerful. Even the marginal options such as Underworld Connections, Graveborn Muse and Bloodgift Demon are likely superior when cast on curve. I'll concede that DP compares favorable to Ambition's Cost + Ancient Craving because it has a higher power ceiling while only being marginally worse but even then it's nice to be able to jam a draw 3 for 4 on turn ~3 after dropping some artifact mana. The point is that this card is actually very bad in everything but the lategame where you're casting it for like X=8. You could argue that it gets brownie points for being castable for less than that but realistically you are not happy to be fielding a Harrowing Journey in your lists. There aren't many occasions where this thing'll be better than a Promise of Power so don't trick yourself into thinking otherwise. In that sense I don't recommend playing this card unless your deck is focused on big/infinite mana. I know that that encompasses a lot of EDH decks but it's certainly not all of them and I don't think that this card is very impressive if you're topping out at 8-10 mana.
EDH Grade C
Constructed/Cube Grade D Not Cubeworthy
Deadly Wanderings: Homicidal Seclusion 2.0 has arrived. I've toyed around with the archetype in the past but never experienced much success with it. The shells always featured a whack of recursive threats, plenty of manlands and usually sought to the end the game with cards like Demonic Rising. The main problems with the lists is that they were always too slow and too weak to removal. They also fell flat on their face when Homicidal Seclusion was destroyed or when I failed to find one at a reasonable pace. I eventually gave up on the archetype and haven't revisited it since. Deadly Wanderings clearly brings and additional level of redundancy to the lists but I don't think that it solves their fundamental flaws. Beyond that I think that this card is completely unplayable in Cube and EDH. Even as someone who plays Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon EDH I don't think that there's any reason to pay 5 mana for +2 power.
Constructed Grade D-
Cube/EDH Grade F Not Cubeworthy
Deathbringer Regent: 7 mana is a lot to pay for a Wrath of God with an upside which leaves me doubtful that I'll be seeing much of this card. I'd rather play things like Crux of Fate that're cheaper or Decree of Pain that're significantly stronger. Necromantic Selection can potentially recur things like Titans and Primordials which are are almost always going to be infinitely more valuable than a 5/6 flyer. I like that this guy is a creature i.e. that he's recurrable but the conditions are a big turn-off. At that point you may as well just play with Reiver Demon and/or Dread Cacodemon to avoid hitting your mobs entirely. Besides, last time I checked Sepulchral Primordial was still a buck and it's still completely ridiculous. Until that changes I don't see much of a reason to play with cards like these. It's fine, I could easily see it making the cut in Cube/EDH, but this is not on the same level as other tier 1 mass removal/finishers. It's average at best.
Global Grade D+ Cubeworthy
Foul Renewal: This card reminds me a lot of Profane Command albeit a significantly weaker version. Black doesn't get that much in the way of inexpensive instants that generate card advantage and I'd fully expect to get a reasonable amount of value from this in an average game. I'm not a big of fan of playing generic spot removal unless it's also providing another effect which is why I'll routinely play Tendrils of Corruption in my lists. Raise Dead is usually going to be worse than gaining 4+ life but that clearly won't always be the case. The biggest strike against this card is obviously how condition it is. Unless you're jamming Buried Alive out on turn 3 it's going to be hard to resolve this before turn 6 or 7 at which point the impact of a 2-for-1 is greatly diminished. I'm not a big fan of this card for that reason alone and don't foresee myself playing with it in the near future. I'm not going to call an instant-speed 2-for-1 a bad card, it clearly isn't, it's just that "not bad" and "good" are two very different things in my mind. I'd never be excited to play with and draw this card in any multiplayer format so until I see it doing some serious work I'm not going to think much of it.
Global Rating D+ Cubeworthy
Hedonist's Trove: Trove here suffers from what I like to call "Grave Betrayal syndrome." Black has a fairly sizable collection of powerful 7 drop Enchantments which don't offer much in the way of immediate impact (Tormod's Crypt is a 0 mana spell) but which virtually ensure long-run victory (in the context of grindy games defined by creatures and removal). The cards usually sound powerful in theory but in practice they rarely accomplish much of anything. The prospect of drawing 3 cards a turn is obviously sweet and if your games were staggeringly long then these kinds of win conditions would be viable but the reality of the matter is that you usually can't afford to play these kinds of finishers in a world of instantaneous 1-2 card win conditions. There's any number of ways to seal games long before you'll be able to derive a sufficient return on investment from your lategame value engine. Rather than casting a "do-nothing" you should simply slam a bomb like Sepulchral Primordial, Army of the Damned, Rise of the Dark Realms, Exsanguinate, etc. and (virtually) win the game on the spot. In that sense I don't think that these kinds of cards have much of a home in the upper echelons of play.
Global Grade D+ Not Cubeworthy
Minister of Pain: I've come around on Drown in Sorrow recently but I still think that cards like Cower in Fear are basically unplayable. Minister of Pain is a cool variation given that she's a creature (i.e. she can be recurred) and that you can pitch a Reassembling Skeleton (or whatever) to her effect but none of that will ever change the fact that paying 3 mana to "deal 1 damage" to opposing creatures is a bad rate. Unless your meta is overrun with token swarms and X/1s I cannot get behind playing these kinds of removal spells. We have tools such as Massacre at our disposal if we're in the market for that type of effect.
Global Grade F Not Cubeworthy
Risen Executioner: As much as I'd want to like a self-recurring zombie lord the combination of "can't block" and "eff you self-mill" kills the card for me. There's just no world where I'd play this over Graveborn Muse, Vengeful Dead, Undead Warchief, Tombstone Stairwell or just about anything really. I'm not willing to give it an F (outside of Cube where it's basically unplayable) since it's a recurrable threat that still technically works when self-milled but it would take something drastic to get me to play with this card.
Constructed/EDH Grade D
Cube Grade F Not Cubeworthy
Sidisi, Undead Vizier: Diabolic Intent has never been the strongest card in the world but tacking it on to a creature makes it infinitely more enticing. This card seems absolutely busted in EDH given her ability to tutor up any number of 2 card kill combos and if nothing else you can just fetch your Skullclamp/Contamination and put your Bloodghast/Reassembling Skeleton/Nether Traitor to work. It's worth noting that she can instantly win the game if you're ever able to generate infinite mana given her ability to sac herself to her own Exploit cost. At that point you'll be able to draw your entire deck in order to find your Exsanguinate (or whatever) which should be good enough to get the job done. She seems completely absurd in that sense and I look forward to finding some oppressively obnoxious things to do with her. With respect to Constructed/Cube she's obviously going to be less good but that isn't really saying much now is it? A 4/6 for 5 is realistically going to eat most 1-5 CMC critters and even if people power out some bombs she can still threaten to trade with anything. Moreover, Black has the best recursive threats to begin with and plenty of solid equipment (such as Lashwrithe) to ensure that they'll always be relevant draws. I bring this up mostly to highlight the fact that you shouldn't feel too bad about being forced to jam random durdles such as Reassembling Skeleton into your lists to support her. There are plenty of Flesh Carvers and Sadistic Hypnotists out there which all provide more than enough incentive to jam a few of them into your brews. The biggest strike against Sidisi is that she competes with Gray Merchant of Asphodel (and even Bloodgift Demon to a lesser extent), a fight she'll probably never win, but I still like the card as a generic playable. The fact that she can sac herself to her own Exploit intrigues me because it means that you can pair her with recursion to gain access to unlimited Demonic Collusions. That's obviously a steep price to pay for a tutor but 5 still beats the 7 of Rune-Scarred Demon if you're not concerned about the body. I also understand that recurring a weak tutor is usually worse than recurring Gray Merchant of Asphodel but that certainly won't always be the case. If nothing else she's new, exciting, powerful and definitely worth testing. I want to stress that I expect her to be an EDH powerhouse above all else but I'd still expect her to have a lot of value outside of the format. With respect to Cube, you really need to be playing with recursive threats to justify slotting her in. The base stats are "fine" and Diabolic Intent is "fine" but if you're pitching a legitimate threat then she's definitely not worthwhile. Still, I think that most Cubes have enough recursive threats/token producers/utility dorks to make her work so I feel confident with giving her a relatively high rating in that format as well.
EDH Grade A
Constructed/Cube Grade C+ Cubeworthy
Silumgar Assassin: I'm not exactly scrambling to play with Gatekeeper of Malakir in any of my decks and the pseudo-evasion is nigh worthless. If it were just plain unblockable I would actually like this card but the fact that it turns-off if you equip a Lashwrithe (or whatever) to it is a big letdown.
Global Grade D- Not Cubeworthy
Ultimate Price: UP is a reasonable spot removal spell that, in the right contexts, doesn't even have much of a drawback. 2 mana to kill a creature is a reasonable rate given that you can often extract a lot of value from flashing these kinds of cards to your opponents in order to dissuade attacks. To clarify, I'm referring to your ability to reveal the card from your hand to the other players in order to influence their behavior (to your benefit obviously). People have very little incentive to trade their threats for your removal since it typically makes more sense to get in for free damage and preserve your own resources. In that sense UP can be a lot better than a 1-for-1 given its ability to act like a Seal of Doom insofar as you hold mana up for it. That being said I want to stress that I don't think that spot removal is actively good in multiplayer in general. Trading 1-for-1 is bad for the 2 players losing resources and good for their opponents. They're "free riders" who passively benefit from the exchange without having to expend any resources themselves. It's virtually impossible to legitimately profit from spot removal in that sense. The overwhelming majority of the time you are coming out well behind the other players. As such I usually recommend a "light touch" when it comes to spot removal in multiplayer. You'll want to have access to a few removal spells in order to keep people honest (and to flash to your opponents) but sitting on a hand full of it probably won't end well for you. Whenever possible stick to cheap + reliable answers such as Slaughter Pact, Go for the Throat and/or Murderous Cut or, barring that, cards such as Tendrils of Corruption that offer additional benefits. Ultimate Price is "pretty good" given that it only costs 2 mana and the condition is usually manageable but the fact that it doesn't hit Artifacts or Multicolored creatures is a big letdown.
Global Rating D+ Cubeworthy
Virulent Plague: Illness in the Ranks 2.0 has arrived. If your meta is swarming with token decks then these kinds of cards are solid Bs that will usually cause one or more players to instantly lose the game. Otherwise they're easy Fs that accomplish nothing. That being said I don't advise playing hate cards in general because I don't like the impact that cards such as Boil have on multiplayer games. The people who field them aren't incredibly likely to go on to win the game and the people affected by them are forced to sit around, be miserable and pretend to play Magic until they inevitably lose. They're not fun to play with or against and ruin games from what I've seen (ruined games, in this instance, refers to ones in which one or more players had (an) overwhelmingly negative experience(s)).
Global Grade N/A Not Cubeworthy
Overall Grade: C- Closing Thoughts: Bluntly put the only card that remotely interests me is Sidisi, Undead Vizier. I think that she's an amazing EDH Commander giver her ability to tutor up infinite mana combos at which point she can then be used to draw your entire deck and win the game on the spot in much the same way that Oona, Queen of the Fae can. She may not be a "better" all-around Commander but as a mono-Black fanatic I'm happy to have another busted general that I can play alongside Mikaeus, the Unhallowed if I'm in the market to secure some wins. While some of the other cards are certainly playable I'm not scrambling to acquire any of them personally. Damnable Pact is probably the other standout card from the set however and I'll likely grab a few copies at some point. I want to stress how hard it is for that card to be better than Promise of Power/Necrologia/etc, it's not insane by any means, but it's "good enough" to collect. Otherwise I wouldn't be unhappy to pick up some copies of Corpseweft, Deathbringer Regent, Hedonist's Trove and Foul Renewal but I wouldn't go out of my to acquire them. They just aren't cards that I could foresee myself sleeving up a year from now.
Red
Berserkers' Onslaught: Onslaught's (I see what you did there Wizards!) Gratuitous Violence has always been a staple in Big Red decks and there are plenty lists that care much more about double strike than double damage. It's not strictly better in the sense that it doesn't work with pings and it's useless when you're blocking but in general you're probably going to want to roll with this version of the card. Putting people in the unfortunate scenario of "take a million" or "lose all of your creatures for free AND take a million" is a good place to be which why you really do want to go out of your way to play with these kinds of cards whenever possible. They aren't win-more by any means and are often essential if you're looking to secure wins in formats such as EDH. This is a "must buy" for someone like me because I do think that it has broad applications across all 3 major multiplayer formats.
Global Grade C+ Cubeworthy
Commune with Lava: The people who think that this card is worthless are definitely underestimating it but the people who think that it's busted are also living in Magical Christmas Land. The baseline card, to me, is an instant speed draw 2 for 5. That's below the curve but given our lack of alternatives we don't have much of an option but to test it out. The card does scale up slightly from there but not by much. It'll be hard to ever cast more than 2 spells and 2 lands off of this thing so don't go tricking yourself into thinking that it'll be a draw 6 at X=10 (unless your deck is filled with inexpensive spells obviously). One thing that I'll say is that you'll probably have to mainphase this card a fair amount in order to get multiple lands out of the deal. I know that casting it at EOT sounds a lot sexier but if you ever want to get 3-4 cards out of it on a consistent basis then you'll need to take your free land drop every now and then. I don't see this as being a staple in Red decks across every format but I'd probably never cut the first from my lists. I'll definitely give it a shot in EDH and I think that it's worthwhile to test it out in Cube as well. We haven't seen a card like this Red yet so the verdict is largely out until I gather some data on it. On the surface it seems playable but unexciting but I could easily see it being marginal-if-not-bad on average.
EDH Grade C-
Constructed/Cube Grade D+ Cubeworthy
Crater Elemental: This is a card that I'm trying very hard to like. It's a 3 drop Red creature that can still have legitimate value on turn 8. It's way better than oh, say, Aether Membrane in my mind because it can legitimately kill opposing attackers as opposed to merely blocking them. It's kinda like a Seal of Doom in that sense which is a card that I'm especially fond of. Since this is the first Formidable card worth discussing I'd like to take a second to explain why I like the ability. 8 power, in my mind, is nothing. Some people might see this effect and think that it's totally win-more but I vehemently disagree. Having a 5/5 and a 4/4 (or whatever, it doesn't matter what the split is) is often the same thing as having nothing in big FFA games where everyone is curving out with blockers and potential attackers. You can't actually attack anyone profitably without risking massive crack-backs to yourself. It's also just not a very threatening clock the vast majority of the time. Even a 5/5 flyer is what? A 16 turn clock in a 5 player non-EDH game? A 32 turn clock in an EDH game? That's just laughably slow in a world where every draw step can be a Mob Rule or a Deadeye Navigator. With that in mind what I like about Formidable is that it gives you some trump effects to win the board stall, draw-go mirrors where players are just drawing cards and casting critters/removal before passing the turn (because no one has good attacks). When your 3 drop transforms into a ~6 drop you have a significant advantage when board stalls do occur. Ultimately I don't really know how good this card will be without playing it. In a vacuum it seems like a slightly below-average defensive 3 drop that could be slotted into basically any creature-based Red deck so until I get a chance to play with it that's where I'll leave it.
Global Grade D+ Not Cubeworthy
Descent of the Dragons: Even a significantly better version of Hellion Eruption doesn't seem especially appealing to me. Red-based token decks aren't amazing to begin with and there are superior "game win" alternatives that don't lose horrendously to removal. Eldrazi Conscription provides resilience, Coat of Arms provides immediate burst, etc. It's obviously nice that you can use this to nuke opposing threats and downgrade them to 4/4 flyers but that's still a real card that needs to be dealt with. All-in-all I just can't think of a compelling reason to play with this card. If anything it'll see play in Purphoros, God of the Forge decks but that card is already so unbelievably broken to the point where it almost doesn't matter what you pair with it.
Global Grade D+ Not Cubeworthy
Dragon Tempest: Now this is a card that I can get behind. Dragon decks have always suffered immensely in the face of removal primarily because it's hard to fit good draw into Red decks and if you're playing with 6-8 CMC dragons then you need to field ramp. Given that most Dragons don't offer much in the way of significant + immediate benefit the strategy has never been especially powerful. You play some dudes, they die, you lose because you're now out of gas and you're drawing into do-nothing ramp. Dragon Tempest is stellar in the sense that it provides all of your threats with immediate impact. Haste is a very powerful keyword to tack on to to things like Balefire Dragon and Utvara Hellkite and the ping definitely adds up, especially if Scourge of Valkas is also floating around. I know that it might seem "win-more" but I legitimately believe that every part of the buffalo is relevant in this instance. A ping for 1-3 isn't stellar but when you pair it with Hasted attack and the Dragons' natural abilities it's going to exert a sizable amount of pressure on your opponents. While it doesn't offer much value early on it's still something cheap to do with your mana before you start chaining your bombs. This is something that most ramp decks sorely need because you really don't want to be casting support spells once you hit 6+ mana. This is way better than Crucible of Fire in my mind and I highly recommend that you play with it in your Dragon lists.
Constructed/EDH Grade C (in Dragon decks)
Cube Grade F Not Cubeworthy
Dragon Whisperer: I've been waiting for a secondary version of Kargan Dragonlord for a very long time and we finally have it. I'm extremely disappointed that it's a Mythic Rare and I can only pray that its price will decline to the point where it's affordable to the masses. I'm doubtful that that'll ever happen but a man can dream can't he? What I love about this card is that it's another powerful 2 drop that scales well into the lategame. I'm also a big fan of the RR mana cost because it allows the card to naturally slot into Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx big mana decks that abuse Boros Reckoner and Purphoros, God of the Forge among other things. He's a decent mana sink himself, Stromgald Crusader has always done good for me, and the Formidable ability is just icing on the cake. Hitting 8 power is trivial in my mind given that Red has a ton of Taurean Mauler, Purphoros, God of the Forge, Malignus, Inferno Titan, Molten Primordial, etc. style cards to enable it. Slapping Dragon Roost on a 2/2 for 2 means that it'll have good value both early and late which is what I'm looking for in a good 2 drop. I'm super high on this card in that sense because it's everything that I could've asked for and more. The only strike against this card is its price-tag which is way higher than I'd like it to be. It would've easily been the best card in the set at rare/uncommon at which point anyone would've been able to get their hands on some. Obviously that would've ruined the Limited format, I understand why it's a Mythic, I'm just saying that for someone like me who only cares about multiplayer it sucks that these cards can't be made more affordable for the masses.
Constructed/Cube Grade B
EDH Grade C Cubeworthy
Dragonlord's Servant: I'm not a big fan of marginal, narrow cards and this one is no exception. It's playable in exactly one archetype (hint: it's Dragons) and has zero Cube applications unless you're big on supporting the tribe. The fact that he's a creature means that he's slightly better in the ultra-early and ultra-late stages of the games where the (chump) blocker will matter more than the ramp. Where he suffers most is in the mid-to-lategame where he'll frequently get swept up in various forms of mass removal. Still, Dragonspeaker Shaman has always been fine in my experience and I have no reason to think that this little guy would be substantially worse. I'd rather play with cards like Charcoal Diamond and Worn Powerstone myself but if you really need the early blocker then it's hard to go wrong with something that has 3 toughness. I personally think of these kinds of cards as being closer to Ds than Cs (in the context of Dragon tribal obviously, it would be an F in a vacuum) because I'd rather play things like Everflowing Chalice for a number of reasons. First, I'm more worried about losing to Wraths than I am early aggro in a multiplayer setting. This is especially true when I'm playing a color like Red that lacks card draw. Moreover, Urza's Incubator (and all cards similar to it) doesn't help you cast your noncreature spells and I personally feel that game-changers such as Wildfire and Aggravated Assault are what allow Dragon decks to be competitive in the first place. Finally, I like being able to play with obviously pushed cards such as Thran Dynamo and Worn Powerstone whenever possible because they increase the overall power-level of my decks substantially. Whereas a Rampant Growth wanna-be can only ever be so good when you start to play with broken "fast mana" it can enable some grotesque sequences. Still, that's all personal opinion and it's heavily biased/influenced by own metagame. The card could easily be a full letter grade higher or lower in your own. That is, I could easily see it being a solid C in aggro-rich metas but I could also see it being a stone-unplayable F in ones plagued with early and/or frequent sweepers.
Constructed/EDH Rating D+
Cube Rating F Not Cubeworthy
Impact Tremors: I will definitely play this thing in my Purphoros, God of the Forge Constructed decks. Maybe not the full 4 but a resilient 2 drops that works with our primary gameplan seems solid to me. Jamming 1-2 in your lists seems like it would be actively good, especially once you start factoring the Devotion that it'll provide for old Purphy. While you can't exactly build dedicated burn decks in Cube "tokens" is a commonly supported archetype and it doesn't take much for this to deal 8-10 damage in a very short time-frame. I like how it opens up the possibility of pursuing alternate routes to victory that don't require attacking nor surviving Wraths. The prospect of sitting back and jamming army-in-a-can threats until I win seems very appealing to me. I don't know how good or bad it'll be in EDH in general but I have mildly high expectations for it. On the one hand 40 is a lot of life to try and burn through but on the other hand Generals such as Marath, Will of the Wild and Prossh, Skyraider of Kher (among others) can chew through that number in no time. The card may look innocuous but don't be fooled by its rarity or mana cost. When supported it can easily be one of the scariest 2 CMC Enchantments since Goblin Bombardment. Obviously this card would function very poorly in a vacuum but as long as you're supporting it seems absurd.
Global Grade C Cubeworthy
Ire Shaman: Unfortunately this card is far too aggressively slanted to have much multiplayer worth. It has no meaningful presence as a 2 drop and in order to get value from the flip early on you need to have an extremely low-to-the-ground deck to begin with. If you could always hit a land/playable spell then she's obviously be fine but those are unrealistic expectations in my mind. I personally do not build multiplayer decks that stop at ~4 CMC and I'm not willing to risk missing and being left with some aggressive do-nothing beater.
Global Grade F Not Cubeworthy
Lightning Berserker: A good multiplayer 1 drop, to me, is something that you wouldn't feel embarrassed to draw on turn 8. Fireball, to no one's surprise, is a good draw on turn 8. While I wouldn't go around jamming this into every Red deck that you build it's certainly a solid playable in extremely aggressive metas. I'm a big fan of playing with defensive Shades in Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx decks who can sometimes randomly kill people later on. You want to be playing with 1 and 2 drops anyways so they might as well be things like Kargan Dragonlord and Dragon Whisperer that can put big mana to use. You need a reason to play with this kind of card, there's absolutely no reason to play with 1 drops if you don't have to, but I could legitimately see myself playing this card in Cube/Constructed if I were worried about being aggro'd down. That being said I'd basically never play her in EDH because I'm less worried about aggro in that sphere and so there's no reason to play with 1 drops like these.
Constructed/Cube Grade D
EDH Grade F Not Cubeworthy
Sarkhan's Triumph: I truly didn't know what to make of this card when I first read it. An instant speed, 3 mana tutor seemed like it would have to be good but I couldn't shake the feeling that it sucked. I went around asking people that I knew what they would find with it and the response was unanimously "uhhh... dunno." Bear in mind that I'm talking about well-versed Magic players with pro-level experience and deep collections; not run-of-the-mill newbies. Anyways, their responses summed up my fears for the card. I literally can't think of a Dragon that I'd want to spend 3 mana to tutor up in an average game. Now, we all collectively agreed that there are certainly some powerful Dragons out there but none of us could think of some that we'd be willing to take the time to tutor up as opposed to playing a different card in that slot. It certainly doesn't help that "toolbox Dragons" isn't really a thing. I'm not saying that they don't have powerful + unique abilities it's just that Dragons are all fairly interchangeable once you start playing with the good ones. Whereas Fierce Empath is a strong card that we all like and play a fair amount (especially in EDH) it loses a lot of its luster when it doesn't come attached to a body and has a significantly more narrow restriction. I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt and list it as a marginal playable but outside of EDH (i.e. Constructed) I could legitimately see myself excluding it from decks that play Dragons. Again, I'm willing to be wrong, I'm just not excited by this card at all.
Constructed/EDH Grade D+ (in decks with Dragons obviously)
Cube Grade F Not Cubeworthy
Volcanic Vision: If Disaster Radius has taught me anything it's that this effect is much worse than it looks. Conditional 7 drops that don't win the game are significantly worse than they seem and it's easy to get tricked into thinking otherwise. I know that people might want to blast me and refute with something along the lines of "but Prid3 you like Mass Calcify and Decree of Pain!" to which I'll respond "they're not conditional." Where I see this card being played most is EDH. I know, I know, I also cannot stand the people who look at every 7+ CMC card and say "HURP DERP GOOD IN EDH" but I realistically cannot think of another home for it. What passes for "win more" in other formats is frequently "not remotely good enough" to seal an EDH game and so I could legitimately see someone casting this, recurring a Mob Rule/Insurrection/Blasphemous Act and still getting value out of both cards. I do realize that pairing Volcanic Vision with mass removal/mass theft effects is a bit of a nonbo but what else are you playing and recurring in multiplayer? Your decks might have a few things like Savage Beating or whatever but in general the vast majority of the expensive Red spells interact with creatures in some way, shape or form. That's all the more reason why I'm largely unimpressed with this card and don't think that it's nearly as good as it looks.
Global Rating D+ Not Cubeworthy
Overall Grade: C- Closing Thoughts: The set started with a bang in the form of Berserkers' Onslaught and surprisingly didn't fall much from there. I expect Commune with Lava to see a fair amount of play initially but I'm more than willing to believe that it'll prove to be too slow and unreliable for generic use. I am glad to see things like Dragon Tempest being printed because I feel that they add legitimacy to otherwise below-average tribal decks. Dragon Whisperer is also exactly what the doctor ordered with respect to a solid Red 2 drop that can be played in any format. Impact Tremors looks very promising and could easily rear its ugly head in every major multiplayer format. There's very little reason not to grab them. Everything else I could live without but I do expect to see a few things them pop up from time-to-time. All-in-all I feel as though Red came out like a bandit in DTK compared to the other colors.
