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 Wight of Precinct Six, 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.
General Notes
Allies: The Allies in this set are aggressively slanted and tend to have very little defensive value due to the nature of Rally. While I recognize that there's a small number of cards that can generate them at instant-speed by and large they're anemic threats on your opponents' turns. In a duel setting this isn't usually going to be a serious concern but in a multiplayer setting it worries me greatly. Moreover, none of the cards struck me as being especially pushed and I personally don't foresee the Ally deck/strategy being especially competitive. As such you won't see me covering many of the Ally cards in this set review. I'm sure that people will use Allies (both old and new) to build fun and interesting decks but from a competitive standpoint I don't feel especially compelled to analyze the tribe and its long-term impact on the multiplayer sphere. I'm just not expecting it to be a significant player. Beyond that I just don't see the value in stating things like "Munda, Ambush Leader, March from the Tomb and Ally Encampment are good in Ally decks." No kidding dude.
Eldrazi: When it comes to keywords such as Devoid and Ingest I'm not going to assign much value to them. They're interesting bonuses (well, Ingest is at least) but not inherent reasons to play with the cards. Moreover, most Eldrazi have cast triggers which makes them resilient to Counterspells but weak Reanimate targets. I'm not going to state that each and every time I analyze one so consider this the blanket statement that covers all of them. Beyond that I'll tress that processors such as Blight Herder do have very real drawbacks but a the same time cards like Bojuka Bog, Scavenging Ooze and Return to Dust help to ensure that it's substantially mitigated in Constructed formats.
Awaken: Random evasionless dorks don't have much value in lategame multiplayer situations. Additional blockers never hurt but at the same time an additional 4/4 isn't going to dramatically improve your relative board position. As such this isn't a mechanic that particularly interests me. Don't expect to see me assign much value to it.
Landfall: Multiplayer games tend to run long and feature decks that have higher land counts to support higher quality cards. As a result Landfall tends to over-perform within the sphere and you can expect my ratings to reflect that.
Converge: Converge, for the purposes of BfZ, is basically a joke keyword. Virtually every card with the keyword has strictly better counterparts in the sense that they always provide the maximum effect at no additional cost. See Radiant Flames vs Slagstorm or Exert Influence vs Mind Control. While the mechanic isn't inherently good or bad it's implementation was horrendous so don't expect to see much in the way of favorable reviews. It's a trash mechanic that isn't worth your time.
Colorless
Bane of Bala Ged: I think that most 5+ CMC threats that die to removal (at no benefit) and that provide people with incentives to remove them are unplayable pieces of trash. BoBG is no exception. One thing that I need to stress to players is that the Exile trigger is basically just a drawback as far as I'm concerned. Let's compare this card to Shivan Dragon for example. It's not a playable Magic card or anything but at the very least no one is going to kill the Dragon until it becomes a problem for them personally. That is, if I'm holding a Doom Blade I have absolutely no incentive to kill the Dragon until it's attacking me. Until then it could easily be used to defeat my adversaries for me or even bait my opponent into using a ton of mana for nothing. Either way I'm almost always going to wait until the last second to deal with it because I can easily afford to wait. The problem (yes, problem) with cards like Bane of Bala Ged is that anyone with removal is priced-in to using it before it becomes a threat. Once it's declared as an attacker it's too late to stop the trigger and so people have to axe the thing beforehand. Given that it's otherwise just a dorky 7 drop with no ETB/dies trigger I really don't think that it's a playable Magic card. Even in the Urzatron decks that frequently produce 7 mana on turn 3 I still just expect this thing to die for no value. As such I personally think that it's trash tier and don't recommend fielding it. I would much rather field things like Steel Hellkite or Myr Battlesphere that don't force everyone's hand.
Constructed Grade D
EDH Grade D
Cube Grade D
Blight Herder: Despite the fact that this card has a relatively high setup cost the payoff is definitely there. The problem with cards like Cloudgoat Ranger is that they don't actually win multiplayer games of Magic. They provide good value and apply pressure but random 5 power fliers don't close games out when you're facing multiple adversaries. A variation that swarms the board and ramps you towards your game-enders that can is very appealing to me in that sense. Not only does it stabilize the midgame but it also helps to secure the lategame. This isn't a "must have" by any means but insofar as your deck is playing cards like Withered Wretch, Scavenging Ooze, Return to Dust, etc. this is certainly a passable 5 drop. Something about a 7/8 across 4 bodies for 5 that also Black Lotuses you into your game-ending bombs sounds powerful to me. The fact that it's conditional means that it'll probably never see play in super serious competitive decks but I mean I generally play Bojuka Bogs and Withered Wretched in my Black decks anyways and insofar as you're reliably meeting the condition the card seems fine. It's not Primeval Titan or anything but it's still a creature that can generate a fairly large amount of extra mana and that's certainly going to enable some busted sequences a reasonable % of the time.
Constructed Grade C-
EDH Grade D+
Cube Grade F
Conduit of Ruin: Anything that tutors and ramps piques my interest for EDH and as far as Constructed is concerned there are plenty of Urzatron/Cloudpost decks that are always on the lookout for new, powerful additions to their roster. Unfortunately the body is rather anemic and "top of deck" tutoring is many orders of magnitude weaker than its "to hand" counterpart which leaves me skeptical that this card will do much work outside of EDH. People have a lot of incentive to remove this thing and it doesn't actually generate card advantage so running it out as your first real play doesn't seem especially competitive to me. It's obviously great if it survives, it's extremely easy to curve this into a big Eldrazi, but most people should see that coming from a mile away so I wouldn't get too greedy with the tutor trigger if you can help it. That is, you're probably better off nabbing a Myr Battlesphere as opposed to that 10+ drop. All-in-all I think that this card looks a lot better than it'll play out so I don't expect to see it much outside of combo decks like Animar, Soul of Elements in EDH that can really "go off" with tutors and ramp. You can obviously play it in most EDH decks (insofar as you have some powerful things to nab with it) but please don't fool yourself into thinking that this is a bomb in the format or anything. Paying 6 mana to Vampiric Tutor for a small subset of threats is extremely marginal and because it's a cast trigger you can't even find things like Artisan of Kozilek to propagate some sort of chain. I want to stress that it's certainly a playable card but not one that you should necessarily get excited over.
Constructed Grade C-
EDH Grade C
Cube Grade F
Endless One: One thing that I'm always keeping an eye out for are generically powerful 2 drops that scale well at every stage of the game (think Scavenging Ooze). Endless One intrigues me in the sense that it's a Grizzly Bears on 2 that basically scales indefinitely as the game progresses. Come turn 10 it's going to be a 7/7-8/8 and if you need a 6/6 on turn 6 to block a Titan it can be that too. Moreover, it has synergy with every "counters matter" effect (think Doubling Season) and because it's colorless it can be played in any deck. That is, you could (in theory) purchase 4, run them in everything and always have a 2 drop in your deck that isn't just dead on turn 7. Unfortunately I don't expect that to be a winning line in practice. The base card is always going to be a vanilla beater and vanilla beaters don't win MP games. Be it a 2 mana 2/2 or an 8 mana 8/8 you're never going to be actively happy about what you're getting and the sad reality is that more often than not the difference is irrelevant. That is, the difference between a vanilla 7/7 and a vanilla 3/3 on turn ~10 is often insignificant to the point where it's virtually never going to dramatically improve your overall position in the game. As such I can't in good conscience call this a powerful/competitive beater that you can blindly jam into your lists. It's certainly a fun, cool card and maybe one day it'll see play alongside a Trinket Mage for creatures but as it stands I wouldn't advocate jamming this thing into your brews.
Constructed Grade C-
EDH Grade D
Cube Grade D
Oblivion Sower: This is my favorite Eldrazi in the set and it's not particularly close. People are underrating this guy hardcore but I can assure you that he's the real deal. As-is it does a decent Primeval Titan impersonation and that's before you take into account the fact that cards like Bojuka Bog, Deathrite Shaman, Scavenging Ooze, Withered Wretch, etc. are all things that you probably want to be running in your MP lists anyways. It's extremely easy to build your decks in such a way that you'll routinely be jamming ~3 lands into play with this thing and that just seems absurd to me. Now, let me be clear. I'm not suggesting that you need to add cards like Sadistic Sacrament to your deck in order to make this card work. I think that it's perfectly fine to play it as-is but it doesn't hurt if it just so happens that you were thinking of playing Deathrite Shaman anyways. The fact that you can't Reanimate this thing is obviously unfortunate but at the same time it does improve the overall health of the game as far as I'm concerned. The historic problem with cards like Sylvan Primordial is that as soon as someone resolves one every Clone and Reanimate effect will forever and always be headed towards it. It's just the best possible thing to be doing at all times. Sower is "fixed" in the sense that you have to actually cast it "the fair way" for 6 mana and from then on you can't just copy/recur the thing to oblivion. This means that you get to play real games of Magic as opposed to playing Red Rover with the ramp fatty. What I love most about this card is that you can blindly jam it in any deck as a pseudo-Primeval Titan and a very large % of the time you'll just get 2 lands and a big body. That % is a bit closer to 50% than I'd like but MP is mostly a crapshoot anyways so sometimes is pays to gamble a bit. It's obviously at its best in decks that do have some form of exile, the card is just fantastic if you can routinely each some Fetchlands, but I personally think that you can still run this thing as a generic threat in basically any deck of any color regardless of its contents.
Now, the one caveat is that these kinds of cards tend to fare better in "competitive" metas than they do in overly casual ones. This is because newer players don't always own Fetchlands and they often cheat on lands in their lists which reduces the likelihood of this thing hitting ~2 lands. I don't want to bore you with too much math but at 25 lands you have ~55% probability of hitting 2 or more lands whereas at 20 lands you only have a ~40% probability. In metas devoid of Fetchlands filled with decks "cheating" on lands the card is only "powerful" 40% of the time which isn't mind-blowing by any means. It's a rather anemic threat if you're just getting 1 land off of the trigger so you do have to be somewhat mindful about when and where to field the thing. Still, again, I need to stress is that there's no opportunity cost to playing a card like Scavenging Ooze in a multiplayer setting to begin with so as long as you're already playing with exile effects this is a completely absurd Magic card. If you Black all have Bojuka Bog and Withered Wretch already go ahead and exile those Fetchlands and build yourself a Primeval Titan.
Scour from Existence: To anyone wondering if 1-2 color decks will play this thing the answer is a resounding "no." I'd love to be able to remove Enchantments in my Black decks as much as the next guy but 7 mana is just way too high of a price to pay to remove a single threat from a single opponent. Even in formats like EDH I just wouldn't add this to my deck "as an out to Iona, Shield of Emeria/Humility" or whatever because that doesn't feel like a winning line to me. When this is in your deck you won't be drawing dead to a specific card nearly as often but ultimately you'll lose a games from having bad cards in your deck.
Constructed Grade D
EDH Grade D
Cube Grade D
Titan's Presence: This card is way too over-hyped and I can guarantee you that it's significantly weaker than it seems. Decks like mono-Blue Tron can consider running 1, MAYBE 2, but to anyone out there who thinks that they'll be slamming 4 of these in their lists you are very much mistaken my friend. 3 mana spot removal with multiple conditions is as marginal as it gets so please don't start thinking about this as some Swords to Plowshares "savior" for colors that lack hard removal. Unmake sees no play in its respective colors for a very good reason and this is significantly weaker card than that. It's a marginal playable at best and even the best decks for it will still only run a small number of copies (if any).
Constructed Grade D
EDH Grade D
Cube Grade F
Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger: In Cube he seems like an extremely busted Renimator target but at the same time I won't be adding him to my own. Much like Sword of Body and Mind he'll just create too many "non-games" where some of the players die on the 4th-5th turn because they ate 1-2 attacks from a threat that promptly milled them out of the game. Trust me when I say that no one at the table benefits when things like that happen. From a purely competitive standpoint he's God-tier but I personally recommend taking a pass on this one.
With respect to Constructed he's a 10 drop that doesn't immediately win the game so he's not going to see play outside of Reanimator (or possibly Oath of Druids) and Cloudpost/Tron decks. In Reanimator he's easily in the top 5 best targets (at least in my opinion) and I'd happily field him myself. He's better at actually killing people than Griselbrand is and he's less vulnerable to removal than Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur is but realistically his average clock is still slower than either. I do, however, think that he's quite a bit better than Inkwell Leviathan even though I recognize the fact that he can be Swords to Plowsharesed, bounced, etc. It really just depends on your meta and the types of interaction (i.e. removal) being fielded by the other players. Either way the card seems fine in the archetype but he's certainly not going to revolutionize it like Griselbrand has. With respect to Tron/Post decks I think that he's generally worse than the old Eldrazi if for no other reason than his lack of Annihilator and anti-death clause (relevant for Eye of Ugin abuse and mill protection). Exiling cards is cool and all but you really do need at least 2 attacks to kill a player off whereas old Eldrazi generally only need 1. I do like his ETB trigger, nabbing 2 perms is sweet, but the cards falls flat otherwise. That being said I would still happily play the guy in most Post/Tron decks because he's definitely in the top 1% of big dumb idiots to ramp out. People who can afford to run him will and people who can't will have to keep settling for things like Artisan of Kozilek.
With respect to EDH Newlamog definitely brings something new to the format. Before if you were playing a non-Blue deck you didn't always have a super powerful creature that you could just blindly revive on turn 2 off of a natural discard, Faithless Looting, Entomb, etc. and feel good about. Most of your options were too weak, slow or vulnerable to removal. Newlamog is extremely difficult to remove once he sticks, works in any color combo and still kills relatively quickly. His clock isn't insanely fast or anything but if your meta isn't riddled with Blue-based combo and/or Prison/Stax/Mana Denial he does a fine job of clearing the table. Otherwise he's another big dumb fatty that you can ramp out eventually and, much like Oldamog, provides decks of any color outs to things like Humility and Iona, Shield of Emeria. The "exile kill" isn't amazing in 100 card singleton formats but he'll randomly hose key combo pieces every now and then and it's nice that he beats any amount of lifegain, damage reduction, graveyard reshuffling, etc.
Constructed Grade A
EDH Grade B
Cube Grade A+ objectively, F subjectively
Void Winnower: If this card isn't on your radar then let me assure you that it should be. Most people are dismissing it as being too weird, slow, unreliable, whatever but I can assure you that this is an extremely competitive Magic card. Stax strategies which seek to prevent your opponents from ever resolving spells is one of the most powerful multiplayer tactics that you can possibly employ. Any creature/artifact that reads "your opponents can't cast 50%+ of the spells in their deck" is definitely going to see play within them. Ignore the cost, ignore the body, ignore the block clause, you are playing this thing for one sentence and one sentence alone. Now, let me be clear, I understand that this card doesn't just win the game when it hits the field. That's not the point. I'm not telling you to play a generic ramp deck that tops out with this guy in the foolish hope that it'll seal the deal. No sir. I'm telling you to play this in a deck with cards like Winter Orb, Tangle Wire, Smokestack, Possessed Portal and Nullstone Gargoyle that're already making it extremely difficult for your opponents to play Magic. Black decks in particular are best suited to using these kinds of creatures because of its ability to recur them on the cheap. Your cards like Smallpox, Contamination, Necrogen Mists, Death Cloud, Braids, Cabal Minion, Mindslicer, etc. are all fantastic at limiting your opponent's options at which point you can lean on things like Animate Dead and/or Necromancy to recur threats such as Void Winnower and Nullstone Gargoyle to seal the game up.
Constructed Grade C
EDH Grade B
Cube Grade F
Closing Thoughts: The safest buys are Oblivion Sower and Newlamog with everything else being marginal/niche. Try to pick up a Void Winnower for EDH at some point but feel free to wait until it tanks because that card isn't going to see competitive play. Everything else is rather anemic so I'll leave the rest to your own discretion.
White
Emeria Shepherd: While I was lukewarm on this card initially I'm since come around on it as a generic value finisher in the same vein as Sun Titan and Angel of Serenity. In additional to her ability to recur any permanent (even Omniscience!) she has some interesting combo applications that make it easier for her to close games out. I'm sure that most players are aware of the Sakura-Tribe Elder combo by now and it only takes a sac outlet (say Altar of Dementia) for this to do silly things with cards like Kor Cartographer and/or Solemn Simulacrum. There's also cards like Prismatic Omen which, again, can lead to some rather absurd sequences involving this spicy little vixen. My problem with all of these combos in Constructed is that they feel significantly slower and weaker than plain old Land Tax/Endless Horizons into Goblin Charbelcher so suffice it to say that I'm not sold on her just yet. I like her more in Cube and EDH in that sense. While you arguably jam her in a Reanimator style deck given that the color already has bombs such as Avacyn, Angel of Hope, Iona, Shield of Emeria, Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite, etc. it's not as though it needed another one. A pseudo Sheoldred, Whispering One in White is "fine" but it already has that in Reya Dawnbringer. The problem with Emeria Shepherd (the same problem that Reya has by the way) is that the card is a bit too slow to cast "the fair way." She's virtually an 8 drop if you want to get immediate value from her (hint: you do) and, again, it's not as though her "combo kills" are any better than what the color can already muster. If you're looking for a generic, value finisher it's tough to field her over Angel of Serenity if for no other reason than the fact the one is actually a 7 drop whereas the other is a phony. Bear in mind that I've basically ignored the fact that most decks (especially EDH lists) don't even have that many actual Plains in them to begin with and it's not as though mono-White is much of a thing. You're also not always going to have lands to follow her up so by no means is she an unconditional finisher. Even the 4/4 stats leave something to be desired but realistically that doesn't matter all that much. The point that I'm trying to make is that while powerful she's also slow and conditional which means that you're not going to start seeing her in every deck. Avid EDH players should probably pick these up at some point but if you're planning to build a dedicated combo deck around her then her Constructed applications are few and far between as far I'm concerned. With EDH still in mind I see her as a decent card in Stax decks (think Hokori, Dust Drinker and Avacyn, Angel of Hope) to function as another recursion engine. She fuels cards like Smokestack and Possessed Portal insanely well, especially if you're constantly cycling a mana rock (such as Gilded Lotus) while hiding behind cards like Winter Orb and Tangle Wire. Otherwise you should probably be trying to recur extremely powerful + unfair things with her and/or looking to combo everyone out if you're going to start sleeving her up on a regular basis. 8 mana (virtually) is simply too much for most fair decks.
Constructed Grade B
EDH Grade B
Cube Grade C
Felidar Sovereign: "You win the game" on a trivial condition? You don't have to twist my arm on this one. This one of the most criminally underplayed White cards in the game since it's basically a free shot to win games out of nowhere (especially in formats such as EDH). I get that MP Magic tends to be casual in nature and so these kinds of cards are frowned-upon but from a purely competitive perspective this is a card that you definitely want to have in your collection. As we'll soon see the Soul Warden, Soul's Attendant deck got a lot better with BfZ so I highly recommend grabbing these at some point. You don't have to ruin the game by slotting them in your go-to decks but if you're ever looking for cheap and easy wins then this is the perfect card for you. It usually only takes 1-2 White lifegain spells to put you well over 40 life (think Congregate) and with Emeria, the Sky Ruin it's not as though 1-2 pieces of interaction are going to thwart your well-laid plans. The card also plays well in Black for its lifegain and recursion (Phyrexian Reclamation, Exsanguinate, Debt to the Deathless) and I've happily splashed it in otherwise mono-Black decks. Gray Merchant of Asphodel on 5 into Sovereign on 6 with a Phyrexian Reclamation in play isn't easy to beat. This is a no-brainer, windmill-slam, must-have bomb across all formats/levels of competition and you're doing a disservice to yourself if don't own them at this point.
Constructed Grade A
EDH Grade A+
Cube Grade C
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar: This is a perfect example of 'Walker that has next-to-no value in an MP setting in my mind. Beating in for 5 doesn't interest me in the slightest (nor should it you) and while I'm assuming that Ally lists will appreciate the 2/2 Token I'm not scrambling to jam that effect into most of my decks. The ultimate is arguable reasonable but I can't remember the last time that I've seen a "good deck" play Honor of the Pure so an indestructible version of the thing doesn't seem very appealing to me. It's not some game-ending effect that will grind the table out even if you manage to get multiples into play. Like most 'Walkers I expect him to see more play than he deserves and being in the Wrath of God color certainly helps but I'd still happily play against this guy any day of the week. He just doesn't have enough of an impact on the game to justify his inclusion into most decks. He's only going to do legitimate work in token decks but even then he's just another card that your evasive beaters/burn can interact with. Like most 'Walkers he also comes with that built-in stigma of "oh my God that guy has a 'Walker we need to stop him!" no matter how bad/marginal the thing actually is. YMMV and every meta is different but I've never been impressed with these kinds of cards in a MP setting. I know that most people consider Elspeth, Knight-Errant to be a top White 4 drop but I personally think that those kinds of cards are massively overrated. You're almost never going to have a stable board in a MP setting and random, evasionless beaters don't win games of magic. If you want to pay 4 mana to generate 3-4 tokens over 3-4 turns, have at it, I just don't understand why people consider that to be competitive. All things being equal people are going to send their evasioned attackers/burn (think Earthquake) at 'Walkers because it's moronic to do otherwise.
Constructed Grade C
EDH Grade C
Cube Grade C
Planar Outburst: Wrath of God and Day of Judgment aren't so expensive that most players will be forced to play with these marginal 5 CMC alternatives but for players looking to field decks that're Standard/Modern legal you don't have much say in the matter. In EDH you have vastly superior options (think Hallowed Burial) but at the same time any Wrath is going to be playable so there's a relatively high floor on this type of effect. Cube is similar in the sense the best ones won't be able to find room for a card like this but at the same time it's probably going to cheap and easy to acquire which is usually more important than most other factors. This isn't a "must own" by any means, Tragic Arrogance from Magic Origins is a significantly more powerful card than this, but you can still feel decent about playing this spell in any multiplayer sphere.
Constructed Grade C
EDH Grade C
Cube Grade C
Quarantine Field: I think that Banishing Light is an incredibly overrated Magic card and this feels like a strictly worse version to me. That should give you a good idea on my opinion of it. I think that the baseline card of "pay 4-8 to exile 1-3 things" is completely unplayable and I really don't care if scales to 10+ mana some % of the time. Paying 4 mana to exile a single threat from a single opponent is just such a horrendous rate that I can't possibly envision myself playing with this thing. Even in Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx decks I'm just never going to field it over actual game-enders because this does not win the game if you sink 12 mana into it. The only role that this card serves, in my mind, is that if you're able to generate infinite mana then you can use it to exile everyone's nonland perms. That's it. Don't buy-in to the hype surrounding this card because I can guarantee you that it won't live up to it. The base card is bad and it doesn't dramatically improve from there. Again, I don't even like Oblivion Ring and I think that this card is almost always going to be worse. 75% of the time you'll be casting it at X=1 anyways so why pay an extra mana for already weak effect? Unless your deck is going real deep on Cloudpost/Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx/Serra's Sanctum effects to consistently generate a lot of mana you will be severely disappointed with Quarantine Field's average use-case. Field a couple of copies in your big-mana decks but don't start looking at this as a replacement for O-Ring that "only" costs 1 more at worst and "scales well" (Ha!) into the mid and lategame.
Constructed Grade C-
EDH Grade C-
Cube Grade C-
Retreat to Emeria: I can understand not wanting to play Luminarch Ascension in 100% of your White decks but even then things like Sacred Mesa and Mastery of the Unseen are almost always going to significantly outperform something like this in the long-run. I get that Retreat is a "fire-and-forget" spell that doesn't require further mana investments but the problem with these kinds of cards is that they're best played early on and offer very little value in the later stages of the game. I also need to stress the fact that this is merely "fine" early (it's not insane or anything) and given that it's just horrendously bad on turn 7 or 8 I can't think of many decks that should feel excited to play with it. After all, the 1/1s aren't going to accomplish much of anything in a MP setting so unless you can somehow sit on a throng of them and go off with some Fetchlands or whatever I can't imagine actually closing a game out with this type of effect. You can obviously support mass tokens with Overruns but this isn't what I'm looking for in a grindy token producer.