Green
Ainok Survivalist: I'm willing to give Den Protector the benefit of the doubt because Eternal Witness is a unique creature with a very powerful effect. Survivalist, on the other hand, I am not. This card is significantly worse than both Reclamation Sage and Acidic Slime among others and even in formats like Cube and EDH I could never see myself cutting something legitimately good to make room for this guy. I am completely unwilling to cast this thing for either half (2 mana 2/1, 5 mana Reclamation Sage) and I don't see why anyone else would see him differently.
Global Grade D- Not Cubeworthy
Assault Formation: Doran, the Siege Tower this card is not. One the reasons why Doran is such a powerful card is because in practice it's a 3 mana 5/5 that reads something close to "your creature get +2/+0." Even in a world where aggro isn't especially competitive that's still one Hell of a Magic card to be facing down. I've seen plenty of people lose to that card in my day and if your 3 drop is legitimately killing people then you know that you're doing something right. My problem with Assault Formation is that it's 3 marginal abilities tacked on to one card in the vein hope that it'll be good. I do realize that it makes cards like Wall of Roots very threatening but that just doesn't strike me as something that I'd want be building around. It has basically no EDH/Cube applications for fairly obvious reasons (too weak, too conditional, too hard to build around for too little reward) but again, I don't even like it in Constructed. I'm not dense, I do realize that you can play it in an Axebane Guardian + Overgrown Battlement + Karametra's Acolyte deck that produces jillions of mana, I just don't see why those decks would want to play with this kind of card. Isn't their sole purpose to power out a Tooth and Nail that wins the game on the spot? What cards are they going to cut to add something like this? Still, I dislike rating these kinds of cards in general because I don't feel like I'm their intended audience. It's a cheap, fun and cool card that can enable inventive deckbuilers to design some sweet brews. It may not be the most competitive card in the world but it probably wasn't designed to be.
Constructed Grade D-
EDH/Cube Grade F Not Cubeworthy
Avatar of the Resolute: People are probably sick and tired of hearing me talk about Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx but when life gives you lemons what else are you going to do other than make lemonade? The fact that most of my Nykthos decks start with Strangleroot Geist and Predator Ooze and end with Lifeblood Hydra certainly doesn't help because those are exactly the kinds of cards that you'll want to pair with this type of threat. Reach isn't as relevant as it used to be now that those decks can all curve Arbor Colossus into Soul of Zendikar into Sylvan Primordial but it still never hurts, especially when you're not forcing yourself to play with marginal cards such as Deadly Recluse. That being said I don't think that this guy has a home outside of Constructed. He's too hard to cast + support in Cube and he's too weak for EDH so I could only ever see myself playing him in dedicated Nykthos decks that run a whack of +1/+1 counter dudes. Even then he's not stellar by any. I'm not entirely convinced that something resilient such as Bassara Tower Archer isn't just strictly better because it's significantly harder to remove and you don't need to get value from your cheap threats insofar as you curve into a Genesis Wave/Sylvan Primordial/Tooth and Nail/Primal Surge via Nythkos.
Constructed Grade C
EDH/Cube Grade F Not Cubeworthy
Collected Company: I think it's safe to say that no one saw this card coming. The ability to jam 6 mana worth of dudes at instant speed is not something that you'd expect from a 4 mana Green spell. In a world where this always hit a combo of Sakura-Tribe Elder, Courser of Kruphix, Yavimaya Elder, etc. the card seems very sweet. The problem is that you'd have to be playing a deck with like 25 sub 3 CMC dudes to make that even close to a reality. I don't know the exact math (nor do I pretend to) but something tells me that your average Cube/EDH/Constructed deck will fall far too short to make this a legitimate 2-for-1. Cool card, cool concept, it's probably just too unreliable to field in a setting where you want to be casting 5-8 mana bombs. That is, the deck-building restraints feel too restrictive for me to label this as a generic playable.
Constructed Grade D+
EDH/Cube Grade F Not Cubeworthy
Deathmist Raptor: I'm a fan of recursive threats with Deathtouch but the condition is far too narrow for this to ever be a generic playable. It's obviously fine in dedicated Morph/Manifest decks but that's not saying very much in my mind.
Constructed Grade C- (when supported)
EDH/Cube Grade F Not Cubeworthy
Den Protector: I've come around on Eternal Witness a lot in the past few years to the point where I'm willing to play a weaker version of it in singleton formats such as EDH and Cube. My problem with these kinds of cards has always been that they're usually bad on turn 3 because most people don't actually own Fetchlands which means that they're basically just 6-7 drops at which point you may as well play with more 6-7 drops. Sylvan Primordial changed everything though (at least for me) and made it realistic for you to cast giant Genesis Waves/Primal Surges and to buy them back with Eternal Witnesses. Den Protector is obviously worse but Sylvan Primordial renders mana requirements irrelevant anyways so paying 5 for a 3 mana effect becomes much more tolerable. It's fine to recur this with Genesis and it even works nicely with Kessig Wolf Run. Granted, KWR grants Trample so blockers aren't especially troublesome but it's still nice to pump up unblockable critters whenever possible. This card is too much weaker than Eternal Witness for me to give it a serious grade but it's still a serviceable Magic card.
EDH/Cube Grade D+
Constructed Grade D- Cubeworthy
Explosive Vegetation: Not only is this card highly playable in every format but it desperately needed a reprint. I'm ecstatic to see it for those reasons. Go out of your way to acquire as mnay that you get your hands on because 100% of your Green EDH/Cube/Constructed decks could realistically play it. 2 basic lands of any color is a complete steal for 4 mana. Turn 4-5 Sylvan Primordials, Hornet Queens, etc. is such a big game and the color fixing is almost always relevant.
Obscuring Aether: For the record I'm obviously only discussing this card in the context of a Trail of Mystery/Secret Plans style Constructed decks filled with Morphs. It has absolutely no EDH/Cube applications and it's worthless in a vacuum. It's important to remember that you get a free mulligan in multiplayer (it's an official rule; not a personal recommendation) when playing with these kinds of cards because opening grips that include these are significantly stronger than ones that don't. I highly recommend shipping your first 7 back if you don't find one because it doesn't really cost you anything. You can decide for yourself if you want to go to 6 from there but if you deck does have a bunch of card advantage engines such as Secret Plans in it then you probably should. The cool thing about this card is that unlike its predecessors it allows you to run out a turn 2 Morph and we all know that Grizzly Bears is a multiplayer staple. Jokes aside this card can legitimately get out of hand if you can ever land multiples as it will enable you to quickly and continually empty and refill your hand as the game progresses. For the life of me I don't understand the the flip ability (why does it even have it?) and I would not recommend ever using it unless you draw the 4th or something. A Vanilla 2/2 for 3 is significantly worse than unplayable trash so unless the chump blocker represents the difference between winning and losing I'd rather bluff having a spell in my hand than run this thing out. I know that this might seem like a bad card to draw later on but multiples actually work fairly well together insofar as you're able to stick some sort of persistent draw engine. Again, I highly recommend mulling aggressively for opening hands that contain them given how much worse the first gets even when cast as early as turn 2 or 3. Otherwise there isn't much to say about this card because its applications are so obvious that it's barely worth discussing them. You'll (probably) always play 4 of these in your Secret Plans Constructed decks but they have absolutely no generic use and virtually cannot be played in singleton formats unless your deck/Cube is specifically built to support it (which isn't impossible, just unlikely).
Constructed Rating C-
Cube/EDh Rating F Not Cubeworthy
Shaman of Forgotten Ways: A Worn Powerstone with a relevant body that gets a free Biorhythm tacked-on? I'll take 10 please! Remember, this kind of card isn't replacing Craterhoof Behemoth/Tooth and Nail in your lists. It's a ramp card that just so happens to act as another big finisher if needed. This means that even when do you draw it on turn 7 when you have access to 30 mana that it'll still be a relevant draw, unlike say Carpet of Flowers or Frontier Siege. I'm a huge fan of this card in that sense I can't wait to whip it out in EDH. It's somewhat unfortunate that you have untap with this guy to get his effect but Lightning Greaves and Thousand-Year Elixir are cards that're making the cut in your Elf-ball EDH decks anyways so you'll definitely have outs to activate this thing immediately. It's also worth noting that being a creature is a massive upside because it means that you're able to Summoner's Pact, Green Sun's Zenith, Chord of Calling, Birthing Pod, etc. this guy into play as needed. Sure, Craterhoof Behemoth is usually better but gaining infinite life is a real thing in EDH and activating this on turn ~4-5 in an 8 player game is probably significantly more damage.
Global Grade C+ Cubeworthy
Sight of the Scalelords: I am legitimately surprised at how reasonable this card is. +2/+2 vigilance is a massive buff to receive every turn and will allow you to smash through board stalls while still maintaining a defensive position. Barring a few exceptions (such as Thragtusk) most of your 4+ CMC threats are going to have 4 toughness anyways and even 3 drops such as Courser of Kruphix fit the bill. Given the the upside of this card is that it's basically a permanent Overrun I'm struggling to dislike this card. Now, let me clear, this isn't some slam-dunk "must include" in your decks. Unlike Overrun it doesn't work on mana dorks/tokens and some people will argue that if you have 3-4 big dudes out that you're already winning. I personally think that that's complete BS because it takes a lot more than a few big bodies to take down a game where I play. I don't think that it's win-more at all in that sense and I could easily see the pump + vigilance allowing players to push through for significant damage. It's also relatively strong even in the face of removal because it'll give you a strong attacker that still stays back to block if nothing else. Insofar as you're casting things like Soul of Zendikar and Sylvan Primordial that's probably a legitimate effect. I don't think that your Constructed decks will want more than 1 or 2 of these, you can definitely draw too many, but I could see the first few being very reasonable.
Global Rating D+ Cubeworthy
Surrak, the Hunt Caller: People are really hating on this card and for the life of me I don't understand why. Obviously it's not great to be jamming him on a empty board but it doesn't take much for this guy to be a 5/4 "your creatures have Haste." Now, I'm not saying that you want to be playing with these kinds of aggressive cards in multiplayer but I could certainly see myself losing this guy. Rant aside Surrak here is just another marginal Green 4 drop that dies to removal. I don't recommend playing these types of threats in general for that reason alone and Surrak here is no different. I'd much rather slam a Masked Admirers or Oracle of Mul Daya and generate some sort of long-run advantage even if my guy gets picked-off immediately. That being said Haste is a very powerful keyword, especially in formats such as EDH where you're often looking to kill in 1-3 hits with your general. Surrak clearly isn't the strongest Haste enabler of all time but he's still a beefy body that grants a relevant effect. Ultimately I don't expect to see him played in any format but I don't think that he deserves the "unplayable trash" label that he's being given.
Global Grade D Not Cubeworthy
Overall Grade: D+ Closing Thoughts: Green didn't get much out of DTK other than a much needed reprint for Explosive Vegetation. The only notable new playable is Shaman of the Forgotten Ways which is a powerful Worn Powerstone variant that I would happily play in every format for many years to come. I suppose that Collected Company is an interesting card because even if you only hit one creature off of it that's still "fine" and if you can build a solid deck that can reliably nab two then you're golden. It has a lot of potential if nothing else which is reason enough to get excited over it. Besides, these are the kinds of cards that will only get better with time. As more and more Scavenging Oozes and Courser of Kruphixes are printed its stock can only rise. The rest of Green's offerings are unexciting at best but most of them are solid build-around-mes. I may not like Assault Formation or Obscuring Aether but they're cool and unique effects that I'm sure others will. There's still not much to get excited over though which seems to be a common trend for the set.
Multicolor
Arashin Sovereign: "Aetherlings" are significantly weaker in a multiplayer setting in the sense that they kill far too slowly to ever provide true inevitability. This particular ability is never as powerful as it reads in practice because both modes are terrible. If you ever put this card on the bottom then you just played a 7 mana 6/6 flyer in a world of cards like Diluvian Primordial. Yeah, let that one sink in. Given that a 6/6 flyer is usually better than an average draw in your deck you'll probably be stuck topping this thing (almost) every time but I mean what is a 6/6 going to accomplish in a multiplayer setting? Kill a player every 3 turns (let's be reasonable and not assume that everyone is still at 20)? That's so incredibly weak that it's not even funny. There's realistically no relevant applications for this kind of card in that sense.
Global Grade D- Not Cubeworthy
Atarka's Command: I think that "Sizzle" decks filled with Price of Progresses and whatnot are almost unplayable so I couldn't foresee myself ever playing with this card nowadays. It's far too aggressively slanted for my tastes. It'll obviously have some Constructed applications if you are looking to build a Sulfuric Vortex deck of sorts but I would never advise playing this thing in EDH or Cube. The problem with the Flame Rift Constructed decks is that they die miserably to pressure and since you're pissing off every single one of your opponents it's nearly impossible to win the race in my experience. Chandra's Spitfire will enable you to kill a player or two off (maybe) but the collective effort of the table is virtually always enough to ensure that you can never take home the W.
Constructed Grade D
EDH/Cube Grade F Not Cubeworthy
Dragonlord Atarka: I'll still take Bogardan Hellkite any day of the week thanks. That being said I don't mind this card because it's enormous + it provides an immediate impact. I'm not overly concerned about the fact that she can't burninate players because I've basically never seen Bogardan Hellkite go to the dome to begin with. Someone always has something more threatening to remove. The fact that she's an 8/8 flying trampler is certainly relevant because that is one incredibly fast clock. Dragons are usually 5/5 flyers for like 6-8 and so getting a "free" +3/+3 figures to be relevant in a large % of your games. At the end of the day the biggest strike against this card in Constructed is that she's not a Molten Primordial/Sylvan Primordial which are are both dirt cheap and significantly more powerful. Since you're not going to be playing with eight 7 drops in your lists I don't expect to see much of her in the format. Still, hey, I would not be surprised to see her creep her way into EDH and possible even Cube. She fits the bill of being a "nut average" 7 drop that provides instant impact and that has a huge body. For anyone wondering why I'm not drooling over her, I'm not big on Flametongue Kavus in general. Putting another player behind is worse than putting your self ahead in a multiplayer setting and this is very much a "must kill" threat that players will have ample opportunity to respond to. Bogardan Hellkite costs more mana and has weaker stats but being able to Flash him in combat or at EOT drastically reduces the window with which players can interact with him. Atarka is good, don't get me wrong, I just don't want to pay 7 mana to kill 1-2 threats and have my fatty die to removal (maybe she gets a hit or two in, maybe not, it doesn't matter much). I would much rather play with a Sylvan Primordial style threat that accrues additional resources for myself.
Global Grade C+ Cubeworthy
Dragonlord Dromoka: There's some merit to fielding threats that force your opponents to react in specific ways but I generally dislike these kinds of finishers in multiplayer. Far more often than not their textboxes are relatively blank which makes them overcosted, underpowered finishers that never accomplish much of anything. They're obviously not horrendous or anything, they have a whack of stats and effects for a reasonable cost, I just never care if people play these kinds of cards against me.
Global Grade D Not Cubeworthy
Dragonlord Kolaghan: In my original review I had Kolaghan lumped together with Dromoka because both cards seemed equally unimpressive to me. Since then numerous people (in this thread and IRL) have defended it on the basis that it's solid Haste enabler. While I was obviously aware of this at the time it's entirely possible that I'm undervaluing the effect. I'm still not impressed with the card but I will concede the fact that he contends with Urabrask the Hidden and Anger with respect to being a mass Haste enabler. While it's true that Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund is the one true King not everyone builds Dragon decks and not everyone plays Jund colors all of the time. I also probably overlooked the fact that Urabrask the Hidden has slowly crept from 2 to 5 dollars since I first started playing with it. Furthermore, he's not a card that Dragonstorm can fetch and Patriarch's Bidding on Dragons won't bring it back. Crux of Fate naming non-Dragons is also going to axe him so there are very legitimate reasons to use Kolaghan instead. Even if you exclude one turn kill strategies granting your entire team Haste is a very big game in formats dominated by Wraths. It enables you to pressure Control out of the game before they can take a complete stranglehold on the match and grind you you with card draw, life gain and uninteractive finishers. While I don't expect his "deal 10" ability to be especially relevant on balance it will lock people out of playing certain spells in Constructed. I don't like that it's basically blank text in EDH and Cube, I think that he's very marginal in said formats for that reason alone, but even as a big Haste enabler he's still a relevant threat.
Dragonlord Ojutai: It has "Hexproof" and "draw a card" on it so it immediately intrigues me more than the other dragons. Barring a Wrath it's not going to die the turn that you play it and even though it's vulnerable on O by then you'll have untapped mana to protect it with Forbid, Dismiss, Cryptic Command, etc. At that point you have a giant Thieving Magpie who still has legitimate defensive value if needed.
Constructed/Cube Grade C
EDH Grade D Cubeworthy
Dragonlord Silumgar: Callous Oppressor, at 3 mana, is good. Sower of Temptation, at 4 mana, is playable. Silumgar, at 6 mana, is sketchy at best. The obvious saving grace to the card is that you can steal and ult/self-kill Planeswalkers but that's a difficult thing to evaluate in a vacuum. In the dark I'd say that the card is stone-unplayable but that opinion is heavily biased in the sense that I think 'Walkers are horrendous in general. In my experience they come down, do their +1 or +2 and die to some evasive beater immediately. I can count the number of 'Walker ultimates that I've seen on 1 hand (it's 1) because there's just no reason to ever leave those things alive and it's virtually impossible to cast them on stable boards. In that sense I see Silumgar as a very expensive and bad Sower of Temptation who'll rarely provide adequate value. His stock clearly rises in decks with dedicated sacrifice outlets but in general I wouldn't want to have this type of 6 drop in my lists.
Global Grade C- Not Cubeworthy
Dromoka's Command: While slightly better than Atarka's Command you're not going to write home about this thing. I could easily see myself getting value out of all 4 abilities and I think that people will underestimate how frequently this'll "counter" an Earthquake or whatever. Still, barring that you're basically looking at a conditional 2-for-1 in a color combo that has access to things like Aura Shards and Mirari's Wake. You have vastly superior alternatives to field in Cube/EDH in that sense and the power-level just isn't there for Constructed either. There's obviously enough versatility to make it a marginal playable, people will cast this and it'll probably always be "fine," this is just not the kind of card that I personally want to be resolving in an a multiplayer setting.
Global Grade D Not Cubeworthy
Harbinger of the Hunt: A 5/3 flyer with an upside for 5 is "fine" but at 3 mana per activation I just couldn't imagine generating significant value from his activated abilities. Killing 1-2 drops is "something" but that's not what I want to be doing with my time and mana on turn 6 and beyond. Again, the baseline stats and potential upside ensure that it can never be unplayable but I don't think that anyone is scrambling to make room for this guy in their lists.
Grade D- Not Cubeworthy
Kolaghan's Command: Unlike Atarka's Command this will virtually always be a 2-for-1 at instant speed for 3 mana. Given that I would play an instant-speed Divination in a huge % of my decks some variation of it has to be a playable Magic card. While the "target player discards a card" clause may seem irrelevant the sad fact of the matter is that you'll probably need to cast this as a removal spell early on and you probably won't have Raise Dead targets available to you. Where I play someone will almost always have a piece of Artifact mana to shoot but that won't be a universal law for everyone I don't think. I wouldn't be excited to play with this card because the power-level just plain isn't there but if it found its way into one of my Rakdos Cube decks I'd probably always get a decent amount of value out of it. I don't think that it's remotely playable in EDH, it's just way too weak, but it does seem reasonable in more aggressive formats.
Constructed/Cube Grade D
EDH Grade F Cubeworthy
Narset Transcendent: 'Walkers like these are unplayable trash in my opinion. She's going to be a "4 mana, draw .3 cards" spell in my circles which is exactly as unplayable as it sounds. Doubling up on draw spells/Swords to Plowshares/ etc. is "fine" but it's not something that I'm usually willing to tap out at Sorcery speed to do. Ok, Rebound is significantly better than doubling a spell (especially for things like mass removal) but not enough to convince me to like this card. Her ultimate is also garbage in the sense that it basically doesn't do anything. Obviously you can combo it with Humility and whatnot to make it relevant but if your combo involves ulting a 'Walker then you're living in Magical Christmas Land. I like that Doubling Season allows for an instant ult activation but, again, you need at least 1 more card (Humility/Moat) to lock the game up from there. That's way too fair + slow + unreliable for my tastes. I would actively put this card in opposing UW decks because I just don't care if people play with these kinds of cards in a multiplayer setting. We often joke about Jace, the Mindsculptor is a 4 mana Brainstorm because that's realistically the only thing that he's ever done when cast. In my experience the only time that 'Walkers are relevant are in situations where you've already locked-up the game and could close it out with just about anything.
Global Grade D Not Cubeworthy
Necromaster Dragon: A 5 drop that has to deal combat damage and pay mana to produce a 2/2 and a bit of mill? I know what you're rating you're getting my friend (hint: it's a D)! I know that I probably sound like a broken record at this point but there's not much to say about these kinds of marginal threats. I know that people like to play with things like Nemesis of Reason but I've realistically never seen them be actively good. I'm not saying that it's hard to attack with these kinds of threats, you'll get a ton of swings off, my problem is that it's meaningless even when they are connecting. A bit of mill is trivial and a conditional token producer on a marginal body is a far cry from an Ant Queen or what have you. That is, the reason why these kinds of cards are so weak is because not only do they fail to consistently provide value (they die to removal at not benefit) but even when they do its marginal value that has next-to-no impact on the game. When you compare that to significance that Gray Merchant of Asphodel has on a match your threats start to feel very inadequate.
Constructed Grade D
Cube/EDH Grade F Not Cubeworthy
Ojutai's Command: People love toolbox cards/enablers in general and Commands certainly qualify. Even if they're not the best cards in the world their flexibility and power will always make them fan favorites. Besides, I'll happily play with the card Dismiss in any multiplayer format and this is ostensibly a more flexible version of the card. The inability to counter game-ending bombs such as Rite of Replication, Insurrection and Exsanguinate is obviously a legitimate drawback but you'll always nail something amazing and nab your free card in the process. This card's stock rises dramatically in lists that have access to Stoneforge Mystic because then your 2-for-1 becomes a 3-for-1 and it all happens at instant speed at EOT. I'm not thrilled with this card or anything, the 4 life seems relatively useless and not every deck is going to have amazing 2 drops to recur but at the end of the day it's hard for a Dismiss with additional modes to be bad (just look at Cryptic Command) so I'm sure this will have some amount of long-term value in the multiplayer sphere.
Global Grade C Cubeworthy
Pristine Skywise: How the Hell is that a name for a Dragon? That aside I like this card because it's a legitimately good threat on both O and D. A 6/4 evasive beater is a real clock in non-EDH formats and it's difficult to attack into a critter that can untap itself and gain colored protections. It's not amazing by any means, it's no Sun Titan or whatever, but it's a big evasive body that always threatens favorable blocks making it a solid (but unexciting) playable. I want to stress that the threat of the untap is significantly more power than the untap itself. I would just plain not attack my Grave Titan (or whatever) into one of these knowing that if my opponent does have a spell to untap it and give it pro-Black then I'd be screwed. Whether they have the the spell or nor is irrelevant in those scenarios because it virtually never makes sense to risk it. This card is deceptively powerful in that sense because even when you don't "have it" the card is still extremely threatening.
Constructed/Cube Grade C-
EDH Grade D- Cubeworthy
Ruthless Deathfang: A an evasive 4/4 isn't much of a clock on turns 7 and beyond and the fact that it needs some amount of support absolutely kills the card for me. It's another durdle tha'll die to removal at no benefit in a world of cards like Massacre Wurm. Besides, Dictate of Erebos is cheaper, more durable and can be cast at instant speed. Sorry buddy, that's a fight that you just can't win. I suppose that a 4/4 flyer with an upside is somewhat playable, the power-ceiling on this guy is fairly high, I just couldn't imagine a "winning" deck that would want this as its 6 drop. Grave Pact costs 4 mana and Grave Pact this thing is not. I wouldn't even play it over something like Attrition really.
Global Grade D Not Cubeworthy
Sarkhan Unbroken: This is what a multiplayer Planeswalker needs to look like in my mind. The baseline card is 4/4 flyer for 5 with an upside. No one would willingly play a "Serra Angel" by choice but this card is obviously much better than that. Drawing a card and ramping are both powerful effects to have on a + ability and ensure you'll be able to generate a good amount of value from this guy every time that you manage to keep him around. I like that he jumps you straight to Primordial mana on the following turn which is a good place to be in a multiplayer setting. His ultimate is also extremely powerful and pairs well with Doubling Season. Fetching Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund and a whack of other Dragons and win on the spot should enable you to win on the spot in the vast majority of your games. Given that every Green EDH deck already plays that card I have to think that this card will see some play in that format. Given that all of the abilities are powerful, aggressively costed and generate card advantage you really don't need him to survive for very long to get your mana's worth. He's not some bomb that will dominate the game each and every time that he's cast but there's more than enough going on here to get excited over this guy. Even someone like me who typically hates 'Walkers likes what he sees so far.
Constructed/EDH Grade C
Cube Grade D Not Cubeworthy
Savage Ventmaw: 6 free mana every turn is a lot of mana. Cards that immediately spring to mind are Aggravated Assault and Hellkite Charger but I mean there's any number of things that you can do with ramp of this magnitude. Genesis Wave, Tooth and Nail, Primal Surge and much more are all fantastic cards to cheat out early on. I realize that this thing is a 6 drop that dies to removal but if it's one thing that I've learned while playing Cube/EDH it's that even "bad" versions of big mana can still very easily win games. If at any point you're able to produce 12+ mana in a given turn you should be able to very easily win the game. This isn't some bomb that can compete with Inferno Titan at 6 CMC or anything but it's still the kind of card that I want to playing with. The upside of being able to hardcast Primal Surge or an enormous Genesis Waves offsets the fact that this card can (and will) be killed at no benefit. Given that this thing'll basically be free I highly recommend acquiring 4 and never looking back. Even if you're not abusing Sneak Attack or whatever to break the trigger it's still an insanely powerful 6 drop if it ever gets to attack. Given that it resides in the colors with Fires of Yavimaya, Anger, Urabrask the Hidden, etc. that isn't exactly saying very much. The upside of producing 6 free mana every turn is just absolutely insane to the point where this thing reminds me of Primeval Titan. It's obviously significantly weaker, it dies to removal, but if people don't kill it immediately then I don't see how you can possibly lose. As it stands this is easily one of my favorite cards in the set and I highly recommend acquiring some.
Global Grade C Cubeworthy
Silumgar's Command: Why does this thing cost 5? It's absolutely awful. Counter-kill is a nice swing, I'll give it that, but every other combo just seems atrocious. I do expect to see this card played a fair amount if only because it's a Command and "it's cool" but this isn't what you want to be doing in a multiplayer setting in my mind. Profane Command was amazing because it was almost impossible to construct a scenario where you weren't ecstatic to cast some combination of it. This card feels similar except I could easily see myself not feeling good about most of the options. I do realize that it's instant-speed vs sorcery-speed and so obviously the sorcery will have the stronger effect but I just don't see why I'd want to cast this at EOT in my UB decks. I'd much rather resolve a Fact or Fiction/Jace's Ingenuity or something and draw a whack of cards than go for some marginal 2-for-1.
Global Grade D+ Not Cubeworthy
Swift Warkite: It's a 6 drop that offers immediate impact so it's probably a marginal playable. I don't know what you'd actually cheat into play with this thing but if nothing else it can act as a Gravedigger of sorts. Hey, you never know, plopping a hasted Wight of Precinct Six or even a Big Game Hunter into play could be a "something." If someone can think of a way to break this card, by all means, share with the rest of the class. Until then I'll just list it as a slightly below average finisher.
Global Grade D+ Not Cubeworthy
Overall Grade: D Closing Thoughts: My standout multicolor picks include Dragonlord Atarka, Sarkhan Unbroken and Savage Ventmaw. Dragonlord Ojutai, Dragonlord Silumgar, Ojutai's Command, Silumgar's Command and Swift Warkite all strike me as being playable but they do feel like a step below the ones that I previously mentioned. Everything else I could live without. For what it's worth I'm not partial to UW or UB so don't read too much into the fact that 2 dragons and their commands made the list whereas the none of the others did. They're simply objectively stronger cards in my mind. What I will say is that most of the multicolor cards are actually "cool" and I wouldn't hate to play with most of them. I don't think that they have very much in the way of raw power but they seem like they'd be fun to play (both with and against) and that definitely counts for something. As such you won't hear any doom and gloom from me on the multicolor front. All-in-all I think that Wizards good job of producing some solid-yet-fair playables.
Artifact
Atarka Monument et al: 3 mana is too much to pay for a Gruul Signet and the prospect of paying 6 mana to maybe deal 4 damage a turn shouldn't entice anyone. 3 CMC mana rocks such as these never have and never will be "fine" to play in EDH (or any format for that matter) because they're significantly worse than countless alternatives that do vastly more broken things for their cost. Do not under any circumstances convince yourself that these are playable magic cards. They aren't.
Global Grade F Not Cubeworthy
Tapestry of the Ages: They lost me at the condition. This is a terrible version of Seer's Sundial and how frequently do you see that card being played? I know that it's not strictly worse or anything but the power-ceiling on this card is abysmally low and the floor is even lower (albeit not by much). This is the kind of card that I would gladly put in my opponents' decks (in any format) because there's just no world in which I could see myself getting buried by the card advantage that it generates over the course of the game.
Global Grade D- Not Cubeworthy
Vial of Dragonfire: It's now confirmed that Renowned Weaponsmith is a beefier Vedalken Engineer with no additional text. I'm willing to live with that. Feel free to play with the Smith in your Artifact-based decks but do not feel compelled to play with this horrendous do-nothing. A Worn Powerstone that blocks 2 power creatures is good enough to play.
Global Grade F Not Cubeworthy
Overall Grade: F Closing Thoughts: Let's just pretend like we didn't see anything :3.
Land
Evolving Wilds: Every player needs 10 of these. It's cheap color fixing, Delve enabling, library manipulation, etc. If you're playing with a 2-3 color deck that doesn't have many 1 drops (i.e. most multicolor decks) then you need a very good reason to be playing with fewer than 4 copies of this badboy. Reprint it as much as you Wizards because it'll always be a solid playable for us casuals.
Global Grade C+ Cubeworthy
Haven of the Spirit Dragon: Crucible of the Spirit Dragon was bland so I'm glad that the new version is a legitimate playable. Free color fixing and low-opportunity cost recursion is a welcome addition to any creature-based deck making this a must-include. There's virtually no reason to omit it from your Dragon builds because it's strictly better than any of your alternatives. Always play this card in any quantity in your Dragon decks (if it fits within the budget obviously).
Constructed/EDH Grade C+
Cube Grade F Not Cubeworthy
Overall Grade: B Closing Thoughts: One good reprint and one new staple for Dragon decks. I'll take it.
Conclusion
The lackluster finale to the unexciting block has reached its conclusion. The general consensus seems to be that DTK was a forgettable set and I tend to agree with that point of view. The "best" offerings that it had for multiplayer are either virtual reprints or slightly different takes on cards that we've seen numerous times already. The new Commands are all extremely marginal and the other cycles weren't any sexier. While Wizards managed to churn out a lot of random midrange nonsense they didn't provide much in the way of solid finishers. Everything is too weak and too niche to have any serious impact on an average game which leaves a lot to be desired. While they did manage to sneak a few goodies in there most of them have very narrow applications in specific archetypes in specific formats. Sidisi, Undead Vizier in EDH, Shorecrasher Elemental in Constructed mono-Blue Devotion and Dragonlord's Prerogative a secondary Opportunity for Cube are all examples of cards that are very exciting in 1-2 decks in 1-2 formats but that probably won't see much play beyond that. It's an extremely forgettable set in that sense and not one that I recommend investing heavily into.
I love niche cards like Assault Formation. To me they are what makes magic great. Its the cards that are good in any deck that I find boring. My friend has a gate/wall deck. He wins with crackling perimeter or Vent Sentinel or Maze's end. He already runs Doran, the siege tower, but in his deck I could see adding Assault Formation in addition to doran or replacing Doran, the siege tower with it. I agree that 3 mana for a 5 power creature is good, but since the rest of my friends creatures are walls, having one creature able to attack isn't all that helpful, especially when you don't want that attacker to die. In his deck its there to pump everything else and virtually never swings.
Niche decks are fun to build and fun to play against. Magic needs more niche cards and less cards that are great in anything.
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I was the guy playing the relentless rats deck back during mirrodin and kamigawa blocks. Yes, cranial extraction was used on me. No, I didn't win much. Yes, I do have a relentless rats edh deck. No, it doesn't win much either...
I love niche cards like Assault Formation. To me they are what makes magic great. Its the cards that are good in any deck that I find boring.
I'm not saying that every card needs to be good in every deck. For example, I love Dark Deal from the previous set. It may not be good in 95% of all Black decks but it's AMAZING in the Waste Not/Notion Thief ones. I'm all for niche cards as long as they enable legitimately powerful strategies/archetypes that actually do something relevant. There are countless numbers of cool + marginal things that you can do in Magic which is why it's no nice to be able to do something powerful.
I have a very generous outlook when it comes to magic cards. I love niche things and see value in cards that are bad in 99% of decks. With that outlook of the 264 cards in this set I can only imagine playing these 18 cards in any format other then booster draft. This set just sucks.
I was the guy playing the relentless rats deck back during mirrodin and kamigawa blocks. Yes, cranial extraction was used on me. No, I didn't win much. Yes, I do have a relentless rats edh deck. No, it doesn't win much either...
The wording for those wild growth cards has always confused me so I may be wrong. Sheltered Aerie allows the land to tap for 2. Thats clear to me, but doesn't overgrowth make it tap for 3? 1 from the land itself plus 2 from the enchantment? So isn't overgrowth clearly better then sheltered Aerie? or if not better at least different enough to be a valid alternative depending on the deck?
I was the guy playing the relentless rats deck back during mirrodin and kamigawa blocks. Yes, cranial extraction was used on me. No, I didn't win much. Yes, I do have a relentless rats edh deck. No, it doesn't win much either...
The wording for those wild growth cards has always confused me so I may be wrong. Sheltered Aerie allows the land to tap for 2. Thats clear to me, but doesn't overgrowth make it tap for 3? 1 from the land itself plus 2 from the enchantment? So isn't overgrowth clearly better then sheltered Aerie? or if not better at least different enough to be a valid alternative depending on the deck?
Ah shoot. My mistake. I thought that it was a legitimately good card and was surprised that no one else seemed to care about it. Now I understand why XD. Anyways, yes, you're right, the card is terrible. In my mind I was thinking about it like Overgrowth when it clearly isn't. It's just unplayable trash.
Personally, I always very much enjoy these reviews. They give me perspective and help me decide on whether I buy a box or shoot for singles. Anyway, since I've been working on my Bladewing Reanimator deck for awhile now, I wanted to delve a little deeper into Swift Warkite by brainstorming over possible targets in EDH and mutliplayer lists. Off the top of my head, Doomed Necromancer, Big Game Hunter, and the aforementioned Wight of Precinct Six sound like decent choices. Pilgrim's Eye is another. Ball Lightning?
Dragon Tempest: Certainly not deserving of the "generically good card that won't make a deck much better or worse" grade; it's neither generic nor good. It's extremely niche and not actually good even in its niche.
You make similar remarks multiple times throughout your post so I'll just say this once for all of them. I know that my rating scale has changed since you made that reply but even at the time I always clearly labeled my reviews with disclaimers such as "this only applies to Dragon decks." I'm unable to present a grading scale that's applicable to all cards but I feel as though I did an adequate job of explaining that it doesn't make sense to rate "Dragons matter" cards in a vacuum because they'll basically never be played in one.
Dealing 1 damage on turn 6 is pitiful and if you're dealing more than 1 you're winning anyway. Haste might look great on dragons but you should expect to be on the defensive and tapped dragons don't block. It could do some work in a deck full of Mordant Dragons and Balefire Dragons, but those are tier 2 dragons. I wouldn't mind spending $1 on a set on the off-chance I'm wrong, though.
I fundamentally disagree with this opinion in its entirety. To the best of my knowledge there isn't a single dragon that offers any reasonable value while sitting on D and for the life of me I don't see how a defensive Dragon deck could win a game. Most of the best Dragons reward you for attacking so it makes absolutely no sense to me when you say that you should be holding them back. Why, then, play Dragons in the first place? Scourge of the Throne, Hellkite Charger, Balefire Dragon, Dragon Mage and Utvara Hellkite are all what I consider to be "top tier" Dragons and none of them do anything when your team is sitting back on your side of the table. With respect to "if you're dealing more than 1 you're winning anyways," again, I completely disagree. A 5/5 Dragon, to me, is basically nothing. That's never going to race Gray Merchant of Asphodel recursion, beat past a Sylvan Primordial, race a Mob Rule, etc. Dragons are tier 2 finishers at best and the idea that single one can put you in a winning position in a somewhat serious multiplayer game just doesn't register with what I see on a regular basis. I would gladly play against someone who sandbagged all of his/her threats under the assumption that single flying beater would be good enough to seal a game. That's an insignificant clock as far as I'm concerned. Unless that thing is pinging for at LEAST 2-3 in the later stages of the game I wouldn't bet a dime on your ability to go on to win that game.
Lightning Berserker: I would feel embarrassed to draw this on turn 8. Fireball on turn 8 is not good, merely OK. This on turn 8 is not OK, merely bad. If you can afford a playset of Nykthos, you can do better than this.
Can you though? I'm legitimately asking. The only 1 drops that I've ever played in Red Devotion are Figure of Destiny and Dragonmaster Outcast. I don't think that Grim Lavamancer variants are playable and Goblin Welder never has enough targets. If there's obvious 1 drops that I'm missing, by all means, share your tech. Nykthos-based decks are my favorite archetypes and I'm always looking for new ways to spice up my brews.
Den Protector: Eternal Witness #2 for Commander at best. Way too clunky for 60-card Magic. Also, the statement "most people don't actually own Fetchlands" is mutually exclusive with "every player needs 10 Evolving Wilds".
I agree that in an ideal world people would always play copies of Eternal Witness first and foremost but I've had some Europeans and such tell me that cards like that run for a lot of money in their LGSes and that they don't have access to same online stores. With that in mind I don't like to assume that people can always purchase those kinds of cards in any number.
With respect to the other statement, I don't see why. "Should own" isn't the same thing as "own" so the statements aren't mutually exclusive by any means. Furthermore, ETBT fetchlands such as Terramorphic Expanse are significantly weaker than true fetchlands such as Wooded Foothills. Witness on the latter means that she can be played a Borderland Ranger early on as needed but if you're nabbing an Evolving Wilds then it isn't nearly as good.
I won't argue that she's a powerful card but I personally put more stock into Flash. My Red decks tend to overkill by a large amount far more often than they squeak through for exactsies so I'm less worried about the size and more worried about the utility. 7 vs 8 is obviously big, I won't argue otherwise, but I'm not convinced that the Flametongue Kavu aspect of the card is that easy to overlook. Casting this thing mid combat to shoot one thing and eat another is a big swing that I routinely see in EDH. Atarka may very well prove to be right up there with Primordials but I'm not that hopeful for her just yet.
Ruthless Deathfang: Relevant enchantments on legs (or wings) should not be underestimated. Sure, they're easier to remove, but they're also easier to get back. The problem here, however, is that this is notGrave Pact; it only triggers on sacrifice (no Skullclamping) and only hits one opponent.
The way I see this card is that even if I'm wrong about it it can't possibly be by that much. I might rate it a D- and in practice it might actually be a D+ or C- but there's absolutely no world in which it's a B- or above. Whereas I could be completely wrong about Clone Legion and get absolutely trounced by that card every time I'm not worried about where a card like Ruthless Deathfang will ultimately fall once all of the cards are on the table.
Sarkhan Unbroken's obvious application, to me, is to alternate crapping out a dragon and drawing one or two cards. If anyone wants to get it off the table they'll have to deal with the dragon token. Looks sweet to me. Forget about Doubling Season combo, though; Jace, Architect of Thought already has that covered, and just how many dragons do you plan on jamming in a Doubling Season deck anyway?
I'm satisfied with my B (previously 4) rating. A big part of what I do is attempt to bring budget-minded advice to budget-minded players and a big part of that involves pretending that things like true duals and Fetchlands don't exist. It makes absolutely no sense for me to use them as baseline discussion tools when they're not realistic options by any means. I agree that Karoos are awesome and I love me some trilands as well but none of that will ever change the fact that Evolving Wilds and Terramorphic Expanse are "must haves" for any 2-3 color deck that doesn't field many 1 drops. Those decks will basically always play those kinds of cards and there aren't amazing + affordable alternatives so I'm satisfied with my rating even if it's slightly inflated. This is another instance where I don't really care if the card is a C or a C+ or a B or whatever. The card is very good and every single casual player should own a ton of them and I won't feel bad if someone acquires a bunch because they see a "B" rating from me. I would much rather people acquire too many than too few because you will always find homes for your copies so I just couldn't care less if my rating is higher than it should be.
Dragonlord's Servant: Dragon decks aren't super impressive to begin with, but this card does several useful things and that's not bad for a 2-drop. Unlike Dragonspeaker Shaman, this thing can actually block and survive the odd sweeper.
It's not that I don't think that is card is playable it's just not something that I felt like discussing. It's a marginal 2 CMC ramper for Dragon decks that dies to removal but that has the upside of being a blocker which means that it has slightly more value in the ultra-early and ultra-late stages of the game. I don't really care if people elect to field it or Fire Diamond or Urza's Incubator as long as they pick something to power their Dragons out. I probably should touch on it to some extent, it's a playable Magic card, I guess I just kind of figured that people can put 2 and 2 together and slot that and Dragonspeaker Shaman (I don't hate that card for what it's worth) in their Dragon decks. I do mean that in the least condescending way possible for what it's worth. A big part of why I write this is to highlight cards that I personally feel like discussing which rarely includes random utility spells with obvious applications. I just don't find them especially interesting. This card, for example, slots into exactly one deck and clearly has no Cube applications unless that's a supported theme. Everything about the card is blatantly obvious which is why I find it so boring. I didn't rate Obscuring Aether for similar reasons. It's good in exactly one archetype (Constructed Morph) and has absolutely no worth beyond that. It's good when played exactly on turn 1 and from then on it's lackluster at best. Again, it's a playable Magic card, it's just not something that I felt like taking the time to discuss. The Secret Plans all-morph archetype is probably going to play it but nothing else will.
My dragon deck contains Dragon Broodmother and Scourge of Valkas and doesn't need to attack at all. Dragon decks can't race and must stabilize before they can win, so I don't see the problem with winning one turn later. Even Steel Hellkite doesn't benefit from haste all that much since you don't have any mana to blow up more than tokens if you cast it on-curve.
Valkas isn't a card that wins games if it sits back on D. From the sounds of things you're able to cast a Dragon Broodmother and no one at the table plays any interaction so it automatically wins the game. Again, that's nothing like what I experience but if it works for you then so be it. Still, I don't really understand the "winning one turn later" comment. How does casting one Dragon and attacking with it allow you to win? Do you really just cast a Broodmother, wait 2 or 3 turns and attack for the win? And no one can ever do anything about it or race that clock? This all seems very peculiar to me.
I run Utvara Hellkite because it's insane with Dragon Broodmother but I consider the other ones too inefficient. Why would you ever want to attack with Dragon Mage anyway? You're the one with the 8-drops, so why are you refilling other people's hands?
It's good for the reason that Wheel of Fortune is good in that sense. If you're just playing a fair game of Magic then the cards are absolutely God-awful in my mind. Even though you get the cards "first" if your opponents still have the ability to play them then that doesn't have much significance. In that sense you only play these cards because they enable gaming winning OTK sequences as you dig into extra combat phase + Gratuitous Violence/Savage Beating/Berserker's Onslaught + Insurrection type effects that win games on the spot. Even things like EOT Dictate of the Twin Gods go a long way to ensuring that you'll be able to untap and win from a 1-2 creature position. I know that I'm listing a lot of cards but it's not because they're all required. They're mostly interchangeable combo pieces and you typically only need 2-3 of them to go off and win. This is very relevant for someone like me who does a lot of Cube and EDH. You can't draft the nut Red deck in Cube every game but as long as you draw "a" extra combat phase card and "a" Mob Rule card then it's not hard to seal a game. You obviously want Sneak Attack and you'll never pass it but the decks still work without it (same if you don't draw it in EDH). You still have things like Mana Geyser which, for someone like me, is basically infinite mana for all intents and purposes. I don't need everyone to be tapped-out with 8 lands in play to generate the ~12 mana required in order to dump the rest of my hand onto the table. You're also obviously drafting mana rocks and such and plenty of games go for 15+ turns to begin with so time isn't much of a concern.
Dragonlord's Servant competes directly with some other cards and I don't consider it obvious which one's better.
It's not so much the problem of "which is card is better" for someone like me. I don't really care which one is actually best. In the dark I would never tell someone to cut the Servants from a Dragon deck in order to make room for Charcoal Diamond (or whatever, random example) unless the personally expressed a need for an alternative. Even if card N would be slightly better in that slot I don't like nit-picking too much and want to give people as much deckbuilding freedom as possible. I personally don't like creature-based ramp that costs more than 1 mana because at that point I'd rather play with something more durable. That's obviously influenced by the number of Wraths played in my circles and it also speaks to my personal preference towards playing things like Wildfire and Burning of Xinye in my decks filled with 5+ toughness creatures. The thing is that none of that makes the little guy a bad guy. He may not work for me and my personal preferences but for someone else who needs early blockers and who doesn't want to play with Wildfire then he's fine. That's the problem with this kind of card. It's so generic and marginal that personal preference and metagame matters way more than anything else. What you or I think about the card is almost trivial. That's how I see it anyways.
But is it good in that archetype? In my experience, many narrow and "obvious" cards are actually not good even in their intended niche (see: Dragonspeaker Shaman). That's why I think they merit discussion.
The thing is that everyone's opinion on these cards will vary wildly. I personally think that Dragonspeaker Shaman is fine (albeit unexciting). I don't play the card myself but people have played it against me and since players are virtually never willing to expend removal on it it does its job of powering a Dragon or two out. It's a marginal playable just like countless other cards. No one is going to play 10/10s in 100% of their decks so I fully expect to see cards like these on a regular basis.
Obscuring Aether is a very similar card in my mind. It has a worthless flip ability but the Emerald Medallion impersonation is "good enough" in the right archetype. Given that this is multiplayer you can aggressively mull for one in your opening hand and the card isn't bad in multiples by any means. As long as your deck has a bunch of Secret Plans and whatnot you should be able to generate a fair amount of value from cost reduction. Is the card a "must have"? Not by a long shot. If you told me that you wanted to build a Morph deck without it then I wouldn't flip my lid. Wizards just plain doesn't print cards like Fluctuator anymore; you're not getting an insane rate either way.
For me it's the difference between getting 4 or not.
Yeah, that was my bad. If I'm going to do these reviews then I better do them right because there's a reasonable chance that it'll influence what people acquire from the set. I've since reviewed all of the "boring" cards like Obscuring Aether, Anticipate, Ultimate Price and Dragonlord's Servant that I previously skipped. "I don't feel like talking bout them" is a poor excuse given that they're all potential role-players in a multiplayer setting.
Besides, sometimes I'm wrong and talking about a card (saying anything about it) can help illuminate that. I've come around on Kolaghan a lot already and, in true Prid3 fashion, I managed to butcher Sheltered Aerie by not reading the effing card. Had I simply said nothing none of this would have been brought to my attention. It was the comments that people like you provided in Kolaghan's defense that made me realize that he wasn't so bad after all. He's not just a bad Anger/Urabrask the Hidden or whatever. If your deck has things like Crux of Fate, Patriarch's Bidding, Dragonstorm, etc. but doesn't have Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund (or even if it does!) then there's absolutely a valid reason to field Kolaghan. This is true even in formats like EDH where his third ability is worthless (let's not get overly technical).
A problem that I have is that I always end up writing/saying too much despite the fact that I try not to. For a set that has like, I dunno, 10 or so playables I somehow managed to write a billion lines of text in which I called 50 cards marginal playables. That's not what I want these reviews to be but that's where they always end up. So yeah, that's kinda why I skipped over some cards that I felt were "obvious" but in for a penny, in for a pound I guess >.<. The irony is obviously that cards like Ultimate Price and Anticipate have significantly more multiplayer value than some random 5 drop which doesn't exactly help my cause.
If your intent is to provide guidance like "I'm just starting out, so which cards should I keep from this booster I just opened?", then maybe it's nice to read that (for instance) Ultimate Price is worth keeping around.
That's a big part of it which is why I did go back and review those kinds of cards.
Without worrying too much about the exact number cards like Serum Visions and Sleight of Hand are less affordable than they once were and Ponder can be a bit sketchy when you're lacking shuffle effects. It's not Brainstorm bad or anything but the card isn't nearly as busted when you can't keep 1 or 2 good cards and ditch the rest. DtT has fallen a lot but it's still a ~$5.00 card (or whatever, I'm not worried about the exact number, it doesn't matter much for the purposes of this discussion) which is enough to make it a legitimate investment for most people that I know. Cards like Alchemy are sweet but they're also Black which doesn't help our new Jeskai overlords. I dislike Augur immensely in EDH because I find that he misses far too frequently. With all of that in mind I could very easily see a world in which a newer who's just starting out would want to have a card like Anticipate in his or her deck. It's not the bomb-diggity or anything but it's an inexpensive card from a recent set that has a worthwhile effect. I know a lot of Magic players and a big % of them want to build decks using cards that they own as much as possible and I have to believe that that's true for a large portion of the global community as well. EDH decks can be a daunting investment and every penny saved can go a long way. Being able to play Anticipate "for free" over a ~$2.00 Sleight of Hand that you'd have to purchase might not seem significant on its own but a few more of those and suddenly you're saving 20 bucks or whatever. I'm not trying to focus too hard on the exact numbers or financial implications here but this kind of stuff can matter a lot to people who don't necessarily have big bankrolls to fuel their hobbies. Once upon a time Serum Visions was an affordable card but Magic is a rich man's hobby and there are plenty of seemingly innocuous cards that are steadily becoming scarce commodities.
I figured as much for Dromoka and Atarka (I'm fairly confident that I always referred to them as "she's" in both set reviews) but I would not have pegged Kolaghan as an XX.
Yesterday I tested Inspiring call in a few of my decks. I have found it to be very impressive. Obviously it needs the right deck, but in that deck its very powerful.
Haven't tried anything else yet. I tend to wait till prices stabilize before I really pick anything up.
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I was the guy playing the relentless rats deck back during mirrodin and kamigawa blocks. Yes, cranial extraction was used on me. No, I didn't win much. Yes, I do have a relentless rats edh deck. No, it doesn't win much either...
Personally none of my valuations of the cards have changed. Some of them might have gone up or down half a letter grade (C to C-, stuff like that) but nothing worth noting or changing. Admittedly I missed the fact that Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit was another combo enabler for the Murderous Redcap decks but I don't focus too much on combos in my initial assessment. Anafenza is certainly more powerful + relevant on average (as opposed to Melira, Sylvok Outcast) but she's a lot harder to cast. I'd probably run 1 of each (minimum) so that I could run them out as Grizzly Bears if needed rather than having extras get stranded in my hand. Otherwise nothing's really changed in my mind. The set is still very unexciting : /.
EDIT: Oh! Berserkers' Onslaught is worse than I thought. I overvalued that one. Being useless on D is a lot more troublesome than I gave credit for. I dislike Rage Reflection, 6 is a lot more than 5, but I didn't realize just how marginal an "offense only" damage doubler would be.