Constructed Grade D
EDH Grade D
Cube Grade D
Serene Steward: If you've overlooked this card I'm going to have to ask you to go back and take another glance. The biggest weakness of most SoulSister decks is that other than the 4x Ajani's Pridemate the deck doesn't have much access to affordable meat. Obviously in an ideal world we'd all have Serra Ascendants and Archangel of Thunes but those just aren't reasonable cards for the masses. What I like the Steward is that she allows you to field another set of "big dumb bears" who, while weaker, are less vulnerable to removal. Those decks frequently play cards like Squadron Hawk and Spectral Procession so splitting the counters is definitely relevant. She's also cheap and a threat herself, unlike Cradle of Vitality, a card which is probably now obsolete. I won't BS you and act like having to pay W isn't insignificant, it's definitely a huge drawback compared to Ajani's Pridemate, but even then I still think that most budget versions of the deck are going to want some number of these to help them close games out. Finally, as I previously alluded to, this archetype was further "buffed" with the reprinting of Felidar Sovereign which further reduces its reliance on cards such as Serra Ascendant to close games out. A simple Emeria, the Sky Ruin + Sovereign recursion suite will probably get there eventually so as long as you have meaty blockers (such as Serene Steward) to buy some time you'll easily pick up some wins every now and then.
Stasis Snare: I expect to see this card played more than it should but I'm personally not a big fan of marginal 1-for-1s. It doesn't have the same flexibility that Oblivion Ring/Banishing Light have (not that I'm a huge fan of those cards either mind you) nor the efficiency that Swords to Plowshares offers. On the plus side it's easier to cast than Unmake, it adds 2 Devotion for Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx and being an Enchantment definitely matters when you have things like Eidolon of Blossoms in your 60. Still, the point of this entry (and the upcoming one for Ruinous Path) is to caution the reader that these kinds of removal effects lose a significant amount of value in multiplayer and to remind you to carefully consider whether or not it's in your best interest to include them. 3 mana to remove a single threat from a single opponent is a steep price to pay and decks that lack sufficient ways to generate card advantage will suffer if they field too many marginal effects such as that. There's a reason why you don't see White/Black decks swimming with Unmakes and it's the fact that 3 mana to axe a threat isn't a winning line in a multiplayer setting. The effect is worth exactlyone mana and paying triple the cost for no benefit isn't going to take you very far.
Constructed Grade D
EDH Grade D
Cube Grade D
Closing Thoughts: The only must-have is Felidar Sovereign with everything else coming in at a distant second. Felidar is legitimately unique in the sense that it's an instant-win card with a trivial condition (especially in EDH) which makes it competitive at every level of play and in every format. Beyond that Emeria Shepherd has broken applications and I always recommend acquiring anything that can win the game on its own. I'm not in love with the card or anything but sometimes you need to be able to cheese out a win and she's good for that. Otherwise Serene Steward is a cheap threat who scales well so I'd probably look to acquire them at some point if possible. When it comes to 1-2 drops I like to err on the side of caution and acquire them if I even think there's a chance that they could be playable. Everything else you could easily live without.
Blue
Anticipate: Cards like Ponder, Preordain, Impulse 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.
Constructed Grade C+
EDH Grade C+
Cube Grade C+
Coastal Discovery: Unlike Mulldrifter you're never happy to cast the spell half of this card and the fact that it's virtually an 7 mana creature (assuming that actually you want to block with it) means that people calling this a "better" Phyrexian Gargantua are missing an extremely important distinction. If you're going to slot this into your decks try to take advantage of the fact that it's a "spell creature" and pair it with things like Augur of Bolas and Archaeomancer if at all possible. An even better idea would be to simply exclude it ;).
Constructed Grade D
EDH Grade D
Cube Grade D
Dampening Pulse: I've never seen a competitive Cumber Stone deck and I don't expect that to change regardless of the number of versions that they print. Multiplayer isn't a format where players are generally winning games by turning small creatures sideways so this is basically just a mulligan as far as I'm concerned. Much like Fog Bank this is a card that I would actively choose to have in my opponents' decks because no Control, Combo, Ramp, Stax, Prison, Mana Denial, etc. deck will ever care about this type of effect. Even token decks are going to win with Overruns, they're not going to clear a table out with small threats, so please don't kid yourself into thinking that this is a powerful, playable Magic card. I can assure you that it's not.
Constructed Grade D
EDH Grade D
Cube Grade D
Part the Waterveil: In order to win MP games of Magic you need to do really busted, degenerate things while limiting your opponents' ability to interact with you as much possible. As a result every single "take and extra turn spell" is a competitive MP Magic card and this one is no exception. If you're a Blue EDH/2HG player you simply must acquire one of these and even if FFA Constructed is more your speed there's still plenty of powerful ways to abuse taking extra turns. I realize that Wizards has finally caught on the fact that players were just taking all of the turns using cards like Soulfire Grand Master, Archaeomancer + Crystal Shard, Panoptic Mirror, etc. but even though the new variations Exile themselves they're still must-haves in rampy, combo-centric formats such as EDH and 2HG Multiplayer. As much I'd like to provide examples of specific decks that will play this card, the answer is basically "any big mana Blue deck." Insofar as your deck has powerful ramp and a strong endgame you'll probably benefit wildly from taking extra turns. I'm already thinking about Generals such as Narset, Enlightened Master, Teferi, Temporal Archmage, Arcanis the Omnipotent, Damia, Sage of Stone and Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur and with respect to Constructed I'm mostly thinking about rampy Cloudpost style decks that win with things like Upheaval fueled by Thran Dynamo. One extra turn can easily become two or three (or infinite!) once you start peppering recursion into the mix and eventually you'll be able to assemble something powerful enough to take the rest of the table down.
Constructed Grade C
EDH Grade A
Cube Grade D
Retreat to Coralhelm: If Mind Over Matter has taught us anything it's that free triggers on free effects leads to degenerate outcomes. Playing a land is a free effect that generates mana and given that we live in a world of Fetchlands you can basically think of this thing as a Lotus Cobra of sorts. Right now I'm mostly thinking about Simic/Bant decks that use things like Arbor Elf and Kiora's Follower to untap lands Enchanted with things like Utopia Sprawl but also ones where you can go "infinite" with a card like Knight of the Reliquary. The card does a ton of work in Genesis Wave decks since you can basically just stack a million untap triggers, use Kiora's Follower to untap Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx or Gaea's Cradle and as long as you have something like Eternal Witness or Greenwarden of Murasa to re-buy your Genesis Waves you should be able to slam your entire deck into play. Another aspect of Retreat to Coralhelm that we shouldn't overlook is that even when your deck isn't ready to do busted things just yet it digs deeper towards the cards that you're missing. I don't want to oversell this point because I wouldn't play this card if it were just a 3 mana Enchantment that let me Scry 1 every turn (and Landfall isn't guaranteed by any means) but it's a bit of extra value that should be accounted for. The card isn't just dead when you have nothing in play and are drawing lands. The point is that there's going to be powerful, unfair applications for this thing so there's absolutely no reason to avoid picking them up assuming that it's just a bulk uncommon. I'm almost positive that it'll slot right into the degenerate Prophet of Kruphix decks that generate ridiculous sums of mana to do absurd things.
Constructed Grade B
EDH Grade C
Cube Grade D
Ugin's Insight: With Recurring Insight at 6 CMC you have to be getting a lot of Scry value to make this type of card worthwhile. If I'm paying 5 mana at Sorcery speed to draw 3 cards I better be getting at least a Scry 4 in the interim. That way I may not be getting the exact quantity of cards that I'm looking for but at least the quality will be relatively high. As such I'd be relatively happy to play this in decks that have a bunch of Archaeomancers and various 5-7 drops (such as Future Sight and Diluvian Primordial) but I'm not going to jam in in creature-light shells that cap out with Snapcaster Mages and Rhystic Studys. It's relatively niche in that sense so I wouldn't put a high priority on acquiring them. While you could arguably jam them in the Omniscience deck the reality is that if you're casting big draw spells with an Omni in play then you've probably already won. Scry 10 is cool and all but likely win-more at that point. With respect to EDH I really like this card in big Blue combo + ramp decks such as Sharuum the Hegemon and Oona, Queen of the Fae that feature an expensive Commander and plenty of 2 card combo kills. Always having access to a 6-10 drop General makes the card significantly more promising and Scrying 6+ to find key combo pieces is very relevant in the format. Past a certain point you stop needing quantity and simply need the highest quality cards that your deck can muster.
Constructed Grade C
EDH Grade B
Cube Grade C
Ulamog's Reclaimer: Mnemonic Wall isn't especially playable as far as I'm concerned and as such I'm completely unwilling to meet conditions for a similar alternative. In a world of creatures such as Snapcaster Mage and Archaeomancer there's just absolutely no reason to ever play these kinds of cards. This thing could literally always work and it still wouldn't be exciting.
Constructed Grade F
EDH Grade F
Cube Grade F
Closing Thoughts:Anticipate is essential for anyone who still doesn't own them and Part the Waterveil is crucial for EDH/2HG players (but Constructed/Cube players can feel free to skip that one). Beyond that the only broken card in the set is Retreat to Coralhelm because it currently enables the Knight of the Reliquary combo and could easily support new ones in the future. It's a must-have either way, especially since it's just an uncommon. Otherwise EDH players should probably grab some Ugin's Insights but, again, Cube and Constructed players can probably live without that one. It loses most of its luster when you don't perpetually have access to a 6+ CMC permanent.
Black
Defiant Bloodlord: Sanguine Bond #2 for EDH is where this guy will see the most play but please don't misinterpret that as me calling him "good in EDH." You'll obviously play him in your Oloro, Ageless Ascetic style decks that feature cards such as Exquisite Blood and Beacon of Immortality but I don't consider him to be a generic playable. I like that you can tutor for him with cards like Survival of the Fittest and I do think that being a creature (as opposed to an Enchantment) is generally a buff in that specific format. Green and Black are two of the strongest colors and Green has a ton of creature-based tutors whereas Black has a plethora of powerful + cheap recursion options. That being said at 7 mana it's extremely difficult to do anything truly abusive with this guy. The Exquisite Blood infinite combos have never been especially competitive and this guy certainly isn't going to change that. While you could arguably play him as a value beater alongside Exsanguinate, Gray Merchant of Asphodel, Kokusho, the Evening Star, etc. as someone who loves playing those kinds of decks I can assure you that I'd personally never field the thing myself. It's a 7 mana spell that doesn't win the game whereas something like Necrologia almost always will. It's a cool card that will probably make some casual players happy but until I can Buried Alive this + something else and win the game off of Victimize or Living Death I'm just not going to bother with weak combo kills when I can just lean on Mikaeus, the Unhallowed + Triskelion and/or Necrotic Ooze + Triskelion + Phyrexian Devourer, etc. It's entirely possible that I'm being unfairly critical towards this thing but I'm just never going to run it over things like Rune-Scarred Demon, Sheoldred, Whispering One or even Sepulchral Primordial in most decks. I don't want to be playing with conditional 7 drops that die to removal even if they enable a small number of marginal combos. This doesn't make me want to add cards like Sanguine Bond and Exquisite Blood to my generic Black-based Combo/Stax decks so I really don't see it being played outside of the WBx lifegain generals.
Constructed Grade D
EDH Grade D in general, C+ in dedicated lifegain decks
Cube Grade F
Drana, Liberator of Malakir: Vampire Nighthawk sees a fair amount of casual play and Drana functions as a similarly powerful 3 drop. That being said my primary issues with Drana are those of functionality and affordability. Whereas you generally want your decks/cards to be defensively slanted Drana is worthless while you're sitting back on D (unless you consider a French vanilla 2/3 to be a playable Magic card). I know that every meta is different and that you can employ various attack restrictions but the reality is that in multiplayer you can't always afford to send in your team every turn. I personally play exclusively FFA because I think that it adds a big strategic element to the game but it also makes it extremely difficult to declare marginal attacks. As such I'm heavily biased against these kinds of cards because I don't expect to ever be turning my team sideways. Now, if she just pumped all of your creatures (as opposed to your "attacking creatures") then she'd obviously be fine but that clearly isn't the case. Beyond that a playset will set you back about $100.00 which makes her impractical/unaffordable for all but the most competitive Magic players. This combination of marginal functionality + extreme cost makes it difficult for me to take an interest in her. I don't expect the card to consistently provide good value nor do I feel comfortable recommending it to other players (it's too much money). It's not wildly unplayable or anything but it's certainly not actively good.
Constructed Grade D+
EDH Grade D
Cube Grade D+
Kalastria Healer: Ally decks aren't a "thing" as far as I'm concerned and the trigger is too weak to actually abuse. Given that I would never play a 2 mana 1/2 that drains for 1 (which is what this card will be 99% of the time) I don't see a compelling reason to acquire them.
Constructed Grade D
EDH Grade F
Cube Grade F
Mind Raker: I'm definitely not willing to work for a weak Unnerve on a useless body.
Constructed Grade D-
EDH Grade D-
Cube Grade F
Ob Nixilis Reignited: Casting this guy on a clear board is going to be virtually impossible and his -3 isn't going to drastically change anything the vast majority of the time. His average use-case will be a 5 mana removal spell and even if you live the dream it's not as though his ultimate actually wins you the game. Much like Gideon I have no interest in this card whatsoever and recommend avoiding him if possible.
Constructed Grade D+
EDH Grade D+
Cube Grade D
Painful Truths: With respect to Constructed this is basically just a draw 3 for 3 in the right shells and that's a relatively powerful Magic card. It's not going to run away with the game like Syphon Mind can but you get your ROI immediately which isn't a feat that draw engines such as Phyrexian Arena can boast. It's just a middling draw spell that you should feel relatively happy to resolve at basically any stage of the game. If I don't sound excited it's because I'm not. You literally have to be playing a 3 color, non-Blue deck to make this card playable and even then it's just a marginally improved Ambition's Cost. If you're playing Mardu or Abzan or whatever then you can certainly consider playing this thing but even then I'm probably just going to stick to things like Outpost Siege and Syphon Mind that have a higher power-ceiling.
Moving on to EDH, a draw 3 for 3 is interesting but I can guarantee you that this card is significantly weaker than it seems. To anyone thinking "oh, but it's better than Ambition's Cost et al." you are just plain wrong. The fact that you have pay 3 colored mana to cast the thing means that you can't use your colorless mana rocks such as Sol Ring, Mana Vault, Basalt Monolith, Worn Powerstone, Thran Dynamo etc. so more often than not you're just going to float your colorless mana anyways. You're also never going to find room for this thing in your Blue decks and since you need to be playing with 3 or more colors just to make it playable it's really asking for a lot. In that sense I think that it's almost strictly worse than cards like Ambition's Cost and Ancient Craving in EDH and those aren't even draw spells that I play in my competitive decks. Don't even get me started with this card in 1-2 color decks when you already have access to Sign in Blood, Night's Whisper, Read the Bones, etc. I get that not everyone plays with a bunch of ramp and card draw in their MP decks (be it EDH or not) but it's hard for me to get excited over a draw spell that's difficult to ramp out.
To anyone who just wants a "buy or not buy" answer, I'm firmly in the "not buy" camp. For this card to be good you have to be playing 3 colors, none of which are Blue, in a deck that doesn't have much colorless ramp. That's such a trivial % of my multiplayer decks that I couldn't possibly imagine getting a worthwhile return on this thing.
Constructed Grade C
EDH Grade C
Cube Grade F
Retreat to Hagra: Even if this were simply a 3 mana Subversion it still wouldn't be a competitive multiplayer card and this doesn't even gain 1 life for each opponent that you drain. I personally think that these kinds of cards are actively bad because they piss the entire table off without improving your board nor providing a significant clock. Since multiplayer tends to be an "all things being equal" format you never want to provide people with an incentive to focus their attention on you if it can be avoided. Do not play with this card.
Constructed Grade D-
EDH Grade D-
Cube Grade D-
Rising Miasma: I don't even think that Infest is a playable Magic card in most MP settings let alone this POS. It's too much mana for too little impact.
Constructed Grade D
EDH Grade D
Cube Grade D
Ruinous Path: Hero's Downfall is extremely overrated in my opinion and this card is basically strictly worse as far as I'm concerned. Spot removal isn't good for much other than disrupting combos and killing attackers both of which are things that you can't really do at Sorcery speed. I'm not saying that you shouldn't ever run spot removal in multiplayer, you gotta do what you gotta do, but 9 times out of 10 these 3 CMC removal spells are just flat-out worse than Go for the Throat in my experience. 'Walkers lose a lot of their value in an MP setting where you can virtually never stabilize the board and tend to draw a lot of hate anyways so it's almost never worthwhile paying more than 1-2 mana for your removal.
Constructed Grade C
EDH Grade C
Cube Grade C
Smothering Abomination: I'm a fan of big, cheap fliers and drawing cards so I can kinda get behind this badboy. I know that it's an unpopular opinion but I love to whip out Contamination/Smokestack/Braids, Cabal Minion decks every now and then and this guy seems like he could slot directly into that style of deck. Even if you're not going deep on a Stax strategy there's always things like Attrition and Grave Pact which reward you for fielding recursive threats such as Reassembling Skeleton and Bloodghast. I want to stress that this is a fringe playable at best (think Blight Herder, not Oblivion Sower) but once it falls to ~50 cents or whatever I see no harm in acquiring some to fool around with. Drawing cards for free is a powerful effect and the body is big, cheap and evasive which is perfect given that Reassembling Skeleton decks are already have incentive to field some Equipment.
Constructed Grade C
EDH Grade C
Cube Grade C-
Vampiric Rites: Ever since tucking stopped being a thing the value of sac outlets plummeted in EDH. They were never that great to begin with (people overrate them in general IMO) but at this point it's almost pointless to even bother with the things unless they're supporting various infinite combos. Protecting your dudes from exile effects is still mildly relevant at times but in general the effect isn't worth a card. The format is just too fast and too powerful for you to be messing around with expensive, do-nothing effects. The reason I highlight this is because people often fall into habits/mindsets that can be difficult to break even after they become obsolete. Once upon a time I happily played cards like Infernal Tribute in my Black decks (even outside of EDH) and I almost tricked myself into thinking that Vampiric Rites was a real card as a result. I mean, look at how cheap it is! And that free lifegain! Wow! Yeah... no. If you're playing 4 mana to draw a card via Reassembling Skeleton (or whatever) you're not actually doing something especially powerful/competitive. It feels good because it's "infinite value" but in reality you're just spinning your wheels for marginal value. I will still happily play free sac outlets sac as Viscera Seer and Sadistic Hypnotist, they enable some extremely degenerate sequences of plays, but I'm basically done with 2+ mana sac outlets at this point. I'm willing to fool around with legitimate threats (such as Flesh Carver) but if I'm just looking to draw cards and generate value this isn't where I want to be anymore. Now, obviously this is just a bulk uncommon that won't cost you a dime, feel free to grab some for your collection, but don't hold your breath waiting for some uber Bloodghast value deck to crop out after its released. You might play it as a 1-of every now and then but this effect isn't exciting by any means.
Zulaport Cutthroat: This is the "good version" of Kalastria Healer and it reminds me a lot of Blood Artist. I'm ashamed to admit that I criminally underrated the Artist for an extremely long time since I often thought of it as a do-nothing 2 drop who could be combo'd with mass removal to gain a bit of life and deal a bit of damage. Whoop-de-doo! In practice the card is actually exceptionally powerful to the point where it can easily cause another player to lose the game outright. Obviously you can gun it down with removal but I don't exactly mind if people are focusing on my 1 and 2 drops. While the Cutthroat arguably doesn't scale as well in big FFA games the effect is still extremely powerful when it's properly supported. Black and White has access to tons of powerful mass recursion spells (Living Death, Immortal Servitude, Return to the Ranks, Rally the Ancestors, etc.) which can often be paired with free sac outlets (such as Viscera Seer) in order to combo kill players/tables out of the game. he even has the Human subtype which is perfect for the Xathrid Necromancer "Humans matter" archetype that naturally wants to be using cards like Skirsdag High Priest and Angel of Glory's Rise. As you can probably imagine creatures are played, killed, and recurred en masse in that style of deck so I can easily envision scenarios where this does obscene amounts of work. Unlike some of the other Black entries I personally this to be a "must have" and highly recommend that you make a concerted effort to acquire some. It's good in both fair and unfair strategies, it's a relevant 2 drop for any creature-based deck (something that Black sorely lacks) and I can't imagine that it'll cost you anything so this seems like a no-brainer to me.
Closing Thoughts:Painful Truths is the only competitive Black card in the set but even then I still don't recommend acquiring them. You have to playing 3 or more colors, none of which are Blue (otherwise you have access to superior alternatives) in decks with no colorless ramp (aka it's not even exciting in EDH). If you're an absolute multiplayer perfectionist you'll want them but for the other 99.99% of us Read the Bones is just fine. Zulaport Cutthroat is a cheap threat that you can use to fill out your curves so it's probably worth acquiring. It's not a busted card or anything but it's a generically powerful 2 drop so you may as well grab some. I don't actually think that Vampiric Rites is good but it's a 1 CMC Enchantment with a relatively powerful and repeatable effect so you may as well grab some "just in case." You'll never play them but whatever. Otherwise you can consider grabbing some Smothering Abominations once they hit the dollar-rare trash binder but they're not essential to acquire by any means. Feel free to jam them in your next Reassembling Skeleton deck but I mean the color already has cards like Grim Haruspex and Dark Prophecy so unless you really need the flier you're paying a lot of mana and meeting a condition for a relatively common effect. Realistically speaking most Black mages could safely ignore BfZ altogether and it wouldn't have any impact (at all) on their current/future deckbuilding decisions.
Red
Akoum Firebird: 6 mana and a condition to recur a 3/3 that (basically) can't block? Thanks Wizards /sarcasm! Please don't waste your time with this steaming pile of ash. You are not going to grind a multiplayer table out with one of these and there's no sac outlet in the world powerful enough to abuse 6 mana, conditional recursion.
Constructed Grade D-
EDH Grade D-
Cube Grade D-
Akoum Hellkite: The body is surprisingly small for a 6 mana Dragon and the effect isn't worthwhile if you're just playing a fair game of Magic. It's virtually never going out-perform cards like Inferno Titan and Scourge of the Throne for the same cost. The only decks that should realistically consider running this guy are Scapeshift, Warp World style decks that slam a ton of lands into play at once. Even that seems extremely niche to me, I can't think of a competitive deck that would actually field this guy, so you can probably safely ignore him.
Constructed Grade D-
EDH Grade D-
Cube Grade D-
Barrage Tyrant: Bosh, Iron Golem this card is not. Red is actually extremely capable at recurring Artifacts and being unable to sac itself is a huge drawback. Given that Bosh only see fringe EDH play to begin with I don't see a reason to acquire this card. 2+ mana sac outlets are just so freaking hard to abuse in Constructed formats. Even if you have creatures such as Wight of Precinct Six/Mortivore in your deck these Fling effects are still almost always way too slow, unreliable and weak given that they're at-best killing players off one at a time. More often than not they simply succumb to pressure/interaction at which point they maybe become king-makers. Play to win, not crown another champion yourself.
Constructed Grade D
EDH Grade D
Cube Grade D
Boiling Earth: These kinds of cards are strictly worse than Earthquake as far I'm concerned (a card which is grotesquely underplayed by the way) and should never see play as a result. I realize that EQ hits your own stuff as well but the fact that it scales extremely well into every stage of the game while simultaneously acting as a potential win condition makes it many orders of magnitude more powerful than marginal crap such as Boiling Earth.