Skullcrack sees enough Eternal play (Modern mostly) that many people expected a more versatile version of the card to see the light of day. Dromoka's Command is one of the cheapest 2-for-1s that you'll ever get in GW and even if you just use it as instant-speed Fight spell (with the +1/+1 counter) it's still passable. A lot of people were pegging it as one of the best cards in the set (although, that doesn't mean anything, people rave about every new card lol).
Thunderbreak Regent's price keeps rising. If anyone was wondering whether to play in the Game Day... you get a foil full-art Thunderbreak Regent if you make top 8 (which, depending on your local metagame, is quite doable if you show up with a "real" deck). The price of that thing will probably settle somewhere between $5-$10, so that's a nice added bonus. I'm still pegging it as "good but not great" and I'm waiting for the price of the regular non-foils to go down.
It's good in aggressive and midrange strategies, it's the cheapest (CMC wise) "good" Dragon to abuse the "Dragons matter" cards, etc. The fact that you can't even Ultimate Price it without getting Bolted is sweet and makes up for the lack of Haste (you get your "hit" anyways).
The problem with Command is that you need things like Snapcaster Mage and Stoneforge Mystic to support it. Those aren't realistic for most people to acquire. Otherwise it's just a "meh" version of Dismiss that has more options but can't counter a Tooth and Nail or whatever.
I agree that Nightveil is insane, I just don't like comparing cards to the "best in slot" alternative and dismissing it if it doesn't hold up. Still, Specter is what? A buck? A dollar for a Phyrexian Arena that deals damage, carries equipment, etc? Yeah... good luck winning that fight Shorecrash-sama. No way in hell I'm paying 7 dollars (or whatever) for a weaker card.
Deathmist Raptor and Ojutai's Exemplars are also surprisingly expensive. I don't think Ojutai's Exemplars is all that hot outside Standard, and I hadn't expected any morph card to be considered for Constructed. Deathmist Raptor is a cool card but it's kind of held back by the fact that you need other morph cards to go along with it, and those all suck.
Ojutai Exemplars... I guess people think it'll be the next Seeker of the Way? 4 mana seems like a lot for something that can die to a Stoke and leaving up a spell is very mana intensive. I hope this guy does something in Standard, he's all-upside and seems powerful, I just figured that he'd be too slow. Also, it's not as though he can beat past Rhino/Tasigur... so... yeah...
Some reflections after having seen the cards actually played:
Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit: In my initial review of this card I focused on its applications in generic creature-based decks rather than her combo applications. In retrospect this was rather nonsensical because a generic 2/2 "with upside" for 2 is never going to see that much multiplayer play but a legitimate combo card can see competitive use for decades. For anyone curious as to how you can "break" her, just pair her with any Persist creature (such as Kitchen Finks) and any free sac outlet (such as Blasting Station). Since that's a legitimately powerful gameplan that defeats any number of opponents I think it was foolish to have focused on the other uses of the card. If she's going to see competitive multiplayer play, and she will, it's going to be as a combo enabler and not as a generic threat. This makes the card significantly better than I initially rated her once you accept the fact that she'll mostly see play in "unfair" decks.
Myth Realized: I knew that this card was going to be bad because it's a giant mana sink that dies to removal and that gets chump-blocked. It's basically just a conditional Mortivore. Having played against it numerous times at this point I have absolutely no idea what anyone ever saw in it. The card has literally never connected with anyone for a significant amount of damage and it's one of the most hilariously bad mid-to-lategame topdecks that I've ever seen. Whereas cards like Sacred Mesa are actively good and on-color this card sits there, soaks a ton of mana and still dies to removal and/or gets chumped. To the few of you who still have high hopes for this card, it's time to move on my friends.
Ojutai Exemplars: While I never gave this card an especially high grade my opinion of it continues to fall further and further as time goes on. It's just a dumb 4 drop that will never win the game and even though it's somewhat "scary" and resilient it just sits around and does nothing. Whereas a card like Monastery Mentor can legitimately beat a table down this guy just sits there and puffs out his chest. I have no plans to slot this card into any current/future decks, I wouldn't add it to my Cube, I'd never dream of playing it in EDH, etc.
Secure the Wastes: I had this card in the high C range when I initially reviewed it but at this point I'd go even higher. This card is stellar and it's something that everyone needs to own many copies of. White decks usually feature cards such as Cathars' Crusade to help them close games out which makes these kinds of threats absolutely insane. At X >= 4 this card is fantastic regardless of what your deck is doing and if you do play with cards like Spear of Heliod then it quickly becomes the strongest thing that you draw at basically every stage of the game. It's done God's work for us in Constructed and Cube and even in EDH it earns its slot in the G/W Token decks. Having another instant-speed threat that you can combo into a Beastmaster Ascension or whatever is back-breaking. Mass removal is literally too slow and spot removal isn't going to save you. It's the best Ivy Elemental that I've ever played with or against and I fully expect to see it played for many years to come. It's just so freaking efficient at basically every point on the curve and turns every Dictate of Heliod into a durable, game-winning threat.
Clone Legion: I pegged this card as being bad in EDH and sure enough it's failed to impress me. It costs 9 mana and it doesn't win the game. People have cast this numerous times and I've never felt as though it put me in a hopeless position. Don't get me wrong, I've lost to it, but I always felt like I had outs to beating the card. This wasn't a Tooth and Nail or an Insurrection. It was a big, dumb spell that won if absolutely no one had anything.
Contradict: Eh, maybe calling this a playable Magic card was a bit of a stretch.
Dragonlord's Prerogative: Opportunity is a lot worse than I remembered it to be. This card quickly shifted from "very good" to "good" to "oh right, there's a reason why no decklist has Opportunity in it any more." Woops. If I had to rate this card today it would be like a high D+ or a low C-.
Gurmag Drowner: While niche I overlooked that this card would be good in Animar, Soul of Elements EDH. There's basically no reason not to play this card in that archetype because it's frequently a 1 mana "Impulse" that even puts another counter on Animar. You'd always play this card in the best versions of that deck and as such this card will see a legitimate amount of competitive EDH play (significantly more than 99% of the cards in the game). Once you have an Earthcraft out (or whatever) it's ridiculously easy to go infinite with these kinds of cantrip threats, especially if you have a Cloudstone Curio kicking around.
Illusory Gains, Living Lore: Still have no idea what to make of these cards. No one (myself included) wants to play with them.
Profaner of the Dead: The fact that this card doesn't say "less than or equal to" is way more important than I thought that it would be. In my mind I just assumed that you could use things like Treasure Mage to find Myr Battlespheres or whatever but in practice the card is quite bad. It's actually worse than Evacuation in my experience and I don't even like that card to begin with. Ultimately it was never close to feeling like a Cyclonic Rift and I have no plans to play it anything at this point.
Shorecrasher Elemental: It was probably wrong to get overly excited about a 3 mana do-nothing threat given that Nightveil Specter is A) inexpensive and B) legitimately amazing. The card is "fine" but it's becoming blatantly clear to me that it doesn't have much of a home outside of mono-U Devotion and even in that deck it's not even the best 3 drop. Before anyone asks, I get that you can Morph and Unmorph this thing to avoid the UUU cost but that seems exceptionally weak to me. I want this card on turn 3, not on turn 5.
Foul Renewal: I convinced myself to give this card a reasonable rating because it's an instant-speed 2-for-1. Now that I realize that I'd never play it over Go for the Throat I'd relegate it as being virtually unplayable.
Sidisi, Undead Vizier: My concerns for this card in Constructed were that she'd be a bad version of Gray Merchant of Asphodel. I wasn't wrong, but as it turns out she functions as copies 5-6 rather nicely. Once you stop looking at her as being a "4 of" card and start looking at her as more of a "2 of" card you start to realize that she's actually quite good even though you need to work to extract value from her. She's still bonkers in EDH and she's sold in Cube but I definitely underestimated her impact on Constructed. She helps you find your bomby singletons such as No Mercy and Whip of Erebos and she's even a Zombie which is A) the best Black tribal deck and B) relevant for Unholy Grotto.
Berserkers' Onslaught: This card ended up being a lot worse than I thought. It wasn't symmetrical which is what I loved about it in the first place but as it turns out you need to do a fair amount of blocking in multiplayer and the card often fell flat on its face. It was little more than king-maker which enabled me to take one player out only to die in the process.
Commune with Lava: Sure enough this card didn't fail to disappoint. I never gave it a stellar review going in to DTK but I do think that it's way closer to a D than a C at this point. Again, I felt that it was important to actually test this card in every format and to give it a fair shot because Red Mages don't have many forms of card advantage available to them. The card seemed weak but it was still worth testing. Was I surprised when it routinely proved to be little more than a 5-6 mana draw 2? No, absolutely not. Was I surprised to see people mainphase the card in order to get multiple land drops out of the deal? Clearly not because I highlighted that interaction in my initial review on it. I never expected much from this card but I'm happy that I took the time to cast it multiple times myself just to see if there was anything that we might have overlooked about it.
Crater Elemental: I still haven't found a home for this thing. I tried making it work in Wildfire decks but the problem is that you can't actually activate it after you "go off" which defeats the purpose of fielding it in the first place. It's probably just a bad card, I have no idea why I want to like it and/or make it work.
Tormenting Voice: I didn't review this card because it's marginal but I probably should have because it's a legitimate staple in formats such as EDH. It's also playable in Constructed even though you don't see it very often. The card is like a D or whatever, it's not good, but it'll see more play than most other Red cards in the game.
Volcanic Vision: Card is basically unplayable in Mono-Red but it's cool in RG. The vast majority of the good expensive Red spells are either mass removal or Insurrection effects and neither combo well with mass removal. None of this should surprise anyone, we all knew that going in, but as it turns out the card works well in Green decks. They have a lot of cards like See the Unwritten and Tooth and Nail which are very strong effects to recur but it's not always easy to find the time to do so. By nuking the field in the process you buy yourself that extra turn needed to "go off." Basically it boils down to the fact that Green has a ton of amazing + big spells but virtually no access to mass removal so this fills a big hole in the "ramp" archetype.
Obscuring Aether: This thing realistically isn't even playable in Morph decks sadly.
Sight of the Scalelords: There was probably no real reason to even review this card. I'm never going to play it nor do I expect anyone else to.
Dragonlord Atarka: I underestimated this card but I don't think that my initial assessment was unreasonable. I still maintain that "Flametongue Kavus" are significantly weaker in MP than they are in duels because "target player loses the game" is significantly weaker than "you win the game" when facing multiple opponents. I'm not trying to get overly technical here but hopefully you can follow my logic. Given the choice of building up my own board (Primeval Titan) or subtracting from someone else's (Inferno Titan) I will virtually always choose the former because that's what'll usually put me in the strongest position to go on to win the match. I don't care who comes in second or last or whatever as long as I clinch the top spot. What I failed to recognize is just how big 8/8 is. It's many orders of magnitude larger than a 5/5 and sometimes it's easy to forget that. The card kills in 2 hits and has multiple forms of (relevant) evasion and so far I haven't seen someone eat 2 attacks from her and go on to win the game. I will argue to the death that her ETB trigger is marginal, significantly worse than basically any Primordial trigger, but the 8/8 body has more impact than I gave credit for. I'm not an idiot, I know that it's big, it's just hard to appreciate just how big 8/8 flying trample is until you play against it. I've played against a lot of 5 power fliers in my day and I've never been especially impressed with their ability to close multiplayer games out. You need 3-4 good hits and that just plain doesn't happen. An 8/8, however, more-or-less does it in 2 and that's just way too fast if you're unable to immediately interact with the thing.
Savage Ventmaw: My initial review of C was too high but even at the time I was aware of this fact. I maintain that this card has actual potential, it does something extremely powerful, it just needs the right home. The problem is that actual broken decks can play significantly more broken cards and fair decks can't really abuse 12+ mana. This puts this card in an extremely awkward position. I like the card, I still think that it's one of the most interesting offerings that we received from DTK, the problem is that it'll probably never find a good home. If I had to give it a more realistic rating today it would probably be a D+. I would never label the card as a D, it has far too many "unfair" applications, but it's not a generic playable or anything. I'm disappointed but ultimately not surprised.
It's kind of funny when you drop three Obscuring Aethers by turn 2 and proceed to dump your hand, but even then you're not producing more than 2-3 morphs. Congratulations, you now have some 2/2s. Oh, and your hand is empty.
Like I said, I expected it to see play in the Secret Plans deck to alleviate that problem but even then the card is just far too marginal to warrant a slot.
I've seen Impact Tremors used (in a Mardu tokens deck). It was obnoxious but really just Purphoros Lite.
I like it as a 2-of in Purph decks to bring further redundancy to the list. I don't think that running 4 is almost ever going to be correct but drawing ~1 per game isn't bad. I currently play the card in WR Tokens, Goblin Tribal and GR Hornet Nest + Blasphemous Act, usually alongside 3 Purphs.
I don't think that surprised you or anyone else though :P. The card was obviously pushed. It has a powerful effect and no realistic downside other than the fact that it's a colorless land.
I've been playing the Tempest as a 2-of and it's been doing fine. The Regent I never liked because a 4/4 flyer for 4 doesn't really impress me. That's certainly not bad or anything but it's not what I want to be doing in a multiplayer setting. It feels way too fair. Still, eh, it's actually one of the better generic 4 drop Dragons available to you so if you're going for full-on Tribal then you kind of have to play it. What else do you run at the 4 drop slot heh? Personally I've been running Ashcloud Phoenix in that slot but I'm also not much of a tribal guy. I don't care about flavour or self-imposed rules. I just like playing with good cards :). I like the Phoenix a lot because it's a high-power flier that blanks the first removal that heads its way which are 2 things that I love having in my lists. Losing 3 toughness is obviously relevant but not enough to get me to switch.
Oh the card is fine in a dedicated Morph deck, my point was merely that you'll virtually never see anyone play the card Nantuko Vigilante in modern Multiplayer decks/Cubes. The Survivalist is an undeniable improvement but it won't have a home outside of an extremely narrow + marginal archetype.
This review is ordered as the cards appear on the MTGS visual spoiler (aka alphabetically). This is to make things easier for you to follow along at home. If you're looking for a specific card (one that was recently spoiled for example) good old Ctrl + F is just as handy as it's ever been. You don't have to scour the entire review to find it. I never evaluate every card because there's absolutely no reason to repeat "this card was designed for Limited" 100 times every set. I'll hit on what I consider to be the key multiplayer cards with an emphasis on the ones that you should make a concerted effort to acquire all things being equal. Bear in mind that all ratings discussed in this evaluation should be taken with a grain of salt. I'm not looking to pin down the perfect letter grade for every single card. I'm merely trying to provide you with a rough estimation of its overall worth.
Grading Scale:
A: Oppressive cards with a relatively unique effects that figure to routinely dominate games in which they're left unchecked. Most of them are going to be insanely powerful "build-around-mes" that'll dramatically increase the overall power-level of any deck that they're slotted in to. These are format definers that can completely warp fledgling metas. Think Gray Merchant of Asphodel, Humility, Consecrated Sphinx, Primeval Titan, Repercussion.
B: Formidable cards that don't offer anything truly unique and that aren't oppressive. People shouldn't have to bend over backwards in order to beat them but decks full of these won't just roll over to any old brew. Think Syphon Mind, Earthquake, Wrath of God, Fact or Fiction, Lurking Predators.
C: Powerful cards that winning decks will want to play. They're not going to blow you away but you'll rarely be disappointed with their performance. A deck full of these won't crush a table but a solid foundation of Cs should be good enough to keep you competitive. Think Vampire Nighthawk, Clever Impersonator, Taurean Mauler, Thragtusk, Restoration Angel.
D: Marginal playables that're unexciting to field. It's not that you can't or shouldn't play them, just don't expect them to yield impressive win %s. Most fun, cool, niche, build-around-me, etc. cards will fall into this category alongside the ones that you'll unhappily field given a lack of alternatives. I don't recommend playing Ds if you can avoid it and I strongly advise that you look for suitable alternatives if it's a realistic option.
F: Weak cards that're unlikely to boast respectable win %s that probably shouldn't be played.
+/-: Used to denote a better or worse N. That is, a B+ represents a strong B whereas C- implies a weak C.
Cubeworthy: simple "yes" or "no" of whether or not I'd Cube with the card myself. That is, would I both put this card in one of Cubes and actively draft it a reasonably high % of the time with plans to maindeck it in a relatively "normal" Cube.
White
Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit: Syndic of Tithes is my baseline for affordable White 2 drops and I don't think that Bolster 1 is so much worse than Extort that you couldn't treat Anafenza as a relatively interchangeable alternative. I don't expect to see this card in EDH (too weak) nor would I advise playing it in Cube (too color intensive) but I could definitely see myself playing with her in Constructed. It fares well in Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx decks that want WW permanents on turn 2 and that're looking to curve out with creatures for the first 4-6 turns of the game. Nykthos is by no means a requirement though. I would gladly jam her into any creature-based deck, especially ones with Squadron Hawk. Bolster isn't an amazing multiplayer keyword by any means but it's free value and overtime it can definitely add up to a lot. I don't expect much from 2 drops not named Stoneforge Mystic to begin with and the effect is still relevant at most stages of the game. You're obviously not happy to draw this card on turn 8 but that's true for 99% of all White 2 drop creatures so that's hardly a strike against her. Feel free to play with this card if you manage to acquire some but don't make a concerted effort to gather them. She's a marginal playable at best.
Constructed Grade D+
EDH/Cube Grade F
Not Cubeworthy
Hidden Dragonslayer: Intrepid Hero this card is not. Being a 2/1 lifelink means that it'll never be strictly worse or anything but if you're in the market for this effect then you may as well play with the card with a substantially higher power-ceiling. I think that Intrepid Hero is underplayed in general and I'm mostly using this entry as an opportunity to plug the card. It's not an inherent bomb that'll always be amazing but running 1 or 2 has a very low opportunity cost and the card has a lot of potential to swing games in a big way. Getting back to the Dragonslayer the power-level just isn't present for any multiplayer format. These kinds of cards aren't really 2-for-1s in my opinion because a 2/1 lifelink is trivial and paying 6 mana to conditionally kill a threat is a terrible rate. Both halves of the card suck and barely add up to a single card in my opinion. Please don't think of this as some amazing Flametongue Kavu style threat that will always provide good value for its cost.
Global Grade D
Not Cubeworthy
Myth Realized: I'm a fan of 1 drops that still have value on turn 8 but this one doesn't quite qualify in my mind. I like the fact that it's a cheap + resilient threat which adds Devotion and I like that it's an inexpensive Enchantment for the Enchantress decks but at the end of the day it's an evasionless creature that dies to removal. It plays a similar role to that of Luminarch Ascension/Sacred Mesa but it's significantly more vulnerable and takes a lot longer to ramp-up when drawn late. Given that your average White deck won't have enough noncreature spells to fuel this thing I can't really think of a home for it. Obviously you could play in in Blue decks filled with cantrips and such but you still run into the problem of having this thing being blanked by blockers and killed by removal. I like the concept of the card and if it were slightly more powerful then I could have seen myself getting behind it but as it stands I don't think that it's especially playable. The power-level is too low for EDH period and it's a marginal playable in the other formats at best.
Constructed/Cube Grade D
EDH Grade F
Not Cubeworthy
Ojutai Exemplars: A Blinking 4 mana 4/4 with lifelink and first strike sounds powerful enough to consider fielding this guy. Isochron Scepter and such are real cards and it even triggers off of things like Oblivion Ring. I don't think that an average White deck will be interested in this guy but a Boros/Jeskai spell-based deck could probably use them as a resilient blocker. My personal problem with the card is that I don't think that fair, spell-based decks are very good in general and a 4/4 for 4 isn't even close to being a real card. Since I'm not willing to work for an above-average 4 drop I don't see a compelling reason to try and make this card work.
Global Grade D
Not Cubeworthy
Profound Journey: At 7 mana you have to be recurring endgame bombs to get any legitimate value from this thing. It's nice that it can buy Enchantments and whatnot back but ultimately it's not better than things like Emeria, the Sky Ruin, Karmic Guide, Reveillark, Sun Titan, Angel of Serenity, etc. on average. It's just not consistently powerful enough to warrant its 7 CMC price-tag. At the end of the day I would actively put this in my opponents' decks because I would much rather play against this than any good White finisher. 2-for-1s lose a lot of their luster on turn 7 when you could just be Mass Calcifying players out of the game. I'm going to give it a slightly higher rating that I might otherwise because this card does have the potential to be very good. It might only swing games 5% of the time (random number, don't read too much into it) but that's still better than a slew of other cards that virtually never will. Some % of the thing this thing will completely turn a game by recurring a True Conviction and an Avacyn, Angel of Hope (or whatever).
Global Grade D+
Not Cubeworthy
Secure the Wastes: Welcome to the saving grace of White in DTK; a simple-yet-effective token producer that works at instant speed. Decree of Justice and White Sun's Zenith are both staples in token-based White decks and I don't see any reason why this one wouldn't also see play. Given that you're probably fielding Anthems such as Intangible Virtue, Spear of Heliod and Dictate of Heliod alongside it this is a fantastic combat trick that trumps Wraths and messes up combat math for anyone trying to race you. It's also superb at fueling things like Hour of Reckoning which can really put the hurt on in the mid and lategame. Still, the strongest aspect of the card is just how blatantly pushed it is. Paying 3 mana for a Raise the Alarm isn't great but everything beyond that is stellar in my mind. 4 mana for 3 bodies at instant speed is easily playable and it only scales up from there. In that sense there's basically no scenario in which this is a dead card that sits in your hand and rots (a problem that White Sun's Zenith can have). It's highly playable in every major multiplayer format and I strongly recommend acquiring them.
Global Grade C+
Cubeworthy
Sunscorch Regent: I've come down a lot on Forgotten Ancient and I don't foresee myself being excited to jam a weaker version that costs more mana into my lists. The evasion and lifegain are obviously swell bonuses but they'll never change the fact that this guy is just another big, dumb 5+ CMC creature that dies to removal at no benefit. If you're looking for a generic playable that won't cost you any money then it's certainly reasonable but don't expecting miracles from this type of threat. I'd rather play with things like Archon of Justice or Increasing Devotion that're significantly more difficult to profitably interact with. That being said I still kinda like playing with these kinds of cards in Cube and EDH because they have a fairly high power-ceiling. In formats where you need to go big or go home it sometimes pays to have cards that can just naturally enhance themselves without any effort or further investments. In that sense I don't mind these kinds of cards even if the best versions of the best decks probably won't want to play them. There's enough going on here that you should probably grab some copies of these once they inevitability make their way to bulk bin.
Global Grade C-
Cubeworthy
Overall Grade: D
Closing Thoughts: If DTK had never came to pass White mages wouldn't have lost any sleep over it. The only standout playable is Secure the Wastes with everything else being marginal filler that we could have easily lived without. I suppose that Sunscorch Regent deserves a bit of a nod as well but I personally don't put much stock in 5+ drops that interact unfavorably with removal. I'm largely unimpressed with the rest of White's haul and I wouldn't expect the set to have much lasting impact in any format.
Anticipate: I haven't had an opportunity to talk about cantrips in a while so I may as well use this as an excuse to cover a few broad topics. Cards like Preordain and Anticipate are solid playables in every Blue deck in every format. Not only do they they smooth your draws and help you dig into the strongest cards in your deck but they also require absolutely no support in order to function optionally. They also offer additional minor benefits such as enabling Treasure Cruise and/or triggering Prowess but let's ignore that for the time being and stick to the basics. These cards are infinitely superior to alternatives such as Brainstorm (and Ponder to a lesser extent) if your deck doesn't have access to a critical mass of cheap shuffle effects such as Fetchlands and Tutors. Brainstorm, on its own, is a draw 1 for 1. That's completely unplayable and makes it one of the most overrated casual cards in the game. If you can use something like Fabricate to shuffle 2 useless lands/cards away with it then you have a worthwhile effect but if you're just drawing the same cards that you put back then you haven't significantly changed anything. Given that many players don't own all of the awesome Fetchlands and Tutors and given that you still should play with cheap cantrips I highly recommend acquiring things like Preordain and Anticipate that don't require any support in order to function. You can blindly jam them into any Blue deck of any format and consistently expect to get full value from your spell. Anticipate, at 2 mana, is clearly a step below something like Preordain but by no means does that make it terrible. A huge % of your decks won't have many 2 drops to begin with so the difference in mana isn't always that significant. The fixing really does go a long way to giving you consistently powerful draws and enables you to avoid playing marginal cards. To the people who don't think that these cards are good in formats like EDH I hope that you'll take this opportunity to reconsider your position on the cards. After all, they're good in EDH for exactly the same reasons that they're good in Constructed. At the end of the day very few cards in your list are better than your Cyclonic Rift, Rite of Replication, Fact or Fiction, Bribery, Diluvian Primordial etc. and drawing into spells that aren't on that level is just plain worse than hitting your 10/10 bombs as frequently and consistently as possible. Rather than fielding a bunch of marginal filler that you'll inevitably draw you can simply jam a bunch of cantrips into those slots and dig your way into the cards that actually matter (while hitting your land drops along the way). This is especially relevant if you're playing with combos because at some point you'll want to stop hitting things like mana rocks and Counterspells in order to assemble them. For all these reasons and more you really do want to be playing with cheap cantrips in your Blue decks as opposed to fielding marginal garbage that help you hit 100 cards. Drawing your best cards in a favorable order is just so much better than playing with a bunch of filler that can't compete with your strongest threats and/or combos.
Global Grade C-
Cubeworthy
Blessed Reincarnation: I'm only rating this card so that I don't have to answer questions about why I didn't rate it. I think that it's complete and utter trash in every format and would never even consider playing it. If you want to screw around and have fun, by all means, play these kinds of cards. What you do with your time and money is up to you and I'm certainly not going to tell people how to have fun playing games. Still, in the context of "is this card actually good" it gets a resounding "NO!" from me. In a world of powerful "enters the battlefield" triggers these kinds of removal spells fail on multiple fronts. Not only have your opponents already extracted value from their finishers but they're also likely to hit something that will provide them with even more. Sure, some % of the time you'll exchange a Mortivore for a Satyr Wayfinder but there's absolutely no reason to treat this like a random Swords to Plowshares effect with minimal drawback. It even costs 4 mana which is utterly ridiculous.
Global Grade F
Not Cubeworthy
Clone Legion: A lot of people are going nuts over this card and for the life of me I can't understand why. It's 9 mana and it doesn't do anything special from what I can tell. For that kind of investment I'm expecting something that basically reads "you win the game" and that's not what I see when I look at it. As someone who plays a lot of Cube and EDH I can safely say that I would gladly put this in my opponents' decks over any of the legitimately good Blue win conditions (of which there are many). If this thing copied every creature in play, ok, sure, then we'd be talking. You'd have a real card at that point. As it stands there's just no way that this card will win the game outright for you unless things are already going your way. I'm obviously not discounting the fact that you'll probably get to abuse a bunch of "enters the battlefield" triggers but this is a far cry from kicking a Rite of Replication. Realistically I see it as a small portion of Insurrection (sans Haste) or Rise of the Dark Realms that, for whatever reason, doesn't cost less mana. People always claim that these cards are "good in EDH" but I certainly wouldn't play with this card myself nor I would mind if others did. It's way too fair for a 9 drop to rustle my jimmies. Still, hey, I am totally willing to be proven wrong about this one. I fully expect to have it cast against me (a lot of people in my circles are buzzing about it) and if I routinely get crushed by it then I'll be more than willing to admit that I was wrong about it. I legitimately want these kinds of cards to be good but at 9 mana I just don't see it.
EDH Grade C-
Constructed/Cube Grade D-
Not Cubeworthy
Contradict: I've played with and against Dismiss, Cryptic Command and Decree of Silence enough to know that this is a playable Magic card. It's not exciting by any means and 5 is a lot more than 4 but I do think that most Blue decks should play some number of counters and I wouldn't fault anyone for electing to use this one. It'll obviously never be the top-tier option but virtually any cantripping Counterspell is playable to some extent in my mind.
Global Grade D
Not Cubeworthy
Dragonlord's Prerogative: Blah blah blah, blah blah blah, Opportunity. Sold! Blue has always had a bit of a soft spot at 6 CMC since it has the worst Titan and Soul by far and since your average player can't afford Consecrated Sphinx you're basically left with Deadeye Navigator or bust. This thing is another awesome Blue 6 drop with a new unique name which is always relevant for Cube and EDH. Again, I strongly advise that you ignore all of the worthless text and focus on the fact that it's a second copy of Opportunity for you to fool around with. 4 for 6 at instant-speed is a solid rate making this is a strong spell to be resolving in the mid-to-lategame.
Global Grade C
Cubeworthy
Icefall Regent: Dungeon Geists et al. aren't unplayable threats but they've never been staples in multiplayer either. They're not big enough to seriously threaten life totals, they die to removal and they elicit hate. I know that they might seem good in EDH since they can keep a busted Commander tapped-down but I've never seen one of these live long enough for that to be relevant. Icefall Regent is no different in my mind and Frost Armor isn't going to convince me otherwise. It's still going to die if people want to kill it and a 4 power flyer for 5 isn't going to race anyone down in the interim. Ultimately I think that this version is almost strictly worse than Dungeon Geists and since I've never really seen that card over-perform I don't see how this one possibly could.
Global Grade D
Not Cubeworthy
Illusory Gains: As obvious as it sounds I'm not someone who enjoys giving my opponents meaningful options. Cards like Trade Secrets and Fact or Fiction are fine because, let's face it, there's basically no scenario in which their decisions matter. My problem with a card like Illusory Gains is that I'm always envisioning the worst-case scenarios in which you steal something relevant only to have it traded away for a Satyr Wayfinder or whatever. Your opponents do have complete control over what you take with it after all. Now, the upside of this card is obviously that it can be a Mind Control that reads "your opponents can't play creatures." The average use-case for it probably lies somewhere in between that spectrum but it's reasonable to assume that this will prevent some of your opponents from casting meaningful threats for a turn or two once it resolves. I've since come to the conclusion this is another card that's just plain going to have to be played against me before I can give it a educated rating. Every time they print a new and relatively unique card like this you really do have to see the card in action yourself before you get an idea of how powerful it is. We've obviously seen cards similar to it in the past (such as Perplexing Chimera) but most of them granted some amount of personal control over the effect ("may" instead of "mandatory"). You made the decisions; not your opponents. Illusory Gains is significantly weaker in that sense which is why I'm dubious to play it. I'm too conservative to pull the trigger and field these kinds of cards myself but I could easily see it being a bomb in practice.
Global Grade D+
Not Cubeworthy
Living Lore: This is a cool card but not one that I would expect to see played in any multiplayer format. It would obviously be unplayable if it had to deal combat damage to a player but given that you can't even block it there's a small glimmer of hope that it might make small waves at kitchen tables. The dream scenarios when playing with these kinds of cards usually involves fielding them in lists with loot spells such as Forbidden Alchemy and Fact or Fiction at which point you can recur some game-ending spells like Clone Legion or Enter the Infinite. The reason why these kinds of decks aren't utter nonsense is because even when you miss you can still just recur your Fact or Fiction (or whatever) and that's still completely fine. That safety-valve alone means that this kind of card can only ever be so bad. This is especially true when you factor the scenarios in which you do recur and cast something silly like Insurrection to completely stomp the table. Now, I understand that this guy dies to removal but when it comes to 4 drops I'm usually willing to live with that. The "it dies to removal" also only carries so much weight in multiplayer because if everyone is playing with powerful threats then there's absolutely no way for people to answer them all individually. Still, even with all that in mind I don't think that the average use-case for this guy is good enough to justify his inclusion in the vast majority of your lists. I still like to give these kinds of cards slightly inflated ratings because they do have very high power-ceilings. The prospect of casting a 4 mana Primal Surge (or whatever) is appealing enough that I don't like relegating these kinds of cards to the "trash binder."
Global Grade D+
Not Cubeworthy
Mirror Mockery: I think that this card is God awful barring some sort of unforeseen combo applications. Casting this on an opposing creature is a horrendous version of Pacifism and casting this on your own critter leaves you vulnerable to removal. In that sense I don't see why you would ever play this over any number of amazing Clones. Cards like Phyrexian Metamorph, Clever Impersonator and Sakashima the Impostor can all guarantee an ETB trigger themselves while also consistently providing you with a relevant body to attack/block with as well. They also require basically no setup because, let's face it, we're talking about multiplayer. Your meta has to be pretty freaking warped if people aren't playing with good creatures in their decks. While I'm always on the lookout for powerful, cheap spells to flesh out my lists I just couldn't imagine a scenario where I'd sleeve this thing up. If someone can think of something cool to do with this card, feel free to share with the rest of the class because I'm unable to conjure anything up.
Global Grade F
Not Cubeworthy
Profaner of the Dead: Cyclonic Rift is a windmill slam first pick in draft and anyone who's ever had it cast at EOT in EDH probably knows that it's stellar in that format as well. It's also bonkers in Constructed, especial when it's powered-out by things like Cloudpost or Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx. While Profaner of the Dead is significantly weaker than Cyclonic Rift it still strikes me as a very powerful Magic card. It's much more conditional in the sense that you need a Myr Battlesphere or whatever to pitch to him but I can't think of many better plays to make when you have a nice board. I know that I'm the first person to harp on people for making tempo plays in a multiplayer setting but these realistically don't qualify. When you bounce your opponents' entire boards it's so ridiculously easy to kill the vast majority of them before they can recover. Cyclonic Rift obviously has the advantage of also bouncing fast mana, Enchantments, etc. but I wouldn't want Wizards to keep printing cards on that power-level. In that sense I'm happy to see something that's powerful-yet-fair coming down the pipeline. It's entirely possible that my judgment is clouded and that this is much closer to an Evacuation than a Cyclonic Rift (given that you have to pitch a big dude) but I'm more than willing to give him a shot in every multiplayer format. The upside of having a 4 mana "Plague Wind" is so high that it seems silly not to give him a go and see how he fares.
Global Grade C-
Cubeworthy
Shorecrasher Elemental: Woohoo! A good Blue creature that costs 3 or less mana! It's not quite a Boros Reckoner but I'll take something that can legitimately threaten opposing creatures looking to get into the Red Zone. Not only does it eat smallish critters for breakfast but the Blink enables it to blank anything that doesn't have Trample as well. It also means that you can't really get blown out by removal if you pump this guy up unless you're playing especially fast and loose. I love the synergy that this thing has with Thassa, God of the Sea and Master of Waves (it's an Elemental) and I can't wait to build a deck that fields 4 of each. The pseudo-vigilance is also nice and makes this thing feel like a mini Aetherling. Lategame you can sink a ton of mana into it if needed which is always going to be better than doing nothing. This isn't some insane bomb that will dominate games and it's probably too weak for EDH but if you're someone like me who's always looking out for solid bodies that you can cast on turns 1-3 then it certainly qualifies. It's too color intensive for Cube though so don't worry about picking up a copy for your own. I want to stress that the reason why I like this card so much is because it gives you the ability to sink mana into it. That is, you are not required to go full-on Shade with it early on. Feel free to run it out as a 3/3 for 3 and continue to curve out if that's what your hand wants to do. Smacking someone for ~5 is "fine" but that's now how you win a multiplayer game (usually). Still, again, if you do have spare mana or if you do draw this late it has a real body and real text that can potentially be relevant. Finally, I want to stress that it's a cheap, meaty body which is something that Blue sorely lacks in my mind. It has access to plenty of solid, inexpensive threats but basically none of them can tangle with anything bigger than a 2/2.
Constructed Grade C
EDH Grade D-
Cube Grade F
Not Cubeworthy
Silumgar Sorcerer: A creature-based Remove Soul/Cancel hybrid strikes me as a playable Magic card. Being a creature means that it's significantly easier to find and recur which makes it substantially easier to abuse. Animar, Soul of Elements, Crystal Shard, Temur Sabertooth, Prophet of Kruphix, Seedborn Muse, Deadeye Navigator and more can all transform these kinds of answers into soft locks that prevent your opponents from ever resolving meaningful threats. I do realize that Mystic Snake and Draining Whelk exist and that neither requires a sacrifice but this is still the cheapest Counterspell creature that I'm aware of. It's not a bomb that you'll play as a 4-of in all of your decks but pitching Coiling Oracles and Wood Elves (or whatever) to counter real threats seems like a very powerful effect in my mind. You obviously have to work to make this better than a Counterspell but the payoff is there I'm willing to work for it. I fully expect this card to be played in competitive Simic decks.
Global Grade D+
Not Cubeworthy
Skywise Teachings: Talrand, Sky Summoner style Constructed decks have always struggled immensely to compete in removal-rich metas. They perform adequately insofar as their Guttersnipes or whatever are alive but once those get picked-off they're typically reduced to piles of do-nothing cantrips with zero meaningful defense. Skywise Teachings isn't a slam-dunk saving grace for those archetypes but if nothing else it's a resilient threat that transforms cantrips and such into real spells. I wouldn't recommend playing 4 or anything but fielding 1 or 2 seems reasonable to me. I don't think that these kinds of cards are especially playable in EDH/Cube period, the power-level just isn't there, but they are reasonable when you can build a streamlined deck filled with cheap cantrips, rituals, tutors, etc.
Constructed Grade D
Cube/EDH Grade F
Not Cubeworthy
Stratus Dancer: A 3/2 flyer that counters a spell that you can also run out on turn 2 as a blocker seems like a "something." The reality of the matter is that some people play in exceptionally aggressive metas that necessitate curving out so I could envision a world in which this card is played. I wouldn't advocate sleeving it up and treating it as a generic playable or anything but Blue doesn't have amazing 2 drops in general so I wouldn't be flabbergasted to see this thing flipped up at some point in my lifetime. Eh, then again, I think I'm stretching too far with this one. I just want Blue to have more solid 2 drops and this thing realistically doesn't qualify. Your meta would have be swimming (soaring?) with flyers for a 2/1 flyer for 2 to be a real Magic card.
Constructed/Cube Grade D-
EDH Grade F
Not Cubeworthy
Youthful Scholar: When I first read this card I was very excited about it. Jamming him on turn 4 seems like a totally reasonable play in basically any multiplayer setting. That being said the more that I thought about it the more that I realized that he isn't actually very good as a generic threat. Drawing 2 cards is sweet but tacking it on to a death trigger makes it significantly weaker than it otherwise could be. Taking 2 is a very real option if you ever try to get aggressive with him in an attempt to manually kill him off. A 4 mana 2/2 unblockable threat isn't a card that most decks should fear. Moreover, I highly doubt that many people will care about attacking in to one. My opponents can feel free to play as many 4 mana Sorcery speed "draw 2 cards, gain ~4 life" cards as they desire. Now, being a creature obviously means that he's better than that but I'm still not sold on this guy just yet. In the same way that Reef Worm is playable but unexciting as a generic 4 drop I'd expect this guy to share all of the same problems. You can choose to ignore them if you want but realistically you don't even have to a huge % of the time. Now, obviously these kinds of cards rise in stock dramatically in decks with dedicated sacrifice outlets. If you do have things like Attrition and Flesh Carver then they gain a ton of value. Still, that doesn't really say much about the card now does it? Any card can be powerful when supported but I mean what's the realistic best-case scenario for this thing? A Concentrate? Given the choice of working for a Concentrate or just plain playing Concentrate (which isn't even an amazing card to begin with) it's not exactly a difficult decision to make. Until shown otherwise I'm going to give this guy a conservative rating because I don't think that you can play him without support at which point you're working for a Concentrate. What I will say is that I'd be more than happy to be proven wrong about him. I would love for Blue to have more strong playables at the lower CMCs.
Global Rating D
Not Cubeworthy
Overall Grade: D+
Closing Thoughts: Blue came out better than White in DTK with a small number of worthwhile playables. Mono-Blue Devotion got a big boon in the form of Shorecrasher Elemental and Dragonlord's Prerogative is a windmill slam across all formats. A big portion of the EDH community is buzzing about Clone Legion but I'm not sold on that card just yet. Until I start losing to it on a consistent basis I wouldn't go out of way to play with it. The card that I'm most conflicted about is Illusory Gains given that your opponents have (more-or-less) complete control over it. I don't think that it's playable but I'd be happy to be proven wrong about it. The rest of the set is relatively unexciting but there are some semi-interesting options that'll have some niche applications. For example, I fully expect Silumgar Sorcerer to see some amount of play in either EDH or Constructed and I'm hoping that Youthful Scholar will pop up outside of sacrifice-based decks and Azami, Lady of Scrolls EDH.
Corpseweft: It's hard not to like this card. If X weren't automatically doubled then it'd obviously be worthless but granting a Walking Corpse "Kicker" to every creature that gets milled and/or dies is kind of hard to overlook. The effect is also much better than that in the sense that it can easily produce 4/4s, 6/6s, whatever when needed. That being said these kinds of cards do carry significant drawbacks. They're useless early on, terrible in multiples and they put a lot of strain on your engines. You can only support so many of them for so long before you run out of resources to fuel them. For those reasons and more I don't recommend playing a ton of these in your lists. The first is usually very good and second is fine but anything beyond that is going to hinder more than help. In EDH you're obviously locked into playing one and only one and I don't recommend playing with this kind of card in Cube. It's just too hard to make it work when you can't sculpt a perfect deck.
Constructed/Cube Rating D
Cube Rating F
Not Cubeworthy
Damnable Pact: At first I was kind of down on this card but I'm starting to like it more and more. It has 2-3 modes in the sense that it can be used as a burn/mill spell to kill a player off if needed and X draw is usually playable in Multiplayer. Still, this is significantly worse than the Blue ones given the life requirement. That may sound silly to some people, especially in the context of EDH, but it really is true. Unless you're playing Oona, Queen of the Fae as your general infinite mana doesn't always translate to game win in EDH. The ability to draw your entire deck with no questions asked is very relevant when that occurs as it realistically ensures victory for you. DP cannot reliably be used to draw your entire deck so it's less good than you probably think in those big mana Black decks. You're probably a favorite to win if you can resolve one after generating a lot/infinite mana but that'll obviously depend on the contents of your list and your life total. Anyways, beyond that I don't think that it's an especially powerful draw spell in a vacuum even though I do like how it functions in high mana environments. Cards like Sign in Blood and Night's Whisper are strong because they can be cast early on to smooth your draws. Meanwhile, paying 4 to draw 2 with DP is horrendous and something that you'll probably never want to do. Once you hit the midgame your options are things like Skeletal Scrying, Phyrexian Arena, Syphon Mind and Promise of Power which are all significantly more powerful. Even the marginal options such as Underworld Connections, Graveborn Muse and Bloodgift Demon are likely superior when cast on curve. I'll concede that DP compares favorable to Ambition's Cost + Ancient Craving because it has a higher power ceiling while only being marginally worse but even then it's nice to be able to jam a draw 3 for 4 on turn ~3 after dropping some artifact mana. The point is that this card is actually very bad in everything but the lategame where you're casting it for like X=8. You could argue that it gets brownie points for being castable for less than that but realistically you are not happy to be fielding a Harrowing Journey in your lists. There aren't many occasions where this thing'll be better than a Promise of Power so don't trick yourself into thinking otherwise. In that sense I don't recommend playing this card unless your deck is focused on big/infinite mana. I know that that encompasses a lot of EDH decks but it's certainly not all of them and I don't think that this card is very impressive if you're topping out at 8-10 mana.
EDH Grade C
Constructed/Cube Grade D
Not Cubeworthy
Deadly Wanderings: Homicidal Seclusion 2.0 has arrived. I've toyed around with the archetype in the past but never experienced much success with it. The shells always featured a whack of recursive threats, plenty of manlands and usually sought to the end the game with cards like Demonic Rising. The main problems with the lists is that they were always too slow and too weak to removal. They also fell flat on their face when Homicidal Seclusion was destroyed or when I failed to find one at a reasonable pace. I eventually gave up on the archetype and haven't revisited it since. Deadly Wanderings clearly brings and additional level of redundancy to the lists but I don't think that it solves their fundamental flaws. Beyond that I think that this card is completely unplayable in Cube and EDH. Even as someone who plays Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon EDH I don't think that there's any reason to pay 5 mana for +2 power.
Constructed Grade D-
Cube/EDH Grade F
Not Cubeworthy
Deathbringer Regent: 7 mana is a lot to pay for a Wrath of God with an upside which leaves me doubtful that I'll be seeing much of this card. I'd rather play things like Crux of Fate that're cheaper or Decree of Pain that're significantly stronger. Necromantic Selection can potentially recur things like Titans and Primordials which are are almost always going to be infinitely more valuable than a 5/6 flyer. I like that this guy is a creature i.e. that he's recurrable but the conditions are a big turn-off. At that point you may as well just play with Reiver Demon and/or Dread Cacodemon to avoid hitting your mobs entirely. Besides, last time I checked Sepulchral Primordial was still a buck and it's still completely ridiculous. Until that changes I don't see much of a reason to play with cards like these. It's fine, I could easily see it making the cut in Cube/EDH, but this is not on the same level as other tier 1 mass removal/finishers. It's average at best.
Global Grade D+
Cubeworthy
Foul Renewal: This card reminds me a lot of Profane Command albeit a significantly weaker version. Black doesn't get that much in the way of inexpensive instants that generate card advantage and I'd fully expect to get a reasonable amount of value from this in an average game. I'm not a big of fan of playing generic spot removal unless it's also providing another effect which is why I'll routinely play Tendrils of Corruption in my lists. Raise Dead is usually going to be worse than gaining 4+ life but that clearly won't always be the case. The biggest strike against this card is obviously how condition it is. Unless you're jamming Buried Alive out on turn 3 it's going to be hard to resolve this before turn 6 or 7 at which point the impact of a 2-for-1 is greatly diminished. I'm not a big fan of this card for that reason alone and don't foresee myself playing with it in the near future. I'm not going to call an instant-speed 2-for-1 a bad card, it clearly isn't, it's just that "not bad" and "good" are two very different things in my mind. I'd never be excited to play with and draw this card in any multiplayer format so until I see it doing some serious work I'm not going to think much of it.
Global Rating D+
Cubeworthy
Hedonist's Trove: Trove here suffers from what I like to call "Grave Betrayal syndrome." Black has a fairly sizable collection of powerful 7 drop Enchantments which don't offer much in the way of immediate impact (Tormod's Crypt is a 0 mana spell) but which virtually ensure long-run victory (in the context of grindy games defined by creatures and removal). The cards usually sound powerful in theory but in practice they rarely accomplish much of anything. The prospect of drawing 3 cards a turn is obviously sweet and if your games were staggeringly long then these kinds of win conditions would be viable but the reality of the matter is that you usually can't afford to play these kinds of finishers in a world of instantaneous 1-2 card win conditions. There's any number of ways to seal games long before you'll be able to derive a sufficient return on investment from your lategame value engine. Rather than casting a "do-nothing" you should simply slam a bomb like Sepulchral Primordial, Army of the Damned, Rise of the Dark Realms, Exsanguinate, etc. and (virtually) win the game on the spot. In that sense I don't think that these kinds of cards have much of a home in the upper echelons of play.
Global Grade D+
Not Cubeworthy
Minister of Pain: I've come around on Drown in Sorrow recently but I still think that cards like Cower in Fear are basically unplayable. Minister of Pain is a cool variation given that she's a creature (i.e. she can be recurred) and that you can pitch a Reassembling Skeleton (or whatever) to her effect but none of that will ever change the fact that paying 3 mana to "deal 1 damage" to opposing creatures is a bad rate. Unless your meta is overrun with token swarms and X/1s I cannot get behind playing these kinds of removal spells. We have tools such as Massacre at our disposal if we're in the market for that type of effect.
Global Grade F
Not Cubeworthy
Risen Executioner: As much as I'd want to like a self-recurring zombie lord the combination of "can't block" and "eff you self-mill" kills the card for me. There's just no world where I'd play this over Graveborn Muse, Vengeful Dead, Undead Warchief, Tombstone Stairwell or just about anything really. I'm not willing to give it an F (outside of Cube where it's basically unplayable) since it's a recurrable threat that still technically works when self-milled but it would take something drastic to get me to play with this card.
Constructed/EDH Grade D
Cube Grade F
Not Cubeworthy
Sidisi, Undead Vizier: Diabolic Intent has never been the strongest card in the world but tacking it on to a creature makes it infinitely more enticing. This card seems absolutely busted in EDH given her ability to tutor up any number of 2 card kill combos and if nothing else you can just fetch your Skullclamp/Contamination and put your Bloodghast/Reassembling Skeleton/Nether Traitor to work. It's worth noting that she can instantly win the game if you're ever able to generate infinite mana given her ability to sac herself to her own Exploit cost. At that point you'll be able to draw your entire deck in order to find your Exsanguinate (or whatever) which should be good enough to get the job done. She seems completely absurd in that sense and I look forward to finding some oppressively obnoxious things to do with her. With respect to Constructed/Cube she's obviously going to be less good but that isn't really saying much now is it? A 4/6 for 5 is realistically going to eat most 1-5 CMC critters and even if people power out some bombs she can still threaten to trade with anything. Moreover, Black has the best recursive threats to begin with and plenty of solid equipment (such as Lashwrithe) to ensure that they'll always be relevant draws. I bring this up mostly to highlight the fact that you shouldn't feel too bad about being forced to jam random durdles such as Reassembling Skeleton into your lists to support her. There are plenty of Flesh Carvers and Sadistic Hypnotists out there which all provide more than enough incentive to jam a few of them into your brews. The biggest strike against Sidisi is that she competes with Gray Merchant of Asphodel (and even Bloodgift Demon to a lesser extent), a fight she'll probably never win, but I still like the card as a generic playable. The fact that she can sac herself to her own Exploit intrigues me because it means that you can pair her with recursion to gain access to unlimited Demonic Collusions. That's obviously a steep price to pay for a tutor but 5 still beats the 7 of Rune-Scarred Demon if you're not concerned about the body. I also understand that recurring a weak tutor is usually worse than recurring Gray Merchant of Asphodel but that certainly won't always be the case. If nothing else she's new, exciting, powerful and definitely worth testing. I want to stress that I expect her to be an EDH powerhouse above all else but I'd still expect her to have a lot of value outside of the format. With respect to Cube, you really need to be playing with recursive threats to justify slotting her in. The base stats are "fine" and Diabolic Intent is "fine" but if you're pitching a legitimate threat then she's definitely not worthwhile. Still, I think that most Cubes have enough recursive threats/token producers/utility dorks to make her work so I feel confident with giving her a relatively high rating in that format as well.
EDH Grade A
Constructed/Cube Grade C+
Cubeworthy
Silumgar Assassin: I'm not exactly scrambling to play with Gatekeeper of Malakir in any of my decks and the pseudo-evasion is nigh worthless. If it were just plain unblockable I would actually like this card but the fact that it turns-off if you equip a Lashwrithe (or whatever) to it is a big letdown.