Constructed Grade F
EDH Grade F
Cube Grade F
Dragonmaster Outcast: As much as I try and step outside of my own meta and biases I've never been able to get a good sense for how powerful these "Scute Mob" style cards are. I'm personally of the opinion that having something, anything on your side of the field is significantly better than having nothing because I've noticed that newer/weaker/inexperienced players often get overwhelmed with the sheer volume of cards in play. As a result they usually shy away from attacks against players who have some semblance of a board. That being said as a seasoned player myself I'm personally never going to be intimidated by 1/1s for 1. That, unfortunately, is exactly what this card is for most of the game. It literally just sits there (either in your hand or in play), does nothing, then hopefully people ignore it once you hit the required number of lands. They don't, I've never seen someone "go off" and make a bunch of Dragons with this thing, but maybe it works for other players? Where I don't mind this card is in Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx decks because you really do want to be casting as many Red permanents as possible. I'll basically play any decent 1 drops in those brews and this is on the short-list of acceptable applicants. It also helps that Outpost Siege makes hitting the requisite number of lands a trivial pursuit so you certainly have incentive to field the thing alongside Nykthos. It's likely the best generic Red 1 drop if only because it can theoretically win the game on its own (despite the fact that in my many years of playing I've yet to see it actually happen). If you like building Nykthos decks I recommend acquiring them but otherwise I probably wouldn't bother unless your meta is especially removal-light. You really do have to treat this like an Inferno Titan of sorts, it's not a 1 drop in most decks, and at that point you're just playing with a 6 drop that dies to removal at no benefit and that will always scare the bejeezus out of the rest of the table.
Constructed Grade B
EDH Grade C
Cube Grade C
Nettle Drone, Tunneling Geopede: Cards can say "each opponent" and still be unplayable garbage. Case in point: Guttersnipe. I have never seen a Guttersnipe deck actually win a game of Magic. Have you? People just kill the Snipe and suddenly the decks cannot possibly win. Anyways, these are irrelevant threats that provide irrelevant clocks and aren't going to do anything other than paint a huge target on your back. The Geopede could arguably be played in Scapeshift, Warp World style decks but as with Akoum Hellkite I just can't think of a competitive advantage to running it over something else.
Constructed Grade D
EDH Grade F
Cube Grade F
Radiant Flames: Uhh... a Slagstorm variant that only works in 3+ color decks and that can't use colorless ramp? Cool? This card is clearly "fine" under those conditions but why in God's name would you ever purchase these over things like Anger of the Gods that always do their job? Again, this card isn't unplayable in 3+ color decks but it's so freaking conditional at no benefit that I'll just refuse to ever play with and/or purchase it out of spite. Earthquake, Slagstorm, Flamebreak, Anger of the Gods, Firespout and more all do the exact same thing and ask nothing from you. It makes no sense to me why you would ever want to play with this card.
Constructed Grade C-
EDH Grade C-
Cube Grade F
Rolling Thunder: While moderately versatile these kinds of cards tend to be significantly weaker than their Earthquake/Comet Storm variants in a MP setting. While it's easy to get a 2-for-1 with this thing or even dome a player for 8 later on this just isn't the kind of card that's going to win you games of Magic.
Constructed Grade D
EDH Grade D
Cube Grade D
Serpentine Spike: 7 mana at Sorcery speed to conditionally kill 3 creatures is so wildly unplayable that it's not even funny. At that point you may as well just wait for Insurrection or jam something like Mob Rule to deliver some savage beatdowns.
Constructed Grade D-
EDH Grade D-
Cube Grade D-
Zada, Hedron Grinder: While I'm generally supportive of 4 CMC threats that can win games on their own I tend to prefer things like Master Transmuter and Crypt Ghast that don't require big boards. This guy's power-ceiling is crazy high but he's basically just another variation of Purphoros, God of the Forge who players can actually interact with. He just doesn't do all that much unless you have a board full of tokens but at that point all you're doing is enabling people to turn spot removal into legitimate spells against you. Whereas a card like Coat of Arms would force them into "mass removal or bust" scenarios this card literally dies to everything. You also need a board full of dudes, this guy in play AND some Hatred-esque spell to get value from his effect which means that he's extremely conditional, unreliable, inconsistent and demanding (with respect to deckbuilding). This is troublesome for a color such as Red which doesn't have access to consistent tutors (Gamble doesn't count) or cheap + powerful forms of card draw. With respect to EDH, again, I struggle to believe that this guy could possibly be superior to Purphoros, God of the Forge as a Commander. I'm more than happy to be proven wrong but I just don't see it happening.
Constructed Grade D+
EDH Grade D+
Cube Grade F
Closing Thoughts: If you really like Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx decks I recommend acquiring some Dragonmaster Outcasts. The rest of Red's offerings aren't worth your time and money. As with Black it was a disappointing set overall for Red Mages.
Green
Beastcaller Savant: 2 CMC mana dorks, especially those with restrictions, are basically unplayable. I actually think that even the best versions (such as Sakura-Tribe Elder) are overrated and that more people should be playing with 1 CMC ramp (such as Utopia Sprawl) whenever possible. Haste is cool and all but this is still just a terrible version of Fellwar Stone that's less durable and that you can't even use to cast your key spells. I would just never consider playing him in any format (including EDH). I can't give this card an F because it's an Elf that taps for mana but I can assure that he's worse than all of the 1 CMC Elves (and there's LOTS). If he were unconditional he'd probably be fine but the "creatures only" clause is the nail in the coffin for me.
Constructed Grade D
EDH Grade D
Cube Grade F
Blisterpod: Doomed Traveler (and creatures similar to it) have seen small amounts of competitive play as sticky, multi-bodied threats. This can be relevant for cards such as Zulaport Cutthroat, Evolutionary Leap and Birthing Pod. When you're playing Green 99.99% you'll want your 1 drops to be Carpet of Flowers style ramp effects but every now and then you'll just need a sticky body and that's where a card like Blisterpod shines. Just grab some at some point because you never know when you'll need them.
Constructed Grade D
EDH Grade F
Cube Grade F
From Beyond: This is definitely one of the most overrated cards in the set and I'm not buying into the hype. Just so we're all clear, we all realize that this is a do-nothing 4 drop that plops out a 1/1 on turn 5 right? Why this has people changing their pants is beyond me. First of all this isn't a threat that will win the game on its own and people seriously need to stop acting as though it can. I think that Elspeth, Knight-Errant style threats are extremely overrated in general and this one is no exception. They grind single opponents out well enough but you can (virtually) never generate enough 1/1s to legitimately pressure a multiplayer table. Even if you were somehow able to produce 20 1/1s off of this thing you still wouldn't be able to clear one out. Now, I like tutors as much as the next guy but paying 6 mana to find one of three (or whatever) cards in your deck come turn ~6 is an atrocious rate. This isn't a Green Sun's Zenith by any means. Otherwise this is also a piss-poor form of ramp given that it doesn't start paying dividends until turn 3-4 and that's even assuming that you ramp this thing out in the first place. Given that there's a ton of Carpet of Flowers and Basalt Monolith-esque cards that enable you to jam 7 drops on turn 3 I don't see why you'd ever feel the need to settle for this. I've never considered Awakening Zone to be a playable Magic card and while thing is arguably more powerful (1/1s > 0/1s) it costs more mana and so I just can't imagine slotting it into a competitive ramp shell (in any format).
If you're putting this card in your deck it's because you want a Green Bitterblossom to fuel your Evolutionary Leaps and Smokestacks or whatever and not because you're looking for some OP form of ramp. I can definitely see it being played in Proteus Staff, Polymorph, Mass Polymorph decks and whatnot too but I just don't understand why players are clamoring to slot these into their typical ramp decks. Green just got Frontier Siege, a way better card that no one plays (I have no idea why, the card is absurd) but then this gets released and everyone loses their mind? What gives? Much like Awakening Zone (another massively over-hyped card that flopped) I sincerely doubt that this card will have many competitive applications so prepare to be disappointed my friends. For this card to be actively good you need to abuse the ramp, the bodies and the tutoring. Otherwise it's just a very slow, weak card. Oh, an no, this isn't me underrating the sum of the parts being greater than the whole. I know exactly how far casting a do-nothing 4 drop that produces a 1/1 on turn 5 will take you. Hint: not very.
Constructed Grade C
EDH Grade C
Cube Grade C
Greenwarden of Murasa: Even a bad Eternal Witness is still a very powerful Magic card and you should expect this thing to see a ton of play. Most modern Green decks win by extracting value from powerful spells/tutors such as Genesis Wave and Nissa's Revelation and your single best answer to removal/counters etc. is to simply "go infinite" and recur them indefinitely. This, by the way, is what makes this card is miles better than Deadwood Treefolk so you can just go ahead and ignore the people making that comparison, It's one thing to recur creatures but it's another to nab that Tooth and Nail or Primal Surge. If you're an avid Green mage you'll definitely want to pick these up to compliment your Witnesses since you can realistically play them in any Green shell. Worst-case scenario it's still a pseudo-Primeval Titan in the sense that it's another value 6 drop that beats removal. Even if you're not recurring a busted spell like Tooth and Nail you're still getting 1-2 things back and at that point it doesn't really matter what happens to the thing. If people want to Doom Blade the threat that recurred the 2 strongest cards that you played that game, God bless them! Obviously this card isn't on the same level as Primetime but it's still a powerful effect and it's one that you really do want to have on a body whenever possible. This is especially relevant for formats such as EDH where you're almost always playing cards like Green Sun's Zenith, Survival of the Fittest, Yisan, the Wanderer Bard, Chord of Calling, Birthing Pod, etc.
Constructed Grade B
EDH Grade B
Cube Grade B
Sylvan Scrying: A 2 mana, 50 cent tutor for Dark Depths/Thespian's Stage, Eye of Ugin, Cloudpost and Urza's Tower? Count me in! If you're ever planning on building a Tron/Post deck you're going to want 4 of these and since they're now affordable you don't have any excuse to omit them from your lists. I've never seen the thing in EDH but I've played Crop Rotation enough that I have to imagine that it's playable. Not being able to fetch Bojuka Bog at instant-speed kinda sucks but if you're playing a Gaea's Cradle deck (or even a Cabal Coffers + Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth shell) I could imagine a world where you'd want a second Crop Rotation. Everyone should own multiple playsets of these so just grab them at some point.
Constructed Grade A
EDH Grade C
Cube Grade F
Tajuru Warcaller: While I have no intention of ever playing this in an Ally deck it's a card that Sylvan Messenger can find (and that Wirewood Symbiote can bounce) and that conceivably wins games if you have a ton of Elves in play. I know that it doesn't grant Trample and I know that it costs 5 mana but I also know that Craterhoof Behemoth costs millions of dollars so I always like to keep an eye out for budget alternatives. I've always hated Joraga Warcaller since people can just kill it during combat at which point your Elf army does nothing. I don't think that it's especially playable in that sense. Tajuru Warcaller, at the very least, doesn't die to removal. Basically I would just keep an eye out for this thing and try to pick one up at some point. Elves are the most competitive tribe by far and I certainly wouldn't be embarrassed to play this in a list (be it EDH or Constructed).
Constructed Grade C
EDH Grade C
Cube Grade F
Undergrowth Champion: I gotta say that I'm a tad perplexed on the hype-train surrounding this card. It's a 3 mana Vinelasher Kudzu and when was the last time that you saw one of those played in a multiplayer deck? The Phantom Nantuko "ghost ability" is cool and all but it's not as though the guy becomes "immortal" if you equip an Aura/Equipment onto him. I get that Green is a color that can field things like Hardened Scales and Doubling Season but we already have cards like Managorger Hydra and Predator Ooze to support them. I also don't think that his "ghost trigger" is an especially relevant defensive ability in multiplayer because you generally don't see much burn in that format. Earthquake/Sudden Demise/Mizzium Mortars pop up from time to time but even then those kinds of cards are criminally underplayed. I would just never play this card over Managorger Hydra, I think that it's basically strictly worse and it's not nearly as durable as Predator Ooze if you're just looking for a sticky threat. In EDH it's too unreliable and too weak when drawn late and in Cube it's never going to make the cut. I don't understand what people see in this thing because it looks like a bad Vinelasher Kudzu to me and I've never seen that card do anything.
Constructed Grade D
EDH Grade D-
Cube Grade D
Closing Thoughts:Sylvan Scrying is an absolute all-star that everyone needs ~6 copies of. You'll happily play 4 in your Constructed Cloudpost/Urzatron shells and the others will probably find a home in an EDH shell of some variety. Otherwise you really do need to get your hands on Greenwarden or Murasa because that card is just insane. Every Eternal Witness style threat is going to be an extremely competitive Magic card and will see a ton of play (especially in formats such as EDH). Rebuying your Genesis Waves, See the Unwrittens and Nissa's Revelations is completely absurd and makes life a living Hell for midrange/Control strategies. I'm mostly indifferent about the other ones but these are just no-brainers as far as I'm concerned.
Multicolor
Bring to Light: From Hypergenesis to Show and Tell to Doomsday there's no shortage of busted things that ~3+ color decks can find with this thing. It reminds me a lot of Wargate but it clearly has a significantly higher power-ceiling if you build your deck to support (and ultimately abuse) it. You really do have to think about this card as a Demonic Tutor of sorts because you're plain going to get a rebate on a bunch of that mana. If Dark Petition has taught us anything it's that you can still build hyper-competitive combo decks even if you need to front-load 5 mana on your tutors. As such I'm excited to see what people come up with to break this thing. Otherwise, even if you're just a casual player building fair, interactive decks then this is still a card for you. 4+ color decks really can treat it like a Green Sun's Zenith of sorts which can even be used to fetch powerful + bizarre silver bullets such as Living End. It's still going to be a creature, Wrath, draw spell, whatever when you need it but the option is there to nab some relatively wild things in a pinch. I'll also stress the fact that the card is Blue which means Brainstorm so there isn't that much of an opportunity cost to adding a card like Living End to your non-Black decks. You can always shuffle it away with a B.Storm + a Fetchland and it's not as though you need to run more than 1. Still, if you just want to Doomsday into a Laboratory Maniac or Hypergenesis a bunch of Eldrazi into play then this is definitely a card that you'll want 4 of. It's the perfect mix of fair and unfair without being horrendously overpowered (you're not going to see these played in every deck across every format or anything) to the point of ruining the game for others. This is definitely a "must have" from the set as it's one of the few cards that could easily see play for years to come. Tutors are just that good, especially in formats such as EDH.
Constructed Grade B+
EDH Grade B
Cube Grade D
Catacomb Sifter: At 3 mana this card is a lot more exciting Reaper of the Wilds as far as I'm concerned. You get the same pile of stats and mass Scry but on a cheaper body that ramps you towards your 6-7 drops if needed. These kinds of small-ball value cards tend to under-form in EDH where the body isn't nearly as relevant but in more aggressive formats I certainly don't mind them. It's something that you jam on turn 2-3 to stabilize the board in order to avoid being aggro'd out but that also isn't just a hard mulligan on turn 6 or 7. I like that this card curves nicely into Deathreap Ritual which should set yourself up nicely for the mid and lategame. It's also a very generic card that be slotted into basically any GB deck which makes it perfect for the casual crowd. You don't need to be running a deck with lots of 4-ofs or synergies to extract value from the thing because all it really asks is that you're playing creatures and spells.
The biggest strike against this card and all threats similar to it is that they're very fair. The best GB decks are often Commune With the Godsing/Kruphix's Insighting into Animate Dead/Dance of the Dead/Necromancy and jamming a Sylvan Primordial/Griselbrand into play on turn 3. Catacomb Sifter brings nothing to the self-mill Reanimator theme so in a way it's destined to forever be a tier 2 threat. A 3/4 body a Scry value are nice and all but they won't win games of Magic. Insofar as you're trying to earn your wins "the fair way" then this is a solid option for the color combo but if you're firmly in the "I want to play degenerate decks" camp then this probably isn't the right card for you.
Constructed Grade C+
EDH Grade D
Cube Grade C
Drana's Emissary: Kingpin's Pet has never made the cut in any of my lists and this card is significantly weaker as far as I'm concerned. This card, much like Retreat to Hagra, is almost actively bad in my mind since it draws attention to yourself without providing sufficient defense against retaliation. Whereas Extort cards can be combo'd with things like No Mercy to put yourself out of "burn range" the same cannot be said about these variations that don't get the health scaling. Be it 2 or 10 players afflicted you're still only gaining the 1 life and that's not nearly enough to justify the fact that you just gave everyone at the table incentive to target you over someone else (all other things being equal obviously).
Constructed Grade D
EDH Grade D
Cube Grade D
Fathom Feeder: While not on the same level as Baleful Strix I could definitely see myself playing with this card. It's a good blocker on turn 2 and a card draw engine on turn 10 so it's almost never going to be an actively terrible draw. Moreover, it's a really good attacker and one of the more relevant Ingesters as a result. People just plain won't want to block this and you'll easily be able to chip a few cards away with it. In case you're wondering why that's relevant, the answer is Oblivion Sower. Between Bojuka Bog, the Feeder and Nightveil Specter UB can run a ton of low opportunity-cost exile effects which all make Oblivion Sower an unreal powerful Magic card. Given that the color combo already has Notion Thief that it can field as an insane value engine all it really lacked was a solid 6 drop that could gum up the ground. Grave Titan is cool and all but it doesn't exactly win games of Magic whereas ramping to ~11 mana almost certainly will. At that point all of your Rite of Replication and Rise of the Dark Realms style spells will easily seal the deal.
Constructed Grade C-
EDH Grade D
Cube Grade D-
Kiora, Master of the Depths: This is another card that I think that most players are criminally underrating. The ability to immediately untap multiple mana producing permanents is an extremely powerful (often degenerate) effect and everything else is a bonus as far I'm concerned. Blue/Green decks often feature powerful forms of acceleration such as Gaea's Cradle, Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, Arbor Elf and Kiora's Follower and hastily untapping multiples enables exceptionally degenerate sequences. From Genesis Wave to Tooth and Nail to Primal Surge it becomes trivially easy to slam your entire deck into play and defeat the table in one fell swoop. Moreover, Kiora will serve a vital role in Stasis, Winter Orb, Tangle Wire, Rising Waters, etc. style decks as a constant source of mana production. This is an extremely competitive archetype in formats such as EDH where certain Denial Commanders (such as Derevi, Empyrial Tactician) are the tippity-top of the S tier. Beyond that she works well alongside Doubling Season and even if you're just using her to draw cards then that's fine too. Paying 4 to draw 2 at Sorcery speed isn't special by any means but it's certainly not horrendous. The key concept that I need to stress is that untapping a Kiora's Follower and a Gaea's Cradle (or whatever) is just ridiculously strong and so I do expect to see her function as Garruk Wildspeakers 5 and 6 in big mana decks looking to chain Genesis Waves into Eternal Witnesses + Garruks/Kioras to slam your entire deck into play on turn ~4. Her base function is busted so whatever value you can squeak out of her draw mode and ultimate are gravy as far as I'm concerned.
Constructed Grade B
EDH Grade B
Cube Grade D
Omnath, Locus of Rage: As with every other Landfall creature it's fairly important to treat this an N+1 drop where N is its converted mana cost. Omnath is clearly a powerful card, he even technically beats removal (not that anyone is going to lose sleep over a Lava Spike), but there's only so much room for 8 drops in modern Magic. If you can ramp this thing out on turn 4 or 5 and have him stick he'll easily take control of the game assuming that there isn't much mass removal floating around. He can also do silly things with cards like Scapeshift and he's even in the perfect colors for the Wildfire archetype. That being he's still a conditional 8 drop and so it's difficult for me to get very excited about him. This is especially true for Green cards in general because there's just so many ways to win the game once you reach that mana threshold. At that point Tooth and Nail is just about ready to end the game and even things like Genesis Wave or Primal Surge are primed to seal the deal. Whereas I see Omnath as a card who slowly wins the game if he's allowed to live for ~3 turns there's just a throng of alternatives who can do it immediately (Craterhoof Behemoth anyone?). I also have to emphasize the fact that Omnath is in fact conditional because it's not a God-given right that you'll have more lands to play in the later stages of the game. Curving Omnath into Sylvan Primordial or Scapeshift s obviously sweet but it certainly doesn't win the game on the spot and for that amount of mana and cards you easily could. I certainly don't think that Omnath is unplayable or anything but in a world of Rampaging Baloths and Avenger of Zendikars he's just another in a long line of strong beaters in Green.
Constructed Grade C
EDH Grade C
Cube Grade C
Sire of Stagnation: I actually think that this card is underrated, if such a thing is actually possible. A lot of people have correctly analyzed that it's significantly weaker than Consecrated Sphinx but at the same time what good does it do to compare everything to the best card in a given CMC slot? I recognize that players have the ability to stop playing lands past a certain point and I also understand that in a MP setting you can do things like ask the table "Ok, who can kill this? Alright people, let's just not play lands until X's turn." That is, I agree that this card isn't going to run away with the game 100% of the time it gets left unchecked for 2-3 upkeeps. Even with that in mind I don't see why people are so skeptical about how powerful this thing figures to be. In the grand scheme of things this is still easily an S tier 6 drop threat because it's one of the few that can just plain win the game on its own. Blue already has access to cards like Sunder and Upheaval but even as a standalone threat it still (realistically) demands an answer. As much as I love cards like Grave Titan I've never actually beat a table down with one whereas this type card can actually just run away with the game by enabling unlimited Forbids and whatnot. Sire is certainly going to have high-highs and low-lows (it's a 6 drop that dies to removal) but any card that can win the game on its own in a MP setting is definitely worth acquiring and playtesting. Blue Black is already an extremely competitive color combo what with cards like Baleful Strix, Nightveil Specter, Notion Thief and Memory Plunder and it just got that much stronger.
Constructed Grade B
EDH Grade B
Cube Grade B
Closing Thoughts: The only "must have" cards are Bring to Light and Sire of Stagnation but I do maintain that Kiora is being criminally underrated. That being said her effect is too narrow to employ in a broad spectrum of shells which is why I don't consider it imperative that people acquire her. Bring to Light is a busted tutor that has any number of present + future applications and so there's absolutely no reason to ignore them. Unfortunately their price has already quintupled since I last checked (and it's probably spiked harder since then) which means that you probably won't be seeing it very frequently at kitchen tables. Even Sire is already rocking a steep pricetag so hopefully that'll decline once people start to cool-off on the thing. He's powerful and all but he's no Consecrated Sphinx.
Artifact
Aligned Hedron Network: This is an interesting 1-2 of for creature-based decks that don't top-out with much in the way of actual fatties (think Wizards or Elves). It's also a decent sweeper in shells that have small-but-important critters such as Crypt Ghast and Master Transmuter. That being said I don't plan on jamming this in my generic Control lists anytime soon because it's just way too slow and situational. It's going to miss a throng of important targets each and every time and it's not as though you're getting an insane rate to begin with. Most sweepers cost 4-5 and this is not a sweeper. I'm not particularly worried about the fact that people will have the option to remove this thing at some point, temporary disruption is still fine, but what does worry me is the fact that most 5+ power creatures are going to be things like Titans/Primordials/Massacre Wurms/etc. that have amazing ETB triggers. Given that those creatures already generated value to begin with and that they could easily generate it again it's hard to argue that you significantly benefited from removing them for a couple of turns. This doesn't make the card unplayable or anything but it does it make it a sketchy inclusion if you meta has a bunch of Artifact destruction floating around. What I'm trying to say is that this card is quite overrated so please don't think of it as the next "must have" colorless sweeper. It's a marginal playable at best.
Constructed Grade C-
EDH Grade C-
Cube Grade D
Hedron Archive: Since you can already play things like Basalt Monolith, Worn Powerstone and Thran Dynamo in Constructed it's hard to imagine that this thing is going to make the cut in most competitive ramp decks. Paying 4 to ramp 2 just isn't an overpowered effect and the ability to cycle this thing for a couple cards later on isn't going to change that. If this is what you can acquire/afford, so be it, but in general I'd encourage you to pursue more unfair cards if at all possible.
What I don't understand is why this card is taking so much flak from the EDH community. I'm not saying this thing belongs in every deck or anything but off the top of my head it's going to make the cut in things like Kothophed, Soul Hoarder, Arcanis the Omnipotent, Damia, Sage of Stone, Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur and a host of others as well. Basically all of the expensive, card-advantage focused Generals are going to play this because they're already happily playing Ur-Golem's Eye so worst comes to worst you'll just make that swap. I'm clearly not arguing that this thing will edge out the OP ramp such as Sol Ring, Mana Vault, Worn Powerstone, Basalt Monolith, Thran Dynamo, etc. but some Generals want to run a lot more than that so I really don't understand where all of this negative criticism is coming from. Again, I'm not saying that it's a must-have for every deck or anything but if your General costs 6+ mana and generates card advantage then I doubt you'll be cutting this from your list. Just ignore the people calling this a "bad Mind Stone" that won't even see play in EDH. They're off their rockers.
Constructed Grade C
EDH Grade B
Cube Grade C
Closing Thoughts:Hedron Archive is a must-have for EDH but otherwise there isn't much for the Constructed/Cube players.
Land
Blighted Cataract, Blighted Fen, Blighted Woodland: The entire Blighted cycle is arguably playable but the 2-for-1s and hard removal interest me more than the others. Most 1-2 color decks can support 4-8 colorless lands in general and even 3 color decks can usually support 2-3. I don't expect any of these to blow you away in practice but I also think that it's pointless to jam 12x Island and 12x Forest in your decks so if you don't have anything better to run I see absolutely no reason to omit these kinds of spell-lands from your lists.
Constructed Grade C-
EDH Grade C-
Cube Grade F
Canopy Vista et al: Fetchlands and Farseeks around the world are rejoicing at this new infusion of blood. The Forest are especially appealing for things like Utopia Sprawl and Sylvan Primordial but I'm sure most people have figured that out by now. Otherwise these are reasonable alternatives to the ABUR duals and Shocks if you happen to acquire them for competitive Standard play. They're certainly never going to be the most powerful dual lands but anything that's Fetchable is going to see a lot of competitive play. They're good enough for Cube, every EDH deck will play them and anyone who thinks that these are "too weak" for Constructed are living in a dream world.
Constructed Grade A
EDH Grade A
Cube Grade A
Lumbering Falls, Shambling Vent: It's important to stress the fact that these manlands aren't on the same level as others which can act as cheap blockers (Mishra's Factory) or legitimate win conditions (Celestial Colonnade). These are extremely marginal "Stirring Wildwoods" style manlands that you probably shouldn't feel excited to play. I would much rather have things like Simic Growth Chamber or Vault of the Archangel in my lists. I'm not saying that they're complete trash or anything but I mean I just wouldn't even add them to my UG or WB decks respectively even if I owned them. Lumbering Falls is slightly better than the Vents because you can safely Equip things on to it to turn into a legitimate threat but the problem with that logic is that you need to be running Equipment in Simic deck. I'm sure it happens, just not very often. They're obviously strictly better than things like Orzhov Guildgate, feel free to play with them if you own them, but please don't go out of way to purchase these for casual play. That money could be better spent elsewhere.
Constructed Grade D
EDH Grade D
Cube Grade D
Mortuary Mire: I'm generally not a fan of marginal ETBT lands and this one is no exception. It doesn't tap for multiple colors, it doesn't tap for more than 1 mana, it doesn't have any meaningful effect in the first few turns of the game and even when it does recur something it's not as though you're suddenly up a card or anything. This will occasionally improve the average quality of your next draw at the cost of always costing you some tempo. As an avid Black Mage I'll probably acquire these but I don't expect to field them very often. I think that some casual decks will want 1 or 2 but I just would never slam 4 of these into my own lists. This just isn't on the same level as a card like Bojuka Bog which can provide some serious value at very little opportunity cost. You'll still play it in small quantities here and there but it's not an auto-include by any means. Look for places to weave them in but don't worry about jamming full playsets into anything. For what it's worth I think that this card is at its best in decks will small numbers of key creatures such as Sepulchral Primordial. That is, you'll want to field these when you can't afford to play actual recursion due to a lack of targets but still want to have some resilience against interaction in the later stages of the game. This card is really good at recurring that one Ætherling without forcing you to dedicate an actual spell slot to supporting it.
Constructed Grade D
EDH Grade C
Cube Grade F
Sanctum of Ugin: These "flood protection" lands that have value both early and late are interesting but you can tell that Wizards was playing scared with them. Eye of Ugin this thing is not. You basically have to be playing an Eldrazi deck to want this thing but even then it's hard to imagine how you could make room for it. In Constructed you're just plain going to run Cloudposts or UrzaTron and since this thing doesn't tap for colored mana your remaining lands will probably have to used to help you cast your key spells. I suppose that you could jam one of these into your EDH lists assuming that you were running a bunch of Eldrazi but that's a fairly niche application if you ask me. I mean the thing taps for mana and provides solid value on turn 10 so it's hard to hate on it but at the same time I'm not scrambling to play with and/or acquire them. It a boring, lackluster effect that can only ever see a fringe amount of play.
Constructed Grade D
EDH Grade D
Cube Grade F
Shrine of the Forsaken Gods: I don't even think that this will make the cut in most colorless EDH decks lol. I have no what the Hell wizards was thinking with this one.
Constructed Grade F
EDH Grade D-
Cube Grade F
Spawning Bed: 7 mana is a lot to pay for a colorless Black Lotus. If your deck has 9+ drops or an absurd amount of card draw I could foresee wanting to run a couple of these to ensure that you'll be able to cast your important finishers at a reasonable pace. If, however, your deck starts at 2 and stops at ~7 then I certainly wouldn't bother with this thing. I recognize that it represents a 3/3 and 3 mana but you're just never going to be able to leverage those 1/1s into anything meaningful by that stage of the game.
Constructed Grade D
EDH Grade D+
Cube Grade F
Closing Thoughts: The Tango lands (Battle lands?) are the obvious all-star from the set with everything else being mostly filler. I think that the manlands are marginal as heck and wouldn't even bother acquiring them for mutiplayer applications. Everything else is fine but unexciting and will basically see play "as needed." Newer players with small collections should feel to jam things like Blighted Cataract into their lists whereas one who already possess sizable collections shouldn't need to bother. The only land that I'm not 100% on is Spawning Bed. I actually think that I might be severely underrating the thing. Time and testing will tell for sure though.
Conclusion
BfZ is going to go down as one of Magic's biggest flops with respect to multiplayer. Almost none of the colors had any stand-out inclusions and for the ones that did it was nothing but reprints. The best cards in White, Green and Red respectively are Felidar Sovereign, Sylvan Scrying and Dragonmaster Outcast. Black didn't get an exciting playable period and the most powerful Blue card is what? A 6 mana Time Warp with a drawback? It'll see play in EDH/2HG but that's about it. Some of the multicolor stuff is powerful but Bring to Light and Sire of Stagnation are already outside of most people's budgets and nothing else excites me. The only other big hits from the set were Newlamog and the new Tango lands with everything else being marginal filler that might find homes in niche decks/archetypes. I suppose there's a bit of EDH fodder in form of Hedron Archive and Ugin's Insight but we're not talking about S-tier playables or anything. All-in-all I'm extremely disappointed with the set and have tapered expectations with respect to its overall effects on the global multiplayer sphere.
I think a D grade is pretty generous. I agree with most of your assessments. I had hoped BFZ would include enough playable Allies that it would actually be a viable deck, but they stuck with the same boring "Allyfall" mechanic which is useless on anyone's turn but your own. Felidar Sovereign dropping by 95% in price was a welcome change and there are a couple cards that could reasonably be used as budget filler, but overall it feels the set was designed entirely for Limited and thus has a super-low power level. My favorite additions were the Blighted lands and Tango lands, which are overall pretty small in impact.
I agree that the set was lackluster but it wasn't a complete joke. I would give Homelands (or whatever) an F but if a set produces cards that will see ultra-competitive play immediately + for many years to come then I don't see much of a reason to give it less than a D. I also care about budget a lot so I really do care about reprints such as Sylvan Scrying and Felidar Sovereign. I like that I can now suggest those cards to newer players.
Very good analyses; I agree with the vast majority of your assessments. I especially liked that you took a stance to slow the hype train on cards like Gideon and From Beyond (I really don't see why this is so highly-regarded either). I also love that you defended new Kiora and gave Bring to Light the praise it deserves... BTL is probably going to be the first playset of cards I buy from this set. I generally feel that every other card of interest to me will be cheaper in a few weeks' time, but for BTL, I'm not so sure that will be the case.
I will say, though, that I too would rate a large percentage of your D's as F's. But I think that has more to do with subjective nature of reviews like this; I think factors such as budget and how people tend to obtain their cards have an impact on this rating. Since budget isn't as much of a limiting factor for me as it is for many other casual players, I see pretty much all of the D's as "Just don't play these at all... spend that $1 on a playset of something else that isn't complete trash". But I also buy literally all of my cards as singles and I know that's not the most fun for a lot of casual players.
For example, take the guy who ends up with a bunch of D's from drafting because they enjoy that experience. Well there's nothing "wrong" with him playing with those D's (lol); they're more "playable" than F's or whatever. And you also included right in the disclaimer that you discouraged the cards in general, and people should try to play something else in those slots if at all possible. But that guy should just not be allowed to complain about his decks being weak in his metagame If you want stronger multiplayer decks, spend your limited income on playsets of good, inexpensive singles, not the equivalent of a Magic scratch ticket! (sorry, /rant)
Anyway, I will conclude by saying that you might have swayed my luke warm opinion of Oblivion Sower a little bit. I don't know that I'll pick them up at the current price, but I would expect they'll drop a couple bucks in the coming weeks. If they do, I might have to grab a set Oh, and I will be picking up some Lumbering Falls and maybe even BW manland as well, despite your D grading. I totally agree that they're not Creeping Tar Pit and Celestial Colonnade, but they fix, and provide a clock in a grindier game while avoiding sorcery speed removal. In decks that are ok with play 2-4 ETBT lands, I don't think these deserve a D, personally.
I agree with the vast majority of your assessments. I especially liked that you took a stance to slow the hype train on cards like Gideon and From Beyond (I really don't see why this is so highly-regarded either). I also love that you defended new Kiora and gave Bring to Light the praise it deserves...
Slow, weak cards don't win MP games of Magic. I'll take decks/cards that do something busted ~30% of the time than ones that do something reasonable, slow and fair 100% of the time. I think that marginal token generators are suuuuuuper overrated because I've easily seen people have 0 good attacks with 7-8 1/1s on their side of the field. Kiora may not work in every meta in every meta but she has busted applications in both EDH and Constructed and so I don't care if she's not great in a vacuum.
I will say, though, that I too would rate a large percentage of your D's as F's.
An F, to me, is a literally unplayable card. In my mind there's a world of difference between a Cliffside Lookout and a Quarantine Field. I don't like the latter but I could actually see myself putting it in a deck, resolving it, and not wanting to vomit with rage. I don't want to put it in my decks but it's not outside the realm of possibility. What I will say is that I'm trying to have looser rating requirements in general. If I only give As to Rhystic Studys we'll see one every 3 expansions and that's just depressing. I don't know that I "succeeded" in this review but I mean it just wasn't a good set :/.
Oh, and I will be picking up some Lumbering Falls and maybe even BW manland as well, despite your D grading. I totally agree that they're not Creeping Tar Pit and Celestial Colonnade, but they fix, and provide a clock in a grindier game while avoiding sorcery speed removal. In decks that are ok with play 2-4 ETBT lands, I don't think these deserve a D, personally.
I would always play Simic Growth Chamber over them, or Alchemist's Refuge, or Simic Guildgate and use that money to purchase other cards. The card isn't actively bad but nor is it actively good. I suppose that if your deck has a bunch of Equipment then the Falls is decent but even then I would still just play Urza's Factory. I gave it D mostly because I would never pay a dime for them not because I'm cheap but because the effect is just so weak in a MP setting. I would just never play them over Simic Growth Chamber which costs nothing and basically draws me an extra card.
I don't understand the prices on these things, I swear.
When a card is in print, the price is directly related to the ability to win tournaments for prizes and cash. If the card helps you win, the price goes up. When you need 4x in a deck, the price goes up further. A 3CMC creature with evasion and a triggered ability make it powerful already.
Drana is fetching 25$ a pop. If that isn't inflated as ****, I don't what is... I don't understand the prices on these things, I swear.
There's a lot of speculation that Abzan Control/Aggro with Hangarback Walker, Drana, Anafenza, Siege Rhino, etc. could be the next deck to beat.
I know that you didn't ask but I didn't bother to review Drana because she's not much of a MP card in my mind. She's a Black card that rewards you for curving out and turning small creatures sideways which isn't what I want be doing in that sphere. She's powerful, don't get me wrong, but not the right kind of "powerful" for most people I don't think. She may be unfair in a 1v1 setting, that's a ****ton of stuff for 3 mana, but a in MP setting you're just not going to aggro an entire table down. Given that she's already a million dollars (and can probably only go up from there) I'm not especially interested in her MP applications. In an ideal world where I could compare her to Vampire Nighthawk, ok, sure, I'd review her. At a buck or two you could consider acquiring her. At 25 bucks or whatever I'm never to see her, never going to suggest her, never going to build decks for her, etc.
CHeers for the review. I agree with most of what you've said. I think this set is mostly rubbish I don't want to play with, let alone draft with.
Besides a few lands I like, I'm gonna be grabbing Dragonmaster Outcasts (passed 1st time around due to cost) and Sire of Stagnation.
Not really all that excited by other stuff, even the tribal stuff like Vampires and Beasts look pretty average...
Now that I've had a chance to play with the cards, here's some updates:
Titan's Presence: This card is trash. I don't even play 1 in mono-Blue Tron decks and whatnot.
Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger: This card is a significantly weaker Reanimation target than I had hoped. I've since cut it from all of my Reanimator decks. That being said the card is very good when cast "the real way" and has since found a home in basically all of my ramp decks. 10 mana is very do-able in the right archetypes and exiling 2 perms is amazing.
Desolation Twin: For 50 cents or whatever this is a great finisher in Cloudpost decks. It's right up there with Myr Battlesphere with respect to being a powerful budget finisher that beats removal.
Conduit of Ruin: This card is absolutely terrible. Don't play it.
Void Winnower: I freaking love this card in Reanimator/Mass Polymorph style decks. I think that it's significantly more powerful than Ulamog in either archetype for example. In practice this shuts off significantly more than 50% of your opponents' "spells that matter" because of how Magic is structured. 2 drops are way better than 1 drops, 4 drops are way better than 3 drops, 5 drops are dwarfed by Titans, stuff like that. I liked the card going in to BfZ and my opinion of it has only increased.
Oblivion Sower: I continually find new and awesome things to do with this card. Parallax Tide and Descent into Madness are my newest finds for example. I don't play it as a generic 6 drop anymore but as long as your deck has some synergies with it then I think that's a stellar addition.
Emeria Shepherd: I now consider this be a staple of White Control decks. It's an extremely powerful form of recursion that enables so many unfair sequences.
Serene Steward: I've since cut this card from my Soul Sister decks. In practice she's too mana intensive and fair. Felidar Sovereign is still God tier though.
Smothering Abomination: I've slightly come around on this card. Given enough sac effects it's serviceable.
Zulaport Cutthroat: This card is stupidly powerful and a must-have for every Black mage.
Dragonmaster Outcast: When you stop treating this like a Red card it starts to get a lot better. Other colors have great forms of recursion and it frequently helps when your target has a low CMC. Think Sun Titan and Disturbed Burial. I still think that it kinda sucks as a generic Red 1 drop in a vacuum but with the right support it's a stellar finisher.
Catacomb Sifter: This card is very good. Way better than oh say Reaper of the Wilds. A 3 drop that Scrys, adds to the board, beats removal and ramps is fairly strong.
Aligned Hedron Network: Holy Hell this card is horrendous. It's freaking garbage even when everyone is playing decks full of giant fatties.
Hedron Archive: This is a legitimately powerful + undervalued card. I dismissed it as being a terrible version of Worn Powerstone but in practice it's way better than it looks. Not ETBT and the lategame Divination value are both very real upsides.
Sanctum of Ugin: This card is better than I gave credit for and I'm fairly happy to run 4 in my ramp decks. Even if you have Eye of Ugin there's no such thing as having too much action.
Bring to Light is weird. It brings redundancy to unfair decks but at 5 CMC it's not really broken so the best versions of the best lists don't really want it. It's more of a "Modern" card that excels in underpowered formats that are aren't riddled with cheap cantrips/tutors/fixing/card draw. As a generic tutor (think Living Wish) it's "fine" but generally weaker than alternatives in the same color. It's not better than Green Sun's Zenith at doing "fair things" so your deck has to have something "unfair" to tutor up or it's kinda pointless. Unless you're routinely fetching a card like Living End or Hypergenesis it's not stellar by any means.
And 3-drops are better than 2-drops, 5-drops better than 4-drops and titans are dwarfed by primordials. I'm not saying the card isn't good, but I'd like to learn how it follows from "cards that cost more are better" that even CMCs take up more than 50%. I would mostly care about removal. Void Winnower shuts off the good wraths, but the best point removal ever has uneven CMC and most of the recent wraths cost 5.
First let me start by saying that every CMC slot has mistakes. Some cards, such as Mystic Remora and Reanimate, are stupidly powerful for their cost. These mistakes exist at every CMC and I'm not arguing otherwise. What I will say is that mistakes are few and far between and that, in general, Magic has clearly defined power break-points.
Let's start with 1-2-3. Powerful/playable 1 drops are typically Blue cantrips and Green ramp spells. Very little else is played in MP because very little else actually wins games. Still, these aren't cards that you generally care about interacting with. People have them, they're good, but they're not so good that you'd modify your deck to try and counter them. That would be losing line. They're also too fast to actually hinder with any semblance of consistency. Someone who wants to jam one and turn 1 is going to be able to do so and you realistically can't expect otherwise. 2 drops, on the other hand, see a lot of play. Things like Survival of the Fittest, Jace, Vryn's Prodigy, Smallpox and more form the base of most MP decks. This is also where you see the most common forms of ramp outside of Green. Signets, Grim Monolith, Fellwar Stone, most baseline ramp starts at 2 and it doesn't get that much better at 3. Barring the select-few mistakes such as Basalt Monolith it's hard to find ramp better than Dimir Signet and Fellwar Stone for your UB deck or whatever. This trend isn't limited to ramp and extends to most groups of cards. For example, very little recursion is better than Animate Dead/Dance of the Dead/Exhume. Reanimate and Necromancy are good cards, don't get me wrong, but they're basically the only cards in those CMC slots that see play whereas there's a ton at 2 CMC that do. Threats? Same thing. Very few 1/3 CMC creatures are signifciantly better than things like Scavenging Ooze and Stoneforge Mystic. Some are, but the jump from 2 to 3 is way smaller than the one from 1 to 2. In that sense 2 CMC is the first real power-spike. The cards here are way better than 1 drops and are only marginally worse than 3 drops. It's also important to remember that almost everything that you can do you at 3 CMC you can also do at 2 CMC. Need a blocker? A 2 drop will work just as well as a 3 drop. Need a ramp spell? 2 drops are better. Need removal? The most commonly played stuff costs 2 since you don't have much incentive to spring for cards like Murder.
Moving on to 4-5-6-7, again, I don't agree with your assessments. First of all, I think that most 4 drops are WAY better than most 3 drops. You basically never see cards like Armageddon, Birthing Pod and Sneak Attack at 3 CMC. When you pay 4 CMC for something you can realistically expect it to have a dramatic, often game-winning impact. I rarely see that at 3 CMC. Moreover, I don't agree with you when you say that 5 trumps 4 and that 7 trumps 6. 5 drops, to me, are almost unplayable. Again, there's always going to be mistakes (Gray Merchant of Asphodel) but there aren't many 5 drops that can compete with the actual top tier 4 and 6 drops. The 6 drops such as Lurking Predators, Wildfire, Consecrated Sphinx, Recurring Insight, Sun Titan, Primeval Titan, etc. are many orders of magnitude better than most 5 drops. They aren't just weak by comparison, they're almost trivial. Since those 5 drops aren't significantly better than the best 4 drops (think about things like Fact or Fiction, Oracle of Mul Daya, Syphon Mind, Humility) I don't think that it's as cut-and-dry and you make it seem. With respect to 6 and 7, again, I disagree. Their sheer existence of Primordials doesn't obsolete powerful 6 drops such as the ones that previously mentioned. They can operate within the same sphere and remain competitive. The reality is that I can ramp out a Sepulchral Primordial on turn 3 and it can easily suck. A Primeval Titan on the other hand basically never will. The delta in their power-level isn't nearly as wide as you're implying. My Inferno Titan isn't trivialized threat merely because an Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite is being played by someone else.
With respect to removal, I personally don't see much of it. I only face 5 CMC Wraths in casual decks and quite frankly I'm not especially worried about them in the context of Void Winnower Stax/Reanimator. If my opponents have access to 5 mana then I've probably lost anyways. StP isn't a card that I routinely play against, especially in high quantities.
Yeah, I gave it a try with fetches and Sun Titans and Sakura-Tribe Elders and stuff and it didn't disappoint.
Agreed, but I was trying to highlight the fact that I now that think it's a legitimately powerful standalone playable. You don't have to be doing broken things for it to be actively good.
This thread seemed like the best place to keep the answer to this question, at least for now.
What is the best range of number of basic lands to have in a 60-card deck to have strong confidence that you can use the dual lands and not have them ETBT a high percentage?
I'm looking at a list with 24 lands: 15 basic, 9 nonbasic; 4 of the nonbasic are the BFZ dual lands. Any idea what a formula would look like for this sort of situation?
This thread seemed like the best place to keep the answer to this question, at least for now.
What is the best range of number of basic lands to have in a 60-card deck to have strong confidence that you can use the dual lands and not have them ETBT a high percentage?
I'm looking at a list with 24 lands: 15 basic, 9 nonbasic; 4 of the nonbasic are the BFZ dual lands. Any idea what a formula would look like for this sort of situation?
Frank Karsten is the math whiz who tends to cover this stuff and he has an article that can be found here.
When you're calculating something MTG you typically need to use hypegeometric distribution and a good browser calculator for that can be found here. Population size is your deck size. Number of successes in population is your number of "hits" which in this instance is basic lands so 15. Sample size is the number of cards that you draw which would be 9 in this example (7 in your opening hand, and draw 2 more by turn 2). Number of successes in sample is how many "hits" you need to draw which in this instance is 2. All told we can see that your probability of going basic -> basic is something close to 0.721340640840437 or 72%. Should you draw a tango land you'll be able to cast it untapped on turn 3 roughly three quarters of the time.
Now, this isn't perfect math. I don't have the time or patience to set up the monte carlo simulations that Frank runs when he pumps out the more accurate numbers. Still, these are very good approximations that will put you in the ballpark range.
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 Wight of Precinct Six, 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.
General Notes
Allies: The Allies in this set are aggressively slanted and tend to have very little defensive value due to the nature of Rally. While I recognize that there's a small number of cards that can generate them at instant-speed by and large they're anemic threats on your opponents' turns. In a duel setting this isn't usually going to be a serious concern but in a multiplayer setting it worries me greatly. Moreover, none of the cards struck me as being especially pushed and I personally don't foresee the Ally deck/strategy being especially competitive. As such you won't see me covering many of the Ally cards in this set review. I'm sure that people will use Allies (both old and new) to build fun and interesting decks but from a competitive standpoint I don't feel especially compelled to analyze the tribe and its long-term impact on the multiplayer sphere. I'm just not expecting it to be a significant player. Beyond that I just don't see the value in stating things like "Munda, Ambush Leader, March from the Tomb and Ally Encampment are good in Ally decks." No kidding dude.