Global Grade D-
Not Cubeworthy
Ultimate Price: UP is a reasonable spot removal spell that, in the right contexts, doesn't even have much of a drawback. 2 mana to kill a creature is a reasonable rate given that you can often extract a lot of value from flashing these kinds of cards to your opponents in order to dissuade attacks. To clarify, I'm referring to your ability to reveal the card from your hand to the other players in order to influence their behavior (to your benefit obviously). People have very little incentive to trade their threats for your removal since it typically makes more sense to get in for free damage and preserve your own resources. In that sense UP can be a lot better than a 1-for-1 given its ability to act like a Seal of Doom insofar as you hold mana up for it. That being said I want to stress that I don't think that spot removal is actively good in multiplayer in general. Trading 1-for-1 is bad for the 2 players losing resources and good for their opponents. They're "free riders" who passively benefit from the exchange without having to expend any resources themselves. It's virtually impossible to legitimately profit from spot removal in that sense. The overwhelming majority of the time you are coming out well behind the other players. As such I usually recommend a "light touch" when it comes to spot removal in multiplayer. You'll want to have access to a few removal spells in order to keep people honest (and to flash to your opponents) but sitting on a hand full of it probably won't end well for you. Whenever possible stick to cheap + reliable answers such as Slaughter Pact, Go for the Throat and/or Murderous Cut or, barring that, cards such as Tendrils of Corruption that offer additional benefits. Ultimate Price is "pretty good" given that it only costs 2 mana and the condition is usually manageable but the fact that it doesn't hit Artifacts or Multicolored creatures is a big letdown.
Global Rating D+
Cubeworthy
Virulent Plague: Illness in the Ranks 2.0 has arrived. If your meta is swarming with token decks then these kinds of cards are solid Bs that will usually cause one or more players to instantly lose the game. Otherwise they're easy Fs that accomplish nothing. That being said I don't advise playing hate cards in general because I don't like the impact that cards such as Boil have on multiplayer games. The people who field them aren't incredibly likely to go on to win the game and the people affected by them are forced to sit around, be miserable and pretend to play Magic until they inevitably lose. They're not fun to play with or against and ruin games from what I've seen (ruined games, in this instance, refers to ones in which one or more players had (an) overwhelmingly negative experience(s)).
Global Grade N/A
Not Cubeworthy
Overall Grade: C-
Closing Thoughts: Bluntly put the only card that remotely interests me is Sidisi, Undead Vizier. I think that she's an amazing EDH Commander giver her ability to tutor up infinite mana combos at which point she can then be used to draw your entire deck and win the game on the spot in much the same way that Oona, Queen of the Fae can. She may not be a "better" all-around Commander but as a mono-Black fanatic I'm happy to have another busted general that I can play alongside Mikaeus, the Unhallowed if I'm in the market to secure some wins. While some of the other cards are certainly playable I'm not scrambling to acquire any of them personally. Damnable Pact is probably the other standout card from the set however and I'll likely grab a few copies at some point. I want to stress how hard it is for that card to be better than Promise of Power/Necrologia/etc, it's not insane by any means, but it's "good enough" to collect. Otherwise I wouldn't be unhappy to pick up some copies of Corpseweft, Deathbringer Regent, Hedonist's Trove and Foul Renewal but I wouldn't go out of my to acquire them. They just aren't cards that I could foresee myself sleeving up a year from now.
Berserkers' Onslaught: Onslaught's (I see what you did there Wizards!) Gratuitous Violence has always been a staple in Big Red decks and there are plenty lists that care much more about double strike than double damage. It's not strictly better in the sense that it doesn't work with pings and it's useless when you're blocking but in general you're probably going to want to roll with this version of the card. Putting people in the unfortunate scenario of "take a million" or "lose all of your creatures for free AND take a million" is a good place to be which why you really do want to go out of your way to play with these kinds of cards whenever possible. They aren't win-more by any means and are often essential if you're looking to secure wins in formats such as EDH. This is a "must buy" for someone like me because I do think that it has broad applications across all 3 major multiplayer formats.
Global Grade C+
Cubeworthy
Commune with Lava: The people who think that this card is worthless are definitely underestimating it but the people who think that it's busted are also living in Magical Christmas Land. The baseline card, to me, is an instant speed draw 2 for 5. That's below the curve but given our lack of alternatives we don't have much of an option but to test it out. The card does scale up slightly from there but not by much. It'll be hard to ever cast more than 2 spells and 2 lands off of this thing so don't go tricking yourself into thinking that it'll be a draw 6 at X=10 (unless your deck is filled with inexpensive spells obviously). One thing that I'll say is that you'll probably have to mainphase this card a fair amount in order to get multiple lands out of the deal. I know that casting it at EOT sounds a lot sexier but if you ever want to get 3-4 cards out of it on a consistent basis then you'll need to take your free land drop every now and then. I don't see this as being a staple in Red decks across every format but I'd probably never cut the first from my lists. I'll definitely give it a shot in EDH and I think that it's worthwhile to test it out in Cube as well. We haven't seen a card like this Red yet so the verdict is largely out until I gather some data on it. On the surface it seems playable but unexciting but I could easily see it being marginal-if-not-bad on average.
EDH Grade C-
Constructed/Cube Grade D+
Cubeworthy
Crater Elemental: This is a card that I'm trying very hard to like. It's a 3 drop Red creature that can still have legitimate value on turn 8. It's way better than oh, say, Aether Membrane in my mind because it can legitimately kill opposing attackers as opposed to merely blocking them. It's kinda like a Seal of Doom in that sense which is a card that I'm especially fond of. Since this is the first Formidable card worth discussing I'd like to take a second to explain why I like the ability. 8 power, in my mind, is nothing. Some people might see this effect and think that it's totally win-more but I vehemently disagree. Having a 5/5 and a 4/4 (or whatever, it doesn't matter what the split is) is often the same thing as having nothing in big FFA games where everyone is curving out with blockers and potential attackers. You can't actually attack anyone profitably without risking massive crack-backs to yourself. It's also just not a very threatening clock the vast majority of the time. Even a 5/5 flyer is what? A 16 turn clock in a 5 player non-EDH game? A 32 turn clock in an EDH game? That's just laughably slow in a world where every draw step can be a Mob Rule or a Deadeye Navigator. With that in mind what I like about Formidable is that it gives you some trump effects to win the board stall, draw-go mirrors where players are just drawing cards and casting critters/removal before passing the turn (because no one has good attacks). When your 3 drop transforms into a ~6 drop you have a significant advantage when board stalls do occur. Ultimately I don't really know how good this card will be without playing it. In a vacuum it seems like a slightly below-average defensive 3 drop that could be slotted into basically any creature-based Red deck so until I get a chance to play with it that's where I'll leave it.
Global Grade D+
Not Cubeworthy
Descent of the Dragons: Even a significantly better version of Hellion Eruption doesn't seem especially appealing to me. Red-based token decks aren't amazing to begin with and there are superior "game win" alternatives that don't lose horrendously to removal. Eldrazi Conscription provides resilience, Coat of Arms provides immediate burst, etc. It's obviously nice that you can use this to nuke opposing threats and downgrade them to 4/4 flyers but that's still a real card that needs to be dealt with. All-in-all I just can't think of a compelling reason to play with this card. If anything it'll see play in Purphoros, God of the Forge decks but that card is already so unbelievably broken to the point where it almost doesn't matter what you pair with it.
Global Grade D+
Not Cubeworthy
Dragon Tempest: Now this is a card that I can get behind. Dragon decks have always suffered immensely in the face of removal primarily because it's hard to fit good draw into Red decks and if you're playing with 6-8 CMC dragons then you need to field ramp. Given that most Dragons don't offer much in the way of significant + immediate benefit the strategy has never been especially powerful. You play some dudes, they die, you lose because you're now out of gas and you're drawing into do-nothing ramp. Dragon Tempest is stellar in the sense that it provides all of your threats with immediate impact. Haste is a very powerful keyword to tack on to to things like Balefire Dragon and Utvara Hellkite and the ping definitely adds up, especially if Scourge of Valkas is also floating around. I know that it might seem "win-more" but I legitimately believe that every part of the buffalo is relevant in this instance. A ping for 1-3 isn't stellar but when you pair it with Hasted attack and the Dragons' natural abilities it's going to exert a sizable amount of pressure on your opponents. While it doesn't offer much value early on it's still something cheap to do with your mana before you start chaining your bombs. This is something that most ramp decks sorely need because you really don't want to be casting support spells once you hit 6+ mana. This is way better than Crucible of Fire in my mind and I highly recommend that you play with it in your Dragon lists.
Constructed/EDH Grade C (in Dragon decks)
Cube Grade F
Not Cubeworthy
Dragon Whisperer: I've been waiting for a secondary version of Kargan Dragonlord for a very long time and we finally have it. I'm extremely disappointed that it's a Mythic Rare and I can only pray that its price will decline to the point where it's affordable to the masses. I'm doubtful that that'll ever happen but a man can dream can't he? What I love about this card is that it's another powerful 2 drop that scales well into the lategame. I'm also a big fan of the RR mana cost because it allows the card to naturally slot into Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx big mana decks that abuse Boros Reckoner and Purphoros, God of the Forge among other things. He's a decent mana sink himself, Stromgald Crusader has always done good for me, and the Formidable ability is just icing on the cake. Hitting 8 power is trivial in my mind given that Red has a ton of Taurean Mauler, Purphoros, God of the Forge, Malignus, Inferno Titan, Molten Primordial, etc. style cards to enable it. Slapping Dragon Roost on a 2/2 for 2 means that it'll have good value both early and late which is what I'm looking for in a good 2 drop. I'm super high on this card in that sense because it's everything that I could've asked for and more. The only strike against this card is its price-tag which is way higher than I'd like it to be. It would've easily been the best card in the set at rare/uncommon at which point anyone would've been able to get their hands on some. Obviously that would've ruined the Limited format, I understand why it's a Mythic, I'm just saying that for someone like me who only cares about multiplayer it sucks that these cards can't be made more affordable for the masses.
Constructed/Cube Grade B
EDH Grade C
Cubeworthy
Dragonlord's Servant: I'm not a big fan of marginal, narrow cards and this one is no exception. It's playable in exactly one archetype (hint: it's Dragons) and has zero Cube applications unless you're big on supporting the tribe. The fact that he's a creature means that he's slightly better in the ultra-early and ultra-late stages of the games where the (chump) blocker will matter more than the ramp. Where he suffers most is in the mid-to-lategame where he'll frequently get swept up in various forms of mass removal. Still, Dragonspeaker Shaman has always been fine in my experience and I have no reason to think that this little guy would be substantially worse. I'd rather play with cards like Charcoal Diamond and Worn Powerstone myself but if you really need the early blocker then it's hard to go wrong with something that has 3 toughness. I personally think of these kinds of cards as being closer to Ds than Cs (in the context of Dragon tribal obviously, it would be an F in a vacuum) because I'd rather play things like Everflowing Chalice for a number of reasons. First, I'm more worried about losing to Wraths than I am early aggro in a multiplayer setting. This is especially true when I'm playing a color like Red that lacks card draw. Moreover, Urza's Incubator (and all cards similar to it) doesn't help you cast your noncreature spells and I personally feel that game-changers such as Wildfire and Aggravated Assault are what allow Dragon decks to be competitive in the first place. Finally, I like being able to play with obviously pushed cards such as Thran Dynamo and Worn Powerstone whenever possible because they increase the overall power-level of my decks substantially. Whereas a Rampant Growth wanna-be can only ever be so good when you start to play with broken "fast mana" it can enable some grotesque sequences. Still, that's all personal opinion and it's heavily biased/influenced by own metagame. The card could easily be a full letter grade higher or lower in your own. That is, I could easily see it being a solid C in aggro-rich metas but I could also see it being a stone-unplayable F in ones plagued with early and/or frequent sweepers.
Constructed/EDH Rating D+
Cube Rating F
Not Cubeworthy
Impact Tremors: I will definitely play this thing in my Purphoros, God of the Forge Constructed decks. Maybe not the full 4 but a resilient 2 drops that works with our primary gameplan seems solid to me. Jamming 1-2 in your lists seems like it would be actively good, especially once you start factoring the Devotion that it'll provide for old Purphy. While you can't exactly build dedicated burn decks in Cube "tokens" is a commonly supported archetype and it doesn't take much for this to deal 8-10 damage in a very short time-frame. I like how it opens up the possibility of pursuing alternate routes to victory that don't require attacking nor surviving Wraths. The prospect of sitting back and jamming army-in-a-can threats until I win seems very appealing to me. I don't know how good or bad it'll be in EDH in general but I have mildly high expectations for it. On the one hand 40 is a lot of life to try and burn through but on the other hand Generals such as Marath, Will of the Wild and Prossh, Skyraider of Kher (among others) can chew through that number in no time. The card may look innocuous but don't be fooled by its rarity or mana cost. When supported it can easily be one of the scariest 2 CMC Enchantments since Goblin Bombardment. Obviously this card would function very poorly in a vacuum but as long as you're supporting it seems absurd.
Global Grade C
Cubeworthy
Ire Shaman: Unfortunately this card is far too aggressively slanted to have much multiplayer worth. It has no meaningful presence as a 2 drop and in order to get value from the flip early on you need to have an extremely low-to-the-ground deck to begin with. If you could always hit a land/playable spell then she's obviously be fine but those are unrealistic expectations in my mind. I personally do not build multiplayer decks that stop at ~4 CMC and I'm not willing to risk missing and being left with some aggressive do-nothing beater.
Global Grade F
Not Cubeworthy
Lightning Berserker: A good multiplayer 1 drop, to me, is something that you wouldn't feel embarrassed to draw on turn 8. Fireball, to no one's surprise, is a good draw on turn 8. While I wouldn't go around jamming this into every Red deck that you build it's certainly a solid playable in extremely aggressive metas. I'm a big fan of playing with defensive Shades in Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx decks who can sometimes randomly kill people later on. You want to be playing with 1 and 2 drops anyways so they might as well be things like Kargan Dragonlord and Dragon Whisperer that can put big mana to use. You need a reason to play with this kind of card, there's absolutely no reason to play with 1 drops if you don't have to, but I could legitimately see myself playing this card in Cube/Constructed if I were worried about being aggro'd down. That being said I'd basically never play her in EDH because I'm less worried about aggro in that sphere and so there's no reason to play with 1 drops like these.
Constructed/Cube Grade D
EDH Grade F
Not Cubeworthy
Sarkhan's Triumph: I truly didn't know what to make of this card when I first read it. An instant speed, 3 mana tutor seemed like it would have to be good but I couldn't shake the feeling that it sucked. I went around asking people that I knew what they would find with it and the response was unanimously "uhhh... dunno." Bear in mind that I'm talking about well-versed Magic players with pro-level experience and deep collections; not run-of-the-mill newbies. Anyways, their responses summed up my fears for the card. I literally can't think of a Dragon that I'd want to spend 3 mana to tutor up in an average game. Now, we all collectively agreed that there are certainly some powerful Dragons out there but none of us could think of some that we'd be willing to take the time to tutor up as opposed to playing a different card in that slot. It certainly doesn't help that "toolbox Dragons" isn't really a thing. I'm not saying that they don't have powerful + unique abilities it's just that Dragons are all fairly interchangeable once you start playing with the good ones. Whereas Fierce Empath is a strong card that we all like and play a fair amount (especially in EDH) it loses a lot of its luster when it doesn't come attached to a body and has a significantly more narrow restriction. I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt and list it as a marginal playable but outside of EDH (i.e. Constructed) I could legitimately see myself excluding it from decks that play Dragons. Again, I'm willing to be wrong, I'm just not excited by this card at all.
Constructed/EDH Grade D+ (in decks with Dragons obviously)
Cube Grade F
Not Cubeworthy
Volcanic Vision: If Disaster Radius has taught me anything it's that this effect is much worse than it looks. Conditional 7 drops that don't win the game are significantly worse than they seem and it's easy to get tricked into thinking otherwise. I know that people might want to blast me and refute with something along the lines of "but Prid3 you like Mass Calcify and Decree of Pain!" to which I'll respond "they're not conditional." Where I see this card being played most is EDH. I know, I know, I also cannot stand the people who look at every 7+ CMC card and say "HURP DERP GOOD IN EDH" but I realistically cannot think of another home for it. What passes for "win more" in other formats is frequently "not remotely good enough" to seal an EDH game and so I could legitimately see someone casting this, recurring a Mob Rule/Insurrection/Blasphemous Act and still getting value out of both cards. I do realize that pairing Volcanic Vision with mass removal/mass theft effects is a bit of a nonbo but what else are you playing and recurring in multiplayer? Your decks might have a few things like Savage Beating or whatever but in general the vast majority of the expensive Red spells interact with creatures in some way, shape or form. That's all the more reason why I'm largely unimpressed with this card and don't think that it's nearly as good as it looks.
Global Rating D+
Not Cubeworthy
Overall Grade: C-
Closing Thoughts: The set started with a bang in the form of Berserkers' Onslaught and surprisingly didn't fall much from there. I expect Commune with Lava to see a fair amount of play initially but I'm more than willing to believe that it'll prove to be too slow and unreliable for generic use. I am glad to see things like Dragon Tempest being printed because I feel that they add legitimacy to otherwise below-average tribal decks. Dragon Whisperer is also exactly what the doctor ordered with respect to a solid Red 2 drop that can be played in any format. Impact Tremors looks very promising and could easily rear its ugly head in every major multiplayer format. There's very little reason not to grab them. Everything else I could live without but I do expect to see a few things them pop up from time-to-time. All-in-all I feel as though Red came out like a bandit in DTK compared to the other colors.
Ainok Survivalist: I'm willing to give Den Protector the benefit of the doubt because Eternal Witness is a unique creature with a very powerful effect. Survivalist, on the other hand, I am not. This card is significantly worse than both Reclamation Sage and Acidic Slime among others and even in formats like Cube and EDH I could never see myself cutting something legitimately good to make room for this guy. I am completely unwilling to cast this thing for either half (2 mana 2/1, 5 mana Reclamation Sage) and I don't see why anyone else would see him differently.
Global Grade D-
Not Cubeworthy
Assault Formation: Doran, the Siege Tower this card is not. One the reasons why Doran is such a powerful card is because in practice it's a 3 mana 5/5 that reads something close to "your creature get +2/+0." Even in a world where aggro isn't especially competitive that's still one Hell of a Magic card to be facing down. I've seen plenty of people lose to that card in my day and if your 3 drop is legitimately killing people then you know that you're doing something right. My problem with Assault Formation is that it's 3 marginal abilities tacked on to one card in the vein hope that it'll be good. I do realize that it makes cards like Wall of Roots very threatening but that just doesn't strike me as something that I'd want be building around. It has basically no EDH/Cube applications for fairly obvious reasons (too weak, too conditional, too hard to build around for too little reward) but again, I don't even like it in Constructed. I'm not dense, I do realize that you can play it in an Axebane Guardian + Overgrown Battlement + Karametra's Acolyte deck that produces jillions of mana, I just don't see why those decks would want to play with this kind of card. Isn't their sole purpose to power out a Tooth and Nail that wins the game on the spot? What cards are they going to cut to add something like this? Still, I dislike rating these kinds of cards in general because I don't feel like I'm their intended audience. It's a cheap, fun and cool card that can enable inventive deckbuilers to design some sweet brews. It may not be the most competitive card in the world but it probably wasn't designed to be.
Constructed Grade D-
EDH/Cube Grade F
Not Cubeworthy
Avatar of the Resolute: People are probably sick and tired of hearing me talk about Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx but when life gives you lemons what else are you going to do other than make lemonade? The fact that most of my Nykthos decks start with Strangleroot Geist and Predator Ooze and end with Lifeblood Hydra certainly doesn't help because those are exactly the kinds of cards that you'll want to pair with this type of threat. Reach isn't as relevant as it used to be now that those decks can all curve Arbor Colossus into Soul of Zendikar into Sylvan Primordial but it still never hurts, especially when you're not forcing yourself to play with marginal cards such as Deadly Recluse. That being said I don't think that this guy has a home outside of Constructed. He's too hard to cast + support in Cube and he's too weak for EDH so I could only ever see myself playing him in dedicated Nykthos decks that run a whack of +1/+1 counter dudes. Even then he's not stellar by any. I'm not entirely convinced that something resilient such as Bassara Tower Archer isn't just strictly better because it's significantly harder to remove and you don't need to get value from your cheap threats insofar as you curve into a Genesis Wave/Sylvan Primordial/Tooth and Nail/Primal Surge via Nythkos.
Constructed Grade C
EDH/Cube Grade F
Not Cubeworthy
Collected Company: I think it's safe to say that no one saw this card coming. The ability to jam 6 mana worth of dudes at instant speed is not something that you'd expect from a 4 mana Green spell. In a world where this always hit a combo of Sakura-Tribe Elder, Courser of Kruphix, Yavimaya Elder, etc. the card seems very sweet. The problem is that you'd have to be playing a deck with like 25 sub 3 CMC dudes to make that even close to a reality. I don't know the exact math (nor do I pretend to) but something tells me that your average Cube/EDH/Constructed deck will fall far too short to make this a legitimate 2-for-1. Cool card, cool concept, it's probably just too unreliable to field in a setting where you want to be casting 5-8 mana bombs. That is, the deck-building restraints feel too restrictive for me to label this as a generic playable.
Constructed Grade D+
EDH/Cube Grade F
Not Cubeworthy
Deathmist Raptor: I'm a fan of recursive threats with Deathtouch but the condition is far too narrow for this to ever be a generic playable. It's obviously fine in dedicated Morph/Manifest decks but that's not saying very much in my mind.
Constructed Grade C- (when supported)
EDH/Cube Grade F
Not Cubeworthy
Den Protector: I've come around on Eternal Witness a lot in the past few years to the point where I'm willing to play a weaker version of it in singleton formats such as EDH and Cube. My problem with these kinds of cards has always been that they're usually bad on turn 3 because most people don't actually own Fetchlands which means that they're basically just 6-7 drops at which point you may as well play with more 6-7 drops. Sylvan Primordial changed everything though (at least for me) and made it realistic for you to cast giant Genesis Waves/Primal Surges and to buy them back with Eternal Witnesses. Den Protector is obviously worse but Sylvan Primordial renders mana requirements irrelevant anyways so paying 5 for a 3 mana effect becomes much more tolerable. It's fine to recur this with Genesis and it even works nicely with Kessig Wolf Run. Granted, KWR grants Trample so blockers aren't especially troublesome but it's still nice to pump up unblockable critters whenever possible. This card is too much weaker than Eternal Witness for me to give it a serious grade but it's still a serviceable Magic card.
EDH/Cube Grade D+
Constructed Grade D-
Cubeworthy
Explosive Vegetation: Not only is this card highly playable in every format but it desperately needed a reprint. I'm ecstatic to see it for those reasons. Go out of your way to acquire as mnay that you get your hands on because 100% of your Green EDH/Cube/Constructed decks could realistically play it. 2 basic lands of any color is a complete steal for 4 mana. Turn 4-5 Sylvan Primordials, Hornet Queens, etc. is such a big game and the color fixing is almost always relevant.
Global Rating B
Cubeworthy
Foe-Razer Regent: The bar for Green 7 drops is way too high for me to even consider playing one that loses to spot removal. Rampaging Baloths (it's a virtual 7 drop), Sylvan Primordial, Hornet Queen, Avenger of Zendikar and more are all infinitely superior.
Global Grade F
Not Cubeworthy
Obscuring Aether: For the record I'm obviously only discussing this card in the context of a Trail of Mystery/Secret Plans style Constructed decks filled with Morphs. It has absolutely no EDH/Cube applications and it's worthless in a vacuum. It's important to remember that you get a free mulligan in multiplayer (it's an official rule; not a personal recommendation) when playing with these kinds of cards because opening grips that include these are significantly stronger than ones that don't. I highly recommend shipping your first 7 back if you don't find one because it doesn't really cost you anything. You can decide for yourself if you want to go to 6 from there but if you deck does have a bunch of card advantage engines such as Secret Plans in it then you probably should. The cool thing about this card is that unlike its predecessors it allows you to run out a turn 2 Morph and we all know that Grizzly Bears is a multiplayer staple. Jokes aside this card can legitimately get out of hand if you can ever land multiples as it will enable you to quickly and continually empty and refill your hand as the game progresses. For the life of me I don't understand the the flip ability (why does it even have it?) and I would not recommend ever using it unless you draw the 4th or something. A Vanilla 2/2 for 3 is significantly worse than unplayable trash so unless the chump blocker represents the difference between winning and losing I'd rather bluff having a spell in my hand than run this thing out. I know that this might seem like a bad card to draw later on but multiples actually work fairly well together insofar as you're able to stick some sort of persistent draw engine. Again, I highly recommend mulling aggressively for opening hands that contain them given how much worse the first gets even when cast as early as turn 2 or 3. Otherwise there isn't much to say about this card because its applications are so obvious that it's barely worth discussing them. You'll (probably) always play 4 of these in your Secret Plans Constructed decks but they have absolutely no generic use and virtually cannot be played in singleton formats unless your deck/Cube is specifically built to support it (which isn't impossible, just unlikely).
Constructed Rating C-
Cube/EDh Rating F
Not Cubeworthy
Shaman of Forgotten Ways: A Worn Powerstone with a relevant body that gets a free Biorhythm tacked-on? I'll take 10 please! Remember, this kind of card isn't replacing Craterhoof Behemoth/Tooth and Nail in your lists. It's a ramp card that just so happens to act as another big finisher if needed. This means that even when do you draw it on turn 7 when you have access to 30 mana that it'll still be a relevant draw, unlike say Carpet of Flowers or Frontier Siege. I'm a huge fan of this card in that sense I can't wait to whip it out in EDH. It's somewhat unfortunate that you have untap with this guy to get his effect but Lightning Greaves and Thousand-Year Elixir are cards that're making the cut in your Elf-ball EDH decks anyways so you'll definitely have outs to activate this thing immediately. It's also worth noting that being a creature is a massive upside because it means that you're able to Summoner's Pact, Green Sun's Zenith, Chord of Calling, Birthing Pod, etc. this guy into play as needed. Sure, Craterhoof Behemoth is usually better but gaining infinite life is a real thing in EDH and activating this on turn ~4-5 in an 8 player game is probably significantly more damage.