Eldrazi: When it comes to keywords such as Devoid and Ingest I'm not going to assign much value to them. They're interesting bonuses (well, Ingest is at least) but not inherent reasons to play with the cards. Moreover, most Eldrazi have cast triggers which makes them resilient to Counterspells but weak Reanimate targets. I'm not going to state that each and every time I analyze one so consider this the blanket statement that covers all of them. Beyond that I'll tress that processors such as Blight Herder do have very real drawbacks but a the same time cards like Bojuka Bog, Scavenging Ooze and Return to Dust help to ensure that it's substantially mitigated in Constructed formats.
Awaken: Random evasionless dorks don't have much value in lategame multiplayer situations. Additional blockers never hurt but at the same time an additional 4/4 isn't going to dramatically improve your relative board position. As such this isn't a mechanic that particularly interests me. Don't expect to see me assign much value to it.
Landfall: Multiplayer games tend to run long and feature decks that have higher land counts to support higher quality cards. As a result Landfall tends to over-perform within the sphere and you can expect my ratings to reflect that.
Converge: Converge, for the purposes of BfZ, is basically a joke keyword. Virtually every card with the keyword has strictly better counterparts in the sense that they always provide the maximum effect at no additional cost. See Radiant Flames vs Slagstorm or Exert Influence vs Mind Control. While the mechanic isn't inherently good or bad it's implementation was horrendous so don't expect to see much in the way of favorable reviews. It's a trash mechanic that isn't worth your time.
Bane of Bala Ged: I think that most 5+ CMC threats that die to removal (at no benefit) and that provide people with incentives to remove them are unplayable pieces of trash. BoBG is no exception. One thing that I need to stress to players is that the Exile trigger is basically just a drawback as far as I'm concerned. Let's compare this card to Shivan Dragon for example. It's not a playable Magic card or anything but at the very least no one is going to kill the Dragon until it becomes a problem for them personally. That is, if I'm holding a Doom Blade I have absolutely no incentive to kill the Dragon until it's attacking me. Until then it could easily be used to defeat my adversaries for me or even bait my opponent into using a ton of mana for nothing. Either way I'm almost always going to wait until the last second to deal with it because I can easily afford to wait. The problem (yes, problem) with cards like Bane of Bala Ged is that anyone with removal is priced-in to using it before it becomes a threat. Once it's declared as an attacker it's too late to stop the trigger and so people have to axe the thing beforehand. Given that it's otherwise just a dorky 7 drop with no ETB/dies trigger I really don't think that it's a playable Magic card. Even in the Urzatron decks that frequently produce 7 mana on turn 3 I still just expect this thing to die for no value. As such I personally think that it's trash tier and don't recommend fielding it. I would much rather field things like Steel Hellkite or Myr Battlesphere that don't force everyone's hand.
Constructed Grade D
EDH Grade D
Cube Grade D
Blight Herder: Despite the fact that this card has a relatively high setup cost the payoff is definitely there. The problem with cards like Cloudgoat Ranger is that they don't actually win multiplayer games of Magic. They provide good value and apply pressure but random 5 power fliers don't close games out when you're facing multiple adversaries. A variation that swarms the board and ramps you towards your game-enders that can is very appealing to me in that sense. Not only does it stabilize the midgame but it also helps to secure the lategame. This isn't a "must have" by any means but insofar as your deck is playing cards like Withered Wretch, Scavenging Ooze, Return to Dust, etc. this is certainly a passable 5 drop. Something about a 7/8 across 4 bodies for 5 that also Black Lotuses you into your game-ending bombs sounds powerful to me. The fact that it's conditional means that it'll probably never see play in super serious competitive decks but I mean I generally play Bojuka Bogs and Withered Wretched in my Black decks anyways and insofar as you're reliably meeting the condition the card seems fine. It's not Primeval Titan or anything but it's still a creature that can generate a fairly large amount of extra mana and that's certainly going to enable some busted sequences a reasonable % of the time.
Constructed Grade C-
EDH Grade D+
Cube Grade F
Conduit of Ruin: Anything that tutors and ramps piques my interest for EDH and as far as Constructed is concerned there are plenty of Urzatron/Cloudpost decks that are always on the lookout for new, powerful additions to their roster. Unfortunately the body is rather anemic and "top of deck" tutoring is many orders of magnitude weaker than its "to hand" counterpart which leaves me skeptical that this card will do much work outside of EDH. People have a lot of incentive to remove this thing and it doesn't actually generate card advantage so running it out as your first real play doesn't seem especially competitive to me. It's obviously great if it survives, it's extremely easy to curve this into a big Eldrazi, but most people should see that coming from a mile away so I wouldn't get too greedy with the tutor trigger if you can help it. That is, you're probably better off nabbing a Myr Battlesphere as opposed to that 10+ drop. All-in-all I think that this card looks a lot better than it'll play out so I don't expect to see it much outside of combo decks like Animar, Soul of Elements in EDH that can really "go off" with tutors and ramp. You can obviously play it in most EDH decks (insofar as you have some powerful things to nab with it) but please don't fool yourself into thinking that this is a bomb in the format or anything. Paying 6 mana to Vampiric Tutor for a small subset of threats is extremely marginal and because it's a cast trigger you can't even find things like Artisan of Kozilek to propagate some sort of chain. I want to stress that it's certainly a playable card but not one that you should necessarily get excited over.
Constructed Grade C-
EDH Grade C
Cube Grade F
Endless One: One thing that I'm always keeping an eye out for are generically powerful 2 drops that scale well at every stage of the game (think Scavenging Ooze). Endless One intrigues me in the sense that it's a Grizzly Bears on 2 that basically scales indefinitely as the game progresses. Come turn 10 it's going to be a 7/7-8/8 and if you need a 6/6 on turn 6 to block a Titan it can be that too. Moreover, it has synergy with every "counters matter" effect (think Doubling Season) and because it's colorless it can be played in any deck. That is, you could (in theory) purchase 4, run them in everything and always have a 2 drop in your deck that isn't just dead on turn 7. Unfortunately I don't expect that to be a winning line in practice. The base card is always going to be a vanilla beater and vanilla beaters don't win MP games. Be it a 2 mana 2/2 or an 8 mana 8/8 you're never going to be actively happy about what you're getting and the sad reality is that more often than not the difference is irrelevant. That is, the difference between a vanilla 7/7 and a vanilla 3/3 on turn ~10 is often insignificant to the point where it's virtually never going to dramatically improve your overall position in the game. As such I can't in good conscience call this a powerful/competitive beater that you can blindly jam into your lists. It's certainly a fun, cool card and maybe one day it'll see play alongside a Trinket Mage for creatures but as it stands I wouldn't advocate jamming this thing into your brews.
Constructed Grade C-
EDH Grade D
Cube Grade D
Oblivion Sower: This is my favorite Eldrazi in the set and it's not particularly close. People are underrating this guy hardcore but I can assure you that he's the real deal. As-is it does a decent Primeval Titan impersonation and that's before you take into account the fact that cards like Bojuka Bog, Deathrite Shaman, Scavenging Ooze, Withered Wretch, etc. are all things that you probably want to be running in your MP lists anyways. It's extremely easy to build your decks in such a way that you'll routinely be jamming ~3 lands into play with this thing and that just seems absurd to me. Now, let me be clear. I'm not suggesting that you need to add cards like Sadistic Sacrament to your deck in order to make this card work. I think that it's perfectly fine to play it as-is but it doesn't hurt if it just so happens that you were thinking of playing Deathrite Shaman anyways. The fact that you can't Reanimate this thing is obviously unfortunate but at the same time it does improve the overall health of the game as far as I'm concerned. The historic problem with cards like Sylvan Primordial is that as soon as someone resolves one every Clone and Reanimate effect will forever and always be headed towards it. It's just the best possible thing to be doing at all times. Sower is "fixed" in the sense that you have to actually cast it "the fair way" for 6 mana and from then on you can't just copy/recur the thing to oblivion. This means that you get to play real games of Magic as opposed to playing Red Rover with the ramp fatty. What I love most about this card is that you can blindly jam it in any deck as a pseudo-Primeval Titan and a very large % of the time you'll just get 2 lands and a big body. That % is a bit closer to 50% than I'd like but MP is mostly a crapshoot anyways so sometimes is pays to gamble a bit. It's obviously at its best in decks that do have some form of exile, the card is just fantastic if you can routinely each some Fetchlands, but I personally think that you can still run this thing as a generic threat in basically any deck of any color regardless of its contents.
Now, the one caveat is that these kinds of cards tend to fare better in "competitive" metas than they do in overly casual ones. This is because newer players don't always own Fetchlands and they often cheat on lands in their lists which reduces the likelihood of this thing hitting ~2 lands. I don't want to bore you with too much math but at 25 lands you have ~55% probability of hitting 2 or more lands whereas at 20 lands you only have a ~40% probability. In metas devoid of Fetchlands filled with decks "cheating" on lands the card is only "powerful" 40% of the time which isn't mind-blowing by any means. It's a rather anemic threat if you're just getting 1 land off of the trigger so you do have to be somewhat mindful about when and where to field the thing. Still, again, I need to stress is that there's no opportunity cost to playing a card like Scavenging Ooze in a multiplayer setting to begin with so as long as you're already playing with exile effects this is a completely absurd Magic card. If you Black all have Bojuka Bog and Withered Wretch already go ahead and exile those Fetchlands and build yourself a Primeval Titan.
7x Island
4x Dismal Backwater
4x Dimir Aqueduct
4x Bojuka Bog
2x Swamp
3x Reliquary Tower
4x Chasm Skulker
3x Notion Thief
3x Consuming Aberration
4x Oblivion Sower
2x Sire of Stagnation
1x Spell Burst
1x Cyclonic Rift
4x Trade Secrets
3x Forbid
1x Death Cloud
2x Rite of Replication
EDH Grade B+
Cube Grade B
Scour from Existence: To anyone wondering if 1-2 color decks will play this thing the answer is a resounding "no." I'd love to be able to remove Enchantments in my Black decks as much as the next guy but 7 mana is just way too high of a price to pay to remove a single threat from a single opponent. Even in formats like EDH I just wouldn't add this to my deck "as an out to Iona, Shield of Emeria/Humility" or whatever because that doesn't feel like a winning line to me. When this is in your deck you won't be drawing dead to a specific card nearly as often but ultimately you'll lose a games from having bad cards in your deck.
Constructed Grade D
EDH Grade D
Cube Grade D
Titan's Presence: This card is way too over-hyped and I can guarantee you that it's significantly weaker than it seems. Decks like mono-Blue Tron can consider running 1, MAYBE 2, but to anyone out there who thinks that they'll be slamming 4 of these in their lists you are very much mistaken my friend. 3 mana spot removal with multiple conditions is as marginal as it gets so please don't start thinking about this as some Swords to Plowshares "savior" for colors that lack hard removal. Unmake sees no play in its respective colors for a very good reason and this is significantly weaker card than that. It's a marginal playable at best and even the best decks for it will still only run a small number of copies (if any).
Constructed Grade D
EDH Grade D
Cube Grade F
Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger: In Cube he seems like an extremely busted Renimator target but at the same time I won't be adding him to my own. Much like Sword of Body and Mind he'll just create too many "non-games" where some of the players die on the 4th-5th turn because they ate 1-2 attacks from a threat that promptly milled them out of the game. Trust me when I say that no one at the table benefits when things like that happen. From a purely competitive standpoint he's God-tier but I personally recommend taking a pass on this one.
With respect to Constructed he's a 10 drop that doesn't immediately win the game so he's not going to see play outside of Reanimator (or possibly Oath of Druids) and Cloudpost/Tron decks. In Reanimator he's easily in the top 5 best targets (at least in my opinion) and I'd happily field him myself. He's better at actually killing people than Griselbrand is and he's less vulnerable to removal than Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur is but realistically his average clock is still slower than either. I do, however, think that he's quite a bit better than Inkwell Leviathan even though I recognize the fact that he can be Swords to Plowsharesed, bounced, etc. It really just depends on your meta and the types of interaction (i.e. removal) being fielded by the other players. Either way the card seems fine in the archetype but he's certainly not going to revolutionize it like Griselbrand has. With respect to Tron/Post decks I think that he's generally worse than the old Eldrazi if for no other reason than his lack of Annihilator and anti-death clause (relevant for Eye of Ugin abuse and mill protection). Exiling cards is cool and all but you really do need at least 2 attacks to kill a player off whereas old Eldrazi generally only need 1. I do like his ETB trigger, nabbing 2 perms is sweet, but the cards falls flat otherwise. That being said I would still happily play the guy in most Post/Tron decks because he's definitely in the top 1% of big dumb idiots to ramp out. People who can afford to run him will and people who can't will have to keep settling for things like Artisan of Kozilek.
With respect to EDH Newlamog definitely brings something new to the format. Before if you were playing a non-Blue deck you didn't always have a super powerful creature that you could just blindly revive on turn 2 off of a natural discard, Faithless Looting, Entomb, etc. and feel good about. Most of your options were too weak, slow or vulnerable to removal. Newlamog is extremely difficult to remove once he sticks, works in any color combo and still kills relatively quickly. His clock isn't insanely fast or anything but if your meta isn't riddled with Blue-based combo and/or Prison/Stax/Mana Denial he does a fine job of clearing the table. Otherwise he's another big dumb fatty that you can ramp out eventually and, much like Oldamog, provides decks of any color outs to things like Humility and Iona, Shield of Emeria. The "exile kill" isn't amazing in 100 card singleton formats but he'll randomly hose key combo pieces every now and then and it's nice that he beats any amount of lifegain, damage reduction, graveyard reshuffling, etc.
Constructed Grade A
EDH Grade B
Cube Grade A+ objectively, F subjectively
Void Winnower: If this card isn't on your radar then let me assure you that it should be. Most people are dismissing it as being too weird, slow, unreliable, whatever but I can assure you that this is an extremely competitive Magic card. Stax strategies which seek to prevent your opponents from ever resolving spells is one of the most powerful multiplayer tactics that you can possibly employ. Any creature/artifact that reads "your opponents can't cast 50%+ of the spells in their deck" is definitely going to see play within them. Ignore the cost, ignore the body, ignore the block clause, you are playing this thing for one sentence and one sentence alone. Now, let me be clear, I understand that this card doesn't just win the game when it hits the field. That's not the point. I'm not telling you to play a generic ramp deck that tops out with this guy in the foolish hope that it'll seal the deal. No sir. I'm telling you to play this in a deck with cards like Winter Orb, Tangle Wire, Smokestack, Possessed Portal and Nullstone Gargoyle that're already making it extremely difficult for your opponents to play Magic. Black decks in particular are best suited to using these kinds of creatures because of its ability to recur them on the cheap. Your cards like Smallpox, Contamination, Necrogen Mists, Death Cloud, Braids, Cabal Minion, Mindslicer, etc. are all fantastic at limiting your opponent's options at which point you can lean on things like Animate Dead and/or Necromancy to recur threats such as Void Winnower and Nullstone Gargoyle to seal the game up.
Constructed Grade C
EDH Grade B
Cube Grade F
Closing Thoughts: The safest buys are Oblivion Sower and Newlamog with everything else being marginal/niche. Try to pick up a Void Winnower for EDH at some point but feel free to wait until it tanks because that card isn't going to see competitive play. Everything else is rather anemic so I'll leave the rest to your own discretion.
Emeria Shepherd: While I was lukewarm on this card initially I'm since come around on it as a generic value finisher in the same vein as Sun Titan and Angel of Serenity. In additional to her ability to recur any permanent (even Omniscience!) she has some interesting combo applications that make it easier for her to close games out. I'm sure that most players are aware of the Sakura-Tribe Elder combo by now and it only takes a sac outlet (say Altar of Dementia) for this to do silly things with cards like Kor Cartographer and/or Solemn Simulacrum. There's also cards like Prismatic Omen which, again, can lead to some rather absurd sequences involving this spicy little vixen. My problem with all of these combos in Constructed is that they feel significantly slower and weaker than plain old Land Tax/Endless Horizons into Goblin Charbelcher so suffice it to say that I'm not sold on her just yet. I like her more in Cube and EDH in that sense. While you arguably jam her in a Reanimator style deck given that the color already has bombs such as Avacyn, Angel of Hope, Iona, Shield of Emeria, Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite, etc. it's not as though it needed another one. A pseudo Sheoldred, Whispering One in White is "fine" but it already has that in Reya Dawnbringer. The problem with Emeria Shepherd (the same problem that Reya has by the way) is that the card is a bit too slow to cast "the fair way." She's virtually an 8 drop if you want to get immediate value from her (hint: you do) and, again, it's not as though her "combo kills" are any better than what the color can already muster. If you're looking for a generic, value finisher it's tough to field her over Angel of Serenity if for no other reason than the fact the one is actually a 7 drop whereas the other is a phony. Bear in mind that I've basically ignored the fact that most decks (especially EDH lists) don't even have that many actual Plains in them to begin with and it's not as though mono-White is much of a thing. You're also not always going to have lands to follow her up so by no means is she an unconditional finisher. Even the 4/4 stats leave something to be desired but realistically that doesn't matter all that much. The point that I'm trying to make is that while powerful she's also slow and conditional which means that you're not going to start seeing her in every deck. Avid EDH players should probably pick these up at some point but if you're planning to build a dedicated combo deck around her then her Constructed applications are few and far between as far I'm concerned. With EDH still in mind I see her as a decent card in Stax decks (think Hokori, Dust Drinker and Avacyn, Angel of Hope) to function as another recursion engine. She fuels cards like Smokestack and Possessed Portal insanely well, especially if you're constantly cycling a mana rock (such as Gilded Lotus) while hiding behind cards like Winter Orb and Tangle Wire. Otherwise you should probably be trying to recur extremely powerful + unfair things with her and/or looking to combo everyone out if you're going to start sleeving her up on a regular basis. 8 mana (virtually) is simply too much for most fair decks.
Constructed Grade B
EDH Grade B
Cube Grade C
Felidar Sovereign: "You win the game" on a trivial condition? You don't have to twist my arm on this one. This one of the most criminally underplayed White cards in the game since it's basically a free shot to win games out of nowhere (especially in formats such as EDH). I get that MP Magic tends to be casual in nature and so these kinds of cards are frowned-upon but from a purely competitive perspective this is a card that you definitely want to have in your collection. As we'll soon see the Soul Warden, Soul's Attendant deck got a lot better with BfZ so I highly recommend grabbing these at some point. You don't have to ruin the game by slotting them in your go-to decks but if you're ever looking for cheap and easy wins then this is the perfect card for you. It usually only takes 1-2 White lifegain spells to put you well over 40 life (think Congregate) and with Emeria, the Sky Ruin it's not as though 1-2 pieces of interaction are going to thwart your well-laid plans. The card also plays well in Black for its lifegain and recursion (Phyrexian Reclamation, Exsanguinate, Debt to the Deathless) and I've happily splashed it in otherwise mono-Black decks. Gray Merchant of Asphodel on 5 into Sovereign on 6 with a Phyrexian Reclamation in play isn't easy to beat. This is a no-brainer, windmill-slam, must-have bomb across all formats/levels of competition and you're doing a disservice to yourself if don't own them at this point.
Constructed Grade A
EDH Grade A+
Cube Grade C
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar: This is a perfect example of 'Walker that has next-to-no value in an MP setting in my mind. Beating in for 5 doesn't interest me in the slightest (nor should it you) and while I'm assuming that Ally lists will appreciate the 2/2 Token I'm not scrambling to jam that effect into most of my decks. The ultimate is arguable reasonable but I can't remember the last time that I've seen a "good deck" play Honor of the Pure so an indestructible version of the thing doesn't seem very appealing to me. It's not some game-ending effect that will grind the table out even if you manage to get multiples into play. Like most 'Walkers I expect him to see more play than he deserves and being in the Wrath of God color certainly helps but I'd still happily play against this guy any day of the week. He just doesn't have enough of an impact on the game to justify his inclusion into most decks. He's only going to do legitimate work in token decks but even then he's just another card that your evasive beaters/burn can interact with. Like most 'Walkers he also comes with that built-in stigma of "oh my God that guy has a 'Walker we need to stop him!" no matter how bad/marginal the thing actually is. YMMV and every meta is different but I've never been impressed with these kinds of cards in a MP setting. I know that most people consider Elspeth, Knight-Errant to be a top White 4 drop but I personally think that those kinds of cards are massively overrated. You're almost never going to have a stable board in a MP setting and random, evasionless beaters don't win games of magic. If you want to pay 4 mana to generate 3-4 tokens over 3-4 turns, have at it, I just don't understand why people consider that to be competitive. All things being equal people are going to send their evasioned attackers/burn (think Earthquake) at 'Walkers because it's moronic to do otherwise.
Constructed Grade C
EDH Grade C
Cube Grade C
Planar Outburst: Wrath of God and Day of Judgment aren't so expensive that most players will be forced to play with these marginal 5 CMC alternatives but for players looking to field decks that're Standard/Modern legal you don't have much say in the matter. In EDH you have vastly superior options (think Hallowed Burial) but at the same time any Wrath is going to be playable so there's a relatively high floor on this type of effect. Cube is similar in the sense the best ones won't be able to find room for a card like this but at the same time it's probably going to cheap and easy to acquire which is usually more important than most other factors. This isn't a "must own" by any means, Tragic Arrogance from Magic Origins is a significantly more powerful card than this, but you can still feel decent about playing this spell in any multiplayer sphere.
Constructed Grade C
EDH Grade C
Cube Grade C
Quarantine Field: I think that Banishing Light is an incredibly overrated Magic card and this feels like a strictly worse version to me. That should give you a good idea on my opinion of it. I think that the baseline card of "pay 4-8 to exile 1-3 things" is completely unplayable and I really don't care if scales to 10+ mana some % of the time. Paying 4 mana to exile a single threat from a single opponent is just such a horrendous rate that I can't possibly envision myself playing with this thing. Even in Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx decks I'm just never going to field it over actual game-enders because this does not win the game if you sink 12 mana into it. The only role that this card serves, in my mind, is that if you're able to generate infinite mana then you can use it to exile everyone's nonland perms. That's it. Don't buy-in to the hype surrounding this card because I can guarantee you that it won't live up to it. The base card is bad and it doesn't dramatically improve from there. Again, I don't even like Oblivion Ring and I think that this card is almost always going to be worse. 75% of the time you'll be casting it at X=1 anyways so why pay an extra mana for already weak effect? Unless your deck is going real deep on Cloudpost/Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx/Serra's Sanctum effects to consistently generate a lot of mana you will be severely disappointed with Quarantine Field's average use-case. Field a couple of copies in your big-mana decks but don't start looking at this as a replacement for O-Ring that "only" costs 1 more at worst and "scales well" (Ha!) into the mid and lategame.
Constructed Grade C-
EDH Grade C-
Cube Grade C-
Retreat to Emeria: I can understand not wanting to play Luminarch Ascension in 100% of your White decks but even then things like Sacred Mesa and Mastery of the Unseen are almost always going to significantly outperform something like this in the long-run. I get that Retreat is a "fire-and-forget" spell that doesn't require further mana investments but the problem with these kinds of cards is that they're best played early on and offer very little value in the later stages of the game. I also need to stress the fact that this is merely "fine" early (it's not insane or anything) and given that it's just horrendously bad on turn 7 or 8 I can't think of many decks that should feel excited to play with it. After all, the 1/1s aren't going to accomplish much of anything in a MP setting so unless you can somehow sit on a throng of them and go off with some Fetchlands or whatever I can't imagine actually closing a game out with this type of effect. You can obviously support mass tokens with Overruns but this isn't what I'm looking for in a grindy token producer.
Constructed Grade D
EDH Grade D
Cube Grade D
Serene Steward: If you've overlooked this card I'm going to have to ask you to go back and take another glance. The biggest weakness of most Soul Sister decks is that other than the 4x Ajani's Pridemate the deck doesn't have much access to affordable meat. Obviously in an ideal world we'd all have Serra Ascendants and Archangel of Thunes but those just aren't reasonable cards for the masses. What I like the Steward is that she allows you to field another set of "big dumb bears" who, while weaker, are less vulnerable to removal. Those decks frequently play cards like Squadron Hawk and Spectral Procession so splitting the counters is definitely relevant. She's also cheap and a threat herself, unlike Cradle of Vitality, a card which is probably now obsolete. I won't BS you and act like having to pay W isn't insignificant, it's definitely a huge drawback compared to Ajani's Pridemate, but even then I still think that most budget versions of the deck are going to want some number of these to help them close games out. Finally, as I previously alluded to, this archetype was further "buffed" with the reprinting of Felidar Sovereign which further reduces its reliance on cards such as Serra Ascendant to close games out. A simple Emeria, the Sky Ruin + Sovereign recursion suite will probably get there eventually so as long as you have meaty blockers (such as Serene Steward) to buy some time you'll easily pick up some wins every now and then.
13x Plains
4x Myriad Landscape
4x Mistveil Plains
3x Emeria, the Sky Ruin
4x Soul Warden
4x Soul's Attendant
4x Ajani's Pridemate
4x Squadron Hawk
2x Serene Steward
2x Relic Seeker
4x Felidar Sovereign
2x Loxodon Warhammer
1x Godsend
3x Benevolent Offering
3x Well of Lost Dreams
EDH Grade D
Cube Grade D
Stasis Snare: I expect to see this card played more than it should but I'm personally not a big fan of marginal 1-for-1s. It doesn't have the same flexibility that Oblivion Ring/Banishing Light have (not that I'm a huge fan of those cards either mind you) nor the efficiency that Swords to Plowshares offers. On the plus side it's easier to cast than Unmake, it adds 2 Devotion for Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx and being an Enchantment definitely matters when you have things like Eidolon of Blossoms in your 60. Still, the point of this entry (and the upcoming one for Ruinous Path) is to caution the reader that these kinds of removal effects lose a significant amount of value in multiplayer and to remind you to carefully consider whether or not it's in your best interest to include them. 3 mana to remove a single threat from a single opponent is a steep price to pay and decks that lack sufficient ways to generate card advantage will suffer if they field too many marginal effects such as that. There's a reason why you don't see White/Black decks swimming with Unmakes and it's the fact that 3 mana to axe a threat isn't a winning line in a multiplayer setting. The effect is worth exactly one mana and paying triple the cost for no benefit isn't going to take you very far.
Constructed Grade D
EDH Grade D
Cube Grade D
Closing Thoughts: The only must-have is Felidar Sovereign with everything else coming in at a distant second. Felidar is legitimately unique in the sense that it's an instant-win card with a trivial condition (especially in EDH) which makes it competitive at every level of play and in every format. Beyond that Emeria Shepherd has broken applications and I always recommend acquiring anything that can win the game on its own. I'm not in love with the card or anything but sometimes you need to be able to cheese out a win and she's good for that. Otherwise Serene Steward is a cheap threat who scales well so I'd probably look to acquire them at some point if possible. When it comes to 1-2 drops I like to err on the side of caution and acquire them if I even think there's a chance that they could be playable. Everything else you could easily live without.
Anticipate: Cards like Ponder, Preordain, Impulse 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.
Constructed Grade C+
EDH Grade C+
Cube Grade C+
Coastal Discovery: Unlike Mulldrifter you're never happy to cast the spell half of this card and the fact that it's virtually an 7 mana creature (assuming that actually you want to block with it) means that people calling this a "better" Phyrexian Gargantua are missing an extremely important distinction. If you're going to slot this into your decks try to take advantage of the fact that it's a "spell creature" and pair it with things like Augur of Bolas and Archaeomancer if at all possible. An even better idea would be to simply exclude it ;).
Constructed Grade D
EDH Grade D
Cube Grade D
Dampening Pulse: I've never seen a competitive Cumber Stone deck and I don't expect that to change regardless of the number of versions that they print. Multiplayer isn't a format where players are generally winning games by turning small creatures sideways so this is basically just a mulligan as far as I'm concerned. Much like Fog Bank this is a card that I would actively choose to have in my opponents' decks because no Control, Combo, Ramp, Stax, Prison, Mana Denial, etc. deck will ever care about this type of effect. Even token decks are going to win with Overruns, they're not going to clear a table out with small threats, so please don't kid yourself into thinking that this is a powerful, playable Magic card. I can assure you that it's not.
Constructed Grade D
EDH Grade D
Cube Grade D
Part the Waterveil: In order to win MP games of Magic you need to do really busted, degenerate things while limiting your opponents' ability to interact with you as much possible. As a result every single "take and extra turn spell" is a competitive MP Magic card and this one is no exception. If you're a Blue EDH/2HG player you simply must acquire one of these and even if FFA Constructed is more your speed there's still plenty of powerful ways to abuse taking extra turns. I realize that Wizards has finally caught on the fact that players were just taking all of the turns using cards like Soulfire Grand Master, Archaeomancer + Crystal Shard, Panoptic Mirror, etc. but even though the new variations Exile themselves they're still must-haves in rampy, combo-centric formats such as EDH and 2HG Multiplayer. As much I'd like to provide examples of specific decks that will play this card, the answer is basically "any big mana Blue deck." Insofar as your deck has powerful ramp and a strong endgame you'll probably benefit wildly from taking extra turns. I'm already thinking about Generals such as Narset, Enlightened Master, Teferi, Temporal Archmage, Arcanis the Omnipotent, Damia, Sage of Stone and Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur and with respect to Constructed I'm mostly thinking about rampy Cloudpost style decks that win with things like Upheaval fueled by Thran Dynamo. One extra turn can easily become two or three (or infinite!) once you start peppering recursion into the mix and eventually you'll be able to assemble something powerful enough to take the rest of the table down.
Constructed Grade C
EDH Grade A
Cube Grade D
Retreat to Coralhelm: If Mind Over Matter has taught us anything it's that free triggers on free effects leads to degenerate outcomes. Playing a land is a free effect that generates mana and given that we live in a world of Fetchlands you can basically think of this thing as a Lotus Cobra of sorts. Right now I'm mostly thinking about Simic/Bant decks that use things like Arbor Elf and Kiora's Follower to untap lands Enchanted with things like Utopia Sprawl but also ones where you can go "infinite" with a card like Knight of the Reliquary. The card does a ton of work in Genesis Wave decks since you can basically just stack a million untap triggers, use Kiora's Follower to untap Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx or Gaea's Cradle and as long as you have something like Eternal Witness or Greenwarden of Murasa to re-buy your Genesis Waves you should be able to slam your entire deck into play. Another aspect of Retreat to Coralhelm that we shouldn't overlook is that even when your deck isn't ready to do busted things just yet it digs deeper towards the cards that you're missing. I don't want to oversell this point because I wouldn't play this card if it were just a 3 mana Enchantment that let me Scry 1 every turn (and Landfall isn't guaranteed by any means) but it's a bit of extra value that should be accounted for. The card isn't just dead when you have nothing in play and are drawing lands. The point is that there's going to be powerful, unfair applications for this thing so there's absolutely no reason to avoid picking them up assuming that it's just a bulk uncommon. I'm almost positive that it'll slot right into the degenerate Prophet of Kruphix decks that generate ridiculous sums of mana to do absurd things.
Constructed Grade B
EDH Grade C
Cube Grade D
Ugin's Insight: With Recurring Insight at 6 CMC you have to be getting a lot of Scry value to make this type of card worthwhile. If I'm paying 5 mana at Sorcery speed to draw 3 cards I better be getting at least a Scry 4 in the interim. That way I may not be getting the exact quantity of cards that I'm looking for but at least the quality will be relatively high. As such I'd be relatively happy to play this in decks that have a bunch of Archaeomancers and various 5-7 drops (such as Future Sight and Diluvian Primordial) but I'm not going to jam in in creature-light shells that cap out with Snapcaster Mages and Rhystic Studys. It's relatively niche in that sense so I wouldn't put a high priority on acquiring them. While you could arguably jam them in the Omniscience deck the reality is that if you're casting big draw spells with an Omni in play then you've probably already won. Scry 10 is cool and all but likely win-more at that point. With respect to EDH I really like this card in big Blue combo + ramp decks such as Sharuum the Hegemon and Oona, Queen of the Fae that feature an expensive Commander and plenty of 2 card combo kills. Always having access to a 6-10 drop General makes the card significantly more promising and Scrying 6+ to find key combo pieces is very relevant in the format. Past a certain point you stop needing quantity and simply need the highest quality cards that your deck can muster.
Constructed Grade C
EDH Grade B
Cube Grade C
Ulamog's Reclaimer: Mnemonic Wall isn't especially playable as far as I'm concerned and as such I'm completely unwilling to meet conditions for a similar alternative. In a world of creatures such as Snapcaster Mage and Archaeomancer there's just absolutely no reason to ever play these kinds of cards. This thing could literally always work and it still wouldn't be exciting.
Constructed Grade F
EDH Grade F
Cube Grade F
Closing Thoughts: Anticipate is essential for anyone who still doesn't own them and Part the Waterveil is crucial for EDH/2HG players (but Constructed/Cube players can feel free to skip that one). Beyond that the only broken card in the set is Retreat to Coralhelm because it currently enables the Knight of the Reliquary combo and could easily support new ones in the future. It's a must-have either way, especially since it's just an uncommon. Otherwise EDH players should probably grab some Ugin's Insights but, again, Cube and Constructed players can probably live without that one. It loses most of its luster when you don't perpetually have access to a 6+ CMC permanent.
Defiant Bloodlord: Sanguine Bond #2 for EDH is where this guy will see the most play but please don't misinterpret that as me calling him "good in EDH." You'll obviously play him in your Oloro, Ageless Ascetic style decks that feature cards such as Exquisite Blood and Beacon of Immortality but I don't consider him to be a generic playable. I like that you can tutor for him with cards like Survival of the Fittest and I do think that being a creature (as opposed to an Enchantment) is generally a buff in that specific format. Green and Black are two of the strongest colors and Green has a ton of creature-based tutors whereas Black has a plethora of powerful + cheap recursion options. That being said at 7 mana it's extremely difficult to do anything truly abusive with this guy. The Exquisite Blood infinite combos have never been especially competitive and this guy certainly isn't going to change that. While you could arguably play him as a value beater alongside Exsanguinate, Gray Merchant of Asphodel, Kokusho, the Evening Star, etc. as someone who loves playing those kinds of decks I can assure you that I'd personally never field the thing myself. It's a 7 mana spell that doesn't win the game whereas something like Necrologia almost always will. It's a cool card that will probably make some casual players happy but until I can Buried Alive this + something else and win the game off of Victimize or Living Death I'm just not going to bother with weak combo kills when I can just lean on Mikaeus, the Unhallowed + Triskelion and/or Necrotic Ooze + Triskelion + Phyrexian Devourer, etc. It's entirely possible that I'm being unfairly critical towards this thing but I'm just never going to run it over things like Rune-Scarred Demon, Sheoldred, Whispering One or even Sepulchral Primordial in most decks. I don't want to be playing with conditional 7 drops that die to removal even if they enable a small number of marginal combos. This doesn't make me want to add cards like Sanguine Bond and Exquisite Blood to my generic Black-based Combo/Stax decks so I really don't see it being played outside of the WBx lifegain generals.
Constructed Grade D
EDH Grade D in general, C+ in dedicated lifegain decks
Cube Grade F
Drana, Liberator of Malakir: Vampire Nighthawk sees a fair amount of casual play and Drana functions as a similarly powerful 3 drop. That being said my primary issues with Drana are those of functionality and affordability. Whereas you generally want your decks/cards to be defensively slanted Drana is worthless while you're sitting back on D (unless you consider a French vanilla 2/3 to be a playable Magic card). I know that every meta is different and that you can employ various attack restrictions but the reality is that in multiplayer you can't always afford to send in your team every turn. I personally play exclusively FFA because I think that it adds a big strategic element to the game but it also makes it extremely difficult to declare marginal attacks. As such I'm heavily biased against these kinds of cards because I don't expect to ever be turning my team sideways. Now, if she just pumped all of your creatures (as opposed to your "attacking creatures") then she'd obviously be fine but that clearly isn't the case. Beyond that a playset will set you back about $100.00 which makes her impractical/unaffordable for all but the most competitive Magic players. This combination of marginal functionality + extreme cost makes it difficult for me to take an interest in her. I don't expect the card to consistently provide good value nor do I feel comfortable recommending it to other players (it's too much money). It's not wildly unplayable or anything but it's certainly not actively good.
Constructed Grade D+
EDH Grade D
Cube Grade D+
Kalastria Healer: Ally decks aren't a "thing" as far as I'm concerned and the trigger is too weak to actually abuse. Given that I would never play a 2 mana 1/2 that drains for 1 (which is what this card will be 99% of the time) I don't see a compelling reason to acquire them.
Constructed Grade D
EDH Grade F
Cube Grade F
Mind Raker: I'm definitely not willing to work for a weak Unnerve on a useless body.
Constructed Grade D-
EDH Grade D-
Cube Grade F
Ob Nixilis Reignited: Casting this guy on a clear board is going to be virtually impossible and his -3 isn't going to drastically change anything the vast majority of the time. His average use-case will be a 5 mana removal spell and even if you live the dream it's not as though his ultimate actually wins you the game. Much like Gideon I have no interest in this card whatsoever and recommend avoiding him if possible.
Constructed Grade D+
EDH Grade D+
Cube Grade D
Painful Truths: With respect to Constructed this is basically just a draw 3 for 3 in the right shells and that's a relatively powerful Magic card. It's not going to run away with the game like Syphon Mind can but you get your ROI immediately which isn't a feat that draw engines such as Phyrexian Arena can boast. It's just a middling draw spell that you should feel relatively happy to resolve at basically any stage of the game. If I don't sound excited it's because I'm not. You literally have to be playing a 3 color, non-Blue deck to make this card playable and even then it's just a marginally improved Ambition's Cost. If you're playing Mardu or Abzan or whatever then you can certainly consider playing this thing but even then I'm probably just going to stick to things like Outpost Siege and Syphon Mind that have a higher power-ceiling.
Moving on to EDH, a draw 3 for 3 is interesting but I can guarantee you that this card is significantly weaker than it seems. To anyone thinking "oh, but it's better than Ambition's Cost et al." you are just plain wrong. The fact that you have pay 3 colored mana to cast the thing means that you can't use your colorless mana rocks such as Sol Ring, Mana Vault, Basalt Monolith, Worn Powerstone, Thran Dynamo etc. so more often than not you're just going to float your colorless mana anyways. You're also never going to find room for this thing in your Blue decks and since you need to be playing with 3 or more colors just to make it playable it's really asking for a lot. In that sense I think that it's almost strictly worse than cards like Ambition's Cost and Ancient Craving in EDH and those aren't even draw spells that I play in my competitive decks. Don't even get me started with this card in 1-2 color decks when you already have access to Sign in Blood, Night's Whisper, Read the Bones, etc. I get that not everyone plays with a bunch of ramp and card draw in their MP decks (be it EDH or not) but it's hard for me to get excited over a draw spell that's difficult to ramp out.
To anyone who just wants a "buy or not buy" answer, I'm firmly in the "not buy" camp. For this card to be good you have to be playing 3 colors, none of which are Blue, in a deck that doesn't have much colorless ramp. That's such a trivial % of my multiplayer decks that I couldn't possibly imagine getting a worthwhile return on this thing.
Constructed Grade C
EDH Grade C
Cube Grade F
Retreat to Hagra: Even if this were simply a 3 mana Subversion it still wouldn't be a competitive multiplayer card and this doesn't even gain 1 life for each opponent that you drain. I personally think that these kinds of cards are actively bad because they piss the entire table off without improving your board nor providing a significant clock. Since multiplayer tends to be an "all things being equal" format you never want to provide people with an incentive to focus their attention on you if it can be avoided. Do not play with this card.
Constructed Grade D-
EDH Grade D-
Cube Grade D-
Rising Miasma: I don't even think that Infest is a playable Magic card in most MP settings let alone this POS. It's too much mana for too little impact.
Constructed Grade D
EDH Grade D
Cube Grade D
Ruinous Path: Hero's Downfall is extremely overrated in my opinion and this card is basically strictly worse as far as I'm concerned. Spot removal isn't good for much other than disrupting combos and killing attackers both of which are things that you can't really do at Sorcery speed. I'm not saying that you shouldn't ever run spot removal in multiplayer, you gotta do what you gotta do, but 9 times out of 10 these 3 CMC removal spells are just flat-out worse than Go for the Throat in my experience. 'Walkers lose a lot of their value in an MP setting where you can virtually never stabilize the board and tend to draw a lot of hate anyways so it's almost never worthwhile paying more than 1-2 mana for your removal.
Constructed Grade C
EDH Grade C
Cube Grade C
Smothering Abomination: I'm a fan of big, cheap fliers and drawing cards so I can kinda get behind this badboy. I know that it's an unpopular opinion but I love to whip out Contamination/Smokestack/Braids, Cabal Minion decks every now and then and this guy seems like he could slot directly into that style of deck. Even if you're not going deep on a Stax strategy there's always things like Attrition and Grave Pact which reward you for fielding recursive threats such as Reassembling Skeleton and Bloodghast. I want to stress that this is a fringe playable at best (think Blight Herder, not Oblivion Sower) but once it falls to ~50 cents or whatever I see no harm in acquiring some to fool around with. Drawing cards for free is a powerful effect and the body is big, cheap and evasive which is perfect given that Reassembling Skeleton decks are already have incentive to field some Equipment.
Constructed Grade C
EDH Grade C
Cube Grade C-
Vampiric Rites: Ever since tucking stopped being a thing the value of sac outlets plummeted in EDH. They were never that great to begin with (people overrate them in general IMO) but at this point it's almost pointless to even bother with the things unless they're supporting various infinite combos. Protecting your dudes from exile effects is still mildly relevant at times but in general the effect isn't worth a card. The format is just too fast and too powerful for you to be messing around with expensive, do-nothing effects. The reason I highlight this is because people often fall into habits/mindsets that can be difficult to break even after they become obsolete. Once upon a time I happily played cards like Infernal Tribute in my Black decks (even outside of EDH) and I almost tricked myself into thinking that Vampiric Rites was a real card as a result. I mean, look at how cheap it is! And that free lifegain! Wow! Yeah... no. If you're playing 4 mana to draw a card via Reassembling Skeleton (or whatever) you're not actually doing something especially powerful/competitive. It feels good because it's "infinite value" but in reality you're just spinning your wheels for marginal value. I will still happily play free sac outlets sac as Viscera Seer and Sadistic Hypnotist, they enable some extremely degenerate sequences of plays, but I'm basically done with 2+ mana sac outlets at this point. I'm willing to fool around with legitimate threats (such as Flesh Carver) but if I'm just looking to draw cards and generate value this isn't where I want to be anymore. Now, obviously this is just a bulk uncommon that won't cost you a dime, feel free to grab some for your collection, but don't hold your breath waiting for some uber Bloodghast value deck to crop out after its released. You might play it as a 1-of every now and then but this effect isn't exciting by any means.
Constructed Grade D+
EDH Grade D+
Cube Grade F
Wasteland Strangler: I'm not willing to work for a conditional, weak version of Shriekmaw/Bone Shredder/Nekrataal. Pass.
Constructed Grade D
EDH Grade F
Cube Grade F
Zulaport Cutthroat: This is the "good version" of Kalastria Healer and it reminds me a lot of Blood Artist. I'm ashamed to admit that I criminally underrated the Artist for an extremely long time since I often thought of it as a do-nothing 2 drop who could be combo'd with mass removal to gain a bit of life and deal a bit of damage. Whoop-de-doo! In practice the card is actually exceptionally powerful to the point where it can easily cause another player to lose the game outright. Obviously you can gun it down with removal but I don't exactly mind if people are focusing on my 1 and 2 drops. While the Cutthroat arguably doesn't scale as well in big FFA games the effect is still extremely powerful when it's properly supported. Black and White has access to tons of powerful mass recursion spells (Living Death, Immortal Servitude, Return to the Ranks, Rally the Ancestors, etc.) which can often be paired with free sac outlets (such as Viscera Seer) in order to combo kill players/tables out of the game. he even has the Human subtype which is perfect for the Xathrid Necromancer "Humans matter" archetype that naturally wants to be using cards like Skirsdag High Priest and Angel of Glory's Rise. As you can probably imagine creatures are played, killed, and recurred en masse in that style of deck so I can easily envision scenarios where this does obscene amounts of work. Unlike some of the other Black entries I personally this to be a "must have" and highly recommend that you make a concerted effort to acquire some. It's good in both fair and unfair strategies, it's a relevant 2 drop for any creature-based deck (something that Black sorely lacks) and I can't imagine that it'll cost you anything so this seems like a no-brainer to me.
23x Stuff
4x Viscera Seer
2x Blisterpod
2x Doomed Traveler
4x Blood Artist
4x Zulaport Cutthroat
4x Satyr Wayfinder
2x Cartel Aristocrat
2x Nether Traitor
2x Athreos, God of Passage
1x Teysa, Orzhov Scion
3x Abzan Ascendancy
3x Living Death
24x Swamp
4x Bloodsoaked Champion
4x Zulaport Cutthroat
2x Skirsdag High Priest
2x Keeper of the Dead
4x Xathrid Necromancer
3x Flesh Carver
3x Grim Haruspex
2x Ophiomancer
2x Nekrataal
2x Braids, Cabal Minion
2x Sadistic Hypnotist
4x Patriarch's Bidding
24x Swamp
4x Bloodsoaked Champion
4x Zulaport Cutthroat
2x Skirsdag High Priest
2x Keeper of the Dead
4x Xathrid Necromancer
3x Flesh Carver
3x Grim Haruspex
2x Ophiomancer
2x Nekrataal
2x Braids, Cabal Minion
2x Sadistic Hypnotist
4x Patriarch's Bidding
25x Lands
4x Bloodsoaked Champion
4x Zulaport Cutthroat
2x Skirsdag High Priest
2x Keeper of the Dead
4x Fiend Hunter
4x Xathrid Necromancer
4x Grim Haruspex
3x Undercity Informer
2x Flesh Carver
1x Braids, Cabal Minion
1x Sadistic Hypnotist
4x Angel of Glory's Rise
EDH Grade D
Cube Grade C
Closing Thoughts: Painful Truths is the only competitive Black card in the set but even then I still don't recommend acquiring them. You have to playing 3 or more colors, none of which are Blue (otherwise you have access to superior alternatives) in decks with no colorless ramp (aka it's not even exciting in EDH). If you're an absolute multiplayer perfectionist you'll want them but for the other 99.99% of us Read the Bones is just fine. Zulaport Cutthroat is a cheap threat that you can use to fill out your curves so it's probably worth acquiring. It's not a busted card or anything but it's a generically powerful 2 drop so you may as well grab some. I don't actually think that Vampiric Rites is good but it's a 1 CMC Enchantment with a relatively powerful and repeatable effect so you may as well grab some "just in case." You'll never play them but whatever. Otherwise you can consider grabbing some Smothering Abominations once they hit the dollar-rare trash binder but they're not essential to acquire by any means. Feel free to jam them in your next Reassembling Skeleton deck but I mean the color already has cards like Grim Haruspex and Dark Prophecy so unless you really need the flier you're paying a lot of mana and meeting a condition for a relatively common effect. Realistically speaking most Black mages could safely ignore BfZ altogether and it wouldn't have any impact (at all) on their current/future deckbuilding decisions.
Akoum Firebird: 6 mana and a condition to recur a 3/3 that (basically) can't block? Thanks Wizards /sarcasm! Please don't waste your time with this steaming pile of ash. You are not going to grind a multiplayer table out with one of these and there's no sac outlet in the world powerful enough to abuse 6 mana, conditional recursion.
Constructed Grade D-
EDH Grade D-
Cube Grade D-
Akoum Hellkite: The body is surprisingly small for a 6 mana Dragon and the effect isn't worthwhile if you're just playing a fair game of Magic. It's virtually never going out-perform cards like Inferno Titan and Scourge of the Throne for the same cost. The only decks that should realistically consider running this guy are Scapeshift, Warp World style decks that slam a ton of lands into play at once. Even that seems extremely niche to me, I can't think of a competitive deck that would actually field this guy, so you can probably safely ignore him.
Constructed Grade D-
EDH Grade D-
Cube Grade D-
Barrage Tyrant: Bosh, Iron Golem this card is not. Red is actually extremely capable at recurring Artifacts and being unable to sac itself is a huge drawback. Given that Bosh only see fringe EDH play to begin with I don't see a reason to acquire this card. 2+ mana sac outlets are just so freaking hard to abuse in Constructed formats. Even if you have creatures such as Wight of Precinct Six/Mortivore in your deck these Fling effects are still almost always way too slow, unreliable and weak given that they're at-best killing players off one at a time. More often than not they simply succumb to pressure/interaction at which point they maybe become king-makers. Play to win, not crown another champion yourself.
Constructed Grade D
EDH Grade D
Cube Grade D
Boiling Earth: These kinds of cards are strictly worse than Earthquake as far I'm concerned (a card which is grotesquely underplayed by the way) and should never see play as a result. I realize that EQ hits your own stuff as well but the fact that it scales extremely well into every stage of the game while simultaneously acting as a potential win condition makes it many orders of magnitude more powerful than marginal crap such as Boiling Earth.
Constructed Grade F
EDH Grade F
Cube Grade F
Dragonmaster Outcast: As much as I try and step outside of my own meta and biases I've never been able to get a good sense for how powerful these "Scute Mob" style cards are. I'm personally of the opinion that having something, anything on your side of the field is significantly better than having nothing because I've noticed that newer/weaker/inexperienced players often get overwhelmed with the sheer volume of cards in play. As a result they usually shy away from attacks against players who have some semblance of a board. That being said as a seasoned player myself I'm personally never going to be intimidated by 1/1s for 1. That, unfortunately, is exactly what this card is for most of the game. It literally just sits there (either in your hand or in play), does nothing, then hopefully people ignore it once you hit the required number of lands. They don't, I've never seen someone "go off" and make a bunch of Dragons with this thing, but maybe it works for other players? Where I don't mind this card is in Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx decks because you really do want to be casting as many Red permanents as possible. I'll basically play any decent 1 drops in those brews and this is on the short-list of acceptable applicants. It also helps that Outpost Siege makes hitting the requisite number of lands a trivial pursuit so you certainly have incentive to field the thing alongside Nykthos. It's likely the best generic Red 1 drop if only because it can theoretically win the game on its own (despite the fact that in my many years of playing I've yet to see it actually happen). If you like building Nykthos decks I recommend acquiring them but otherwise I probably wouldn't bother unless your meta is especially removal-light. You really do have to treat this like an Inferno Titan of sorts, it's not a 1 drop in most decks, and at that point you're just playing with a 6 drop that dies to removal at no benefit and that will always scare the bejeezus out of the rest of the table.
Constructed Grade B
EDH Grade C
Cube Grade C
Nettle Drone, Tunneling Geopede: Cards can say "each opponent" and still be unplayable garbage. Case in point: Guttersnipe. I have never seen a Guttersnipe deck actually win a game of Magic. Have you? People just kill the Snipe and suddenly the decks cannot possibly win. Anyways, these are irrelevant threats that provide irrelevant clocks and aren't going to do anything other than paint a huge target on your back. The Geopede could arguably be played in Scapeshift, Warp World style decks but as with Akoum Hellkite I just can't think of a competitive advantage to running it over something else.
Constructed Grade D
EDH Grade F
Cube Grade F
Radiant Flames: Uhh... a Slagstorm variant that only works in 3+ color decks and that can't use colorless ramp? Cool? This card is clearly "fine" under those conditions but why in God's name would you ever purchase these over things like Anger of the Gods that always do their job? Again, this card isn't unplayable in 3+ color decks but it's so freaking conditional at no benefit that I'll just refuse to ever play with and/or purchase it out of spite. Earthquake, Slagstorm, Flamebreak, Anger of the Gods, Firespout and more all do the exact same thing and ask nothing from you. It makes no sense to me why you would ever want to play with this card.
Constructed Grade C-
EDH Grade C-
Cube Grade F
Rolling Thunder: While moderately versatile these kinds of cards tend to be significantly weaker than their Earthquake/Comet Storm variants in a MP setting. While it's easy to get a 2-for-1 with this thing or even dome a player for 8 later on this just isn't the kind of card that's going to win you games of Magic.
Constructed Grade D
EDH Grade D
Cube Grade D
Serpentine Spike: 7 mana at Sorcery speed to conditionally kill 3 creatures is so wildly unplayable that it's not even funny. At that point you may as well just wait for Insurrection or jam something like Mob Rule to deliver some savage beatdowns.
Constructed Grade D-
EDH Grade D-
Cube Grade D-
Zada, Hedron Grinder: While I'm generally supportive of 4 CMC threats that can win games on their own I tend to prefer things like Master Transmuter and Crypt Ghast that don't require big boards. This guy's power-ceiling is crazy high but he's basically just another variation of Purphoros, God of the Forge who players can actually interact with. He just doesn't do all that much unless you have a board full of tokens but at that point all you're doing is enabling people to turn spot removal into legitimate spells against you. Whereas a card like Coat of Arms would force them into "mass removal or bust" scenarios this card literally dies to everything. You also need a board full of dudes, this guy in play AND some Hatred-esque spell to get value from his effect which means that he's extremely conditional, unreliable, inconsistent and demanding (with respect to deckbuilding). This is troublesome for a color such as Red which doesn't have access to consistent tutors (Gamble doesn't count) or cheap + powerful forms of card draw. With respect to EDH, again, I struggle to believe that this guy could possibly be superior to Purphoros, God of the Forge as a Commander. I'm more than happy to be proven wrong but I just don't see it happening.
Constructed Grade D+
EDH Grade D+
Cube Grade F
Closing Thoughts: If you really like Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx decks I recommend acquiring some Dragonmaster Outcasts. The rest of Red's offerings aren't worth your time and money. As with Black it was a disappointing set overall for Red Mages.
Beastcaller Savant: 2 CMC mana dorks, especially those with restrictions, are basically unplayable. I actually think that even the best versions (such as Sakura-Tribe Elder) are overrated and that more people should be playing with 1 CMC ramp (such as Utopia Sprawl) whenever possible. Haste is cool and all but this is still just a terrible version of Fellwar Stone that's less durable and that you can't even use to cast your key spells. I would just never consider playing him in any format (including EDH). I can't give this card an F because it's an Elf that taps for mana but I can assure that he's worse than all of the 1 CMC Elves (and there's LOTS). If he were unconditional he'd probably be fine but the "creatures only" clause is the nail in the coffin for me.
Constructed Grade D
EDH Grade D
Cube Grade F
Blisterpod: Doomed Traveler (and creatures similar to it) have seen small amounts of competitive play as sticky, multi-bodied threats. This can be relevant for cards such as Zulaport Cutthroat, Evolutionary Leap and Birthing Pod. When you're playing Green 99.99% you'll want your 1 drops to be Carpet of Flowers style ramp effects but every now and then you'll just need a sticky body and that's where a card like Blisterpod shines. Just grab some at some point because you never know when you'll need them.
Constructed Grade D
EDH Grade F
Cube Grade F
From Beyond: This is definitely one of the most overrated cards in the set and I'm not buying into the hype. Just so we're all clear, we all realize that this is a do-nothing 4 drop that plops out a 1/1 on turn 5 right? Why this has people changing their pants is beyond me. First of all this isn't a threat that will win the game on its own and people seriously need to stop acting as though it can. I think that Elspeth, Knight-Errant style threats are extremely overrated in general and this one is no exception. They grind single opponents out well enough but you can (virtually) never generate enough 1/1s to legitimately pressure a multiplayer table. Even if you were somehow able to produce 20 1/1s off of this thing you still wouldn't be able to clear one out. Now, I like tutors as much as the next guy but paying 6 mana to find one of three (or whatever) cards in your deck come turn ~6 is an atrocious rate. This isn't a Green Sun's Zenith by any means. Otherwise this is also a piss-poor form of ramp given that it doesn't start paying dividends until turn 3-4 and that's even assuming that you ramp this thing out in the first place. Given that there's a ton of Carpet of Flowers and Basalt Monolith-esque cards that enable you to jam 7 drops on turn 3 I don't see why you'd ever feel the need to settle for this. I've never considered Awakening Zone to be a playable Magic card and while thing is arguably more powerful (1/1s > 0/1s) it costs more mana and so I just can't imagine slotting it into a competitive ramp shell (in any format).
If you're putting this card in your deck it's because you want a Green Bitterblossom to fuel your Evolutionary Leaps and Smokestacks or whatever and not because you're looking for some OP form of ramp. I can definitely see it being played in Proteus Staff, Polymorph, Mass Polymorph decks and whatnot too but I just don't understand why players are clamoring to slot these into their typical ramp decks. Green just got Frontier Siege, a way better card that no one plays (I have no idea why, the card is absurd) but then this gets released and everyone loses their mind? What gives? Much like Awakening Zone (another massively over-hyped card that flopped) I sincerely doubt that this card will have many competitive applications so prepare to be disappointed my friends. For this card to be actively good you need to abuse the ramp, the bodies and the tutoring. Otherwise it's just a very slow, weak card. Oh, an no, this isn't me underrating the sum of the parts being greater than the whole. I know exactly how far casting a do-nothing 4 drop that produces a 1/1 on turn 5 will take you. Hint: not very.
Constructed Grade C
EDH Grade C
Cube Grade C
Greenwarden of Murasa: Even a bad Eternal Witness is still a very powerful Magic card and you should expect this thing to see a ton of play. Most modern Green decks win by extracting value from powerful spells/tutors such as Genesis Wave and Nissa's Revelation and your single best answer to removal/counters etc. is to simply "go infinite" and recur them indefinitely. This, by the way, is what makes this card is miles better than Deadwood Treefolk so you can just go ahead and ignore the people making that comparison, It's one thing to recur creatures but it's another to nab that Tooth and Nail or Primal Surge. If you're an avid Green mage you'll definitely want to pick these up to compliment your Witnesses since you can realistically play them in any Green shell. Worst-case scenario it's still a pseudo-Primeval Titan in the sense that it's another value 6 drop that beats removal. Even if you're not recurring a busted spell like Tooth and Nail you're still getting 1-2 things back and at that point it doesn't really matter what happens to the thing. If people want to Doom Blade the threat that recurred the 2 strongest cards that you played that game, God bless them! Obviously this card isn't on the same level as Primetime but it's still a powerful effect and it's one that you really do want to have on a body whenever possible. This is especially relevant for formats such as EDH where you're almost always playing cards like Green Sun's Zenith, Survival of the Fittest, Yisan, the Wanderer Bard, Chord of Calling, Birthing Pod, etc.
Constructed Grade B
EDH Grade B
Cube Grade B
Sylvan Scrying: A 2 mana, 50 cent tutor for Dark Depths/Thespian's Stage, Eye of Ugin, Cloudpost and Urza's Tower? Count me in! If you're ever planning on building a Tron/Post deck you're going to want 4 of these and since they're now affordable you don't have any excuse to omit them from your lists. I've never seen the thing in EDH but I've played Crop Rotation enough that I have to imagine that it's playable. Not being able to fetch Bojuka Bog at instant-speed kinda sucks but if you're playing a Gaea's Cradle deck (or even a Cabal Coffers + Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth shell) I could imagine a world where you'd want a second Crop Rotation. Everyone should own multiple playsets of these so just grab them at some point.
Constructed Grade A
EDH Grade C
Cube Grade F
Tajuru Warcaller: While I have no intention of ever playing this in an Ally deck it's a card that Sylvan Messenger can find (and that Wirewood Symbiote can bounce) and that conceivably wins games if you have a ton of Elves in play. I know that it doesn't grant Trample and I know that it costs 5 mana but I also know that Craterhoof Behemoth costs millions of dollars so I always like to keep an eye out for budget alternatives. I've always hated Joraga Warcaller since people can just kill it during combat at which point your Elf army does nothing. I don't think that it's especially playable in that sense. Tajuru Warcaller, at the very least, doesn't die to removal. Basically I would just keep an eye out for this thing and try to pick one up at some point. Elves are the most competitive tribe by far and I certainly wouldn't be embarrassed to play this in a list (be it EDH or Constructed).
Constructed Grade C
EDH Grade C
Cube Grade F
Undergrowth Champion: I gotta say that I'm a tad perplexed on the hype-train surrounding this card. It's a 3 mana Vinelasher Kudzu and when was the last time that you saw one of those played in a multiplayer deck? The Phantom Nantuko "ghost ability" is cool and all but it's not as though the guy becomes "immortal" if you equip an Aura/Equipment onto him. I get that Green is a color that can field things like Hardened Scales and Doubling Season but we already have cards like Managorger Hydra and Predator Ooze to support them. I also don't think that his "ghost trigger" is an especially relevant defensive ability in multiplayer because you generally don't see much burn in that format. Earthquake/Sudden Demise/Mizzium Mortars pop up from time to time but even then those kinds of cards are criminally underplayed. I would just never play this card over Managorger Hydra, I think that it's basically strictly worse and it's not nearly as durable as Predator Ooze if you're just looking for a sticky threat. In EDH it's too unreliable and too weak when drawn late and in Cube it's never going to make the cut. I don't understand what people see in this thing because it looks like a bad Vinelasher Kudzu to me and I've never seen that card do anything.
Constructed Grade D
EDH Grade D-
Cube Grade D
Closing Thoughts: Sylvan Scrying is an absolute all-star that everyone needs ~6 copies of. You'll happily play 4 in your Constructed Cloudpost/Urzatron shells and the others will probably find a home in an EDH shell of some variety. Otherwise you really do need to get your hands on Greenwarden or Murasa because that card is just insane. Every Eternal Witness style threat is going to be an extremely competitive Magic card and will see a ton of play (especially in formats such as EDH). Rebuying your Genesis Waves, See the Unwrittens and Nissa's Revelations is completely absurd and makes life a living Hell for midrange/Control strategies. I'm mostly indifferent about the other ones but these are just no-brainers as far as I'm concerned.
Bring to Light: From Hypergenesis to Show and Tell to Doomsday there's no shortage of busted things that ~3+ color decks can find with this thing. It reminds me a lot of Wargate but it clearly has a significantly higher power-ceiling if you build your deck to support (and ultimately abuse) it. You really do have to think about this card as a Demonic Tutor of sorts because you're plain going to get a rebate on a bunch of that mana. If Dark Petition has taught us anything it's that you can still build hyper-competitive combo decks even if you need to front-load 5 mana on your tutors. As such I'm excited to see what people come up with to break this thing. Otherwise, even if you're just a casual player building fair, interactive decks then this is still a card for you. 4+ color decks really can treat it like a Green Sun's Zenith of sorts which can even be used to fetch powerful + bizarre silver bullets such as Living End. It's still going to be a creature, Wrath, draw spell, whatever when you need it but the option is there to nab some relatively wild things in a pinch. I'll also stress the fact that the card is Blue which means Brainstorm so there isn't that much of an opportunity cost to adding a card like Living End to your non-Black decks. You can always shuffle it away with a B.Storm + a Fetchland and it's not as though you need to run more than 1. Still, if you just want to Doomsday into a Laboratory Maniac or Hypergenesis a bunch of Eldrazi into play then this is definitely a card that you'll want 4 of. It's the perfect mix of fair and unfair without being horrendously overpowered (you're not going to see these played in every deck across every format or anything) to the point of ruining the game for others. This is definitely a "must have" from the set as it's one of the few cards that could easily see play for years to come. Tutors are just that good, especially in formats such as EDH.
Constructed Grade B+
EDH Grade B
Cube Grade D
Catacomb Sifter: At 3 mana this card is a lot more exciting Reaper of the Wilds as far as I'm concerned. You get the same pile of stats and mass Scry but on a cheaper body that ramps you towards your 6-7 drops if needed. These kinds of small-ball value cards tend to under-form in EDH where the body isn't nearly as relevant but in more aggressive formats I certainly don't mind them. It's something that you jam on turn 2-3 to stabilize the board in order to avoid being aggro'd out but that also isn't just a hard mulligan on turn 6 or 7. I like that this card curves nicely into Deathreap Ritual which should set yourself up nicely for the mid and lategame. It's also a very generic card that be slotted into basically any GB deck which makes it perfect for the casual crowd. You don't need to be running a deck with lots of 4-ofs or synergies to extract value from the thing because all it really asks is that you're playing creatures and spells.
The biggest strike against this card and all threats similar to it is that they're very fair. The best GB decks are often Commune With the Godsing/Kruphix's Insighting into Animate Dead/Dance of the Dead/Necromancy and jamming a Sylvan Primordial/Griselbrand into play on turn 3. Catacomb Sifter brings nothing to the self-mill Reanimator theme so in a way it's destined to forever be a tier 2 threat. A 3/4 body a Scry value are nice and all but they won't win games of Magic. Insofar as you're trying to earn your wins "the fair way" then this is a solid option for the color combo but if you're firmly in the "I want to play degenerate decks" camp then this probably isn't the right card for you.
Constructed Grade C+
EDH Grade D
Cube Grade C
Drana's Emissary: Kingpin's Pet has never made the cut in any of my lists and this card is significantly weaker as far as I'm concerned. This card, much like Retreat to Hagra, is almost actively bad in my mind since it draws attention to yourself without providing sufficient defense against retaliation. Whereas Extort cards can be combo'd with things like No Mercy to put yourself out of "burn range" the same cannot be said about these variations that don't get the health scaling. Be it 2 or 10 players afflicted you're still only gaining the 1 life and that's not nearly enough to justify the fact that you just gave everyone at the table incentive to target you over someone else (all other things being equal obviously).
Constructed Grade D
EDH Grade D
Cube Grade D
Fathom Feeder: While not on the same level as Baleful Strix I could definitely see myself playing with this card. It's a good blocker on turn 2 and a card draw engine on turn 10 so it's almost never going to be an actively terrible draw. Moreover, it's a really good attacker and one of the more relevant Ingesters as a result. People just plain won't want to block this and you'll easily be able to chip a few cards away with it. In case you're wondering why that's relevant, the answer is Oblivion Sower. Between Bojuka Bog, the Feeder and Nightveil Specter UB can run a ton of low opportunity-cost exile effects which all make Oblivion Sower an unreal powerful Magic card. Given that the color combo already has Notion Thief that it can field as an insane value engine all it really lacked was a solid 6 drop that could gum up the ground. Grave Titan is cool and all but it doesn't exactly win games of Magic whereas ramping to ~11 mana almost certainly will. At that point all of your Rite of Replication and Rise of the Dark Realms style spells will easily seal the deal.
Constructed Grade C-
EDH Grade D
Cube Grade D-
Kiora, Master of the Depths: This is another card that I think that most players are criminally underrating. The ability to immediately untap multiple mana producing permanents is an extremely powerful (often degenerate) effect and everything else is a bonus as far I'm concerned. Blue/Green decks often feature powerful forms of acceleration such as Gaea's Cradle, Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, Arbor Elf and Kiora's Follower and hastily untapping multiples enables exceptionally degenerate sequences. From Genesis Wave to Tooth and Nail to Primal Surge it becomes trivially easy to slam your entire deck into play and defeat the table in one fell swoop. Moreover, Kiora will serve a vital role in Stasis, Winter Orb, Tangle Wire, Rising Waters, etc. style decks as a constant source of mana production. This is an extremely competitive archetype in formats such as EDH where certain Denial Commanders (such as Derevi, Empyrial Tactician) are the tippity-top of the S tier. Beyond that she works well alongside Doubling Season and even if you're just using her to draw cards then that's fine too. Paying 4 to draw 2 at Sorcery speed isn't special by any means but it's certainly not horrendous. The key concept that I need to stress is that untapping a Kiora's Follower and a Gaea's Cradle (or whatever) is just ridiculously strong and so I do expect to see her function as Garruk Wildspeakers 5 and 6 in big mana decks looking to chain Genesis Waves into Eternal Witnesses + Garruks/Kioras to slam your entire deck into play on turn ~4. Her base function is busted so whatever value you can squeak out of her draw mode and ultimate are gravy as far as I'm concerned.
Constructed Grade B
EDH Grade B
Cube Grade D
Omnath, Locus of Rage: As with every other Landfall creature it's fairly important to treat this an N+1 drop where N is its converted mana cost. Omnath is clearly a powerful card, he even technically beats removal (not that anyone is going to lose sleep over a Lava Spike), but there's only so much room for 8 drops in modern Magic. If you can ramp this thing out on turn 4 or 5 and have him stick he'll easily take control of the game assuming that there isn't much mass removal floating around. He can also do silly things with cards like Scapeshift and he's even in the perfect colors for the Wildfire archetype. That being he's still a conditional 8 drop and so it's difficult for me to get very excited about him. This is especially true for Green cards in general because there's just so many ways to win the game once you reach that mana threshold. At that point Tooth and Nail is just about ready to end the game and even things like Genesis Wave or Primal Surge are primed to seal the deal. Whereas I see Omnath as a card who slowly wins the game if he's allowed to live for ~3 turns there's just a throng of alternatives who can do it immediately (Craterhoof Behemoth anyone?). I also have to emphasize the fact that Omnath is in fact conditional because it's not a God-given right that you'll have more lands to play in the later stages of the game. Curving Omnath into Sylvan Primordial or Scapeshift s obviously sweet but it certainly doesn't win the game on the spot and for that amount of mana and cards you easily could. I certainly don't think that Omnath is unplayable or anything but in a world of Rampaging Baloths and Avenger of Zendikars he's just another in a long line of strong beaters in Green.
Constructed Grade C
EDH Grade C
Cube Grade C
Sire of Stagnation: I actually think that this card is underrated, if such a thing is actually possible. A lot of people have correctly analyzed that it's significantly weaker than Consecrated Sphinx but at the same time what good does it do to compare everything to the best card in a given CMC slot? I recognize that players have the ability to stop playing lands past a certain point and I also understand that in a MP setting you can do things like ask the table "Ok, who can kill this? Alright people, let's just not play lands until X's turn." That is, I agree that this card isn't going to run away with the game 100% of the time it gets left unchecked for 2-3 upkeeps. Even with that in mind I don't see why people are so skeptical about how powerful this thing figures to be. In the grand scheme of things this is still easily an S tier 6 drop threat because it's one of the few that can just plain win the game on its own. Blue already has access to cards like Sunder and Upheaval but even as a standalone threat it still (realistically) demands an answer. As much as I love cards like Grave Titan I've never actually beat a table down with one whereas this type card can actually just run away with the game by enabling unlimited Forbids and whatnot. Sire is certainly going to have high-highs and low-lows (it's a 6 drop that dies to removal) but any card that can win the game on its own in a MP setting is definitely worth acquiring and playtesting. Blue Black is already an extremely competitive color combo what with cards like Baleful Strix, Nightveil Specter, Notion Thief and Memory Plunder and it just got that much stronger.
Constructed Grade B
EDH Grade B
Cube Grade B
Closing Thoughts: The only "must have" cards are Bring to Light and Sire of Stagnation but I do maintain that Kiora is being criminally underrated. That being said her effect is too narrow to employ in a broad spectrum of shells which is why I don't consider it imperative that people acquire her. Bring to Light is a busted tutor that has any number of present + future applications and so there's absolutely no reason to ignore them. Unfortunately their price has already quintupled since I last checked (and it's probably spiked harder since then) which means that you probably won't be seeing it very frequently at kitchen tables. Even Sire is already rocking a steep pricetag so hopefully that'll decline once people start to cool-off on the thing. He's powerful and all but he's no Consecrated Sphinx.
Aligned Hedron Network: This is an interesting 1-2 of for creature-based decks that don't top-out with much in the way of actual fatties (think Wizards or Elves). It's also a decent sweeper in shells that have small-but-important critters such as Crypt Ghast and Master Transmuter. That being said I don't plan on jamming this in my generic Control lists anytime soon because it's just way too slow and situational. It's going to miss a throng of important targets each and every time and it's not as though you're getting an insane rate to begin with. Most sweepers cost 4-5 and this is not a sweeper. I'm not particularly worried about the fact that people will have the option to remove this thing at some point, temporary disruption is still fine, but what does worry me is the fact that most 5+ power creatures are going to be things like Titans/Primordials/Massacre Wurms/etc. that have amazing ETB triggers. Given that those creatures already generated value to begin with and that they could easily generate it again it's hard to argue that you significantly benefited from removing them for a couple of turns. This doesn't make the card unplayable or anything but it does it make it a sketchy inclusion if you meta has a bunch of Artifact destruction floating around. What I'm trying to say is that this card is quite overrated so please don't think of it as the next "must have" colorless sweeper. It's a marginal playable at best.
Constructed Grade C-
EDH Grade C-
Cube Grade D
Hedron Archive: Since you can already play things like Basalt Monolith, Worn Powerstone and Thran Dynamo in Constructed it's hard to imagine that this thing is going to make the cut in most competitive ramp decks. Paying 4 to ramp 2 just isn't an overpowered effect and the ability to cycle this thing for a couple cards later on isn't going to change that. If this is what you can acquire/afford, so be it, but in general I'd encourage you to pursue more unfair cards if at all possible.
What I don't understand is why this card is taking so much flak from the EDH community. I'm not saying this thing belongs in every deck or anything but off the top of my head it's going to make the cut in things like Kothophed, Soul Hoarder, Arcanis the Omnipotent, Damia, Sage of Stone, Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur and a host of others as well. Basically all of the expensive, card-advantage focused Generals are going to play this because they're already happily playing Ur-Golem's Eye so worst comes to worst you'll just make that swap. I'm clearly not arguing that this thing will edge out the OP ramp such as Sol Ring, Mana Vault, Worn Powerstone, Basalt Monolith, Thran Dynamo, etc. but some Generals want to run a lot more than that so I really don't understand where all of this negative criticism is coming from. Again, I'm not saying that it's a must-have for every deck or anything but if your General costs 6+ mana and generates card advantage then I doubt you'll be cutting this from your list. Just ignore the people calling this a "bad Mind Stone" that won't even see play in EDH. They're off their rockers.
Constructed Grade C
EDH Grade B
Cube Grade C
Closing Thoughts: Hedron Archive is a must-have for EDH but otherwise there isn't much for the Constructed/Cube players.
Blighted Cataract, Blighted Fen, Blighted Woodland: The entire Blighted cycle is arguably playable but the 2-for-1s and hard removal interest me more than the others. Most 1-2 color decks can support 4-8 colorless lands in general and even 3 color decks can usually support 2-3. I don't expect any of these to blow you away in practice but I also think that it's pointless to jam 12x Island and 12x Forest in your decks so if you don't have anything better to run I see absolutely no reason to omit these kinds of spell-lands from your lists.
Constructed Grade C-
EDH Grade C-
Cube Grade F
Canopy Vista et al: Fetchlands and Farseeks around the world are rejoicing at this new infusion of blood. The Forest are especially appealing for things like Utopia Sprawl and Sylvan Primordial but I'm sure most people have figured that out by now. Otherwise these are reasonable alternatives to the ABUR duals and Shocks if you happen to acquire them for competitive Standard play. They're certainly never going to be the most powerful dual lands but anything that's Fetchable is going to see a lot of competitive play. They're good enough for Cube, every EDH deck will play them and anyone who thinks that these are "too weak" for Constructed are living in a dream world.
Constructed Grade A
EDH Grade A
Cube Grade A
Lumbering Falls, Shambling Vent: It's important to stress the fact that these manlands aren't on the same level as others which can act as cheap blockers (Mishra's Factory) or legitimate win conditions (Celestial Colonnade). These are extremely marginal "Stirring Wildwoods" style manlands that you probably shouldn't feel excited to play. I would much rather have things like Simic Growth Chamber or Vault of the Archangel in my lists. I'm not saying that they're complete trash or anything but I mean I just wouldn't even add them to my UG or WB decks respectively even if I owned them. Lumbering Falls is slightly better than the Vents because you can safely Equip things on to it to turn into a legitimate threat but the problem with that logic is that you need to be running Equipment in Simic deck. I'm sure it happens, just not very often. They're obviously strictly better than things like Orzhov Guildgate, feel free to play with them if you own them, but please don't go out of way to purchase these for casual play. That money could be better spent elsewhere.
Constructed Grade D
EDH Grade D
Cube Grade D
Mortuary Mire: I'm generally not a fan of marginal ETBT lands and this one is no exception. It doesn't tap for multiple colors, it doesn't tap for more than 1 mana, it doesn't have any meaningful effect in the first few turns of the game and even when it does recur something it's not as though you're suddenly up a card or anything. This will occasionally improve the average quality of your next draw at the cost of always costing you some tempo. As an avid Black Mage I'll probably acquire these but I don't expect to field them very often. I think that some casual decks will want 1 or 2 but I just would never slam 4 of these into my own lists. This just isn't on the same level as a card like Bojuka Bog which can provide some serious value at very little opportunity cost. You'll still play it in small quantities here and there but it's not an auto-include by any means. Look for places to weave them in but don't worry about jamming full playsets into anything. For what it's worth I think that this card is at its best in decks will small numbers of key creatures such as Sepulchral Primordial. That is, you'll want to field these when you can't afford to play actual recursion due to a lack of targets but still want to have some resilience against interaction in the later stages of the game. This card is really good at recurring that one Ætherling without forcing you to dedicate an actual spell slot to supporting it.
Constructed Grade D
EDH Grade C
Cube Grade F
Sanctum of Ugin: These "flood protection" lands that have value both early and late are interesting but you can tell that Wizards was playing scared with them. Eye of Ugin this thing is not. You basically have to be playing an Eldrazi deck to want this thing but even then it's hard to imagine how you could make room for it. In Constructed you're just plain going to run Cloudposts or UrzaTron and since this thing doesn't tap for colored mana your remaining lands will probably have to used to help you cast your key spells. I suppose that you could jam one of these into your EDH lists assuming that you were running a bunch of Eldrazi but that's a fairly niche application if you ask me. I mean the thing taps for mana and provides solid value on turn 10 so it's hard to hate on it but at the same time I'm not scrambling to play with and/or acquire them. It a boring, lackluster effect that can only ever see a fringe amount of play.
Constructed Grade D
EDH Grade D
Cube Grade F
Shrine of the Forsaken Gods: I don't even think that this will make the cut in most colorless EDH decks lol. I have no what the Hell wizards was thinking with this one.
Constructed Grade F
EDH Grade D-
Cube Grade F
Spawning Bed: 7 mana is a lot to pay for a colorless Black Lotus. If your deck has 9+ drops or an absurd amount of card draw I could foresee wanting to run a couple of these to ensure that you'll be able to cast your important finishers at a reasonable pace. If, however, your deck starts at 2 and stops at ~7 then I certainly wouldn't bother with this thing. I recognize that it represents a 3/3 and 3 mana but you're just never going to be able to leverage those 1/1s into anything meaningful by that stage of the game.
Constructed Grade D
EDH Grade D+
Cube Grade F
Closing Thoughts: The Tango lands (Battle lands?) are the obvious all-star from the set with everything else being mostly filler. I think that the manlands are marginal as heck and wouldn't even bother acquiring them for mutiplayer applications. Everything else is fine but unexciting and will basically see play "as needed." Newer players with small collections should feel to jam things like Blighted Cataract into their lists whereas one who already possess sizable collections shouldn't need to bother. The only land that I'm not 100% on is Spawning Bed. I actually think that I might be severely underrating the thing. Time and testing will tell for sure though.
BfZ is going to go down as one of Magic's biggest flops with respect to multiplayer. Almost none of the colors had any stand-out inclusions and for the ones that did it was nothing but reprints. The best cards in White, Green and Red respectively are Felidar Sovereign, Sylvan Scrying and Dragonmaster Outcast. Black didn't get an exciting playable period and the most powerful Blue card is what? A 6 mana Time Warp with a drawback? It'll see play in EDH/2HG but that's about it. Some of the multicolor stuff is powerful but Bring to Light and Sire of Stagnation are already outside of most people's budgets and nothing else excites me. The only other big hits from the set were Newlamog and the new Tango lands with everything else being marginal filler that might find homes in niche decks/archetypes. I suppose there's a bit of EDH fodder in form of Hedron Archive and Ugin's Insight but we're not talking about S-tier playables or anything. All-in-all I'm extremely disappointed with the set and have tapered expectations with respect to its overall effects on the global multiplayer sphere.
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
I agree that the set was lackluster but it wasn't a complete joke. I would give Homelands (or whatever) an F but if a set produces cards that will see ultra-competitive play immediately + for many years to come then I don't see much of a reason to give it less than a D. I also care about budget a lot so I really do care about reprints such as Sylvan Scrying and Felidar Sovereign. I like that I can now suggest those cards to newer players.
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
I will say, though, that I too would rate a large percentage of your D's as F's. But I think that has more to do with subjective nature of reviews like this; I think factors such as budget and how people tend to obtain their cards have an impact on this rating. Since budget isn't as much of a limiting factor for me as it is for many other casual players, I see pretty much all of the D's as "Just don't play these at all... spend that $1 on a playset of something else that isn't complete trash". But I also buy literally all of my cards as singles and I know that's not the most fun for a lot of casual players.
For example, take the guy who ends up with a bunch of D's from drafting because they enjoy that experience. Well there's nothing "wrong" with him playing with those D's (lol); they're more "playable" than F's or whatever. And you also included right in the disclaimer that you discouraged the cards in general, and people should try to play something else in those slots if at all possible. But that guy should just not be allowed to complain about his decks being weak in his metagame If you want stronger multiplayer decks, spend your limited income on playsets of good, inexpensive singles, not the equivalent of a Magic scratch ticket! (sorry, /rant)
Anyway, I will conclude by saying that you might have swayed my luke warm opinion of Oblivion Sower a little bit. I don't know that I'll pick them up at the current price, but I would expect they'll drop a couple bucks in the coming weeks. If they do, I might have to grab a set Oh, and I will be picking up some Lumbering Falls and maybe even BW manland as well, despite your D grading. I totally agree that they're not Creeping Tar Pit and Celestial Colonnade, but they fix, and provide a clock in a grindier game while avoiding sorcery speed removal. In decks that are ok with play 2-4 ETBT lands, I don't think these deserve a D, personally.
Thanks for taking the time to write this up.
WUBG Atraxa Superfriends
WRBG Saskia's Angry
UBRG Yidris Valuetown
WUBR Breya "not just for infinite combos anymore" Etherium Shaper
mana]W[/mana]UR Narset the Nerfed
WBG Ghave counters madness
BRG Prossh, Token Master
UBG Tasigur Seedborn Control
WU Brago Bouncy Castle
WB Karlov Voltron
B Erebos/Drana MBC
R Feldon jank
Slow, weak cards don't win MP games of Magic. I'll take decks/cards that do something busted ~30% of the time than ones that do something reasonable, slow and fair 100% of the time. I think that marginal token generators are suuuuuuper overrated because I've easily seen people have 0 good attacks with 7-8 1/1s on their side of the field. Kiora may not work in every meta in every meta but she has busted applications in both EDH and Constructed and so I don't care if she's not great in a vacuum.
An F, to me, is a literally unplayable card. In my mind there's a world of difference between a Cliffside Lookout and a Quarantine Field. I don't like the latter but I could actually see myself putting it in a deck, resolving it, and not wanting to vomit with rage. I don't want to put it in my decks but it's not outside the realm of possibility. What I will say is that I'm trying to have looser rating requirements in general. If I only give As to Rhystic Studys we'll see one every 3 expansions and that's just depressing. I don't know that I "succeeded" in this review but I mean it just wasn't a good set :/.
I would always play Simic Growth Chamber over them, or Alchemist's Refuge, or Simic Guildgate and use that money to purchase other cards. The card isn't actively bad but nor is it actively good. I suppose that if your deck has a bunch of Equipment then the Falls is decent but even then I would still just play Urza's Factory. I gave it D mostly because I would never pay a dime for them not because I'm cheap but because the effect is just so weak in a MP setting. I would just never play them over Simic Growth Chamber which costs nothing and basically draws me an extra card.
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
Bring to Light is too damn good. I've been dreaming of things to cast with it.
There's a lot of speculation that Abzan Control/Aggro with Hangarback Walker, Drana, Anafenza, Siege Rhino, etc. could be the next deck to beat.
I know that you didn't ask but I didn't bother to review Drana because she's not much of a MP card in my mind. She's a Black card that rewards you for curving out and turning small creatures sideways which isn't what I want be doing in that sphere. She's powerful, don't get me wrong, but not the right kind of "powerful" for most people I don't think. She may be unfair in a 1v1 setting, that's a ****ton of stuff for 3 mana, but a in MP setting you're just not going to aggro an entire table down. Given that she's already a million dollars (and can probably only go up from there) I'm not especially interested in her MP applications. In an ideal world where I could compare her to Vampire Nighthawk, ok, sure, I'd review her. At a buck or two you could consider acquiring her. At 25 bucks or whatever I'm never to see her, never going to suggest her, never going to build decks for her, etc.
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
Besides a few lands I like, I'm gonna be grabbing Dragonmaster Outcasts (passed 1st time around due to cost) and Sire of Stagnation.
Not really all that excited by other stuff, even the tribal stuff like Vampires and Beasts look pretty average...
will wait for price to drop and buy the goodstuff.
sire of stagnation, dragonmaster outcast, oblivion sower, bring to light
BUW Oloro, Ageless Ascetic
GUW Roon of the hidden realm
Tiny Leaders
GW Selvala, Explorer Returned
BU Sygg, River Cutthroat
You helped me reassess Oblivion Sower and Void Winnower, in particular. And that Abzan Drain looks FUN!
FWIW, I have never seen Dragonmaster Outcast do anything useful in a game either.
I felt as though both were being underrated by the general public. I'm glad that you were able to appreciate my insight if nothing else :).
No surprises there :P.
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
Titan's Presence: This card is trash. I don't even play 1 in mono-Blue Tron decks and whatnot.
Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger: This card is a significantly weaker Reanimation target than I had hoped. I've since cut it from all of my Reanimator decks. That being said the card is very good when cast "the real way" and has since found a home in basically all of my ramp decks. 10 mana is very do-able in the right archetypes and exiling 2 perms is amazing.
Desolation Twin: For 50 cents or whatever this is a great finisher in Cloudpost decks. It's right up there with Myr Battlesphere with respect to being a powerful budget finisher that beats removal.
Conduit of Ruin: This card is absolutely terrible. Don't play it.
Void Winnower: I freaking love this card in Reanimator/Mass Polymorph style decks. I think that it's significantly more powerful than Ulamog in either archetype for example. In practice this shuts off significantly more than 50% of your opponents' "spells that matter" because of how Magic is structured. 2 drops are way better than 1 drops, 4 drops are way better than 3 drops, 5 drops are dwarfed by Titans, stuff like that. I liked the card going in to BfZ and my opinion of it has only increased.
Oblivion Sower: I continually find new and awesome things to do with this card. Parallax Tide and Descent into Madness are my newest finds for example. I don't play it as a generic 6 drop anymore but as long as your deck has some synergies with it then I think that's a stellar addition.
Emeria Shepherd: I now consider this be a staple of White Control decks. It's an extremely powerful form of recursion that enables so many unfair sequences.
Serene Steward: I've since cut this card from my Soul Sister decks. In practice she's too mana intensive and fair. Felidar Sovereign is still God tier though.
Kalastria Healer: This card is very good in the right shells. All of my Halimar Excavator + Zulaport Cutthroat + Kalastria Healer + Living Death decks have been doing work. He still sucks as a generic 2 drop but I was wrong about the Ally deck "not being a thing."
Smothering Abomination: I've slightly come around on this card. Given enough sac effects it's serviceable.
Zulaport Cutthroat: This card is stupidly powerful and a must-have for every Black mage.
Dragonmaster Outcast: When you stop treating this like a Red card it starts to get a lot better. Other colors have great forms of recursion and it frequently helps when your target has a low CMC. Think Sun Titan and Disturbed Burial. I still think that it kinda sucks as a generic Red 1 drop in a vacuum but with the right support it's a stellar finisher.
Catacomb Sifter: This card is very good. Way better than oh say Reaper of the Wilds. A 3 drop that Scrys, adds to the board, beats removal and ramps is fairly strong.
Aligned Hedron Network: Holy Hell this card is horrendous. It's freaking garbage even when everyone is playing decks full of giant fatties.
Hedron Archive: This is a legitimately powerful + undervalued card. I dismissed it as being a terrible version of Worn Powerstone but in practice it's way better than it looks. Not ETBT and the lategame Divination value are both very real upsides.
Sanctum of Ugin: This card is better than I gave credit for and I'm fairly happy to run 4 in my ramp decks. Even if you have Eye of Ugin there's no such thing as having too much action.
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
I enjoy playing UG Stasis/Stax decks and so Kiora has been working wonders for me. She's also very good in Genesis Wave decks with Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx/Gaea's Cradle, Kiora's Follower, Eternal Witness, things like that. It's trivially easy to go infinite and jam your entire deck into play if desired.
Bring to Light is weird. It brings redundancy to unfair decks but at 5 CMC it's not really broken so the best versions of the best lists don't really want it. It's more of a "Modern" card that excels in underpowered formats that are aren't riddled with cheap cantrips/tutors/fixing/card draw. As a generic tutor (think Living Wish) it's "fine" but generally weaker than alternatives in the same color. It's not better than Green Sun's Zenith at doing "fair things" so your deck has to have something "unfair" to tutor up or it's kinda pointless. Unless you're routinely fetching a card like Living End or Hypergenesis it's not stellar by any means.
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
First let me start by saying that every CMC slot has mistakes. Some cards, such as Mystic Remora and Reanimate, are stupidly powerful for their cost. These mistakes exist at every CMC and I'm not arguing otherwise. What I will say is that mistakes are few and far between and that, in general, Magic has clearly defined power break-points.
Let's start with 1-2-3. Powerful/playable 1 drops are typically Blue cantrips and Green ramp spells. Very little else is played in MP because very little else actually wins games. Still, these aren't cards that you generally care about interacting with. People have them, they're good, but they're not so good that you'd modify your deck to try and counter them. That would be losing line. They're also too fast to actually hinder with any semblance of consistency. Someone who wants to jam one and turn 1 is going to be able to do so and you realistically can't expect otherwise. 2 drops, on the other hand, see a lot of play. Things like Survival of the Fittest, Jace, Vryn's Prodigy, Smallpox and more form the base of most MP decks. This is also where you see the most common forms of ramp outside of Green. Signets, Grim Monolith, Fellwar Stone, most baseline ramp starts at 2 and it doesn't get that much better at 3. Barring the select-few mistakes such as Basalt Monolith it's hard to find ramp better than Dimir Signet and Fellwar Stone for your UB deck or whatever. This trend isn't limited to ramp and extends to most groups of cards. For example, very little recursion is better than Animate Dead/Dance of the Dead/Exhume. Reanimate and Necromancy are good cards, don't get me wrong, but they're basically the only cards in those CMC slots that see play whereas there's a ton at 2 CMC that do. Threats? Same thing. Very few 1/3 CMC creatures are signifciantly better than things like Scavenging Ooze and Stoneforge Mystic. Some are, but the jump from 2 to 3 is way smaller than the one from 1 to 2. In that sense 2 CMC is the first real power-spike. The cards here are way better than 1 drops and are only marginally worse than 3 drops. It's also important to remember that almost everything that you can do you at 3 CMC you can also do at 2 CMC. Need a blocker? A 2 drop will work just as well as a 3 drop. Need a ramp spell? 2 drops are better. Need removal? The most commonly played stuff costs 2 since you don't have much incentive to spring for cards like Murder.
Moving on to 4-5-6-7, again, I don't agree with your assessments. First of all, I think that most 4 drops are WAY better than most 3 drops. You basically never see cards like Armageddon, Birthing Pod and Sneak Attack at 3 CMC. When you pay 4 CMC for something you can realistically expect it to have a dramatic, often game-winning impact. I rarely see that at 3 CMC. Moreover, I don't agree with you when you say that 5 trumps 4 and that 7 trumps 6. 5 drops, to me, are almost unplayable. Again, there's always going to be mistakes (Gray Merchant of Asphodel) but there aren't many 5 drops that can compete with the actual top tier 4 and 6 drops. The 6 drops such as Lurking Predators, Wildfire, Consecrated Sphinx, Recurring Insight, Sun Titan, Primeval Titan, etc. are many orders of magnitude better than most 5 drops. They aren't just weak by comparison, they're almost trivial. Since those 5 drops aren't significantly better than the best 4 drops (think about things like Fact or Fiction, Oracle of Mul Daya, Syphon Mind, Humility) I don't think that it's as cut-and-dry and you make it seem. With respect to 6 and 7, again, I disagree. Their sheer existence of Primordials doesn't obsolete powerful 6 drops such as the ones that previously mentioned. They can operate within the same sphere and remain competitive. The reality is that I can ramp out a Sepulchral Primordial on turn 3 and it can easily suck. A Primeval Titan on the other hand basically never will. The delta in their power-level isn't nearly as wide as you're implying. My Inferno Titan isn't trivialized threat merely because an Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite is being played by someone else.
With respect to removal, I personally don't see much of it. I only face 5 CMC Wraths in casual decks and quite frankly I'm not especially worried about them in the context of Void Winnower Stax/Reanimator. If my opponents have access to 5 mana then I've probably lost anyways. StP isn't a card that I routinely play against, especially in high quantities.
Agreed, but I was trying to highlight the fact that I now that think it's a legitimately powerful standalone playable. You don't have to be doing broken things for it to be actively good.
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
I'd love to see this UG Stax deck.
What is the best range of number of basic lands to have in a 60-card deck to have strong confidence that you can use the dual lands and not have them ETBT a high percentage?
I'm looking at a list with 24 lands: 15 basic, 9 nonbasic; 4 of the nonbasic are the BFZ dual lands. Any idea what a formula would look like for this sort of situation?
Frank Karsten is the math whiz who tends to cover this stuff and he has an article that can be found here.
When you're calculating something MTG you typically need to use hypegeometric distribution and a good browser calculator for that can be found here. Population size is your deck size. Number of successes in population is your number of "hits" which in this instance is basic lands so 15. Sample size is the number of cards that you draw which would be 9 in this example (7 in your opening hand, and draw 2 more by turn 2). Number of successes in sample is how many "hits" you need to draw which in this instance is 2. All told we can see that your probability of going basic -> basic is something close to 0.721340640840437 or 72%. Should you draw a tango land you'll be able to cast it untapped on turn 3 roughly three quarters of the time.
Now, this isn't perfect math. I don't have the time or patience to set up the monte carlo simulations that Frank runs when he pumps out the more accurate numbers. Still, these are very good approximations that will put you in the ballpark range.
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