Global Grade C+
Cubeworthy
Sight of the Scalelords: I am legitimately surprised at how reasonable this card is. +2/+2 vigilance is a massive buff to receive every turn and will allow you to smash through board stalls while still maintaining a defensive position. Barring a few exceptions (such as Thragtusk) most of your 4+ CMC threats are going to have 4 toughness anyways and even 3 drops such as Courser of Kruphix fit the bill. Given the the upside of this card is that it's basically a permanent Overrun I'm struggling to dislike this card. Now, let me clear, this isn't some slam-dunk "must include" in your decks. Unlike Overrun it doesn't work on mana dorks/tokens and some people will argue that if you have 3-4 big dudes out that you're already winning. I personally think that that's complete BS because it takes a lot more than a few big bodies to take down a game where I play. I don't think that it's win-more at all in that sense and I could easily see the pump + vigilance allowing players to push through for significant damage. It's also relatively strong even in the face of removal because it'll give you a strong attacker that still stays back to block if nothing else. Insofar as you're casting things like Soul of Zendikar and Sylvan Primordial that's probably a legitimate effect. I don't think that your Constructed decks will want more than 1 or 2 of these, you can definitely draw too many, but I could see the first few being very reasonable.
Global Rating D+
Cubeworthy
Surrak, the Hunt Caller: People are really hating on this card and for the life of me I don't understand why. Obviously it's not great to be jamming him on a empty board but it doesn't take much for this guy to be a 5/4 "your creatures have Haste." Now, I'm not saying that you want to be playing with these kinds of aggressive cards in multiplayer but I could certainly see myself losing this guy. Rant aside Surrak here is just another marginal Green 4 drop that dies to removal. I don't recommend playing these types of threats in general for that reason alone and Surrak here is no different. I'd much rather slam a Masked Admirers or Oracle of Mul Daya and generate some sort of long-run advantage even if my guy gets picked-off immediately. That being said Haste is a very powerful keyword, especially in formats such as EDH where you're often looking to kill in 1-3 hits with your general. Surrak clearly isn't the strongest Haste enabler of all time but he's still a beefy body that grants a relevant effect. Ultimately I don't expect to see him played in any format but I don't think that he deserves the "unplayable trash" label that he's being given.
Global Grade D
Not Cubeworthy
Overall Grade: D+
Closing Thoughts: Green didn't get much out of DTK other than a much needed reprint for Explosive Vegetation. The only notable new playable is Shaman of the Forgotten Ways which is a powerful Worn Powerstone variant that I would happily play in every format for many years to come. I suppose that Collected Company is an interesting card because even if you only hit one creature off of it that's still "fine" and if you can build a solid deck that can reliably nab two then you're golden. It has a lot of potential if nothing else which is reason enough to get excited over it. Besides, these are the kinds of cards that will only get better with time. As more and more Scavenging Oozes and Courser of Kruphixes are printed its stock can only rise. The rest of Green's offerings are unexciting at best but most of them are solid build-around-mes. I may not like Assault Formation or Obscuring Aether but they're cool and unique effects that I'm sure others will. There's still not much to get excited over though which seems to be a common trend for the set.
Arashin Sovereign: "Aetherlings" are significantly weaker in a multiplayer setting in the sense that they kill far too slowly to ever provide true inevitability. This particular ability is never as powerful as it reads in practice because both modes are terrible. If you ever put this card on the bottom then you just played a 7 mana 6/6 flyer in a world of cards like Diluvian Primordial. Yeah, let that one sink in. Given that a 6/6 flyer is usually better than an average draw in your deck you'll probably be stuck topping this thing (almost) every time but I mean what is a 6/6 going to accomplish in a multiplayer setting? Kill a player every 3 turns (let's be reasonable and not assume that everyone is still at 20)? That's so incredibly weak that it's not even funny. There's realistically no relevant applications for this kind of card in that sense.
Global Grade D-
Not Cubeworthy
Atarka's Command: I think that "Sizzle" decks filled with Price of Progresses and whatnot are almost unplayable so I couldn't foresee myself ever playing with this card nowadays. It's far too aggressively slanted for my tastes. It'll obviously have some Constructed applications if you are looking to build a Sulfuric Vortex deck of sorts but I would never advise playing this thing in EDH or Cube. The problem with the Flame Rift Constructed decks is that they die miserably to pressure and since you're pissing off every single one of your opponents it's nearly impossible to win the race in my experience. Chandra's Spitfire will enable you to kill a player or two off (maybe) but the collective effort of the table is virtually always enough to ensure that you can never take home the W.
Constructed Grade D
EDH/Cube Grade F
Not Cubeworthy
Dragonlord Atarka: I'll still take Bogardan Hellkite any day of the week thanks. That being said I don't mind this card because it's enormous + it provides an immediate impact. I'm not overly concerned about the fact that she can't burninate players because I've basically never seen Bogardan Hellkite go to the dome to begin with. Someone always has something more threatening to remove. The fact that she's an 8/8 flying trampler is certainly relevant because that is one incredibly fast clock. Dragons are usually 5/5 flyers for like 6-8 and so getting a "free" +3/+3 figures to be relevant in a large % of your games. At the end of the day the biggest strike against this card in Constructed is that she's not a Molten Primordial/Sylvan Primordial which are are both dirt cheap and significantly more powerful. Since you're not going to be playing with eight 7 drops in your lists I don't expect to see much of her in the format. Still, hey, I would not be surprised to see her creep her way into EDH and possible even Cube. She fits the bill of being a "nut average" 7 drop that provides instant impact and that has a huge body. For anyone wondering why I'm not drooling over her, I'm not big on Flametongue Kavus in general. Putting another player behind is worse than putting your self ahead in a multiplayer setting and this is very much a "must kill" threat that players will have ample opportunity to respond to. Bogardan Hellkite costs more mana and has weaker stats but being able to Flash him in combat or at EOT drastically reduces the window with which players can interact with him. Atarka is good, don't get me wrong, I just don't want to pay 7 mana to kill 1-2 threats and have my fatty die to removal (maybe she gets a hit or two in, maybe not, it doesn't matter much). I would much rather play with a Sylvan Primordial style threat that accrues additional resources for myself.
Global Grade C+
Cubeworthy
Dragonlord Dromoka: There's some merit to fielding threats that force your opponents to react in specific ways but I generally dislike these kinds of finishers in multiplayer. Far more often than not their textboxes are relatively blank which makes them overcosted, underpowered finishers that never accomplish much of anything. They're obviously not horrendous or anything, they have a whack of stats and effects for a reasonable cost, I just never care if people play these kinds of cards against me.
Global Grade D
Not Cubeworthy
Dragonlord Kolaghan: In my original review I had Kolaghan lumped together with Dromoka because both cards seemed equally unimpressive to me. Since then numerous people (in this thread and IRL) have defended it on the basis that it's solid Haste enabler. While I was obviously aware of this at the time it's entirely possible that I'm undervaluing the effect. I'm still not impressed with the card but I will concede the fact that he contends with Urabrask the Hidden and Anger with respect to being a mass Haste enabler. While it's true that Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund is the one true King not everyone builds Dragon decks and not everyone plays Jund colors all of the time. I also probably overlooked the fact that Urabrask the Hidden has slowly crept from 2 to 5 dollars since I first started playing with it. Furthermore, he's not a card that Dragonstorm can fetch and Patriarch's Bidding on Dragons won't bring it back. Crux of Fate naming non-Dragons is also going to axe him so there are very legitimate reasons to use Kolaghan instead. Even if you exclude one turn kill strategies granting your entire team Haste is a very big game in formats dominated by Wraths. It enables you to pressure Control out of the game before they can take a complete stranglehold on the match and grind you you with card draw, life gain and uninteractive finishers. While I don't expect his "deal 10" ability to be especially relevant on balance it will lock people out of playing certain spells in Constructed. I don't like that it's basically blank text in EDH and Cube, I think that he's very marginal in said formats for that reason alone, but even as a big Haste enabler he's still a relevant threat.
Constructed Grade C-
EDH Grade D+
Cube Grade D-
Not Cubeworthy
Dragonlord Ojutai: It has "Hexproof" and "draw a card" on it so it immediately intrigues me more than the other dragons. Barring a Wrath it's not going to die the turn that you play it and even though it's vulnerable on O by then you'll have untapped mana to protect it with Forbid, Dismiss, Cryptic Command, etc. At that point you have a giant Thieving Magpie who still has legitimate defensive value if needed.
Constructed/Cube Grade C
EDH Grade D
Cubeworthy
Dragonlord Silumgar: Callous Oppressor, at 3 mana, is good. Sower of Temptation, at 4 mana, is playable. Silumgar, at 6 mana, is sketchy at best. The obvious saving grace to the card is that you can steal and ult/self-kill Planeswalkers but that's a difficult thing to evaluate in a vacuum. In the dark I'd say that the card is stone-unplayable but that opinion is heavily biased in the sense that I think 'Walkers are horrendous in general. In my experience they come down, do their +1 or +2 and die to some evasive beater immediately. I can count the number of 'Walker ultimates that I've seen on 1 hand (it's 1) because there's just no reason to ever leave those things alive and it's virtually impossible to cast them on stable boards. In that sense I see Silumgar as a very expensive and bad Sower of Temptation who'll rarely provide adequate value. His stock clearly rises in decks with dedicated sacrifice outlets but in general I wouldn't want to have this type of 6 drop in my lists.
Global Grade C-
Not Cubeworthy
Dromoka's Command: While slightly better than Atarka's Command you're not going to write home about this thing. I could easily see myself getting value out of all 4 abilities and I think that people will underestimate how frequently this'll "counter" an Earthquake or whatever. Still, barring that you're basically looking at a conditional 2-for-1 in a color combo that has access to things like Aura Shards and Mirari's Wake. You have vastly superior alternatives to field in Cube/EDH in that sense and the power-level just isn't there for Constructed either. There's obviously enough versatility to make it a marginal playable, people will cast this and it'll probably always be "fine," this is just not the kind of card that I personally want to be resolving in an a multiplayer setting.
Global Grade D
Not Cubeworthy
Harbinger of the Hunt: A 5/3 flyer with an upside for 5 is "fine" but at 3 mana per activation I just couldn't imagine generating significant value from his activated abilities. Killing 1-2 drops is "something" but that's not what I want to be doing with my time and mana on turn 6 and beyond. Again, the baseline stats and potential upside ensure that it can never be unplayable but I don't think that anyone is scrambling to make room for this guy in their lists.
Grade D-
Not Cubeworthy
Kolaghan's Command: Unlike Atarka's Command this will virtually always be a 2-for-1 at instant speed for 3 mana. Given that I would play an instant-speed Divination in a huge % of my decks some variation of it has to be a playable Magic card. While the "target player discards a card" clause may seem irrelevant the sad fact of the matter is that you'll probably need to cast this as a removal spell early on and you probably won't have Raise Dead targets available to you. Where I play someone will almost always have a piece of Artifact mana to shoot but that won't be a universal law for everyone I don't think. I wouldn't be excited to play with this card because the power-level just plain isn't there but if it found its way into one of my Rakdos Cube decks I'd probably always get a decent amount of value out of it. I don't think that it's remotely playable in EDH, it's just way too weak, but it does seem reasonable in more aggressive formats.
Constructed/Cube Grade D
EDH Grade F
Cubeworthy
Narset Transcendent: 'Walkers like these are unplayable trash in my opinion. She's going to be a "4 mana, draw .3 cards" spell in my circles which is exactly as unplayable as it sounds. Doubling up on draw spells/Swords to Plowshares/ etc. is "fine" but it's not something that I'm usually willing to tap out at Sorcery speed to do. Ok, Rebound is significantly better than doubling a spell (especially for things like mass removal) but not enough to convince me to like this card. Her ultimate is also garbage in the sense that it basically doesn't do anything. Obviously you can combo it with Humility and whatnot to make it relevant but if your combo involves ulting a 'Walker then you're living in Magical Christmas Land. I like that Doubling Season allows for an instant ult activation but, again, you need at least 1 more card (Humility/Moat) to lock the game up from there. That's way too fair + slow + unreliable for my tastes. I would actively put this card in opposing UW decks because I just don't care if people play with these kinds of cards in a multiplayer setting. We often joke about Jace, the Mindsculptor is a 4 mana Brainstorm because that's realistically the only thing that he's ever done when cast. In my experience the only time that 'Walkers are relevant are in situations where you've already locked-up the game and could close it out with just about anything.
Global Grade D
Not Cubeworthy
Necromaster Dragon: A 5 drop that has to deal combat damage and pay mana to produce a 2/2 and a bit of mill? I know what you're rating you're getting my friend (hint: it's a D)! I know that I probably sound like a broken record at this point but there's not much to say about these kinds of marginal threats. I know that people like to play with things like Nemesis of Reason but I've realistically never seen them be actively good. I'm not saying that it's hard to attack with these kinds of threats, you'll get a ton of swings off, my problem is that it's meaningless even when they are connecting. A bit of mill is trivial and a conditional token producer on a marginal body is a far cry from an Ant Queen or what have you. That is, the reason why these kinds of cards are so weak is because not only do they fail to consistently provide value (they die to removal at not benefit) but even when they do its marginal value that has next-to-no impact on the game. When you compare that to significance that Gray Merchant of Asphodel has on a match your threats start to feel very inadequate.
Constructed Grade D
Cube/EDH Grade F
Not Cubeworthy
Ojutai's Command: People love toolbox cards/enablers in general and Commands certainly qualify. Even if they're not the best cards in the world their flexibility and power will always make them fan favorites. Besides, I'll happily play with the card Dismiss in any multiplayer format and this is ostensibly a more flexible version of the card. The inability to counter game-ending bombs such as Rite of Replication, Insurrection and Exsanguinate is obviously a legitimate drawback but you'll always nail something amazing and nab your free card in the process. This card's stock rises dramatically in lists that have access to Stoneforge Mystic because then your 2-for-1 becomes a 3-for-1 and it all happens at instant speed at EOT. I'm not thrilled with this card or anything, the 4 life seems relatively useless and not every deck is going to have amazing 2 drops to recur but at the end of the day it's hard for a Dismiss with additional modes to be bad (just look at Cryptic Command) so I'm sure this will have some amount of long-term value in the multiplayer sphere.
Global Grade C
Cubeworthy
Pristine Skywise: How the Hell is that a name for a Dragon? That aside I like this card because it's a legitimately good threat on both O and D. A 6/4 evasive beater is a real clock in non-EDH formats and it's difficult to attack into a critter that can untap itself and gain colored protections. It's not amazing by any means, it's no Sun Titan or whatever, but it's a big evasive body that always threatens favorable blocks making it a solid (but unexciting) playable. I want to stress that the threat of the untap is significantly more power than the untap itself. I would just plain not attack my Grave Titan (or whatever) into one of these knowing that if my opponent does have a spell to untap it and give it pro-Black then I'd be screwed. Whether they have the the spell or nor is irrelevant in those scenarios because it virtually never makes sense to risk it. This card is deceptively powerful in that sense because even when you don't "have it" the card is still extremely threatening.
Constructed/Cube Grade C-
EDH Grade D-
Cubeworthy
Ruthless Deathfang: A an evasive 4/4 isn't much of a clock on turns 7 and beyond and the fact that it needs some amount of support absolutely kills the card for me. It's another durdle tha'll die to removal at no benefit in a world of cards like Massacre Wurm. Besides, Dictate of Erebos is cheaper, more durable and can be cast at instant speed. Sorry buddy, that's a fight that you just can't win. I suppose that a 4/4 flyer with an upside is somewhat playable, the power-ceiling on this guy is fairly high, I just couldn't imagine a "winning" deck that would want this as its 6 drop. Grave Pact costs 4 mana and Grave Pact this thing is not. I wouldn't even play it over something like Attrition really.
Global Grade D
Not Cubeworthy
Sarkhan Unbroken: This is what a multiplayer Planeswalker needs to look like in my mind. The baseline card is 4/4 flyer for 5 with an upside. No one would willingly play a "Serra Angel" by choice but this card is obviously much better than that. Drawing a card and ramping are both powerful effects to have on a + ability and ensure you'll be able to generate a good amount of value from this guy every time that you manage to keep him around. I like that he jumps you straight to Primordial mana on the following turn which is a good place to be in a multiplayer setting. His ultimate is also extremely powerful and pairs well with Doubling Season. Fetching Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund and a whack of other Dragons and win on the spot should enable you to win on the spot in the vast majority of your games. Given that every Green EDH deck already plays that card I have to think that this card will see some play in that format. Given that all of the abilities are powerful, aggressively costed and generate card advantage you really don't need him to survive for very long to get your mana's worth. He's not some bomb that will dominate the game each and every time that he's cast but there's more than enough going on here to get excited over this guy. Even someone like me who typically hates 'Walkers likes what he sees so far.
Constructed/EDH Grade C
Cube Grade D
Not Cubeworthy
Savage Ventmaw: 6 free mana every turn is a lot of mana. Cards that immediately spring to mind are Aggravated Assault and Hellkite Charger but I mean there's any number of things that you can do with ramp of this magnitude. Genesis Wave, Tooth and Nail, Primal Surge and much more are all fantastic cards to cheat out early on. I realize that this thing is a 6 drop that dies to removal but if it's one thing that I've learned while playing Cube/EDH it's that even "bad" versions of big mana can still very easily win games. If at any point you're able to produce 12+ mana in a given turn you should be able to very easily win the game. This isn't some bomb that can compete with Inferno Titan at 6 CMC or anything but it's still the kind of card that I want to playing with. The upside of being able to hardcast Primal Surge or an enormous Genesis Waves offsets the fact that this card can (and will) be killed at no benefit. Given that this thing'll basically be free I highly recommend acquiring 4 and never looking back. Even if you're not abusing Sneak Attack or whatever to break the trigger it's still an insanely powerful 6 drop if it ever gets to attack. Given that it resides in the colors with Fires of Yavimaya, Anger, Urabrask the Hidden, etc. that isn't exactly saying very much. The upside of producing 6 free mana every turn is just absolutely insane to the point where this thing reminds me of Primeval Titan. It's obviously significantly weaker, it dies to removal, but if people don't kill it immediately then I don't see how you can possibly lose. As it stands this is easily one of my favorite cards in the set and I highly recommend acquiring some.
Global Grade C
Cubeworthy
Silumgar's Command: Why does this thing cost 5? It's absolutely awful. Counter-kill is a nice swing, I'll give it that, but every other combo just seems atrocious. I do expect to see this card played a fair amount if only because it's a Command and "it's cool" but this isn't what you want to be doing in a multiplayer setting in my mind. Profane Command was amazing because it was almost impossible to construct a scenario where you weren't ecstatic to cast some combination of it. This card feels similar except I could easily see myself not feeling good about most of the options. I do realize that it's instant-speed vs sorcery-speed and so obviously the sorcery will have the stronger effect but I just don't see why I'd want to cast this at EOT in my UB decks. I'd much rather resolve a Fact or Fiction/Jace's Ingenuity or something and draw a whack of cards than go for some marginal 2-for-1.
Global Grade D+
Not Cubeworthy
Swift Warkite: It's a 6 drop that offers immediate impact so it's probably a marginal playable. I don't know what you'd actually cheat into play with this thing but if nothing else it can act as a Gravedigger of sorts. Hey, you never know, plopping a hasted Wight of Precinct Six or even a Big Game Hunter into play could be a "something." If someone can think of a way to break this card, by all means, share with the rest of the class. Until then I'll just list it as a slightly below average finisher.
Global Grade D+
Not Cubeworthy
Overall Grade: D
Closing Thoughts: My standout multicolor picks include Dragonlord Atarka, Sarkhan Unbroken and Savage Ventmaw. Dragonlord Ojutai, Dragonlord Silumgar, Ojutai's Command, Silumgar's Command and Swift Warkite all strike me as being playable but they do feel like a step below the ones that I previously mentioned. Everything else I could live without. For what it's worth I'm not partial to UW or UB so don't read too much into the fact that 2 dragons and their commands made the list whereas the none of the others did. They're simply objectively stronger cards in my mind. What I will say is that most of the multicolor cards are actually "cool" and I wouldn't hate to play with most of them. I don't think that they have very much in the way of raw power but they seem like they'd be fun to play (both with and against) and that definitely counts for something. As such you won't hear any doom and gloom from me on the multicolor front. All-in-all I think that Wizards good job of producing some solid-yet-fair playables.
Atarka Monument et al: 3 mana is too much to pay for a Gruul Signet and the prospect of paying 6 mana to maybe deal 4 damage a turn shouldn't entice anyone. 3 CMC mana rocks such as these never have and never will be "fine" to play in EDH (or any format for that matter) because they're significantly worse than countless alternatives that do vastly more broken things for their cost. Do not under any circumstances convince yourself that these are playable magic cards. They aren't.
Global Grade F
Not Cubeworthy
Tapestry of the Ages: They lost me at the condition. This is a terrible version of Seer's Sundial and how frequently do you see that card being played? I know that it's not strictly worse or anything but the power-ceiling on this card is abysmally low and the floor is even lower (albeit not by much). This is the kind of card that I would gladly put in my opponents' decks (in any format) because there's just no world in which I could see myself getting buried by the card advantage that it generates over the course of the game.
Global Grade D-
Not Cubeworthy
Vial of Dragonfire: It's now confirmed that Renowned Weaponsmith is a beefier Vedalken Engineer with no additional text. I'm willing to live with that. Feel free to play with the Smith in your Artifact-based decks but do not feel compelled to play with this horrendous do-nothing. A Worn Powerstone that blocks 2 power creatures is good enough to play.
Global Grade F
Not Cubeworthy
Overall Grade: F
Closing Thoughts: Let's just pretend like we didn't see anything :3.
Evolving Wilds: Every player needs 10 of these. It's cheap color fixing, Delve enabling, library manipulation, etc. If you're playing with a 2-3 color deck that doesn't have many 1 drops (i.e. most multicolor decks) then you need a very good reason to be playing with fewer than 4 copies of this badboy. Reprint it as much as you Wizards because it'll always be a solid playable for us casuals.
Global Grade C+
Cubeworthy
Haven of the Spirit Dragon: Crucible of the Spirit Dragon was bland so I'm glad that the new version is a legitimate playable. Free color fixing and low-opportunity cost recursion is a welcome addition to any creature-based deck making this a must-include. There's virtually no reason to omit it from your Dragon builds because it's strictly better than any of your alternatives. Always play this card in any quantity in your Dragon decks (if it fits within the budget obviously).
Constructed/EDH Grade C+
Cube Grade F
Not Cubeworthy
Overall Grade: B
Closing Thoughts: One good reprint and one new staple for Dragon decks. I'll take it.
The lackluster finale to the unexciting block has reached its conclusion. The general consensus seems to be that DTK was a forgettable set and I tend to agree with that point of view. The "best" offerings that it had for multiplayer are either virtual reprints or slightly different takes on cards that we've seen numerous times already. The new Commands are all extremely marginal and the other cycles weren't any sexier. While Wizards managed to churn out a lot of random midrange nonsense they didn't provide much in the way of solid finishers. Everything is too weak and too niche to have any serious impact on an average game which leaves a lot to be desired. While they did manage to sneak a few goodies in there most of them have very narrow applications in specific archetypes in specific formats. Sidisi, Undead Vizier in EDH, Shorecrasher Elemental in Constructed mono-Blue Devotion and Dragonlord's Prerogative a secondary Opportunity for Cube are all examples of cards that are very exciting in 1-2 decks in 1-2 formats but that probably won't see much play beyond that. It's an extremely forgettable set in that sense and not one that I recommend investing heavily into.
Overall Set Grade: D+
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
That's basically the best way to summarize the entire set. So far there's maybe 5 cards that seem remotely interesting.
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
Niche decks are fun to build and fun to play against. Magic needs more niche cards and less cards that are great in anything.
I'm not saying that every card needs to be good in every deck. For example, I love Dark Deal from the previous set. It may not be good in 95% of all Black decks but it's AMAZING in the Waste Not/Notion Thief ones. I'm all for niche cards as long as they enable legitimately powerful strategies/archetypes that actually do something relevant. There are countless numbers of cool + marginal things that you can do in Magic which is why it's no nice to be able to do something powerful.
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
anafenza, kin-tree spirit
Gleam of authority
mirror mockery
shorecrasher elemental
sidisi, undead vizier
descent of the dragons
Dragon Tempest
Assault formation
avatar of the resolute
collected company
inspiring call
shaman of forgotten ways
atarka's command
dragonlord dromoka
dragonlord kolaghan
narset transcendent
ojutai's command
sarkhan unbroken
Ah shoot. My mistake. I thought that it was a legitimately good card and was surprised that no one else seemed to care about it. Now I understand why XD. Anyways, yes, you're right, the card is terrible. In my mind I was thinking about it like Overgrowth when it clearly isn't. It's just unplayable trash.
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
You make similar remarks multiple times throughout your post so I'll just say this once for all of them. I know that my rating scale has changed since you made that reply but even at the time I always clearly labeled my reviews with disclaimers such as "this only applies to Dragon decks." I'm unable to present a grading scale that's applicable to all cards but I feel as though I did an adequate job of explaining that it doesn't make sense to rate "Dragons matter" cards in a vacuum because they'll basically never be played in one.
I fundamentally disagree with this opinion in its entirety. To the best of my knowledge there isn't a single dragon that offers any reasonable value while sitting on D and for the life of me I don't see how a defensive Dragon deck could win a game. Most of the best Dragons reward you for attacking so it makes absolutely no sense to me when you say that you should be holding them back. Why, then, play Dragons in the first place? Scourge of the Throne, Hellkite Charger, Balefire Dragon, Dragon Mage and Utvara Hellkite are all what I consider to be "top tier" Dragons and none of them do anything when your team is sitting back on your side of the table. With respect to "if you're dealing more than 1 you're winning anyways," again, I completely disagree. A 5/5 Dragon, to me, is basically nothing. That's never going to race Gray Merchant of Asphodel recursion, beat past a Sylvan Primordial, race a Mob Rule, etc. Dragons are tier 2 finishers at best and the idea that single one can put you in a winning position in a somewhat serious multiplayer game just doesn't register with what I see on a regular basis. I would gladly play against someone who sandbagged all of his/her threats under the assumption that single flying beater would be good enough to seal a game. That's an insignificant clock as far as I'm concerned. Unless that thing is pinging for at LEAST 2-3 in the later stages of the game I wouldn't bet a dime on your ability to go on to win that game.
Can you though? I'm legitimately asking. The only 1 drops that I've ever played in Red Devotion are Figure of Destiny and Dragonmaster Outcast. I don't think that Grim Lavamancer variants are playable and Goblin Welder never has enough targets. If there's obvious 1 drops that I'm missing, by all means, share your tech. Nykthos-based decks are my favorite archetypes and I'm always looking for new ways to spice up my brews.
I agree that in an ideal world people would always play copies of Eternal Witness first and foremost but I've had some Europeans and such tell me that cards like that run for a lot of money in their LGSes and that they don't have access to same online stores. With that in mind I don't like to assume that people can always purchase those kinds of cards in any number.
With respect to the other statement, I don't see why. "Should own" isn't the same thing as "own" so the statements aren't mutually exclusive by any means. Furthermore, ETBT fetchlands such as Terramorphic Expanse are significantly weaker than true fetchlands such as Wooded Foothills. Witness on the latter means that she can be played a Borderland Ranger early on as needed but if you're nabbing an Evolving Wilds then it isn't nearly as good.
I won't argue that she's a powerful card but I personally put more stock into Flash. My Red decks tend to overkill by a large amount far more often than they squeak through for exactsies so I'm less worried about the size and more worried about the utility. 7 vs 8 is obviously big, I won't argue otherwise, but I'm not convinced that the Flametongue Kavu aspect of the card is that easy to overlook. Casting this thing mid combat to shoot one thing and eat another is a big swing that I routinely see in EDH. Atarka may very well prove to be right up there with Primordials but I'm not that hopeful for her just yet.
The way I see this card is that even if I'm wrong about it it can't possibly be by that much. I might rate it a D- and in practice it might actually be a D+ or C- but there's absolutely no world in which it's a B- or above. Whereas I could be completely wrong about Clone Legion and get absolutely trounced by that card every time I'm not worried about where a card like Ruthless Deathfang will ultimately fall once all of the cards are on the table.
You don't need much more than Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund, Utvara Hellkite and Atarka, World Render to clear a table out. Scion of the Ur-Dragon is exploding in popularity as we speak (check the price history of the card) and makes these kinds of dreams a reality.
I'm satisfied with my B (previously 4) rating. A big part of what I do is attempt to bring budget-minded advice to budget-minded players and a big part of that involves pretending that things like true duals and Fetchlands don't exist. It makes absolutely no sense for me to use them as baseline discussion tools when they're not realistic options by any means. I agree that Karoos are awesome and I love me some trilands as well but none of that will ever change the fact that Evolving Wilds and Terramorphic Expanse are "must haves" for any 2-3 color deck that doesn't field many 1 drops. Those decks will basically always play those kinds of cards and there aren't amazing + affordable alternatives so I'm satisfied with my rating even if it's slightly inflated. This is another instance where I don't really care if the card is a C or a C+ or a B or whatever. The card is very good and every single casual player should own a ton of them and I won't feel bad if someone acquires a bunch because they see a "B" rating from me. I would much rather people acquire too many than too few because you will always find homes for your copies so I just couldn't care less if my rating is higher than it should be.
It's not that I don't think that is card is playable it's just not something that I felt like discussing. It's a marginal 2 CMC ramper for Dragon decks that dies to removal but that has the upside of being a blocker which means that it has slightly more value in the ultra-early and ultra-late stages of the game. I don't really care if people elect to field it or Fire Diamond or Urza's Incubator as long as they pick something to power their Dragons out. I probably should touch on it to some extent, it's a playable Magic card, I guess I just kind of figured that people can put 2 and 2 together and slot that and Dragonspeaker Shaman (I don't hate that card for what it's worth) in their Dragon decks. I do mean that in the least condescending way possible for what it's worth. A big part of why I write this is to highlight cards that I personally feel like discussing which rarely includes random utility spells with obvious applications. I just don't find them especially interesting. This card, for example, slots into exactly one deck and clearly has no Cube applications unless that's a supported theme. Everything about the card is blatantly obvious which is why I find it so boring. I didn't rate Obscuring Aether for similar reasons. It's good in exactly one archetype (Constructed Morph) and has absolutely no worth beyond that. It's good when played exactly on turn 1 and from then on it's lackluster at best. Again, it's a playable Magic card, it's just not something that I felt like taking the time to discuss. The Secret Plans all-morph archetype is probably going to play it but nothing else will.
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
Valkas isn't a card that wins games if it sits back on D. From the sounds of things you're able to cast a Dragon Broodmother and no one at the table plays any interaction so it automatically wins the game. Again, that's nothing like what I experience but if it works for you then so be it. Still, I don't really understand the "winning one turn later" comment. How does casting one Dragon and attacking with it allow you to win? Do you really just cast a Broodmother, wait 2 or 3 turns and attack for the win? And no one can ever do anything about it or race that clock? This all seems very peculiar to me.
Dragon Mage is a strong OTK card. Once you resolve a Sneak Attack, World at War, Aggravated Assault, Hellkite Charger, Scourge of the Throne, Fury of the Horde etc. with one in play you can usually dig into further copies and/or your Nature's Will/Bear Umbra/Sword of Feast and Famine. It's very easy to go infinite when you're drawing 7 cards every combat phase or if your Knollspine Dragon is nabbing you 15+ cards. Again, my experience with Red decks in formats such as Cube/EDH and even Constructed (albeit to a lesser extent) is that they tend to overkill by a lot far more often than they fly over for exactsies. World at War one turn into Mass Mutiny/Mob Rule/Insurrection (and/or Fury of the Horde) the next or Sneak Attack into Dragon Mage + Scourge of the Throne with Fury of the Horde are how I see people kill ~5 players in a single turn from completely empty boards. There's very little "ride 1 threat to victory across multiple turns" going on because that has absolutely no chance at racing what the other decks are capable of.
It's good for the reason that Wheel of Fortune is good in that sense. If you're just playing a fair game of Magic then the cards are absolutely God-awful in my mind. Even though you get the cards "first" if your opponents still have the ability to play them then that doesn't have much significance. In that sense you only play these cards because they enable gaming winning OTK sequences as you dig into extra combat phase + Gratuitous Violence/Savage Beating/Berserker's Onslaught + Insurrection type effects that win games on the spot. Even things like EOT Dictate of the Twin Gods go a long way to ensuring that you'll be able to untap and win from a 1-2 creature position. I know that I'm listing a lot of cards but it's not because they're all required. They're mostly interchangeable combo pieces and you typically only need 2-3 of them to go off and win. This is very relevant for someone like me who does a lot of Cube and EDH. You can't draft the nut Red deck in Cube every game but as long as you draw "a" extra combat phase card and "a" Mob Rule card then it's not hard to seal a game. You obviously want Sneak Attack and you'll never pass it but the decks still work without it (same if you don't draw it in EDH). You still have things like Mana Geyser which, for someone like me, is basically infinite mana for all intents and purposes. I don't need everyone to be tapped-out with 8 lands in play to generate the ~12 mana required in order to dump the rest of my hand onto the table. You're also obviously drafting mana rocks and such and plenty of games go for 15+ turns to begin with so time isn't much of a concern.
It's not so much the problem of "which is card is better" for someone like me. I don't really care which one is actually best. In the dark I would never tell someone to cut the Servants from a Dragon deck in order to make room for Charcoal Diamond (or whatever, random example) unless the personally expressed a need for an alternative. Even if card N would be slightly better in that slot I don't like nit-picking too much and want to give people as much deckbuilding freedom as possible. I personally don't like creature-based ramp that costs more than 1 mana because at that point I'd rather play with something more durable. That's obviously influenced by the number of Wraths played in my circles and it also speaks to my personal preference towards playing things like Wildfire and Burning of Xinye in my decks filled with 5+ toughness creatures. The thing is that none of that makes the little guy a bad guy. He may not work for me and my personal preferences but for someone else who needs early blockers and who doesn't want to play with Wildfire then he's fine. That's the problem with this kind of card. It's so generic and marginal that personal preference and metagame matters way more than anything else. What you or I think about the card is almost trivial. That's how I see it anyways.
The thing is that everyone's opinion on these cards will vary wildly. I personally think that Dragonspeaker Shaman is fine (albeit unexciting). I don't play the card myself but people have played it against me and since players are virtually never willing to expend removal on it it does its job of powering a Dragon or two out. It's a marginal playable just like countless other cards. No one is going to play 10/10s in 100% of their decks so I fully expect to see cards like these on a regular basis.
Obscuring Aether is a very similar card in my mind. It has a worthless flip ability but the Emerald Medallion impersonation is "good enough" in the right archetype. Given that this is multiplayer you can aggressively mull for one in your opening hand and the card isn't bad in multiples by any means. As long as your deck has a bunch of Secret Plans and whatnot you should be able to generate a fair amount of value from cost reduction. Is the card a "must have"? Not by a long shot. If you told me that you wanted to build a Morph deck without it then I wouldn't flip my lid. Wizards just plain doesn't print cards like Fluctuator anymore; you're not getting an insane rate either way.
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
Yeah, that was my bad. If I'm going to do these reviews then I better do them right because there's a reasonable chance that it'll influence what people acquire from the set. I've since reviewed all of the "boring" cards like Obscuring Aether, Anticipate, Ultimate Price and Dragonlord's Servant that I previously skipped. "I don't feel like talking bout them" is a poor excuse given that they're all potential role-players in a multiplayer setting.
Besides, sometimes I'm wrong and talking about a card (saying anything about it) can help illuminate that. I've come around on Kolaghan a lot already and, in true Prid3 fashion, I managed to butcher Sheltered Aerie by not reading the effing card. Had I simply said nothing none of this would have been brought to my attention. It was the comments that people like you provided in Kolaghan's defense that made me realize that he wasn't so bad after all. He's not just a bad Anger/Urabrask the Hidden or whatever. If your deck has things like Crux of Fate, Patriarch's Bidding, Dragonstorm, etc. but doesn't have Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund (or even if it does!) then there's absolutely a valid reason to field Kolaghan. This is true even in formats like EDH where his third ability is worthless (let's not get overly technical).
A problem that I have is that I always end up writing/saying too much despite the fact that I try not to. For a set that has like, I dunno, 10 or so playables I somehow managed to write a billion lines of text in which I called 50 cards marginal playables. That's not what I want these reviews to be but that's where they always end up. So yeah, that's kinda why I skipped over some cards that I felt were "obvious" but in for a penny, in for a pound I guess >.<. The irony is obviously that cards like Ultimate Price and Anticipate have significantly more multiplayer value than some random 5 drop which doesn't exactly help my cause.
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
That's a big part of it which is why I did go back and review those kinds of cards.
Without worrying too much about the exact number cards like Serum Visions and Sleight of Hand are less affordable than they once were and Ponder can be a bit sketchy when you're lacking shuffle effects. It's not Brainstorm bad or anything but the card isn't nearly as busted when you can't keep 1 or 2 good cards and ditch the rest. DtT has fallen a lot but it's still a ~$5.00 card (or whatever, I'm not worried about the exact number, it doesn't matter much for the purposes of this discussion) which is enough to make it a legitimate investment for most people that I know. Cards like Alchemy are sweet but they're also Black which doesn't help our new Jeskai overlords. I dislike Augur immensely in EDH because I find that he misses far too frequently. With all of that in mind I could very easily see a world in which a newer who's just starting out would want to have a card like Anticipate in his or her deck. It's not the bomb-diggity or anything but it's an inexpensive card from a recent set that has a worthwhile effect. I know a lot of Magic players and a big % of them want to build decks using cards that they own as much as possible and I have to believe that that's true for a large portion of the global community as well. EDH decks can be a daunting investment and every penny saved can go a long way. Being able to play Anticipate "for free" over a ~$2.00 Sleight of Hand that you'd have to purchase might not seem significant on its own but a few more of those and suddenly you're saving 20 bucks or whatever. I'm not trying to focus too hard on the exact numbers or financial implications here but this kind of stuff can matter a lot to people who don't necessarily have big bankrolls to fuel their hobbies. Once upon a time Serum Visions was an affordable card but Magic is a rich man's hobby and there are plenty of seemingly innocuous cards that are steadily becoming scarce commodities.
I figured as much for Dromoka and Atarka (I'm fairly confident that I always referred to them as "she's" in both set reviews) but I would not have pegged Kolaghan as an XX.
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
Haven't tried anything else yet. I tend to wait till prices stabilize before I really pick anything up.
EDIT: Oh! Berserkers' Onslaught is worse than I thought. I overvalued that one. Being useless on D is a lot more troublesome than I gave credit for. I dislike Rage Reflection, 6 is a lot more than 5, but I didn't realize just how marginal an "offense only" damage doubler would be.
Skullcrack sees enough Eternal play (Modern mostly) that many people expected a more versatile version of the card to see the light of day. Dromoka's Command is one of the cheapest 2-for-1s that you'll ever get in GW and even if you just use it as instant-speed Fight spell (with the +1/+1 counter) it's still passable. A lot of people were pegging it as one of the best cards in the set (although, that doesn't mean anything, people rave about every new card lol).
It's good in aggressive and midrange strategies, it's the cheapest (CMC wise) "good" Dragon to abuse the "Dragons matter" cards, etc. The fact that you can't even Ultimate Price it without getting Bolted is sweet and makes up for the lack of Haste (you get your "hit" anyways).
The problem with Command is that you need things like Snapcaster Mage and Stoneforge Mystic to support it. Those aren't realistic for most people to acquire. Otherwise it's just a "meh" version of Dismiss that has more options but can't counter a Tooth and Nail or whatever.
I agree that Nightveil is insane, I just don't like comparing cards to the "best in slot" alternative and dismissing it if it doesn't hold up. Still, Specter is what? A buck? A dollar for a Phyrexian Arena that deals damage, carries equipment, etc? Yeah... good luck winning that fight Shorecrash-sama. No way in hell I'm paying 7 dollars (or whatever) for a weaker card.
Deathmist Raptor is being played in the GW decks with Mastery of the Unseen and Whisperwood Elemental. I don't know why, that deck doesn't seem like it cares about ground-pounders, but hey, the format is young!
Ojutai Exemplars... I guess people think it'll be the next Seeker of the Way? 4 mana seems like a lot for something that can die to a Stoke and leaving up a spell is very mana intensive. I hope this guy does something in Standard, he's all-upside and seems powerful, I just figured that he'd be too slow. Also, it's not as though he can beat past Rhino/Tasigur... so... yeah...
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit: In my initial review of this card I focused on its applications in generic creature-based decks rather than her combo applications. In retrospect this was rather nonsensical because a generic 2/2 "with upside" for 2 is never going to see that much multiplayer play but a legitimate combo card can see competitive use for decades. For anyone curious as to how you can "break" her, just pair her with any Persist creature (such as Kitchen Finks) and any free sac outlet (such as Blasting Station). Since that's a legitimately powerful gameplan that defeats any number of opponents I think it was foolish to have focused on the other uses of the card. If she's going to see competitive multiplayer play, and she will, it's going to be as a combo enabler and not as a generic threat. This makes the card significantly better than I initially rated her once you accept the fact that she'll mostly see play in "unfair" decks.
Myth Realized: I knew that this card was going to be bad because it's a giant mana sink that dies to removal and that gets chump-blocked. It's basically just a conditional Mortivore. Having played against it numerous times at this point I have absolutely no idea what anyone ever saw in it. The card has literally never connected with anyone for a significant amount of damage and it's one of the most hilariously bad mid-to-lategame topdecks that I've ever seen. Whereas cards like Sacred Mesa are actively good and on-color this card sits there, soaks a ton of mana and still dies to removal and/or gets chumped. To the few of you who still have high hopes for this card, it's time to move on my friends.
Ojutai Exemplars: While I never gave this card an especially high grade my opinion of it continues to fall further and further as time goes on. It's just a dumb 4 drop that will never win the game and even though it's somewhat "scary" and resilient it just sits around and does nothing. Whereas a card like Monastery Mentor can legitimately beat a table down this guy just sits there and puffs out his chest. I have no plans to slot this card into any current/future decks, I wouldn't add it to my Cube, I'd never dream of playing it in EDH, etc.
Secure the Wastes: I had this card in the high C range when I initially reviewed it but at this point I'd go even higher. This card is stellar and it's something that everyone needs to own many copies of. White decks usually feature cards such as Cathars' Crusade to help them close games out which makes these kinds of threats absolutely insane. At X >= 4 this card is fantastic regardless of what your deck is doing and if you do play with cards like Spear of Heliod then it quickly becomes the strongest thing that you draw at basically every stage of the game. It's done God's work for us in Constructed and Cube and even in EDH it earns its slot in the G/W Token decks. Having another instant-speed threat that you can combo into a Beastmaster Ascension or whatever is back-breaking. Mass removal is literally too slow and spot removal isn't going to save you. It's the best Ivy Elemental that I've ever played with or against and I fully expect to see it played for many years to come. It's just so freaking efficient at basically every point on the curve and turns every Dictate of Heliod into a durable, game-winning threat.
Clone Legion: I pegged this card as being bad in EDH and sure enough it's failed to impress me. It costs 9 mana and it doesn't win the game. People have cast this numerous times and I've never felt as though it put me in a hopeless position. Don't get me wrong, I've lost to it, but I always felt like I had outs to beating the card. This wasn't a Tooth and Nail or an Insurrection. It was a big, dumb spell that won if absolutely no one had anything.
Contradict: Eh, maybe calling this a playable Magic card was a bit of a stretch.
Dragonlord's Prerogative: Opportunity is a lot worse than I remembered it to be. This card quickly shifted from "very good" to "good" to "oh right, there's a reason why no decklist has Opportunity in it any more." Woops. If I had to rate this card today it would be like a high D+ or a low C-.
Gurmag Drowner: While niche I overlooked that this card would be good in Animar, Soul of Elements EDH. There's basically no reason not to play this card in that archetype because it's frequently a 1 mana "Impulse" that even puts another counter on Animar. You'd always play this card in the best versions of that deck and as such this card will see a legitimate amount of competitive EDH play (significantly more than 99% of the cards in the game). Once you have an Earthcraft out (or whatever) it's ridiculously easy to go infinite with these kinds of cantrip threats, especially if you have a Cloudstone Curio kicking around.
Illusory Gains, Living Lore: Still have no idea what to make of these cards. No one (myself included) wants to play with them.
Profaner of the Dead: The fact that this card doesn't say "less than or equal to" is way more important than I thought that it would be. In my mind I just assumed that you could use things like Treasure Mage to find Myr Battlespheres or whatever but in practice the card is quite bad. It's actually worse than Evacuation in my experience and I don't even like that card to begin with. Ultimately it was never close to feeling like a Cyclonic Rift and I have no plans to play it anything at this point.
Shorecrasher Elemental: It was probably wrong to get overly excited about a 3 mana do-nothing threat given that Nightveil Specter is A) inexpensive and B) legitimately amazing. The card is "fine" but it's becoming blatantly clear to me that it doesn't have much of a home outside of mono-U Devotion and even in that deck it's not even the best 3 drop. Before anyone asks, I get that you can Morph and Unmorph this thing to avoid the UUU cost but that seems exceptionally weak to me. I want this card on turn 3, not on turn 5.
Foul Renewal: I convinced myself to give this card a reasonable rating because it's an instant-speed 2-for-1. Now that I realize that I'd never play it over Go for the Throat I'd relegate it as being virtually unplayable.
Sidisi, Undead Vizier: My concerns for this card in Constructed were that she'd be a bad version of Gray Merchant of Asphodel. I wasn't wrong, but as it turns out she functions as copies 5-6 rather nicely. Once you stop looking at her as being a "4 of" card and start looking at her as more of a "2 of" card you start to realize that she's actually quite good even though you need to work to extract value from her. She's still bonkers in EDH and she's sold in Cube but I definitely underestimated her impact on Constructed. She helps you find your bomby singletons such as No Mercy and Whip of Erebos and she's even a Zombie which is A) the best Black tribal deck and B) relevant for Unholy Grotto.
Berserkers' Onslaught: This card ended up being a lot worse than I thought. It wasn't symmetrical which is what I loved about it in the first place but as it turns out you need to do a fair amount of blocking in multiplayer and the card often fell flat on its face. It was little more than king-maker which enabled me to take one player out only to die in the process.
Commune with Lava: Sure enough this card didn't fail to disappoint. I never gave it a stellar review going in to DTK but I do think that it's way closer to a D than a C at this point. Again, I felt that it was important to actually test this card in every format and to give it a fair shot because Red Mages don't have many forms of card advantage available to them. The card seemed weak but it was still worth testing. Was I surprised when it routinely proved to be little more than a 5-6 mana draw 2? No, absolutely not. Was I surprised to see people mainphase the card in order to get multiple land drops out of the deal? Clearly not because I highlighted that interaction in my initial review on it. I never expected much from this card but I'm happy that I took the time to cast it multiple times myself just to see if there was anything that we might have overlooked about it.
Crater Elemental: I still haven't found a home for this thing. I tried making it work in Wildfire decks but the problem is that you can't actually activate it after you "go off" which defeats the purpose of fielding it in the first place. It's probably just a bad card, I have no idea why I want to like it and/or make it work.
Tormenting Voice: I didn't review this card because it's marginal but I probably should have because it's a legitimate staple in formats such as EDH. It's also playable in Constructed even though you don't see it very often. The card is like a D or whatever, it's not good, but it'll see more play than most other Red cards in the game.
Volcanic Vision: Card is basically unplayable in Mono-Red but it's cool in RG. The vast majority of the good expensive Red spells are either mass removal or Insurrection effects and neither combo well with mass removal. None of this should surprise anyone, we all knew that going in, but as it turns out the card works well in Green decks. They have a lot of cards like See the Unwritten and Tooth and Nail which are very strong effects to recur but it's not always easy to find the time to do so. By nuking the field in the process you buy yourself that extra turn needed to "go off." Basically it boils down to the fact that Green has a ton of amazing + big spells but virtually no access to mass removal so this fills a big hole in the "ramp" archetype.
Obscuring Aether: This thing realistically isn't even playable in Morph decks sadly.
Sight of the Scalelords: There was probably no real reason to even review this card. I'm never going to play it nor do I expect anyone else to.
Dragonlord Atarka: I underestimated this card but I don't think that my initial assessment was unreasonable. I still maintain that "Flametongue Kavus" are significantly weaker in MP than they are in duels because "target player loses the game" is significantly weaker than "you win the game" when facing multiple opponents. I'm not trying to get overly technical here but hopefully you can follow my logic. Given the choice of building up my own board (Primeval Titan) or subtracting from someone else's (Inferno Titan) I will virtually always choose the former because that's what'll usually put me in the strongest position to go on to win the match. I don't care who comes in second or last or whatever as long as I clinch the top spot. What I failed to recognize is just how big 8/8 is. It's many orders of magnitude larger than a 5/5 and sometimes it's easy to forget that. The card kills in 2 hits and has multiple forms of (relevant) evasion and so far I haven't seen someone eat 2 attacks from her and go on to win the game. I will argue to the death that her ETB trigger is marginal, significantly worse than basically any Primordial trigger, but the 8/8 body has more impact than I gave credit for. I'm not an idiot, I know that it's big, it's just hard to appreciate just how big 8/8 flying trample is until you play against it. I've played against a lot of 5 power fliers in my day and I've never been especially impressed with their ability to close multiplayer games out. You need 3-4 good hits and that just plain doesn't happen. An 8/8, however, more-or-less does it in 2 and that's just way too fast if you're unable to immediately interact with the thing.
Savage Ventmaw: My initial review of C was too high but even at the time I was aware of this fact. I maintain that this card has actual potential, it does something extremely powerful, it just needs the right home. The problem is that actual broken decks can play significantly more broken cards and fair decks can't really abuse 12+ mana. This puts this card in an extremely awkward position. I like the card, I still think that it's one of the most interesting offerings that we received from DTK, the problem is that it'll probably never find a good home. If I had to give it a more realistic rating today it would probably be a D+. I would never label the card as a D, it has far too many "unfair" applications, but it's not a generic playable or anything. I'm disappointed but ultimately not surprised.
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
My meta: 3 or 4 player free for all, anything goes but boring games or broken decks cause a vote to end that game.
Or nothing. Nothing would also work. The card is just bad lol.
Like I said, I expected it to see play in the Secret Plans deck to alleviate that problem but even then the card is just far too marginal to warrant a slot.
Not that anyone still plays with that card :P.
I like it as a 2-of in Purph decks to bring further redundancy to the list. I don't think that running 4 is almost ever going to be correct but drawing ~1 per game isn't bad. I currently play the card in WR Tokens, Goblin Tribal and GR Hornet Nest + Blasphemous Act, usually alongside 3 Purphs.
I don't think that surprised you or anyone else though :P. The card was obviously pushed. It has a powerful effect and no realistic downside other than the fact that it's a colorless land.
I've been playing the Tempest as a 2-of and it's been doing fine. The Regent I never liked because a 4/4 flyer for 4 doesn't really impress me. That's certainly not bad or anything but it's not what I want to be doing in a multiplayer setting. It feels way too fair. Still, eh, it's actually one of the better generic 4 drop Dragons available to you so if you're going for full-on Tribal then you kind of have to play it. What else do you run at the 4 drop slot heh? Personally I've been running Ashcloud Phoenix in that slot but I'm also not much of a tribal guy. I don't care about flavour or self-imposed rules. I just like playing with good cards :). I like the Phoenix a lot because it's a high-power flier that blanks the first removal that heads its way which are 2 things that I love having in my lists. Losing 3 toughness is obviously relevant but not enough to get me to switch.
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
Oh the card is fine in a dedicated Morph deck, my point was merely that you'll virtually never see anyone play the card Nantuko Vigilante in modern Multiplayer decks/Cubes. The Survivalist is an undeniable improvement but it won't have a home outside of an extremely narrow + marginal archetype.
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold