Introductions and Explanations
Greetings fellow multiplayer enthusiasts! My name is Prid3 and I'm a 15+ year veteran of the game who's been playing Magic: the Gathering since the Winter of 2000. While I've followed and played the game at a competitive-level across every major duel format the bulk of my personal playtime has been spent at kitchen tables duking it out in large multiplayer matches. Be it Cube, Constructed or EDH I've played tens of thousands of hours of multiplayer Magic in my life and have since made it my goal to impart some of that knowledge and experience on to you. As such this set review is solely focused towards the multiplayer crowd with an emphasis on budget-minded, fair Magic that adheres to a Legacy-esque banned/restricted list. While I'll still touch on degenerate combos and unfair applications I understand that not everyone takes the game as seriously as my own circles and as such I try to balance my reviews to ensure that they're applicable to players of all levels. From turn 1 kills to turn 20 slugfests I'll do my best to keep these relevant for anyone and everyone who routinely sits down at a multiplayer table.
Before moving on I'll quickly touch on some important book-keeping notes that you should be made aware of before delving deeper into this set review. First, know that I never evaluate every single card in a new set. There's absolutely no reason to repeat "this card was designed for duel formats/Limited" hundreds of times so don't expect me to touch on chaff. 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. Moreover, bear in mind that all ratings discussed in this evaluation should be taken with a grain of salt. It's virtually impossible to give a card a grade that accurately reflects its worth in Cube, Constructed and EDH and so for the purposes of this guide I slant it mostly towards Constructed. I'll touch on Cube and EDH whenever I feel that it's especially applicable but otherwise my primary emphasis will be on a card's 60-card Constructed applications. Finally, 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 that completely warp the game around them. These are format definers that figure to dominate games and crush opponents who aren't playing with cards of a similar power-level. These are must-have competitive staples with limitless potential. Think Gray Merchant of Asphodel, Humility, Consecrated Sphinx, Sylvan Primordial, Repercussion. B: Extremely formidable cards that will allow you to pull ahead of the pack. Although they lack the visceral overpowered-ness that A's possess winning decks should still be clamoring to field them. This makes them top-priority acquisition targets for players of all skill-levels. Think Syphon Mind, Earthquake, Wrath of God, Rite of Replication, Woodland Bellower. C: Powerful cards that winning decks will want to play. A list full of these won't crush a table but a solid foundation of C's should be good enough to keep you competitive. Think Wight of Precinct Six, Clever Impersonator, Taurean Mauler, Thragtusk, Restoration Angel. D: Marginal playables that can flesh out your lists in the absence of reasonable alternatives. I strongly encourage you to focus your efforts elsewhere if it's a realistic option since they're unlikely to yield impressive win %s. F: Extremely weak cards that shouldn't be played under any circumstances. +/-: Used to denote a better or worse N. That is, a B+ represents a strong B whereas C- implies a weak C.
White
Always Watching: While I've never been especially fond of Anthem effects such as Spear of Heliod I've always liked vigilant threats in multiplayer. Trading/racing isn't feasible and so anything that allows you to remain defensive while mounting an offense is a big game. At the same time I've never been able to justify fielding things like Heliod, God of the Sun since they're worthless in multiples and rarely earn their slots which means that by-and-large my experiences with the keyword have been rather infrequent. As such I'm relatively excited to fool around with this card if only to get a better sense of just how powerful mass Vigilance can be. While neither half of the card is bonkers and the nontoken clause is disappointing I'm still going to try 1-2 in my creature-based White decks since I have to imagine that it'll provide solid value on average. This isn't going to be a staple and you'll never need more than 1-2 total since the card doesn't stack well but as long as it's cheap I don't see the harm in picking some up to jam in your midrange brews. Don't expect miracles or anything but insofar as you're just looking for an easy way to pump the team, get in for damage, threaten good blocks, etc. this seems like a solid option.
Grade D-
Angel of Deliverance: Even though cards like Arcbond exist at 8 CMC plus the Delirium condition this will never see any form of competitive play. I know most of you are probably thinking "by the time you cast your 8 drops you'll have Delirium fool" but I guarantee you A) not every deck is going to have an easy time meeting the condition, B) it'll matter for things like Animate Dead and C) the card isn't nearly good enough to justify having any sort of drawback.
Grade F
Archangel Avacyn/Avacyn, the Purifier: Defensive "trap cards" have never, I repeat, never seen serious competitive play regardless of the magnitude of the effect. Cards like Fresh Meat are simply too expensive, inconsistent and clunky to reliably counter Wraths and Avacyn will share the same fate. Even the likes of Boros Charm, Comeuppance and Angel of the Dire Hour are unable to shimmy their way into the best EDH/Cubes/Constructed decks so please don't value the effect higher than you should. What this means is that as a generic "gotcha!" spell Avacyn isn't likely to make waves since this type of effect isn't competitive. Sure, every now and then you'll get someone with it but far more often than not you'll be forced to cast her for very little value given that you can't exactly spin your wheels doing nothing trying to blow someone out. Now, the beauty of a card like Avacyn (as opposed to card like Comeuppance) is that even if you're forced to run her out for very little value she still has an insane flipped mode that isn't all that hard to trigger. In an ideal world you'd support her with cards like High Market, Viscera Seer and Evolutionary Leap but even if you don't "a creature must die" isn't much of a requirement and nuking the board for 3 is a big game. Obviously there's multiple instances where you can kill Avacyn while her triggers are on the stack (when she initially ETB, when she tries to flip at the beginning of the next upkeep, etc.) but I personally don't put much stock in the "it dies to removal" argument and so I appreciate that Avacyn doesn't suck in the ~65% of games where you're forced to cast her on turn 5 for "no value." Flamebreak is no joke and the 6/5 flier is a sizable threat in addition to whatever value she's already provided. This is what separates Avacyn from the other "bad" trap cards and why she's going to be a competitive finisher. Even if you're unable to reliably extract value from the defensive aspect of the card she's more than capable of mounting a stellar offense as well.
Where I think Avacyn will shine is in dedicated blink decks. Much like Huntmaster of the Fells Avacyn benefits immensely from being flickered into play over and over again given that both of her modes have extremely high upside. I'm already envisioning decks in which she's fighting alongside cards like Eldrazi Displacer and Eerie Interlude and let me tell you that it seems absurd. I've said this before and I'll say it again but I have absolutely no idea why cards like Anger of the Gods see next-to-no multiplayer play at any level. The effects have always been completely absurd in my experience and bear in mind that I'm the one playing with and against ultra-degenerate combo decks among other things. If they're still good enough for me then I have to imagine that they're insane for the average player. Anyways, her initial ETB trigger makes it nigh impossible for people to attack you (assuming that you have a decent board state) while also making all forms of removal awkward as heck. Otherwise flipping her is clearly insane and I can already envision scenarios in which you Eldrazi Displacer your newly flipped Avacyn, the Purifier (trigger still on the stack) to re-trigger Archangel Avacyn's ETB trigger to ensure that the rest your team survives the "Flamebreak." I know that I just used the word trigger 1000 times but believe me when I say that you can make some sweet sequences with Avacyn + blink effects. I cannot stress how insanely strong it will be to Eerie Interlude your entire team with the Flamebreak trigger on the stack to create absurd board swings.
Grade B+
Bygone Bishop: If Mentor of the Meek is any indication of this card's power-level then it's safe to say that things are looking slightly less dismal for White's card draw woes. While I've had mixed feelings about the Mentor's value in the past we've since let bygones be bygones and I'm now relatively happy to field the thing in basically any token/swarm deck. 2 is clearly a lot more than 1 but White isn't exactly swimming in a sea of alternatives and the effect is just barely powerful enough to get my attention. While the Bishop doesn't work with tokens/flicker effects it's still powerful in the sense that there's no strict timing requirements to paying the cost. This means that you can spend your initial turns casting creatures and building up a defense only to pop your Clues as needed in the mid-to-late stages of the game. Furthermore it has immense synergy with multi-bodied threats such as Squadron Hawk and "creature spells" such as Fleshbag Marauder and so there's clearly powerful applications for this card. It even stacks well in multiples and the 2/3 flying body is relatively defensive which is perfect when you're mostly looking to sit back, draw cards and play for the lategame. Build-around-me draw spells will never be on the same level as cards like Rhystic Study/Syphon Mind and the 3 CMC upper-limit further restricts deckbuilding by a fair amount however so we're not looking at a bomby draw engine ala Outpost Siege. 2 is also a lot of mana to pay to conditionally draw a card which means that while the Bishop will likely be a small player in the upcoming expansion it's a far cry from a star. I still think that this is a relatively powerful Magic card that avid White mages should make a concerted effort to acquire.
Declaration in Stone: My TL;DR stance on spot removal in multiplayer is that "it's weak but necessary" which is why I typically review cheap, interactive spells that could potentially see play. While this one's competing with the likes of Swords to Plowshares, Path to Exile and Grasp of Fate at 2 CMC it's still reasonably powerful and should see a fair amount of play as a result. Sorcery-speed removal is obviously significantly weaker than instant-speed alternatives given that you typically never want to use your spot removal until you're absolutely required to. Cards like Grasp of Fate obviously break that mold but's it's difficult to compete with Swords to Plowshares when it comes to fielding spot removal in a Constructed environment. Where I expect this card to see the most play is in formats such as Cube, EDH and 2HG where you're typically happy enough to field any 1-2 CMC exile effect. The Sorcery-speed restriction is a huge pain but the card is still extremely efficient and will answer just about everything. It also randomly hoses Tokens which is always sweet and the Clue doesn't matter in the slightest. All-in-all it will never be a Constructed staple due to the existence of Swords and Grasp of Fate (and no multiplayer deck wants ~12 spot removal spells) but it will have a home in singleton formats.
Grade B
Descend Upon the Sinful: I'll be the first to admit that this isn't quite what I had in mind when I fantasized about a pack of Angels coming down on me for being a naughty boy. Final Judgment 2.0 has arrived and the new name is a welcome sight for the Cube and EDH crowds. Unlike most other Delirium cards the additional effect is insignificant so please don't feel as though you need to build with it in mind. A free 4/4 flier is "fine" and at 6 CMC you'll naturally receive it a fair amount of the time but you don't need to go out your way to enable it. With respect to the card's overall power-level 6 is way too much to pay for a generic mass removal spell which means that you should only field this thing in metas swarming with recursion and whatnot. When push comes to shove it can't exactly compete with the likes of Grasp of Fate and Wrath of God in a vacuum and so the exile clause has to be very relevant to justify the pricetag. In that sense you should probably stick to cards like Day of Judgment if you can help it unless you well and truly need a permanent answer to critters and are willing to pay out the nose for it.
Grade C
Eerie Interlude: Unfortunately this isn't the interlude for my set review and you're still stuck with me for the next hour or so. Ghostway is already a multiformat all-star and so a "strictly better" version is a welcome sight. On the surface this type of spell might seem like a glorified "Divination" but in practice it can frequently enable disgusting sequences of draws in which you (infinitely) bounce armies of critters with vast arrays of enters the battle (ETB) triggers. Given that it can flip Manifested creatures, reset Wall of Roots, blank removal and a whole host of other applications there's no end to the value that this 3 CMC instant can provide. Common cards to pair this type of effect with include Archaeomancer and Skullwinder in order to "go infinite," especially if cards like Peregrine Drake are also floating around. Still, even if you ignore degenerate applications there's nothing wrong with bouncing your Wall of Omens, Oreskos Explorers, Blade Splicers, Restoration Angels, Wingmate Rocs, Sun Titans, Linvala, the Preservers, Luminate Primordials, etc. for insane value. As we saw with Eldrazi Displacer in the previous set this is the type of card that can see serious competitive play in any format and at any skill level while simultaneously being a card that works in any creature-based deck of any combination of colors. If you're someone like me who loves investing in cards that will have legitimate competitive applications in countless shells/archetypes for years to come then this is a no-brainer pickup.
Nahiri's Machinations: I like the effect well enough in formats such as EDH and/or in Sun Titan decks but not enough to waste a card on it. While cool it's far too low-impact and conditional to justify fielding it.
Grade F+
Odric, Lunarch Marshal: As with Nahiri's Machinations this is a cool effect but not one that most decks can justify wasting an actual deck slot on. Bluntly put I've never actually seen a Concerted Effort-like spell cast in a multiplayer setting in my ~16 years playing and have no reason to think that I ever will. They're notoriously overrated and rarely-if-ever provide meaningful value.
Grade D+
Open the Armory: Any reliable 1-3 CMC tutor is conceivably playable and Open the Armory is no exception. Between Umezawa's Jitte, Sword of Fire and Ice, Loxodon Warhammer, Bonehoard, Angelic Destiny and even Batterskull there's countless amazing targets to fetch and you never know what the future will hold. That being said I will caution you that Steelshaper's Gift is currently played far too liberally and (more importantly) in too large of quantities. Dedicated Equipment/Aura decks can easily support 1-2 of these but please don't start every White deck with 4 or anything. Equipment are slow + mana-intensive to begin with and require creature-based support to accomplish anything meaningful. Drawing an Open the Armory at some point is fine and even if you don't happen to see one, hey, that's fine too. It sure beats drawing 2-3 Equipment and 2-3 of these and not having anything relevant to do with your resources. I will stress that any cheap, reliable tutor is playable though and so I do encourage most people to grab a playset or two even if they don't plan on using them right away. At some point you'll probably want to play a deck with a fair amount of Auras/Equipment at which point having access to some of these could easily be relevant. As long as you don't go overboard and slot 4 into every list they should perform adequately.
Grade C-
Thraben Inspector: While it's no Wall of Omens (which isn't an especially competitive card to begin with) it's still an Elvish Visionary for your massblink decks, your sacrifice decks, on and on and on. Moreover, if you desperately need a 1 drop (for whatever reason) and can't afford Weathered Wayfarer and/or Mother of Runes then this is likely your 3rd best option in a vacuum assuming that you're not looking for lifegain. I'm not a fan of running marginal 1 drops in general and I would never play this under normal circumstances but a cheap ($ wise) 1 drop that cantrips is somewhat tolerable.
Grade D
Topplegeist: I've tested Citadel Siege in small numbers in various defensive decks and never found the card to be especially powerful. It's certainly decent at keeping single, large beaters at bay but in general it doesn't do enough to justify its deckslot. There is some advantage to playing a 1 CMC creature version of the spell, namely recursion effects such as Ojutai's Command and Sun Titan. That being said a 1/1 for 1 isn't even close to being a relevant card in a MP setting and the ETB trigger is basically worthless so suffice it to say that the Geist here isn't exactly toppling his competition. I'm fine with running out cards like Mother of Runes or Weathered Wayfarer early on but I'm not especially interested in working for my 1 drops. While this functions as a passable form of defense in decks with cheap spells/self-mill/etc. in general I'd advise you to steer clear of these marginal defensive threats. It's not reliable (or even good) early nor is it fantastic later on and so if you really want this effect just run the consistent, durable Enchantment.
Grade D+
Closing Thoughts: The safest investment by a country mile is Eerie Interlude which is unquestionably powerful and playable in countless archetypes. It's a no-risk acquisition relevant in any creature-based shell (regardless of colors) that will still provide solid value 5 years from now. Be it Cube/Constructed/EDH it's fantastic in any MP setting and so you can't ask for much more than that. Next there's Declaration in Stone which I expect to be solid for the EDH/Cube communities but less for for Constructed where you can simply field 4x Swords to Plowshares. Otherwise tutors are always safe bets which makes Open the Armory a solid option and ultimately one that I do recommend acquiring at some point (although it's not a top-priority). Finally, Archangel Avacyn is a stupidly strong 5 drop for creature-based shells, especially ones that can blink her at instant-speed. Continuously Boros Charming your own field while Flamebreaking everyone else's is a ridiculously nasty combo in multiplayer that creature-based strategies will struggle immensely to beat.
Blue
Confirm Suspicions: I suspect that most people will overrate this hunk of junk and let me confirm that it's unplayable. 11 mana to counter a spell and draw 3 cards is laughable so please don't go treating this as a generic Cryptic Command alternative. It's far too slow and weak to compete with Blue's best draw and counterspells so go ahead and ignore it.
Grade D
Engulf the Shore: I've said it before and I'll say it again; mass bounce (not named Cyclonic Rift) is criminally underrated in MP settings. Not only does it act as temporary Wrath of Gods to stifle aggression but since most playable Blue creature have powerful ETB triggers it's almost always beneficial to bounce your own dudes. In the case of cards like Archaeomancer that means infinite instant-speed mass removal spells and you better believe that I'm going to build and play that deck. Otherwise you can always choose to build your decks with the effect in mind and field things like Hunted Phantasm that circumvent it. Obviously we've seen mass bounce in Blue before except it's never been this fast nor this cheap. As much as I love Whelming Wave I can't hold it up alongside Fact or Fiction and/or Forbid and Evacuation is a bit too slow at 5 CMC. By the way, you better get used to seeing that Engulf + Fact or Fiction combo because the ability to choose between casting your mass removal spell, your draw spell or even your counterspell is going to leave most people feeling helplessly engulfed. Between Vedalken Shackles, Flow of Ideas and Scourge of Fleets "Island matters" is also starting to become a real thing for Blue to the point where it's starting to seem worthwhile to exclude big mana such as Cloudpost and Glimmerpost from your lists. Shackles alone was never quite good enough to justify their dismissal but now I'm not so shore. For what it's worth I still think that you can play Cloud + Glimmer in your Engulf the Shore decks but at that point you're probably better off with Whelming Wave or Evacuation so mise. For anyone wondering "but muh Evacuations" just think about the difference between Wrath of God and Hallowed Burial. Power rarely offsets a loss of speed given 2 similar effects and so any time that you can get a cheaper version of an already powerful spell then you're probably looking at a winner. I personally see this as a staple for mono-Blue decks and highly recommend picking them up at some point. Between Wrathing the board, recurring my sweet ETB triggers and abusing Archaeomancer to no end this is exactly where I want to be in a MP setting.
Epiphany at the Drownyard: Sorry to drown your hopes but this is the kind of card that looks a lot better than it actually is. Just bear with me for now because I'm sure that most of you will reach the same epiphany soon enough. First and foremost your opponent gets to choose the pile which means that unlike similar spells there's no guarantee that you'll get the exact card/effect that you're digging for. This is why cards like Steam Augury are many orders of magnitude weaker than ones like Fact or Fiction and typically don't see much play as a result. Moreover when you're casting it for low sums of mana (X<=3) you're not getting much value as compared to cards like Thirst for Knowledge and Fact or Fiction and it doesn't exactly scale well from there either. When all's said and done you need to be jamming this at X>=5 but at that point why not have cards like Blue Sun's Zenith in your deck?. After all, X draw spells typically dig you into everything you need and then some and since you'll typically overdraw in the process you can always discard anything that you wanted in your bin. Bear in mind that you have to be playing a deck that cares a fair amount about its graveyard to justify fielding Epiphany at the Drownyard whereas generic draw spells such as Mystic Remora, Rhystic Study, Trade Secrets, Recurring Insight, etc. don't have that requirement. Blue already has plenty of powerful draw spells that are always good and that don't leave anything up to chance. Clearly Epiphany at the Drownyard is still a reasonably powerful card and so it won't get an abysmal grade but given that Blue is the king of card draw there's very little incentive to field these kinds of marginal alternatives. Mystic Remora is 50 times better and costs a buck so why bother? If you want to draw some cards and bin some junk for Treasure Cruises, Reanimation, whatever then so be it but given that cards like Trade Secrets can do it for 3 mana I can't envision myself ever reaching for these.
Grade C-
Essence Flux: First of all ignore the sentence about Spirits. It's irrelevant. The real meat of this card is that it's a pseudo-Preordain that has significantly more value later on when you can blink things like Diluvian Primordial or even an Evoke'd Mulldrifter (yes, you get to keep your 2/2 flier!). Early on you can hit things like Augur of Bolas, Sea Gate Oracle, Treasure Mage, etc. and later on you can blank removal spells while copying absurd ETB triggers which is always sweet. Now, obviously the problem with this card is that Preordain is relevant 100% of the time whereas this thing isn't. Sometimes you have no creatures in play or the targeted creature is killed in response. Otherwise it can't be used to fix your early draw steps which is where reliable cantrips shine. It's not a perfect card by any means but Preordain will never trigger a Scourge of Fleets for you so I don't hate running cards that actually scale well as the game progresses. It's a not going to be a competitive staple but a couple can go long way given enough ETB triggers and the Evoke'd Mulldrifter interaction alone is enough to get my juices running.
Grade D+
Forgotten Creation: As much as I like this card on a conceptual level it's too slow to be legitimately competitive. A free, continuous self-mill/Dredge//Madness/Delirium/Reanimator enabler is sweet but at the same time a 4 mana 3/3 that doesn't do anything the turn that cast it isn't going to make the final cut in most lists. Oh, and no, I don't even care that "it dies to removal" nor do I think for a second that people will actively gun it down. I just don't want a 4 CMC card in my deck that doesn't do anything. Maybe on the following turns I'll get some value from it but even then it's an all-or-nothing deal and if your hand has good cards in it (hint: winning decks typically have a lot of them!) then you don't always want to swap for a new one at random. I understand that a good deck will have mostly good cards and you can argue "pitching a good hand is fine because you'll draw into another one" but experienced Mages already know that you typically develop strategies based on information that you collect as the game progresses. Tossing your well-laid plans to the wind carries inherent drawbacks that aren't easy to overlook. Otherwise the card doesn't do much when your hand is low/empty and Skulk is probably the worst evasion mechanic ever printed which is all the more reason why this card doesn't excite me. I'm not trying to downplay the fact that binning 6 cards is sweet when your deck has cards like Animate Dead, Eternal Witness, Past in Flames and Treasure Cruise but I also want to stress how cards like Careful Study reliably bin them immediately and for significantly less mana. Believe me when I say that I like the effect, I just want it on something faster and more reliable.
Grade C-
Geralf's Masterpiece: It's my unfortunate duty to inform you that Geralf's master work is a master flop. Even in Ux self-mill decks powered by cards such as Life from the Loam/Squee, Goblin Nabob/Veilborn Ghoul this still isn't where I want to be if I'm looking to close a MP game out. At 3 cards per pop it's realistically not much of a Reanimator/Madness/Dredge enabler either and as a generic threat it's hard to imagine getting much mileage out of a 5 mana ~4/4 flier in an average MP match. Conditional + awkward cards almost never get there (even if they're relatively powerful) and I have no reason to believe that this card will fare any better. The throwback to Griselbrand is certainly nostalgic but suffice it to say that the cards are worlds apart with respect to their competitive applications.
Grade D
Jace, Unraveler of Secrets: Blue has plenty of access to powerful Upheaval-like effects to protect Planeswalkers and if you're ever able to combo his emblem with an Arcane Laboratory (or any variation thereof) then that's game. Outside of Blue there's things like Armageddon, Wildfire and Doubling Season that make it relatively easy to combo-off so suffice it to say that Jace could easily find himself in various competitive combo shells. While I don't consider him to be remotely playable as a generic threat the one-two punch of Arcane Lab into Emblem is certainly powerful enough to justify building around and I wouldn't be surprised to see him crop up every now and then as a result.
Grade D+
Manic Scribe: Even if we put terrible mill decks aside (they're not competitive) mass mill does have niche competitive applications worth discussing. Cards like Animate Dead, Wight of Precinct Six, Undead Alchemist and Consuming Aberration can do silly things with the effect so there are legitimatly powerful reasons to field these kinds of enablers in multiplayer. Hell, I've even played a Chancellor of the Spires deck full of Mortivores (there's a ton of them now) so believe me when I say that I can appreciate the fact that some people want to fill graveyards early and often. The biggest strike against this card is that a 2 mana 0/3 is missing a point of toughness to be a relevant blocker and as a general rule of thumb enablers that need enabling tend to suck. Whereas Altar of the Brood and Mesmeric Orb only ask for a bit of mana and a card Manic Scribe makes you jump through hoops. On that note if you're in the market for a powerful Delirum enabler to support this guy look no further than Mesmeric Orb because that card is gas! Anyway, I hope it's obvious that this type of threat has absolutely no generic value so unless you're trying to go very deep on "graveyards matter" then this probably isn't the card for you. If you want something for a dedicated mill deck I'd recommend taking a pass on this one unless your list is already weak to removal. There's typically no incentive to open yourself up to it if you can help it and mill decks usually want a lot of mass removal to begin with.
Grade D-
Ongoing Investigation: Let's investigate this card's playability together shall we? Military Intelligence provides the same effect free of charge and sees next-to-no play because it's far too weak and unreliable to compete with the likes of Mystic Remora and Rhystic Study. Well wait, what about a conditional Treasure Trove? That card sees play right? Yeah... no, it really doesn't. Not ever. A weak hybrid of a cards that sees no play is, you guessed it, unplayable trash. Investigation over.
Grade D
Pieces of the Puzzle: While some of you may be puzzled as to why I'm even reviewing this card it won't take me long to put the pieces together for you. Careful Study and its many variants have long-since been employed by Reanimator strategies to cheat giant fatties into play as early as turn 1. Storm decks have historically also relied on self-mill effects to fuel cards like Pyromancer Ascension, Deep Analysis and Past in Flames into order to enable win conditions such as Guttersnipe, Jeskai Ascendancy and Mind's Desire. Pieces of the Puzzle may not be the ideal candidate for the role but it's clear that it has some potential to act a self-mill enabler for any "spells matter" archetype. It's true that it's slow, conditional and that it can't pitch key cards stranded in your hand but given that it can mill over new ones and/or dig into missing pieces it's conceivable that this type of spell could see play. We're not looking at the next Frantic Search or anything but basically any "spells matter" deck could reasonably field a small number of these to decent effect.
Pore Over the Pages: Poor Frantic Search, how far you're fallen. Land untappers are extremely scary in a world of cards like Tolarian Academy, Gaea's Cradle, Cloudpost, Cabal Coffers, Nyktho,s Shrine to Nyx and even Karoos such as Dimir Aqueduct are totally (un?)reasonable to abuse. Otherwise looting cards is a mainstay for Blue as it enables any number of "graveyard matters" shenanigans such as Animate Dead, Past in Flames and/or Treasure Cruise. While I think this card is ultimately too slow and fair to compete with cards like Fact or Fiction and Peregrine Drake it combines multiple unfair elements into one cards which makes it a stronger enabler than it might otherwise seem. Not enough to make it a staple in anything but it's definitely closer than what you might expect.
Grade D+
Rise from the Tides: Given enough Careful Studys and Thought Scours this could theoretically put a ton of tokens into play, especially if you have cards like Recoup, Mizzix's Mastery and Past in Flames to recur it. In that sense it's kinda like a bad Empty the Warrens but is has the advantage of still being a relevant draw even if you haven't cast (m)any other spells that turn. That swing alone could easily turn the tides of a game and give rise to a new champion. At 6 CMC it'll never be a true staple for Storm decks (it's no Mind's Desire) but as a value finisher I could see it working as a 1-2 of. This is especially true for decks with cards like Jeskai Ascendancy that can do silly things with mass amounts of creature tokens as chaining draw spells into Treasure Cruises could easily leave you with more than enough power to clobber the field in a single swing.
Grade C-
Thing in the Ice/Awoken Horror: Ludevic's Test Subject is back and this time he's better than ever. I have a thing for these defensive, scaling threats that act as a reasonable deterrents early on that eventually awaken into legitimate horrors as the game progresses. I'm somewhat embarrassed to admit that I've historically given these marginal playables more credit than they deserve since realistically they shouldn't be your go-to 2 drops unless you're well and truly desperate for something to fill out the lower-half of your curve. That being said Thing in the Ice may finally break that mold since this card strikes me as being significantly more powerful than his brethren. As a matter of fact that's putting it lightly because from where I'm sitting we're looking at a competitive staple. As it sits the only (budget-minded) 2 drops that I'm happy to blindly jam in my spell-based decks are things like Merfolk Looter and Augur of Bolas and the difference in power-level between them and Thing in the Ice is gargantuan in my mind. Given the choice of "marginal value" or "bomby finisher + mass removal spell" there's nothing to even consider. For starters the baseline stats are passable in the sense that very few 1-3 CMC beaters will be able to slog past an 0/4 Wall (especially if you're curving out with other threats as well). While that isn't a relevant consideration for everyone it certainly is for players who operate within aggressive multiplayer metas. Developing an early board presence can be crucial to one's success in those spheres which and that's where cheap threats shine. While the card lacks immediate (or even short-term) impact the prospect of generating a 2 CMC Scourge of Fleets is busted and given that Blue is the king of cheap cantrips casting 4 spells isn't an especially difficult requirement. Even if you assume 1 spell per turn flipping this on turn 6 is still reasonable and realistically speaking you can easily get there in 2-3 if you're making a concerted effort to do so. It's also relevant to note that unlike similar cards this one doesn't require further mana investments (not directly anyways) which means that you get to keep playing Magic while building towards your "bomb." This crippling weakness is ultimately why cards like Ludevic's Test Subject aren't actually playable (despite my historic comments suggesting otherwise) and I'm glad to see that Wizards really pushed this little guy. Even if people kill it, meh, I'm not going to lose sleep over having my 2 drop die to removal. If people want to 1-for-1 me in the color that has access to cards like Mystic Remora, Rhystic Study and Recurring Insight then so be it. After all, unlike similar cards you're never going to sink ~12 mana into the thing only to have it die for no value so you're never truly getting blown out if/when this bites the dust. Your deck will have other threats/relevant spells and if people want to axe your 2 drops then God bless. I've said it before and I'll say it again but I'd rather cast a creature that can stomp an entire table but that dies to removal (Master Transmuter) than a creature that always provides value but that can't possibly win a game of Magic (Solemn Simulacrum). The former unquestionably wins more games in the long-run so even if it leads to more variance/risk there's no point in playing it safe if it doesn't convert to game wins. While this card is a relatively weak topdeck in the later stages of the game it's an absurd early-game threat that isn't useless as time passes which is everything that I'm looking for in a cheap multiplayer threat. Even if it's a touch slow and liable to draw removal 2 mana for a 7/8 "Scourge of Fleets" is absolutely nuts and so I'm willing to undertake a bit of risk. I will stress that this card does require support and that you can't blindly jam it into any Blue deck and expect it to kick some serious butt. Still, in the context of a spell-based deck this is easily the single strongest threat that you can run out on turn 2 in my opinion.
Closing Thoughts:Engulf the Shore is a no-brainer acquisition for dedicated Blue mages and I want to add that people seriously need to start fielding more than 1x Cyclonic Rift to their Control decks to deal with opposing creatures. That doesn't cut it people! Otherwise Thing in the Ice is bonkers in "spells matter" decks but it's not worth the ridiculous pricetag that it's currently sitting at. Siege Rhino saw all the Standard/Modern play in the world and it never cost 20 bucks so you can probably wait until it plummets in value before acquiring them. I do think that the card is bonkers though as a 2 mana "Scourge of Fleets" is an insane amount of value for a single card.
Black
Asylum Visitor: Even as someone who loves playing with cards like Smallpox, Delirium Skeins, Pox, Necrogen Mists, Bottomless Pit, Death Cloud and Mindslicer I can't imagine actually finding room for this type of threat in any of my Constructed lists. As a generic value engine it's lackluster compared to bombs such as Waste Not and Geth's Grimoire and win conditions such as Shrieking Affliction and Quest for the Nihil Stone frequently kill too fast for a card like this to matter. It also doesn't protect you in the same way that cards like Ensnaring Bridge and Noetic Scales do nor does it answer opposing threats on the board. The obvious advantage to this type of threat is that when you Delirium Skeins/Mindslicer with a Necrogen Mists/Bottomless Pit in play then you're probably going to start drawing a ton of cards and since you get to Madness the thing out you also get to offset most of the card disadvantage that you inflict upon yourself. The problem that I have with this plan is that I'd rather have something that could actually win the game in the short-run like Quest for the Nihil Stone since I don't exactly want to play a long game after pissing people off with mass discard spells. I want to kill them as quickly possible before they band together to eliminate me. Early beats + Poxes/Death Clouds + global hate doesn't leave you with much life to fool around with and so jamming a Baleful Force into play is significantly less appealing than it otherwise could be. It's even a creature that dies to removal whereas these kinds of decks can typically ignore it altogether. It's not as though I even want creatures in my 16 Wrath.decks and so you can probably see why I'm so torn on this card.
While I don't think that this will ever be a competitive staple for the reasons outlined above I still think that this is a powerful magic card. Baleful Force is criminally underrated in my opinion and much like his Forceful brother I expect this thing to shine in formats like EDH where health totals are higher and where it's more realistic to jam things like Sire of Insanity, Cabal Conditioning, Myojin of Night's Reach and Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur into your lists. When supported with the likes of Necrogen Mists, Bottomless Pit and Mindslicer it's very reasonable to think that you could lock most players at 0 cards and bury them in a sea of card advantage. While this plan could obviously still work to some extent in Constructed you'd have to know a lot about your metagame and the speed of the decks involved. This isn't what you want against aggro/midrange but it's stellar against combo/control given enough discard effects. Again, I wouldn't put on the same level as Waste Not or Geth's Grimoire but it's a reasonable alternative if you're looking for something new. I do expect it to be quite powerful in EDH though so I do recommend acquiring this guy if that's your format of choice.
Grade C
Behold the Beyond: Lo and behold Wizards has reverted back to their original stance of "Black tutors have to suck now." Guess they learned their lesson with Dark Petition. Why people think that this card is playable is beyond me because this thing is a steaming pile of garbage. Increasing Ambition and Diabolic Revelation both see next-to-no play and while they're not strict upgrades I can assure you that pitching your hand is a very real cost. Even in formats like EDH this will never enable truly degenerate combo decks given that you can already field Sidisi, Undead Vizier as your general and she has multiple 1(ish) card combo kills in Buried Alive and Ad Nauseam. I'm not denying that on some level it reads "untap, you win the game" but Sidisi does the same thing for 2 less mana and since you always have access to her it's a no-brainer as to why BtB isn't going to pass muster. I get that not everything has to be turn 4 wins and blah blah blah but I can't let every random expensive spell get a free pass in EDH and act like they're all somehow amazing. I haven't played either of the aforementioned tutors in years, both seem vastly superior to me and since I can't imagine running all 3 I can't envision the scenario where this would see play. For the record the card that you should all be playing is Necrologia which for some unknown reason still isn't in 100% of Black EDH decks. Why? No frikkin clue but it sure as Hell should be. You're allowed to run cards like Vampiric Tutor, Demonic Tutor, Diabolic Intent, Praetor's Grasp, Necropotence, Phyrexian Arena, Syphon Mind, Graveborn Muse, Necrologia, Sidisi, Undead Vizier, Rune-Scarred Demon and that's just a sample of the Black cards let alone what colors like Blue and Green also have to offer. Who's still wasting their time with 5+ mana tutors? I obviously can't stop any of you from playing this thing if you still want to but let's not kid ourselves into thinking that we've stumbled upon a powerful new tool for combo/control decks. It's the 10th best card for the job at best.
Call the Bloodline: Who you gunna call? Not the Bloodline apparently. I've build Veilborn Ghoul decks in the past (usually in Faithless Looting decks with Squee, Goblin Nabob) and I can assure you that they're not very good. A 1 mana 1/1 lifelink isn't much of a card unless you're buffing/Equipping it and even if you produce 10 of them it's not as though you'll typically have good attacks on anyone. Given enough time, mass removal, mana, etc. you can eventually grind everyone out but in the real-world someone else will always enact a more powerful gameplan before you can seal the deal. Given enough Bloodghasts and Lords this might be fine in vampire tribal but even then I'm skeptical.
Grade D-
Creeping Dread: I've been playing the Megrim deck since before some of you were born and as much I'd like to say that this is a playable enabler + win condition for dedicated discard decks the dreaded reality is that it isn't. I have a creeping suspicion that most of you will disagree with me but there's no doubt in my mind that this card is unplayable. Cards like Shrieking Affliction, Quest for the Nihil Stone, Waste Not and even Wheel of Torture are significantly cheaper and more reliable than Creeping Dread and I'm unwilling to bet on hitting enough lands to nuke everyone down in a reasonable time-frame. It's a ridiculous gambit to make given that other cards are guaranteed to do their jobs. Moveover it's too slow to act as reliable discard engine and can't compete with the likes of Necrogen Mists and Bottomless Pit on that front. Discard decks need to be fast and brutal because people are going to hate your guts for fielding mass discard and you better believe that they'll team-up against you. Time isn't on your side and even if a card is "efficient" deckslots wise if it's not efficient mana wise then it's garbage. Believe me when I say that I understand that Shrieking Affliction into Necrogen Mists is 2 cards whereas this is one but I'm telling you that you'll die if you tap out for a 4 drop that doesn't do anything. You turn 4 play needs to be a Pox, Mutilate, Ensnaring Bridge, Noetic Scales or some other card that actually affects the board. I'd bet on my life that I've cast more Waste Nots, Smallpoxes, Poxes, Mindslicers, Geth's Grimoires, etc. than most of you combined and so if I'm sitting here telling you that this isn't a card that I'll be acquiring and fielding myself I hope that speaks volumes as to how marginal that it is.
Grade D
Diregraf Colossus: First Relentless Dead and now this? The hits just keep on coming for the Zombie tribe. Most of you are probably aware of the Carrion Feeder + Gravecrawler synergy by now and since the Crawler is cast from your bin this particular interaction seems rather absurd with Diregraf Colossus kicking around. It's also important to note that threats like Fleshbag Marauder and Sidisi, Undead Vizier are "spell creatures" and that both aspects of casting and sacrificing zombies works well with him. Early on it means that you get more tokens and later it just means that you get a larger threat. In that sense the Colossus fits the bill of a cheap threat that's relevant both early and late which is exactly what I'm looking for when I'm trying to flesh out my lists. "Corpses matter" is even a recurring theme in the Zombie tribe as seen on cards like Corpse Augur and Tombstone Stairwell. The latter packs a serious punch in decks with cards like Vengeful Dead and/or ones pairing with Carrion Feeder with Gravecrawler so you can see where the various synergies start to come into play. Otherwise we mustn't forget good old Gray Merchant of Asphodel who is the unquestioned king of the Zombie underworld. All-in-all this makes for extremely interesting possibility with respect to building Zombie tribal decks.
Elusive Tormentor/Insidious Mist: "Unkillable" threats such as Sengir Nosferatu have always been some of the most overrated multiplayer cards in the game. I'm not saying this with with insidious intent so please wipe those misty eyes of yours and hear me out. I'm sure that we've all dreamed of scenarios in which they dominate creature combat and/or removal warfare but in practice they're far too slow and weak to actually seal the deal. In that sense any plan that involves beating a table down with a small, resilient threat is inherently doomed to fail since it will virtually never get the job done in a reasonable amount of time. While it's true that MP games are long and grindy in general they're not so weak that a durdly threat will be able to smash ~15 times before someone else is capable of enacting a significantly more powerful gameplan. In practice these evasive, resilient beaters never get there and pinning your hopes and dreams on them can only end in disaster.
Clearly that means that Elusive Tormentor is unplayable right? ... right? WRONG!
Insidious Mist is bonkers. Yeah, you heard me, bonkers. The combination of Hexproof + Indestructible + Unblockable makes Insidious Mist one of the premier multiplayer finishers in the game. Slap a Nighthowler/Bonehoard on that baby and watch as people futilely resist your onslaught. You obviously have to tread carefully when you're playing with a card this scary and that frequently means treating it as a 7-8 drop that you can "protect" by flipping multiple times (in response to removal) if needed. Still, even if this thing costs you 8 mana and 4 cards it doesn't freaking matter if you curved Mutilate into Bonehoard into one of these. This card, when supported, can reliably clear a multiplayer table out and that's not a feat that most threats can boast. I cannot stress how stupidly uninteractive and powerful this combination of keywords is because so many decks will literally be drawing dead to this type of threat. Sure, you can interact with cards like Bonehoard easily enough but Black is the king of creature revival and given that it can recur both Insidious Mist and Nighthowler I think that a lot of players will struggle to topple this ensemble. Regardless of what you pair it with it's going to make people miserable and I'm excited to see if people can come up with something better than mass removal + "Mortivores" to seal the deal.
Before I finish this entry I will caution everyone that this card is not being graded in a vacuum. If you simply add this to your deck as a generic threat then don't come tormenting me about how it sucked. It's being graded under the assumption that you, as a smart deckbuilder, will build around the fact that your deck now has an Indestructible + Hexproof + Unblockable threat that it can abuse to smash the rest of the table to pieces with powerful Equipment/Auras/etc. I'm giving this card an extremely high grade because it's such a unique threat with an absurd amount of potential both now and in the future. I personally consider this to be a must-have staple since there's literally no other card in the game that brings such a stupidly powerful + uninteractive combination of keywords together for such a low cost (cards and mana wise). I don't really care who/what/where/when/how/why you slap on it but insofar as your deck is looking to Voltron up a creature and smash in the Red Zone this is easily one of the strongest finishers in the game. Obviously the card needs support and only works with a relatively small subset of cards (hence why it's not getting an A) but let me assure you that this card is going to be miserable to play against.
Ever After: 6 mana is too much to pay for a 3-4 mana effect. Wake the Dead and Victimize are already good enough if you're trying to revive a 2-card combo such as Triskelion + Mikaeus, the Lunarch or Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker + Pestermite and if you're simply in the market for a generic "value" revival spell then Living Death is probably where you want to be. I would never put this in my decks over cards like Reanimate, Animate Dead, Dance of the Dead, Necromancy, etc. and even in formats like EDH it's not as though you want a jillion revival effects to begin with. I understand that those cards only revival a single threat whereas this recurs 2 but for 6 mana? Really? I'll take any threat from any GY for 1-3 mana than 2 from my own for 6.
For the record I don't value the "self-recursion" aspect of this card at all. I think that "Beacon of Unrest" style recursion is hideously overrated and rarely-if-ever relevant. If your deck is able to produce infinite mana, sure, Blue Sun's Zenith has a relevant upside. Maybe your Constructed deck has Trade Secrets which frequently allows you to draw the entire thing. Again, I can see how how this type of recursion would be relevant for those kinds of decks as well. For the 99.999999% of other decks it's completely trivial to the point where it doesn't even warrant discussion. It doesn't add any significant value to the card and shouldn't factor into the equation at all. If the base is bad then it's unplayable. Period.
Grade D+
From Under the Floorboards: Hmmm... a 5 CMC Zombie spell that gains life. Where have I seen that before? Like most X spells this one has theoretical implications for multiplayer but in practice I don't expect it to make any serious breakthroughs. Colour me surprised if it ends up pulling the rug from under me. With respect to the base card having your Sorcery-speed threat ETBT is a major drawback since unlike a duel if you ever find yourself vulnerable you're usually looking at ~10 damage per circuit as opposed to ~4. Whereas the 3 life would typically offset that (or close enough) it doesn't scale nearly well enough when more adversaries are involved. While the Madness mode enables you to circumvent these awkward timings I dislike its conditional aspect and do consider that to be a serious drawback. I hate having to support marginal cards and you really do have to build with this card in mind. If the payoff was there then sure but it's not as though we're talking about turn 2 Oona's Prowler into turn 3 Animate Dead on Griselbrand or anything. This is where I personally think that Madness falls short (especially in colors like Black) because as long as you're playing with cheap + consistent discard outlets why go for value when you can play to win? Hell, it's not even an auto-win when X = [insert arbitrarily large number] whereas cards like Exsanguinate are. Sorry team but From Under the Floorboards is a marginal value threat at best.
Grade D+
Indulgent Aristocrat: I was overly critical of Vampiric Rites back when I initially reviewed it and I've since happily played as a 1-of in various lists. It's not amazing or anything, no deck realistically wants more than 1-2 copies but ultimately it's still a decent form of card advantage, lifegain and a way to dodge exile effects.
Oh, sorry, were you expecting me to actually review this card? Ok, ok, fine! I won't starve you any longer so let's indulge that insatiable appetite of yours. Vampire.deck isn't really a "thing" in multiplayer despite the fact that the tribe is loved in general. However, the fact that Bloodghast is a free recursive threat makes this type of effect intriguing and once you toss Blood Artist and Pawn of Ulamog onto the grill suddenly you're cooking with gas. Moreover, the tribe has recently received an insane buff in the form of Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet which has blown all of my expectations of him away. He's now on my short-list for best Black 4 drops period. Toss in a bit of card draw and some removal and you're suddenly looking at a sweet deck. Alternatively you can go the lifelink route with cards like Vampire Nighthawk and Kalitas which also seems reasonably powerful.
The problem? This style of deck costs a million dollars for no good reason. I'd post a budget one if I could but I legitimately can't so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
Mindwrack Demon: This is going to be one of my most played cards from this set and my mind is already wracked with different shells that I intend to test him in. I don't know if it'll get there in the end but I love the idea of jamming a giant flier who self-mills with a seemingly manageable drawback in a whole host of Bx archetypes. Fetchlands, powerful tutors, creature spells and more all take some of the bite out of his requirements and I love the idea of slotting him in decks with powerful forms of recursion such as Animate Dead and Living Death (which want to be playing with cards like Buried Alive regardless). It's also important to remember that other colors house powerful self-mill effects such as Faithless Looting, Careful Study, Satyr Wayfinder, Mulch, Grisly Salvage and more all of which are amazing cards in Reanimator decks to begin with. They're also cheap enough to make Mindwrack Demon a consistently safe 4 drop (or so I hope) that won't be taxing your life total too badly early on. Otherwise Black will always welcome more ways to fuel its Oversold Cemeterys, Animate Deads, Vengeful Pharaohs, Demigod of Revenges, on and on and on and since it doesn't have an especially high quantity of relevant 4 drops that it can currently field I'm very excited to see how this card will play out.
Relentless Dead: Now this is a card that excites me. My absolute favorite multiplayer threats are things like Scavenging Ooze and Stoneforge Mystic that are just as good on turn 8 as they are on turn 2 and Relentless Dead certainly qualifies as a relevant threat at every stage of the game. After all, anyone can reach 6 mana and cast a card like Consecrated Sphinx and so the real struggle that us deckbuilders face is how we go about filling the bottom half of our curves. Luckily for us Black mages Wizards has been relentlessly pushing the Zombie tribe for the past few years and about the only thing that it's been missing is another powerful 2 drop that it can pair with Wight of Precinct Six. Between Unholy Grotto, Gravecrawler, Carrion Feeder, Fleshbag Marauder, Lord of the Undead, Corpse Augur, Vengeful Dead, Graveborn Muse, Gray Merchant of Asphodel and Sidisi, Undead Vizier it has the rest of the curve covered and so I'm ecstatic to have a new BB 2 drop that I can blindly jam into my Gray Merchant of Asphodel decks. Cheap, recursive threats are always welcome in Black period given its plethora of cards like Contamination, Attrition and Pestilence and I'm glad to finally have one that can A) block and B) doesn't enter the battlefield tapped. I love that it can naturally recur a ton of creatures that I'm already extremely happy to play and the evasion is a nice bonus if you do decide to pair him with cards like Nighthowler and Bonehoard. My only gripe with this card is that it's a mythic which will undoubtedly balloon its pricetag to unreasonable amounts despite the fact that it's a typical recursive zombie that we've seen hundreds of times before at rare. That being said I still absolutely love the raw power and versatility that it brings to Black decks and I can't wait to jam it into all sorts of brews. I want to stress that there's a ton of archetypes that naturally play a throng of Zombies so please don't think of this as some niche tribal card with limited applications. A huge % of Black's relevant threat base is zombies and so you don't have to work hard at all to get some serious value from the recursion that it offers. This is a must-have staple for any avid Black mage as it will undoubtedly be a major player for years to come. This will become all too apparent the first time that you play a deck with 4x Relentless Dead and 4x Gray Merchant of Asphodel so start brewing boys and girls!
Sinister Concoction: "BB, Discard a card: Destroy target creature" is mostly unplayable but any cheap discard outlet piques my interest for reanimator strategies. Historically they've employed the services of cards like Putrid Imp and Oona's Prowler to fill that role however neither provides much additional value past their intial discards. Cheap bodies are decent and a 3/1 flier is reasonable deterrent but ultimately they don't accomplish much past the first 3 turns of the game. A hard removal spell is somewhat intriguing on the other hand. It's not as though you're ever planning to cast the fatties trapped in your grip (which means that it's realistically not a 2-for-1) and having a cheap form of interaction can definitely be useful at times. Visible removal such as this can also have relevant psychological applications in the sense that it incentivizes people to focus their attention elsewhere. Attacking into someone who can unquestionably kill your threats is disheartening and often functions as an effective deterrent. This card is also a solid Delirium and Madness enabler which could certainly be relevant at some point in the future. Even if it's not with this set you never know what the future will hold. The self-mill is arguably relevant given that Black is the king of recursion but a single card is marginal value at best which is why I don't put much emphasis on it. All-in-all there's enough niche applications for this card to interest me which means that even though we're not looking at the Black Swords to Plowshares there's definitely room for this type of enabler in multiplayer.
Grade D
To the Slaughter: Diabolic Edict sees no competitive multiplayer play and nor will this. It's too slow, unreliable and the format tends to be significantly more creature-based which makes it that much harder to hit the things that you actually care about. Cards like Toxic Deluge exist for a reason and they blow Edicts out of the water.
Grade D
Tooth Collector: Unlike Mindwrack Demon I don't think that the payoff is worthwhile for a card Tooth Collector. As a a generic 3 CMC removal spell it's a far cry from Fleshbag Marauder/Merciless Executioner and even though its "activated mode" is reasonably powerful I'm not willing to work for a buffed Cuombajj Witches. In MP I want my threats to have relevant + immediate impact as much as possible and -1/-1 to a single threat doesn't even come close to qualifying. That isn't to say that every card has to be a Massacre Wurm but at least cards like Ophiomancer combo with things like Attrition and Contamination to do something reasonably powerful whereas Tooth Collector doesn't possess many relevant, unfair combo/synergy applications. Had it been a 2/3 or something I probably would have tested 1-2 in a shell similar to the one that I posted for Mindwrack Demon but unfortunately at 3 power it doesn't work nearly as well. This is a "close but no cigar" 3 drop and you'll have to pull my teeth before you can convince me to sleeve it up.
Grade D
Triskaidekaphobia: Turn 2 Dark Ritual + 13phobia, turn 3 Pox brings everyone to 13 and I'm going to make it my mission to win with that deck once. I'm certain that it'll take me 50 tries but some day I'll get there. I think that this is a terrible combo card in general and strongly discourage people from trying to use silly things like Soul Conduit and Repay in Kind to try and pick people off. Those decks are slow, unreliable and basically just terrible. Where I like this card is as a generic 1-of in generic decks. Why? Politics! When you have a card that says "people at 13 lose" then the entire table gets to work together to make the dream happen. X burn spells, pump effects, lifeloss, suddenly everyone has a massive incentive to actively use resources to bring people to a specific number. Yeah, sure, they could do it to you too. That's life. It doesn't change the fact that the best use for this card (in my opinion) is to bring some chaos to your games by incorporating a new loss condition. I want to stress that I don't think that this is an actively good card nor do I recommend fielding it in large amounts. Still, I could definitely see myself slotting the 1 in random Black decks if only to mise kills every now and then.
Grade D+
Closing Thoughts:Relentless Dead is a self-recurring (relevant for cards like Contamination) blocker/threat/revival engine that's stupidly good in Gray Merchant of Asphodel decks. It's among the best Black 2 drops in the game and I fully expect it to be a competitive staple for years to come. Otherwise there's Elusive Tormentor which is one of the most hideously uninteractive cards that I've ever seen and I cannot wait to slap things like Nighthowler on it and watch and people are powerless to thwart my Hexproof, Unblockable and Indestructible threat. Otherwise I'm a huge fan of Diregraf Colossus and highly recommend it to anyone who builds Zombie decks on a regular basis. I want to stress that "Zombie deck" doesn't necessarily mean "Zombie Tribal" since there's so many generically powerful Zombie printed nowadays. Things like Wight of Precinct Six, Fleshbag Marauder, Corpse Augur, Graveborn Muse, Gray Merchant of Asphodel, Sidisi, Undead Vizier and many more are objectively good cards that just so happen to have the Zombie subtype. Diregraf Colossus is trivially easy to support if desired and by no means do you have to invest in a bunch lords and/or other "zombie matter" cards.
Red
Avacyn's Judgment: Some people are probably excited to play this in Faithless Looting, Daretti, Scrap Savant style decks but I judge it unworthy. Rolling Thunder is many orders of magnitude weaker than Earthquake mass removal variants in a multiplayer setting and as such I don't see how you could ever find room in your decks for more than a singleton. Trust me, I get it. When you discard this as opposed to an Earthquake you offset the inherent card disadvantage which basically makes it a "free spell." Furthermore, Rolling Thunder doesn't nail your own dudes whereas mass removal such as Blasphemous Act does. Who cares? Mass removal will almost always trump targeted effects in practice because when you need to clear the board you need to clear the board. It's naive to assume that you'll only have to worry about a handful of small threats which you'll be able to remove while preserving your own battalion. More players = more draw steps = more must-answer threats and so you want the nuclear strike as opposed to the RPG. Otherwise deck slots aren't free resources and adding anything to your list carries a very significant opportunity cost. A "free, bad card" is still a bad card and it's always coming at the cost of an actively good one. In that sense I expect people to value this thing much higher than they actually should. It's a marginal playable at best for decks that have a critical mass of discard outlets.
Devils' Playground: Red generally lends itself well to token strategies because of cards like Tempt with Vengeance, Impact Tremors, Ogre Battledriver and Purphoros, God of the Forge. That being said 6 mana for 4 tokens is a laughable rate compared to what things like Mogg Infestation typically offer and a handful of pings isn't nearly enough to offset that. As a generic threat in a random Red decks this is a far-cry from things like Inferno Titan which ultimately renders it virtually unplayable.
Grade D-
Flameblade Angel: A 6 mana 4/4 flier with a conditional + garbage effect is unplayable trash. Next.
Grade D-
Gibbering Fiend: No, it's not even good in dedicated burn decks. Never field this.
Grade F
Harness the Storm: Good guy Wizards is giving us deckbuilding hints by putting storm in the name so that we don't accidentally get confused. Much like Pyromancer Ascension this style of card has basically no value outside of silly Recoup/Yawgmoth's Will/Mizzix's Mastery/Past in Flames style decks that combo loot spells with rituals to cheese out a win. This card is surprisingly good with Infernal Tutor and since Dark Petition is the new hotness it doesn't seem especially difficult to Petition for a Petition, cast that newly tutored Petition triggering Harness the Storm for a 3rd Petition and well you probably get the idea by now. You need a whack of mana to pull that off but that's where rituals like Mana Geyser shine. I couldn't imagine playing this type of card in any other setting but insofar as you're playing some broken Storm deck then it seems sweet enough.
Insolent Neonate: Hapless Researcher sees large quantities competitive play in Reanimator decks and while his insolent companion is weaker he still enables you to pitch a Griselbrand (or whatever) on turn 1 so that you can Animate Dead it on turn 2. It's actually worth noting that discarding second is an advantage when it comes to Dredgers since the ability to pitch + Dredge immediately is incredibly relevant for graveyard-based strategies. As it stands the only consistent 1 CMC loot spell in Red is Faithless Looting (sorry Burning Inquiry, you don't count!) and while cards like Tormenting Voice and Wild Guess are "fine" the difference between 1 and 2 mana is gargantuan in practice. As such I expect this card to see a relatively high amount of competitive play in any deck that's looking to recur a key spell early on. Now, he's clearly worthless in "normal" decks trying to do fair things so please don't look at his Grade and assume that he's some inherent bomb. I'm grading him under the assumption that he's being paired with degenerate recursion to enable fast and/or uninteractive wins at which point the card is quite insane.
Mad Prophet: I like looters more than most and while cards like Rummaging Goblin and Mad Prophet are marginally playable they never make the final cut over cheaper + more reliable alternatives such as Faithless Looting and Tormenting Voice. Realistically speaking you can't play a 4 drop that loots a single card per turn and still expect that compete with the likes of Crypt Ghast and Deathreap Ritual which makes these marginal value engines mostly unplayable (even in decks that care about filling their graveyards).
Grade D+
Sin Prodder: Much like Browbeat this is a card with high-highs and low-lows and I'm very interested in hearing what other people think about it. For starters I think that it's garbage in EDH and nigh-worthless in low-to-the-ground decks since taking 2 to bin Price of Progress is a no-brainer. While I realize that this will never draw you into more lands I do kind of like it in midrange/ramp decks with fatties however. It be will difficult for people to randomly take 6 to prevent you from drawing an Inferno Titan for example and assuming that it survives for many circuits then it could easily nab you 4+ cards. This is especially true for decks filled with spells such as Blasphemous Act that have high printed mana costs but inherent cost reduction mechanics. Taking 1 from Earthquake is nothing but 9 isn't an easy pill to swallow. I get that Sin Prodder's slow and vulnerable to removal but at the same time what Red 3 drops aren't? Goblin Matron if your deck has Goblins and Imperial Recruiter if you have $800.00 burning a hole in your pocket? Clearly we're not talking about the next Outpost Siege and I'm not trying to downplay how unfortunate it is that you'll never be able to draw lands with this guy but a 3/2 for 3 is a decent blocker and drawing ~0.4 cards per turn seems reasonable for Red. Since most of you are probably trying to prod me for a definitive answer by now I'll cut to the chase and provide my final verdict. Ultimately I think that this card is too weak and unreliable to see serious competitive play in any multiplayer format. Your opponents would have to be idiots to forgo taking small amounts of damage in order to force you to bin cards like Vandalblast, Earthquake, Sudden Demise, Mizzium Mortars, Purphoros, God of the Forge, etc. and even though you'll draw a 5+ drops every now and then those will be the exception as opposed to the norm. Otherwise it's important to stress that taking 5-8 from Mana Geyser/Insurrection is still better than losing to them and that you'll also get randomly hosed by lifegain decks that can afford to take the big hits when needed. For all these reasons and more I think that this card is actually quite weak and I feel that most people are overrating it in general. I truly am in interested in hearing what others have to say about it however and encourage everyone to discuss it in the comments.
Grade C
Tormenting Voice: It's no Faithless Looting but Tormenting Voice is still significantly more competitive than most people realize. In fact, I personally consider it to be a must-have staple even at the highest levels of play. While Red's graveyard/combo/prison offerings aren't on the same level at Blue's it's still the second-best color for the job assuming that your goal is to assemble key combo pieces while binning others. This fuels countless "I win the game" graveyard cards such as Animate Dead, Mizzix's Mastery and Past in Flames while also digging for combos/key cards such as Confusion in the Ranks, Sneak Attack and Splinter Twin + Pestermite. Otherwise it fuels oppressive Delve spells such as Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time while also supporting value engines such as Goblin Welder and Daretti, Scrap Savant. These tactics are more are all extremely competitive gameplans in formats such as Constructed and EDH which, again, is why I consider Tormenting Voice to be a true staple of the color. Good versions of the best decks will happily run it and if that's not good enough for you then nothing ever will be.
Grade B
Vessel of Volatility: Cards like Rite of Flame, Seething Song, Simian Spirit Guide, Treasonous Ogre, Mana Geyser and more have been competitive staples across multiple Magic formats for many, many years. From Storm decks to turn 1 Daretti, Scrap Savants in EDH to Comet Storm combo kills there's any number of reasons why you'd 2-for-1 yourself (or more) to accelerate a key threat into play. 5 mana on turn 3 nets you a Sneak Attack + Worldspine Wurm activation, a Confusion in the Ranks, a Siege-Gang Commander for board presence or any number of other powerful sequences. While this ritual is clearly far less abusable than most (it's an Enchantment as opposed to an Instant/Sorcery, it doesn't net any mana the turn that you cast it) I still refuse to discount a cheap Dark Ritual that allows you to jump the curve by 2 full turns. I've used Generator Servant to attack with a ton of hasty Scourge of the Thrones, Inferno Titans and Balefire Dragons in my day and while this card is clearly different it's still more-or-less comparable to Seething Song. I don't have an amazing new deck idea for this card just yet, it would merely be a rehash of the Storm deck I've already posted but at the same time this is a card that you should go out of your way to acquire even if you can't find an immediate home for it. Pick them up for free after a draft, nab them from your friends before they chuck their commons in the trash, take that second to collect a playset of these in case you ever need them.
Closing Thoughts:Insolent Neonate is a welcome addition to Red's competitive Reanimator arsenal. The ability to bin a key spell on turn 1 can lead to a number of virtual wins on turns 2-3 making this a must-have bomb for fans of the archetype. Moving on, Tormenting Voice is amazing but it's obviously been printed so many times and at such a low rarity that most people should have them by now. If you don't, hey, grab 'em. The card is awesome. Otherwise Vessel of Volatility is another "Seething Song" type spell that allows you to jump the curve by 2 full turns which can be important for fast combo decks. That's turn 1 Faithless Looting (binning Enter the Infinite) into a turn 3 Overmaster + Mizzix's Mastery, turn 3 Sneak Attack + activate for Worldspine Wurm or even a turn 1 Norin the Wary into turn 3 Confusion in the Ranks. These are obviously just random examples and there's countless others but you can see why having access to more "Seething Songs" could be relevant (if not now, in the future). Besides, it's a freaking common. Just pick them up at some point even if you never use them. Anyone who drafts/buys sealed product/has friends/visits local game stores/etc. should easily be able to nab them for free because most players will throw out commons such as these anyways.
Green
Autumnal Gloom/Ancient of the Equinox: As crappy as this card might seem it's still a self-mill enabler that comes with a Trampling, Hexproof body. While a 4/4 might not accomplish anything on its own if you can slap a Nighthowler and/or Bonehoard on it then those are the two keywords that you're looking for. I would never, ever, ever put this card in my decks as a generic "value" engine but insofar as you're converting it into an actual win condition then it's semi-reasonable.
Grade F+
Clip Wings: As much as I love Innocent Blood I don't foresee myself playing with removal this niche unless it's on the same power-level as a card like Whirlwind. If you desperately need cheap flying interaction then it's somewhat playable but I personally don't think that winning lists should bother with this type of effect. Don't clip your decks' wings by adding every random card that says "each opponent" to them under the assumption that they're all automatically amazing in a MP setting.
Grade D-
Cryptolith Rite: This card is poorly understood and underrated. Most people seem to treat it as a generic ramp spell that you'd slot in decks full of creatures like Elvish Mystic. They couldn't be more wrong. This is the card that you play in your creature-based/token shells that don't have access to and/or don't want to run a bunch of generic ramp. Whereas the traditional stuff is stellar if you're looking to jump the curve by 1-2 turns early on it's not especially apt at helping you reach 8-10 mana unless you dedicated 12-16 slots for it. This is where a card like Cryptolith Rite shines as it enables you to turn cards like Tempt with Vengeance, Sylvan Offering, Grave Titan, Prossh, Skyraider of Kher and some lands into 8-10 drops such as Tooth and Nail, Insurrection and Primal Surge. That is, it allows you to play a normal game of Magic but also opens back-door outs to cast insanely expensive + powerful spells long before you otherwise could. Otherwise I want to highlight the obvious synergy that it has with Wall of Roots and it's these interactions that showcase how this type of "fancy ramp" can still operate alongside its consistent cousins.
Alternatively it can do silly things with cards like Nettle Sentinel, Midnight Guard and Intruder Alarm and you can probably imagine how easy it would be to draw and cast your entire deck using things like Glimpse of Nature, Temur Ascendancy, Beck // Call and Soul of the Harvest. It's a very interesting combo card in that sense as it allows you to play the Heritage Druid + Nettle Sentinel game outside of the dedicated Elf deck. While I couldn't a post a version that trumps the best versions of the current Elf combo lists the point isn't that "it's the best deck" and merely that "it exists." Either way I don't think that it's nearly as weak as people seem to think but the main thing is that you can't treat it like a generic Sakura-Tribe Elder ramp spell. As long as you keep in that mind I think that you'll be pleasantly surprised with its performance.
Grade B-
Deathcap Cultivator: Sorry buddy but you're no Sakura-Tribe Elder. The ability to sometimes trade-up with larger threats doesn't offset the fact that it randomly dies to sweepers at no benefit. You're significantly better off fielding 1 CMC accelerators such as Utopia Sprawl and Carpet of Flowers if you're in the market for cheap ramp and if you have to run the 2 CMC stuff try to stick the ones that fetch actual lands if possible.
Grade C-
Duskwatch Recruiter/Krallenhorde Howler: While I typically dislike fielding these kinds of middling threats they do serve a crucial role for players who play in extremely aggressive metas. The Recruiter serves as a passable 2 drop (a Grizzly Bears usually gets the job done on turn 2) who scales decently well into the lategame where he becomes a persistent (albeit slow) draw engine. It's also critical to note that Krallenhorde Howler functions as a pseudo-Wall of Roots in the sense that it offers solid early-game protection while functioning as a reasonable form of ramp. Ultimately this is how Duskwatch Recruiter was able to conscript my loyalty since untapping with Krallenhorde Howler on turn 3 is going to be relatively powerful sequence for most creature-based decks. Otherwise the Recruiter enables you to pay 3 mana to "draw a card" with the added bonus of digging for key silver-bullets such as Bane of Progress when needed. While I wouldn't expect most winning decks to spin their wheels paying 3 mana to draw a card in the developing stages of the game having the option to do so is frequently going to be relevant later on. Otherwise the 2/2 body should mostly suffice early on because literally anything should function as an effective deterrent on turn 2. I want to reinforce the idea that I would prefer to start all my decks with cards like Carpet of Flowers and other forms of ramp whenever possible but if you desperately need early board presence that threatens small attackers then this is certainly a decent option. I think that people will overrate this card in general however, primarily because "creatures cost 1 less" is significantly worse than affecting all spells. The fact that you can't curve a turn 2 Duskwatch Recruiter into a turn 3 Frontier Siege/Tempt with Discovery (or any other variation thereof) is a massive strike against it that far too many people will overlook. That being said Green Mages accustomed to dealing with aggro should probably still acquire these but otherwise their competitive applications are limited at best.
Grade C+
Sage of Ancient Lore/Werewolf of Ancient Hunger: Step up your game Wizards! Blizzard's Ancient of Lore let's us draw TWO cards. In general these Maro-esque cards are exceptionally weak in Green ramp decks since you rarely hit the mid-to-late stages of the game with a reasonably-sized grip. Cards like Sandstone Oracle and Kozilek, the Great Distortion can assist on that front but at the same time I'd never build around this type of threat. Maybe if I were playing an UG deck with things like Mystic Remora, Trade Secrets, Rhystic Study, Recurring Insight etc. then I'd be more inclined to slot him in but even then it's only a couple of extra stats. Best-case scenario is that it's a 7/7 which would still be dwarfed by 3 drops such as Managorger Hydra. Real-world this guy is probably a 4/4 (maybe 5/5) after the draw which is... something I guess? I'll take my free cards where I can get them but paying 5 mana to draw a card and put a ~4/4 into play isn't exciting in the least. I expect something better than an Elvish Visionary who hit the gym really hard last week for that sum of mana. Sure, it's fine from a "value" perspective but from a "I want to win games" perspective it's trivial. In that sense he's worthless compared to cards like Seedborn Muse, Genesis and Titania, Protector of Argoth that "actually do stuff" as opposed to drawing a card and putting a dorky body into play. The real meat of this card clearly lies in his flipped form in that a Vigilance, Trampling Multani, Maro-Sorcerer is a very real threat that will quickly end games on his own. Clearly he loses points in formats such as EDH where health totals are higher and he's obviously better in oh, say, 6 player games than in 3 player ones but it's fairly easy for this thing to be making lethal attacks each and every turn. Well, that's assuming that you can keep him flipped but I guess Arcane Laboratory et al. exist for a reason. Who know, this could easily be a finisher for your Possibility Storm/Knowledge Pool lockdown deck. Otherwise you can Fling him with cards like Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord if you're so inclined but realistically your best bet is to simply cast this guy, hope he flips and hope that gets in for massive damage. If he dies, meh, you drew a card, forced removal and took a line that could legitimately kill people. Some might see that as a victory in the sense that you drew a card and traded 2-for-1 but I personally couldn't care less about trivial advantages such as those. That being said I'm more willing than most to take risks and put cards in my decks that can legitimately end games and whereas cards like Thragtusk or Whisperwood Elemental never will this guy has the potential (albeit slim) to actually mow players off one-by-one. If you could reliably flip him and keep him there (no, I'm not going to add cards like Immerwolf to my decks) I would like the card a fair amount and would definitely test him in various creature-based shells that employ things like Dense Foliage to blank spot removal. That being said I hate how everyone else has control over my threat and since I've experienced very little success with the other Werewolves I don't see why this one would be any different. The card seems sweet when it works, I just don't expect him to very often.
Grade C-
Seasons Past: Creature-based recursion such as Eternal Witness, Skullwinder and Greenwarden of Murasa tend to vastly out-perform their spell-based alternatives in that Green is brimming with creature-based tutors but devoid of effects that care about spells. From Oath of Nissa to Green Sun's Zenith to Survival of the Fittest to Chord of Calling to Genesis Wave to Defense of the Heart to Lurking Predators to Nissa's Revelation "creatures matter" is a defining characteristic of the color whereas spells are typically left by the wayside. This is why you'll frequently see Green decks full of Eternal Witnesses with no Regrowths in sight even though the latter is arguably significantly more powerful in a vacuum. At the end of the day Genesis Waveing into Greenwarden of Murasa is a big game whereas a card like Season Past will unhappily slink to the bottom of your library. While I like the card as a whole and do think that it's quite powerful ultimately it's not a creature and so I don't expect it to have many competitive applications in any multiplayer format. Most Green decks could easily support 1 however and as long as you're recurring 5+ cards with this then it does seem absolutely fantastic. Personally I'm going to stick to the creature-based alternatives as long as it's an option but by no means is the card actively bad. As to when this card breaks-even, again, I have it at 5 cards. Hamonize is what I expect to pay for a draw 3 in Green and Opportunity is the most I'll pay for 4 (but I do expect it to be unconditional and instant-speed) so when you're talking about a 6 CMC Sorcery with 2 very big restrictions (the cards have to be in your GY and they must have different mana costs) I want at LEAST 5 cards for my trouble. Binning 5 cards with unique mana costs takes a long time which is why I wouldn't advise running more than 1 of these in general. For those curious about EDH it's basically in the same boat. The most competitive decks will never run it but your average value deck easily could.
For the record I don't value the "self-recursion" aspect of this card at all. I think that "Beacon of Unrest" style recursion is hideously overrated and rarely-if-ever relevant in the slightest. If your deck is able to produce infinite mana, sure, Blue Sun's Zenith has a relevant upside. I'll agree to that. Maybe your Constructed deck has Trade Secrets which frequently allows you to draw your entire deck. Again, I can see how how this type of recursion would be relevant for those kinds of decks as well. For the 99.999999% of other decks it's completely trivial to the point where it doesn't even warrant discussion. It doesn't add any significant value to the card and shouldn't factor into the equation at all.
Grade C
Second Harvest: Unlike Parallel Lives and other similar token doublers you can actually cast this card after-the-fact and still get value from your spell. Since it's generally a better idea to develop your board and then cast your value spells (to avoid taking too much unnecessary damage) it's clear that Second Harvest offers some advantages over its alternatives. That being said the one-time deal leaves me less than impressed and unfortunately there's no second-wind great enough to save this harvest. When I reach for a card to fill this type of role I typically look to Shamanic Revelation since I'd rather draw ~5 cards than put another set of tokens into play. Why open yourself up to mass removal when you can simply refill your hand? Also, while it's "more convenient" than a card like Parallel Lives it's many orders of magnitude less powerful. A turn ~3 Parallel Lives into any sequence of mass token spells will set you up to win most games whereas this is more of a generic threat. If you can ramp out an early Sylvan Offering and follow it up with one of these that's "fine" but, again, I'd still rather play Shamanic Revelation or any variation thereof. If you're going for a very fast Beastmaster Ascension/Cathars' Crusade kill or something then it might make sense to max out on actual token producers but I still think that your best bet is to play a more value-focused game. That isn't to say that you shouldn't put cards like Cathars' Crusade in your deck, I'm mostly implying that you should respect mass removal and field some actual card draw.
Grade D+
Tireless Tracker: In multiplayer a good rule of thumb is to value creatures at their immediate impact and how they advance your gameplan in the short-run. This, by the way, is why cards like Solemn Simulacrum are mostly unplayable. A 4 mana Rampant Growth is horrifically weak and the prospect of a "free card" down the road isn't nearly enough to offset that. In the case of the Tracker your 3 mana nets you nothing inherently but you can follow it up with (Fetch)lands to start amassing a reservoir of Clues. This gives you a steady source of card draw in the mid-to-late stages of the game especially if you can pair it with cards like Scapeshift, Primeval Titan and Sylvan Primordial. Where Tireless Tracker falls short is in the early game where you want cards that help you right now as opposed to later on. Whereas a card like Basalt Monolith enables a turn 3-4 Sylvan Primordial the Tracker will only begin to yield dividends multiple turns down the road. While the best decks will never field this it's a fantastic value-engine for casual decks that figures to draw an absurd amount of cards over time. Insofar as you're in the market for a "Courser of Kruphix" as opposed to a Worn Powerstone then the payoff is definitely there.
Grade B
Traverse the Ulvenwald: So this is what the unholy union of Lay of the Land and Demonic Tutor looks like eh? If the former wasn't so heinously unplayable I'd be more interested in the competitive applications for this card but unfortunately a gutted Green Sun's Zenith isn't going to pass muster. The ability to tutor for any creature or land is obviously insanely powerful but the moment that have to jump through real hoops to achieve it is when you're suddenly not talking about a competitive staple. At some point you'll be able to fetch anything from Cloudpost to Sylvan Primordial but since it has zero early-game value it's important to temper your expectations and appreciate this card for what it is; a budget + bad Green Sun's Zenith. Now, the fact that Oath of Nissa is Legendary is surprisingly useful in this instance since binning extras is quite handy when you're trying to hit Delirium. There's even cards like Expedition Map which you want in your Cloudpost decks to begin with and that also make their way to the graveyard early on. Otherwise creatures and lands are easy-peasey for Green so as long as you get a Nature's Lore/Sylvan Scrying (or whatever) in the bin then it's not unreasonable to think that generic Green deck could have Delirium by turn 5-6 in a typical multiplayer match. As to why you would bother jumping through these hoops first the answer is basically "because it's cheap." I don't know how much this card will actually cost a few months from now but what I do know is that cards like Green Sun's Zenith, Survival of the Fittest and Chord of Calling aren't free and that Birthing Pod doesn't work in every archetype. While Green has fantastic creature tutors in general most of them are old, expensive, difficult to acquire, etc. whereas Transverse the Ulvenwald is significantly less likely to be. I could be wrong obviously but let's roll with that for now. In that sense even though the base card is completely unplayable it still becomes a "Demonic Tutor" (not quite but you get the idea) eventually and in the context of budget-minded Magic that a fine place to be. You won't see this in the best versions of the best decks but assuming that you're playing casually with friends this card is freaking amazing when it "gets there" so don't worry too too much about what other people have to say about it.
Ulvenwald Mysteries: I hope it's no mystery that when you add "nontoken" to a draw engine that you can kills most of its competitive applications goodbye. Even then cards like Grim Haruspex are still fine Magic cards that I routinely field myself but Hell if I'm going to pay 2 mana per corpse to get my value. Conditional + mana intensive aren't the adjectives that you want describing, well, anything so feel free to take a pass on this on this one.
Grade D-
Closing Thoughts:Ulvenwald Hydra isn't the Primeval Titan that we want but its the one that we deserve. From Cloudpost to Gaea's Cradle it can fetch any number of oppressive lands making it one of the more competitive 6 drops on the market. Be it Cube, Constructed or EDH I'd happily field it in any format and in any quantity making it a must-have staple for avid Green mages. Next there's Cryptolith Rite which I expect to be a staple in any token/creature-based list that isn't already filled with mana dorks. After all, curving Sylvan Offering into Tooth and Nail is a big game. While Tireless Tracker doesn't offer the same short-run impact as cards like Worn Powerstone and Basalt Monolith much like Courser of Kruphix it's a fantastic card advantage engine for midrange/ramp strategies. Unfortunately you basically need a ton of good Fecthlands to make it truly competitive but even if you don't it's still a solid 3 drop in any casual multiplayer setting. Lastly Traverse the Ulvenwald has a fair amount of potential and insofar as your games are slow enough to support it then I'd definitely give a shot. Cards like Cloudpost and Sylvan Primordial are many orders of magnitude more powerful than the other cards in your decks and the flexibility to tutor for them as needed is extremely powerful. It's never going to have a home in fast combo decks and the like but when it comes to slow, fair games of Magic it's hard to pass up on a 1 CMC Demonic Tutor.
Multicolor
Altered Ego: This is the easiest B of my life. Clone is already a solid card and tacking 2 relevant upsides onto it is good enough to bump the letter Grade in my books. While some may dismiss the X +1/+1 counters I personally think that it's fantastic when you take the time to think about the kinds of decks that will actually play this thing. Think Prophet of Kruphix decks that have bounce (Cloudstone Curio, Crystal Shard, Temur Sabertooth), big mana (Primeval Titan, Sylvan Primordial) and Prime Speaker Zegana. Drawing more cards from copying your Zeganas is fantastic, Cloneing Sylvan Primordials is stupid and since the Sylvan-father routinely dumps your entire manabase into play jamming a giant dude and then giving it Trample with Kessig Wolf Run or Nylea, God of the Hunt is quite powerful. I think that Altered Ego is a noticeable upgrade to Clone in that sense and that's without acknowledging the "can't be countered" clause. Much like Clever Impersonator I think that this is easily a competitive staple that any UG deck should strongly consider.
Anguished Unmaking: As much as I come down on spot removal in general an instant-speed Vindicate that exiles is still good enough to earn my seal of approval. Trading 1-for-1 is obviously a weak exchange in a MP setting (it's virtual card disadvantage) but since you can't beat cards like Consecrated Sphinx and Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur without it your hands are tied on that front. Otherwise it's a blanket answer-all to any threat from any opponent which means that you'll always get decent value out of the effect. I've liked Utter End well enough and since I'd rather pay 3 life than hold a 4th land hostage this is a clear upgrade in my mind. Most of my WB decks are lifegain-focused anyways and in formats like EDH you have more than enough life to play around with regardless. While it's true that Vindicate can nail annoying lands such as Gaea's Cradle and Cabal Coffers I've never been fond of Sorcery-speed removal in a MP setting given that I never want to use it until it's absolute necessary. Again, it's virtual card disadvantage so firing it off willy-nilly is pointless and I'd rather have as much control over the timing as possible. I also think that the exile clause is going to be a relevant bonus a reasonably large % of the time and since the 3 life doesn't especially bother me I can safely say that I'll be slotting a couple of these into most of my WB concoctions for the foreseeable future. For the record I don't think that this card is better than Grasp of Fate but in the interest of diversity I usually try to vary my decks to keep things fresh.
Grade C+
Fevered Visions: Grading these kinds of cards never makes any sense because they have no generic value. This card has to be played in a "Nekusar, the Mindrazer" style deck that pairs mass card draw with Underworld Dreams and/or Molten Psyche style win conditions. I like this card a fair amount in that archetype as it functions as both an engine and a win condition rolled into one. This makes it significantly more valuable than most people realize and I'm sure that fans of the archetype are ecstatic to see this. It's also somewhat relevant to note that the draw happens at EOT which makes it significantly harder for other people to take advantage of their extra draw steps before you can. Otherwise there's not much to say because this goes in exactly 1 archetype and since it's more of an EDH deck than a Constructed one odds are most people are going to play it regardless.
Grade C
Olivia, Mobilized for War: That's uhh... quite the name for a card. It sounds like something a 5 year old would pick out for him or herself. Tangent aside I personally I see Olivia as a duel card with extremely limited multiplayer applications. The only compelling use for her that I could conceive of is that you can field her in decks with cards like Squee, Goblin Nabob and Veilborn Ghoul at which point you can grant Haste to all of your Inferno Titans, Scourge of the Thrones, Balefire Dragons, Myr Battlespheres, etc. "for free." As a generic 3/3 flier for 3 she gums up the board well enough early on (I'm not expecting miracles from 2-3 drops) and since Red has a number of creatures that generate a ton of value when they attack she could theoretically provide decent value. That being said you'd have to justify the Squee, Goblin Nabobs in your list with looting, equipment, etc. because otherwise there'd be no point in running her over cards like Hammer of Purphoros, Anger, Ogre Battledriver, etc. This is especially true ever since Flamekin Village was printed because that card is a total house.
The inherent problem with that design is that it's a total trap (i.e. not worth your time, effort and resources). Red is the king of consistent Haste enabling and you can basically solve all of your problems by jamming 2-3x Flamekin Village over basic Mountains. Otherwise Anger, Ogre Battledriver and Urabrask the Hidden are actual bombs that don't ask anything of you. Since a 3/3 flier for 3 isn't a relevant threat in a multiplayer setting (it can block 1-3 drops but it's not winning any games for you) she doesn't have that going for her and I don't want to skew my deck to support an effect that I can easily acquire with no strings attached. While a 3/3 flier for 3 can actually win games in a duel setting her body is trivial in multiplayer and once you take it out of the equation her persistent effect isn't very good. Yeah, sure, she enables Madness, supports reanimator strategies, fuels Delve/Delirium and a bunch of other nonsense. Doesn't interest me. Faithless Looting is the Red "graveyard matters" spell and if you're looking to do busted things with it then jam 4 and never look back. Still need a bit a of help? There's nothing wrong with Tormenting Voice which is weaker but marginally playable. Either way the key points to emphasize here is that when don't care about the body (for whatever reason) then power, efficiency and reliability tend to matter more than anything else and Olivia is lacking on all 3 fronts.
If people disagree with my assessment that a 3/3 flier is a trivial body that's totally fine. The awesome part about multiplayer is that every meta is different. I frequently play with 8 players and so when I see a 3/3 for 3 it doesn't even register as a card that would ever hit the Red Zone. 3/140 is close enough to 0% (it's just over 2% or something) that I'd rather have the extra blocker and avoid pissing someone off and possibly triggering (significant) retribution. That doesn't mean that I'm inherently right it's merely how I like to approach the game. Still, hey, I play a ton of 4 player games too (especially online) and even then I don't care about a 3/3 flier for 3. Granted I always build my decks in such a way that I don't need to worry about marginal value or small beaters but the fact remains that getting in for 3 is a drop in the bucket when you're trying to chew through 60 points of life. I will never initiate races or promote trades and even going 3-for-1 (i.e. attacking with Olivia and getting hit by oh, say, Elvish Mystic) isn't an exchange that I'm willing to actively pursue. Even though it's a "fair trade" from a mathematical perspective that math doesn't take experience and technical ability into account and I'd rather preserve my own life if it means that I can play longer games (on average) in which everyone is forced to make more decisions.
Grade D+
Prized Amalgam: To some this will be a prized possession but to most it's little more than an amalgamation of disappointment and and displeasure. While recurring threats certainly have a home in multiplayer formats they tend to lose most of their luster when they have to be supported. Whereas Reassembling Skeleton will fuel a Contamination indefinitely or a pack of Bloodghasts merely ask that you have a land ETB the effect isn't nearly as useful when you actually have to work for it. Clearly he's meant to be paired with cards like Gravecrawler but it's not as though a 3/3 is a relevant threat in a MP setting nor does the card have any obvious + abusive synergies. The fact that he ETBT is also annoying and while he can still block on the following turn, again, we're talking about a 3/3 here. I wouldn't be surprised to see him pop up in self-mill decks, Dredge decks, zombie decks, etc. but at the same time I doubt that he'll be actively good.
While I won't spend too much time on the subject I will note that his potential for Dredge decks is at least somewhat intriguing. For the record we're talking about the Golgari Thug, Stinkweed Imp and Golgari Grave-Troll monstrosities that abuse Narcomoeba, Bridge from Below and Dread Return to no end. He's still a Black creature for Ichorid and unlike Bloodghast he can actually block which isn't something that the deck it typically good at doing. Assuming that your list has Leyline of the Voids (hint: it needs them) they could potentially help you create throngs of Bridge From Below tokens over time. This is especially true if you have an Undiscovered Paradise to fuel your Bloodghasts or even a card like Dakmor Salvage.
Grade C
Sigarda, Heron's Grace: A conditional Ant Queen that's harder to cast? Needless to say she's a far cry from Sigarda, Host of Herons and it's sad to see just how far she's fallen from grace. I like the Ivory Mask effect well enough but a 4/5 flier for 5 with a crappy ability doesn't pass muster in modern day Magic and so I feel that you're better off focusing your attention towards more powerful spells and effects.
Grade D
Sorin, Grim Nemesis: Phyrexian Arena is fine (but hardly worth 6 mana), Death Grasp is lame and Storm Herd is meh which means that Sorin is unlikely to make any waves in the multiplayer scene. His only redeeming quality, in my mind, is that if you can stick him for a turn then nuke the world with card like Jokulhaups or Death Cloud then his +1 (or -9, whatever) will eventually win the game against any number of players. He's kinda like Liliana Vess in that sense except he can't tutor for your big finisher the turn that you cast him and 6 CMC is a lot more than 5. I'd still rather have a card like Assemble the Legion that can't die to creatures/burn/etc. but that strategy is certainly competitive so I'll give him what little credit he deserves. Otherwise the card seems extremely weak to me and I wouldn't advise fielding him as a generic finisher.
Grade C+
The Gitrog Monster: This is my current pick for "best card in the set." As a matter of fact I had to read and re-read it 4-5 times just to ensure that I wasn't losing my mind because it seems way too good to be true. Crack Fetchland draw a card. Dredge Life From the Loam/Stinkweed Imp/Golgari Grave-Troll draw a card. Activate Molten Voxtex/Seismic Assault draw a card. Smallpox draw a card. Activate Liliana of the Veil and/or trigger Necrogen Mists draw a card. Cycle Tranquil Thicket draw a card. Cast Mox Diamond draw a card. Cast Devastating Dreams/Wildfire/Destructive Force, survive, draw a card. Cast Life from the Loam, get everything back and do it all again? Toss in Dakmor Salvage? I'm hooked baby! This thing is bananas overpowered and will literally bury an entire table in card advantage if left unchecked for even a handful of turns. It pairs stupidly well with cards like Crop Rotation, Knight of the Reliquary, Titania, Protector of Argoth, etc. and it's big enough to tangle with literally anything the turn that you cast it. Otherwise I'll take as many Exploration effects as I can get and even though he naturally offsets his own I don't exactly care. After all, you better believe that I'm going to pair him with Life from the Loam and cycling lands anyways. The card's one and only "weakness" is that it dies to removal at no significant benefit as putting an extra land from your hand into play is marginal at best. Much like Consecrated Sphinx people will kill it if they're able to as they'll surely lose otherwise. This is literally the only thing preventing The Gitrog Monster from being an A+ bomb auto-include in any deck that could reasonably support it. Make no mistake though; the card is still outrageous. There aren't many 3-5 CMC cards that you can blindly run out and outright win games with and this certainly qualifies as one that can. We haven't seen a card with a power-level this high in a long time and it would ridiculous for any avid multiplayer Mage to forgo acquiring them. This is exactly what you want to be doing in a multiplayer setting.
Closing Thoughts:The Gitrog Monster is among the strongest cards in the set and has limitless competitive applications in Life from the Loam style decks as far as I'm concerned. Otherwise both Altered Ego and Anguished Unmaking are legitimately amazing spells that could realistically make the cut in any deck of their respective colors. I think that Vindicate is insanely overrated and that far too few Mages appreciate just how powerful a 3 mana unconditional, instant-speed, exile spell actually is. Otherwise I love me some Clones in multiplayer, especially ones that do silly things in Prime Speaker Zegana + Sylvan Primordial decks.
Artifact
Brain in a Jar: "Brain in a jar" is an accurate description of the people who think that this is a powerful Magic card. A slow, awkward, inconsistent version of Vedalken Orrery that "color fixes" doesn't entice me in the slightest and for the life of me I don't understand why anyone would want to play with this trash. Unlike Æther Vial this can't be used to protect your key spells from counter magic and the fact that it can't be used to cheese 0 CMC spells (such as Restore Balance) is a total drag. I also want to stress that you need the spells to already be in your hand which, quite frankly, is laughable. If it were a Birthing Pod of sorts then maybe you could do something cool with untapping effects (such as Hidden Strings and Turnabout) but as it stands a huge % of the time you're simply going to charge the Jar for no effect. The Scry activated ability is reminiscent of Jar of Eyeballs in that it's heinously weak and unlikely to provide serious value in a typical multiplayer match (or any match for that matter). Obviously the idea here is that you can use it to regulate the counters but that's marginal value at best. Even in dream scenarios where you find yourself going-off with Thrummingbirds/Unwinding Clocks/Inexorable Tides (or whatever) this is is still going to be a far cry from overpowered given that you still need the right spells in your hand to abuse it. Between the card disadvantage, the insane time and mana requirements and the conditional nature of the effect there's significantly better ways to go about winning MP games. If you're well and truly desperate for a way to cast Wrath of Gods at instant-speed then do what you gotta do but make no mistake; this isn't a bomb, it's not "good in EDH" and it's not "fine for casual." It's merely a bad card.
Grade D-
Corrupted Grafstone: Why is this card a rare? It's a freaking conditional manarock. Whatever. In Constructed we have things like Fellwar Stone and Simic Signet that ETB untapped and that always tap for colored mana which makes something like this basically unplayable. There's absolutely no reason to field it over any number of significantly more powerful and consistent alternatives. When it comes to Cube, again, there's no shortage of manarocks that always work and so there's no world in which this makes the final cut. That being said this is an amazing EDH staple. No wait, sorry, I got that mixed up. It's utter garbage in EDH. Anyone lauding its worth in that format is completely off their rockers as far as I'm concerned. Even as someone who routinely fields cards like Fractured Powerstone and Prismatic Lens I have absolutely no clue what anyone sees in this trash. People have read the card text right? You cast it on turn 2 and it doesn't do anything. I don't care if it can tap for mana on turn 4 or whatever. That's meaningless. When I put manarocks in my EDH decks it's so that I can jam them into play early and often and that usually means chaining them together. Your turn 1 Gemstone Caverns, Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, Mana Vault, etc. are frequently used to immediately cast other manarocks and on turns 2-3 it's important to have ones that inherently tap for mana so that you can (for example) chain your Fellwar Stone into your Grim Monolith. The reality is that your graveyard doesn't start with a colored card in it and I want to remind everyone that colorless isn't a color so Fetchlands don't count. Speed and consistency are everything in EDH and I absolutely refuse to acknowledge a ramp spell that doesn't actually accelerate you in the developing stages of the game. Let's call a spade a spade and recognize that "Rampant Growth" is a marginal card to begin with and a conditional Rampant Growth is unplayable trash. There's far too many consistent cards to waste any time with this nonsense. This card will undoubtedly cause a lot of controversy and divide among the multiplayer communities (especially the EDH crowd) but I'm personally of the opinion that that this is the 10th best card for the job.
Grade D-
Magnifying Glass: Maybe you can use this to look for cards that are actually playable. Please don't field this in any format (including EDH) because there isn't a universe in which "9 mana draw a card" qualifies as a playable Magic card.
Grade F
Tamiyo's Journal: This card is unplayable trash in every format including EDH. Don't like it? Go write in your journal about how the big mean Internet man yelled at you for all I care. One the primary reasons why I write these reviews is to spare people the embarrassment of investing any time/money/energy into obvious traps such as this and let me be the first person to assure you that this card is horrifically bad. For the low-low price of 11 mana and 4 turns you too can Concentrate! Sounds really freaking terrible when you put it that way doesn't it? I'll spare us all the trouble of comparing it to cards like Mind's Eye and Staff of Nin and address the reasons why this card still sucks for colors like Red/White that don't have much access to card draw/tutoring. I'm positive that as some people were reading this entry they were also thinking to themselves "we obviously knew that it was weak for Black/Blue/Green but you never stopped to consider its applications for Red/White." Wrong. Even as someone who plays Daretti, Scrap Savant in EDH I can assure that Tamiyo's Journal has no place in any EDH archetype/color combo. It's an incredibly unreliable form of tutoring, a heinously weak form of card draw and EDH isn't so slow that you can spend 7 mana over 2 turns to draw a card. Even if Wizards prints some stupidly powerful form of Clue generation (they won't) you'd still have to draw both cards in your 100 card singleton deck (not going to happen) and even then, so what? Congratulations, you've assembled a specific 2 card combo to build your own Sidisi, Undead Vizier. In what Universe is that a powerful line? Even if you could magically draw Bygone Bishop (or whatever) every game your "combo" isn't remotely close to powerful/unfair/broken and if that's not enough to convince you that this card is hot-garbage then I don't know what is. People often makes logical leaps in the vein of "powerful forms of card draw win games therefore I must run card draw" and ignore the fact that ultimately your goal is to win the game of Magic. The result? They trick themselves into running cards that cannot possibly win games of Magic. If you don't own/can't afford/can't get access to other forms of card draw play something else! If your opponent is paying three mana to draw twelve cards you fire back by paying thirteen mana to draw four cards then you're still going to lose. Given a lack of alternatives don't look for substitutes; simply add powerful cards that fill other roles.
Grade F+
Closing Thoughts: Another set where every Artifact is a steaming pile of trash that won't make the cut in bad Limited decks.
Land
Choked Estuary et al: These "show lands" (or whatever) are relatively consistent early on but quickly become Guildgates as the game progresses. This reduces their effectiveness in Control/Ramp decks that are seeking to cast powerful 5-6 drops on curve but makes them relatively decent in faster combo decks. Given that they're not Fetchable and lose value as the game progresses (whereas most gain) this makes them relatively weak options as multiplayer games tend drag on much longer than duels. It's also less important to have a fast start in multiplayer and since you can typically afford to "waste" your first turn with an ETBT land it's usually better to field something like Dragonskull Summit that will still have value in the mid and late stages of the game. Granted most of this is trivial nonsense because when it comes to your manabase people are more-or-less forced to play with what they own and/or can afford. Graven Cairns could be the best card for your deck but if it's 8 bucks whereas Temple of Malice is 1 then price will win out over functionality. In that sense I struggle to give lands functional grades because telling someone that Misty Rainforest and Underground Sea are good cards doesn't magically enable them to afford either. "Show lands" such as Choked Estuary don't stack-up well compared to many of the "good" dual lands and since they're only a slight improvement over the bad ones I wouldn't advise anyone to shell out a bunch of cash for them for the purposes of casual play. Assuming that they cost 5 bucks (or whatever) I'd rather jam some Dimir Aqueducts in my brews and put that money to better use.
Grade D+
Drownyard Temple: I completely misread this card when it was initially spoiled and thought that was some horrendous Delirium enabler. In hindsight I don't know what the Hell that I was thinking since there's no way Wizards would ever print something that weak at rare. It's at times like these that I wish that I was a drinker so I could drown my embarrassment away but unfortunately that's not in the cards. Anyways, now that I actually understand what this card does my opinion of it has vastly improved. While it may not seem like much it's an extremely unique card in the sense that it's ramp that doesn't require spell slots in your lists. In the context of brews with cheap discard outlets such as Faithless Looting, Merfolk Looter, Oona's Prowler, etc. you can bin these early on and return them on turn ~3 in addition to your land for the turn. Oh, did I forget to mention that you can do this at instant-speed (i.e. at end of turn) to bluff removal/counters/etc. until then? No? Because you can! Most of you undoubtedly realize that a colorless Manalith would be unplayable trash in every format but that's not what we're talking about here. Drownyard Temple, unlike actual ramp, doesn't consume spell slots and can be cast at instant-speed once the coast is clear. Whereas running 4x Fellwar Stone not only carries a legitimate deckbuilding opportunity cost but it also "lowers the shields" with respect to removal. Conversely if your 24-26 land deck has some cheap discard and some Drownyard Temples then you still get the ramp (albeit less quickly and consistently) without having to allocate any space for them. It's not amazing ramp by any means but remember that we're talking about a land that ETBU and that taps for mana. Who cares if you have to use them as normal lands? Who cares if you aren't able to recur them early on? It doesn't exactly matter now does it? Moreover it's important to stress that when you loot + recur these not only are you ramping but you're also effectively drawing a card. It's not much but hey, it's something! In addition they're relevant for decks with a lot of mass land destruction and basically anything with a bunch of Smallpoxes, Armageddons, Smokestacks, Wildfires, Possessed Portals etc. will probably want at least 1 of them (if not 4). Now, I'm clearly not suggesting that you should add cards like Faithless Looting and Merfolk Looter to generic decks just so that you can support these but if you're going to run those kinds of cards anyways then that's where Drownyard Temple should enter the equation. Even if you can't afford to run the full four 1-2 probably isn't going to kill your manabase and "free" ramp is almost always going to be awesome. Finally, for those of you who still aren't convinced it's important to remember that the closest proxy to this effect is Gemstone Caverns which is an A+ bomb in every multiplayer format. Clearly the Temple is many orders of magnitude weaker but Magic doesn't have many "free ramp lands" that allow you to break the 1 land per turn rule (without the help of cards like Exploration). The ability to turn a generic land that ETBU and that taps for mana into a legitimate ramp spell (that even draws card!) is more-or-less unheard of and the condition is rather trivial to meet in my opinion. Its applications may be niche but they're undeniably powerful.
Grade C+
Forsaken Sanctuary et al: Guildgates are fine if you can't afford anything else. They get the job done which is all that matters. They obviously have to be awarded a low grade because the cards themselves are quite weak but please don't feel ashamed about having to play them if that's all that you can afford. That's perfectly reasonable.
Grade D-
Warped Landscape: Not even the most warped metagame could support this trash. Don't field it anywhere (even EDH).
Grade F-
Westvale Abbey/Ormendahl, Profane Prince: Man this card is f***ing sweet! Bah, my bad, too much time spent hanging around profanityprofane princes. Between cards like Secure the Wastes, Tempt with Vengeance, Sylvan Offering, Lingering Souls, Siege-Gang Commander and Prossh, Skyraider of Kher amassing an army of 5 or more creatures is a reasonably simple task. All things considered the Prince here's a solid finisher in that he's a giant, hasted, flying, indestructible and lifelinked beater that kills in 2 hits. That doesn't exactly leave much room for interaction now does it? Much like Gavony Township the Abbey here doesn't eat actual spell slots in your decks and since it's a land that ETBU and that taps for mana there's very little risk associated with jamming one into your brews. Unlike the Township I sincerely doubt that any deck will want to run 3-4 (I'm thinking 1, 2 tops) but as a last resort I don't see a compelling reason to exclude this from your token decks unless your mana requirements are especially strict. It's never going to be your Plan A but come turn 7-8 if you've got nothing but some Increasing Devotion dorks sitting around why not convert them into a threat that can pressure people in a meaningful way? With respect to the "tap 6 lands and pay 1 life to put a 1/1 into play" you'll obviously activate it some % of the time but let's not make mountains out of moguls. It's an extremely minor upside at best and odds are it won't be relevant in the vast majority of your games. Still, hey, you're not paying anything for the effect so as long as your deck want to plop a big dumb flier into play you may as well take the free 1/1s where you can get them.
Grade C
Closing Thoughts:Drownyard Temple is stellar for players who build a lot of MLD, Stax, graveyard-based and/or looting decks and I highly recommend acquiring them at your earliest convenience. Free ramp isn't something that gets printed very often making it one of the most unique and powerful lands that we've seen in many sets. Otherwise Westvale Abbey is perfect for Token decks and/or for Control players in the market for a low-opportunity cost finisher. Adding 1-2 (or even 3-4!) to any 1-2 color deck realistically carries very little risk and/or opportunity cost making this is a relatively safe investment with long-term competitive applications.
Closing Thoughts
Shadows Over Innistrad will go down as a wild success in my books as the overall power-level of the set is completely off-the-charts. Ever color except Red received multiple competitive playables and the gold card were on a entirely different tier from the ones that we've seen in recent sets. Moreover, SOI broke the trend of sets not containing powerful utility and/or cheap 2-3 CMC threats that scale well as the game progresses. I like the balanced mix of spells and creatures and there's ton of new, unique effects that seem extremely competitive for players of all skill levels. The only significant strike against the set is that Red received nothing beyond a Tormenting Voice reprint but I'm more than willing to overlook that flaw given its net contributions to the multiplayer scene as a whole. I'm ecstatic to try a host of new cards in dozens of archetypes which is head-and-shoulders above where I was at with Oath of the Gatewatch.
Thanks! You and/or anyone else should feel free to shoot any constructive criticism my way. I'm always trying to improve my process in order to provide the highest quality product possible.
Let's not forget how good a B grade truly is, this is a card that smashes face in fair games and is the next best thing to something that shouldn't have been printed. I like this card a lot and echo the sentiment in your review. Keep this card on your radar for when the price drops below $2.50/card.
Let's not forget how good a B grade truly is, this is a card that smashes face in fair games and is the next best thing to something that shouldn't have been printed. I like this card a lot and echo the sentiment in your review. Keep this card on your radar for when the price drops below $2.50/card.
Yeah I can't stress enough how "free" it is to add zombies to your deck when cards like Wight of Precinct Six, Fleshbag marauder, Corpse Augur, Graveborn Muse, Gray Merchant of Asphodel and Sidisi, Undead Vizier are being printed. These are not "good zombies for my zombie tribal deck." These are good cards for my good deck. I'm already happily playing them as-is so Wizards keep throwing me bones like Unholy Grotto and Relentless Dead then you better believe that I'm going to snag all of that sweet sweet value for myself. I've been dying for a durable 2 drop for my Gray Merchant decks that isn't Bloodghast (BLOCK DAMN YOU!) and this is so much better than what I could have ever hoped for. That being said I can't in good conscience give a Grizzly Bears an A Grade which is why I felt that a B was more appropriate. The card is very good but it's not like a Humility that you can blindly jam in a White deck for devastating results.
This is definitely a better way to do these...they'll actually get done now and it won't be this colossal p.i.t.a. for you. Brilliant!!
I understand 'Tickling your inner Johnny' but I look at Mindwrack Demon and all I see is average-power-level midrange beater whose best case seems to be avoiding unplayableness to achieve (frankly) mediocre stats. I'm pretty underwhelmed by this guy in almost any constructed application I can think of, but particularly multiplayer where his 'chances' are worst.
It might be a badÆther Vial for spells but it's still an Æther Vial for spells. There are specific scenarios in which this thing "taps" for more mana than a generic mana rock.
While true I still think that the "winning line" is to add a card like Fellwar Stone to your deck that will consistently provide you with ramp + color fixing. The bad doesn't outweigh the good in this instance, at least not in my opinion. At 2 to cast + 1 to activate + the requirement of the spells already being your hand it just doesn't feel powerful enough to justify the (in all likelihood) 4 deckslots that the card would require. Much Æther Vial this card loses almost all of its effectiveness over time and so any deck that wants to see it want to see it on turn 2 and that means playing the full 4 which is a very taxing requirement. I think that you'll will significantly more games jamming Fellwar Stone/Mind Stone/Basalt Monolith/whatever into your decks and running that out early on instead. I get it, they're very different cards, but I still think that you win significantly more games when your turn 2 play is Fellwar Stone.
This is definitely a better way to do these...they'll actually get done now and it won't be this colossal p.i.t.a. for you. Brilliant!!
I understand 'Tickling your inner Johnny' but I look at Mindwrack Demon and all I see is average-power-level midrange beater whose best case seems to be avoiding unplayableness to achieve (frankly) mediocre stats. I'm pretty underwhelmed by this guy in almost any constructed application I can think of, but particularly multiplayer where his 'chances' are worst.
I could be convinced that the card is a D but that won't stop me from trying to make him work. He's an aggressively costed, defensive 4 drop who provides immediate value and who combos naturally with everything that I want to be doing in my Black decks. Much like Bloodline Keeper he comes with some nice flying defense and it's fairly trivial to enable him if you can curve a Buried Alive into the guy. Things like Nighthowler and Sphinx of the Steel Wind pull double duty as card types and the existence of Fetchlands (even bad ones such as Evolving Wilds) means that getting the 4 card types isn't especially difficult. All-in-all I think that this card is enough better than most other Ds that it warrants a higher grade and a fair amount of testing.
I'm ready and willing to be wrong about that one but I love me some self-mill and I'm glad that Black is finally starting to get some awesome Mythics again.
In fair deck the Duskwatch Recruiter is pretty good I think.
A C- is a surprisingly decent grade for a middling ramp spell/draw engine which is a testament to how relevant the card is against aggressive, creature-based strategies. When you're competing with the likes of Utopia Sprawl, Carpet of Flowers, Exploration, etc. it's extremely difficult for 2 CMC ramp to compete to the point where you almost need to be o-par with a card like Wall of Roots that offers both defense and ramp. I don't think for a second that the Recruiters are a competitive staple that should be played in a wide variety of Green decks (especially in formats such as EDH) but if you're desperate for early-game board presence then it's certainly a decent, budget-minded option that isn't horrifically weak in the later stages of the game (like, oh, say, Strangleroot Geist is).
Let's not forget how good a B grade truly is, this is a card that smashes face in fair games and is the next best thing to something that shouldn't have been printed. I like this card a lot and echo the sentiment in your review. Keep this card on your radar for when the price drops below $2.50/card.
I've been dying for a durable 2 drop for my Gray Merchant decks that isn't Bloodghast (BLOCK DAMN YOU!) and this is so much better than what I could have ever hoped for.
Hey, I've even played Cuombajj Witches at BB in black decks that want to max out on devotion. This is obviously a huge step up. I assume they'll eventually notice that they've given a lot of these the zombie creature type and the next good black multiplayer creature will be a thrull or something.
Part of me is secretly hoping that Tamiyo's Journal turns out to enable some sort of fun clue combo engine. In some ways I can kind of see it as Awakening Zone + Skullclamp in a single card, but of the ways to be degenerate with Skullclamp, that combo is way the hell down the list.
Lots of good points about Avacyn. I think that she's one of the most interesting cards in the set but at the same time it's hard to pin down exactly how good she is until we know more about how the "flip rules" will be changed (if at all). If I can trigger her nuke 5 times by saccing a bunch of Mitotic Slimes to a Viscera Seer then that makes a very cool finisher for swarmy token decks but if that gets "patched out" due to rule changes then she loses some of her utility as a finisher. I agree with what what mitch1238 is saying about jamming her in blink decks although we do have to be careful about nuking our own Eldrazi Displacers for 3 so you do have to be vigilant when adding her to your deck. Ultimately I think that Avacyn will be good in decks that build with her in ming but weak as a generic 5 drop if you play "just because."
Avacyn says transform at beginning of next upkeep.
I don't think multiple BOOM is possible.
For each creature that dies her final triggered ability will trigger at the beginning of the next upkeep. It's the same thing with Thraben Sentry:
If multiple creatures you control die simultaneously, Thraben Sentry's ability will trigger that many times. Each time one of those abilities resolves, you may transform the creature, even if it's Thraben Militia at the time.
While this wasn't especially easy to trigger with the Sentry since the creatures had to die simultaneously the fact that Avacyn has a delayed trigger makes it significantly more likely that you'll be able to pull the old fliperoo multiple times at the beginning of the next upkeep.
Looks like we have a ruling: "Here's the new rule: if a DFC has an activated or triggered ability that transforms it, that permanent transforms only if it hasn't since that ability was put on the stack."
Looks like we have a ruling: "Here's the new rule: if a DFC has an activated or triggered ability that transforms it, that permanent transforms only if it hasn't since that ability was put on the stack."
Figured as much and updated my review to reflect the new rulings. It doesn't change anything since I was already anticipating this nerf but at least we know now!
I like both of those. Elusive Tormentor is going to be fun, I think. Not sure what a deck would look like yet, but I like the looks of it. Thing in the Ice is going to be solid in blue in the same way that Crush of Tentacles is. Not super hard to get the most out of it, and gives you a really solid board presence as well. Soul Swallower seems like it has some potential, too. Getting Delirium online isn't exactly trivial, but it's not like Fetchland (even a Terramorphic expanse or something) + Sakura-Tribe Elder + like Harmonize isn't a totally feasible line of play for a green deck, and then you're 3/4 of the way there. I wish he triggered more often, though. Only on your upkeep sucks some of the fun out of it.
I like both of those. Elusive Tormentor is going to be fun, I think. Not sure what a deck would look like yet, but I like the looks of it. Thing in the Ice is going to be solid in blue in the same way that Crush of Tentacles is. Not super hard to get the most out of it, and gives you a really solid board presence as well. Soul Swallower seems like it has some potential, too. Getting Delirium online isn't exactly trivial, but it's not like Fetchland (even a Terramorphic expanse or something) + Sakura-Tribe Elder + like Harmonize isn't a totally feasible line of play for a green deck, and then you're 3/4 of the way there. I wish he triggered more often, though. Only on your upkeep sucks some of the fun out of it.
I'm probably going to take pass on reviewing cards like Soul Swallower unless there's sufficient interest from the community to see those kinds of cards analyzed. To me it's a Managorger Hydra/Forgotten Ancient with a steep requirement for absolutely no benefit and in the context of a generic fatty that dies to removal that makes it a D tops.
Greetings fellow multiplayer enthusiasts! My name is Prid3 and I'm a 15+ year veteran of the game who's been playing Magic: the Gathering since the Winter of 2000. While I've followed and played the game at a competitive-level across every major duel format the bulk of my personal playtime has been spent at kitchen tables duking it out in large multiplayer matches. Be it Cube, Constructed or EDH I've played tens of thousands of hours of multiplayer Magic in my life and have since made it my goal to impart some of that knowledge and experience on to you. As such this set review is solely focused towards the multiplayer crowd with an emphasis on budget-minded, fair Magic that adheres to a Legacy-esque banned/restricted list. While I'll still touch on degenerate combos and unfair applications I understand that not everyone takes the game as seriously as my own circles and as such I try to balance my reviews to ensure that they're applicable to players of all levels. From turn 1 kills to turn 20 slugfests I'll do my best to keep these relevant for anyone and everyone who routinely sits down at a multiplayer table.
Before moving on I'll quickly touch on some important book-keeping notes that you should be made aware of before delving deeper into this set review. First, know that I never evaluate every single card in a new set. There's absolutely no reason to repeat "this card was designed for duel formats/Limited" hundreds of times so don't expect me to touch on chaff. 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. Moreover, bear in mind that all ratings discussed in this evaluation should be taken with a grain of salt. It's virtually impossible to give a card a grade that accurately reflects its worth in Cube, Constructed and EDH and so for the purposes of this guide I slant it mostly towards Constructed. I'll touch on Cube and EDH whenever I feel that it's especially applicable but otherwise my primary emphasis will be on a card's 60-card Constructed applications. Finally, 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 that completely warp the game around them. These are format definers that figure to dominate games and crush opponents who aren't playing with cards of a similar power-level. These are must-have competitive staples with limitless potential. Think Gray Merchant of Asphodel, Humility, Consecrated Sphinx, Sylvan Primordial, Repercussion.
B: Extremely formidable cards that will allow you to pull ahead of the pack. Although they lack the visceral overpowered-ness that A's possess winning decks should still be clamoring to field them. This makes them top-priority acquisition targets for players of all skill-levels. Think Syphon Mind, Earthquake, Wrath of God, Rite of Replication, Woodland Bellower.
C: Powerful cards that winning decks will want to play. A list full of these won't crush a table but a solid foundation of C's should be good enough to keep you competitive. Think Wight of Precinct Six, Clever Impersonator, Taurean Mauler, Thragtusk, Restoration Angel.
D: Marginal playables that can flesh out your lists in the absence of reasonable alternatives. I strongly encourage you to focus your efforts elsewhere if it's a realistic option since they're unlikely to yield impressive win %s.
F: Extremely weak cards that shouldn't be played under any circumstances.
+/-: Used to denote a better or worse N. That is, a B+ represents a strong B whereas C- implies a weak C.
White
Always Watching: While I've never been especially fond of Anthem effects such as Spear of Heliod I've always liked vigilant threats in multiplayer. Trading/racing isn't feasible and so anything that allows you to remain defensive while mounting an offense is a big game. At the same time I've never been able to justify fielding things like Heliod, God of the Sun since they're worthless in multiples and rarely earn their slots which means that by-and-large my experiences with the keyword have been rather infrequent. As such I'm relatively excited to fool around with this card if only to get a better sense of just how powerful mass Vigilance can be. While neither half of the card is bonkers and the nontoken clause is disappointing I'm still going to try 1-2 in my creature-based White decks since I have to imagine that it'll provide solid value on average. This isn't going to be a staple and you'll never need more than 1-2 total since the card doesn't stack well but as long as it's cheap I don't see the harm in picking some up to jam in your midrange brews. Don't expect miracles or anything but insofar as you're just looking for an easy way to pump the team, get in for damage, threaten good blocks, etc. this seems like a solid option.
Grade D-
Angel of Deliverance: Even though cards like Arcbond exist at 8 CMC plus the Delirium condition this will never see any form of competitive play. I know most of you are probably thinking "by the time you cast your 8 drops you'll have Delirium fool" but I guarantee you A) not every deck is going to have an easy time meeting the condition, B) it'll matter for things like Animate Dead and C) the card isn't nearly good enough to justify having any sort of drawback.
Grade F
Archangel Avacyn/Avacyn, the Purifier: Defensive "trap cards" have never, I repeat, never seen serious competitive play regardless of the magnitude of the effect. Cards like Fresh Meat are simply too expensive, inconsistent and clunky to reliably counter Wraths and Avacyn will share the same fate. Even the likes of Boros Charm, Comeuppance and Angel of the Dire Hour are unable to shimmy their way into the best EDH/Cubes/Constructed decks so please don't value the effect higher than you should. What this means is that as a generic "gotcha!" spell Avacyn isn't likely to make waves since this type of effect isn't competitive. Sure, every now and then you'll get someone with it but far more often than not you'll be forced to cast her for very little value given that you can't exactly spin your wheels doing nothing trying to blow someone out. Now, the beauty of a card like Avacyn (as opposed to card like Comeuppance) is that even if you're forced to run her out for very little value she still has an insane flipped mode that isn't all that hard to trigger. In an ideal world you'd support her with cards like High Market, Viscera Seer and Evolutionary Leap but even if you don't "a creature must die" isn't much of a requirement and nuking the board for 3 is a big game. Obviously there's multiple instances where you can kill Avacyn while her triggers are on the stack (when she initially ETB, when she tries to flip at the beginning of the next upkeep, etc.) but I personally don't put much stock in the "it dies to removal" argument and so I appreciate that Avacyn doesn't suck in the ~65% of games where you're forced to cast her on turn 5 for "no value." Flamebreak is no joke and the 6/5 flier is a sizable threat in addition to whatever value she's already provided. This is what separates Avacyn from the other "bad" trap cards and why she's going to be a competitive finisher. Even if you're unable to reliably extract value from the defensive aspect of the card she's more than capable of mounting a stellar offense as well.
Where I think Avacyn will shine is in dedicated blink decks. Much like Huntmaster of the Fells Avacyn benefits immensely from being flickered into play over and over again given that both of her modes have extremely high upside. I'm already envisioning decks in which she's fighting alongside cards like Eldrazi Displacer and Eerie Interlude and let me tell you that it seems absurd. I've said this before and I'll say it again but I have absolutely no idea why cards like Anger of the Gods see next-to-no multiplayer play at any level. The effects have always been completely absurd in my experience and bear in mind that I'm the one playing with and against ultra-degenerate combo decks among other things. If they're still good enough for me then I have to imagine that they're insane for the average player. Anyways, her initial ETB trigger makes it nigh impossible for people to attack you (assuming that you have a decent board state) while also making all forms of removal awkward as heck. Otherwise flipping her is clearly insane and I can already envision scenarios in which you Eldrazi Displacer your newly flipped Avacyn, the Purifier (trigger still on the stack) to re-trigger Archangel Avacyn's ETB trigger to ensure that the rest your team survives the "Flamebreak." I know that I just used the word trigger 1000 times but believe me when I say that you can make some sweet sequences with Avacyn + blink effects. I cannot stress how insanely strong it will be to Eerie Interlude your entire team with the Flamebreak trigger on the stack to create absurd board swings.
Grade B+
Bygone Bishop: If Mentor of the Meek is any indication of this card's power-level then it's safe to say that things are looking slightly less dismal for White's card draw woes. While I've had mixed feelings about the Mentor's value in the past we've since let bygones be bygones and I'm now relatively happy to field the thing in basically any token/swarm deck. 2 is clearly a lot more than 1 but White isn't exactly swimming in a sea of alternatives and the effect is just barely powerful enough to get my attention. While the Bishop doesn't work with tokens/flicker effects it's still powerful in the sense that there's no strict timing requirements to paying the cost. This means that you can spend your initial turns casting creatures and building up a defense only to pop your Clues as needed in the mid-to-late stages of the game. Furthermore it has immense synergy with multi-bodied threats such as Squadron Hawk and "creature spells" such as Fleshbag Marauder and so there's clearly powerful applications for this card. It even stacks well in multiples and the 2/3 flying body is relatively defensive which is perfect when you're mostly looking to sit back, draw cards and play for the lategame. Build-around-me draw spells will never be on the same level as cards like Rhystic Study/Syphon Mind and the 3 CMC upper-limit further restricts deckbuilding by a fair amount however so we're not looking at a bomby draw engine ala Outpost Siege. 2 is also a lot of mana to pay to conditionally draw a card which means that while the Bishop will likely be a small player in the upcoming expansion it's a far cry from a star. I still think that this is a relatively powerful Magic card that avid White mages should make a concerted effort to acquire.
Grade C-
5x Swamp
4x Plains
4x Orzhov Guildgate
4x Scoured Barrens
4x Orzhov Basilica
2x Mistveil Plains
1x Vault of the Archangel
4x Wight of Precinct Six
4x Squadron Hawk
1x Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim
4x Bygone Bishop
4x Nighthowler
4x Fleshbag Marauder
4x Hallowed Spiritkeeper
2x Merciless Executioner
4x Corpse Augur
2x Utter End
2x Bonehoard
1x Whip of Erebos
Declaration in Stone: My TL;DR stance on spot removal in multiplayer is that "it's weak but necessary" which is why I typically review cheap, interactive spells that could potentially see play. While this one's competing with the likes of Swords to Plowshares, Path to Exile and Grasp of Fate at 2 CMC it's still reasonably powerful and should see a fair amount of play as a result. Sorcery-speed removal is obviously significantly weaker than instant-speed alternatives given that you typically never want to use your spot removal until you're absolutely required to. Cards like Grasp of Fate obviously break that mold but's it's difficult to compete with Swords to Plowshares when it comes to fielding spot removal in a Constructed environment. Where I expect this card to see the most play is in formats such as Cube, EDH and 2HG where you're typically happy enough to field any 1-2 CMC exile effect. The Sorcery-speed restriction is a huge pain but the card is still extremely efficient and will answer just about everything. It also randomly hoses Tokens which is always sweet and the Clue doesn't matter in the slightest. All-in-all it will never be a Constructed staple due to the existence of Swords and Grasp of Fate (and no multiplayer deck wants ~12 spot removal spells) but it will have a home in singleton formats.
Grade B
Descend Upon the Sinful: I'll be the first to admit that this isn't quite what I had in mind when I fantasized about a pack of Angels coming down on me for being a naughty boy. Final Judgment 2.0 has arrived and the new name is a welcome sight for the Cube and EDH crowds. Unlike most other Delirium cards the additional effect is insignificant so please don't feel as though you need to build with it in mind. A free 4/4 flier is "fine" and at 6 CMC you'll naturally receive it a fair amount of the time but you don't need to go out your way to enable it. With respect to the card's overall power-level 6 is way too much to pay for a generic mass removal spell which means that you should only field this thing in metas swarming with recursion and whatnot. When push comes to shove it can't exactly compete with the likes of Grasp of Fate and Wrath of God in a vacuum and so the exile clause has to be very relevant to justify the pricetag. In that sense you should probably stick to cards like Day of Judgment if you can help it unless you well and truly need a permanent answer to critters and are willing to pay out the nose for it.
Grade C
Eerie Interlude: Unfortunately this isn't the interlude for my set review and you're still stuck with me for the next hour or so. Ghostway is already a multiformat all-star and so a "strictly better" version is a welcome sight. On the surface this type of spell might seem like a glorified "Divination" but in practice it can frequently enable disgusting sequences of draws in which you (infinitely) bounce armies of critters with vast arrays of enters the battle (ETB) triggers. Given that it can flip Manifested creatures, reset Wall of Roots, blank removal and a whole host of other applications there's no end to the value that this 3 CMC instant can provide. Common cards to pair this type of effect with include Archaeomancer and Skullwinder in order to "go infinite," especially if cards like Peregrine Drake are also floating around. Still, even if you ignore degenerate applications there's nothing wrong with bouncing your Wall of Omens, Oreskos Explorers, Blade Splicers, Restoration Angels, Wingmate Rocs, Sun Titans, Linvala, the Preservers, Luminate Primordials, etc. for insane value. As we saw with Eldrazi Displacer in the previous set this is the type of card that can see serious competitive play in any format and at any skill level while simultaneously being a card that works in any creature-based deck of any combination of colors. If you're someone like me who loves investing in cards that will have legitimate competitive applications in countless shells/archetypes for years to come then this is a no-brainer pickup.
Grade C+
10x Forest
5x Plains
4x Selesnya Sanctuary
4x Krosan Verge
1x Gavony Township
Creatures (26)
4x Wall of Blossoms
4x Wall of Roots
3x Wood Elves
3x Skullwinder
2x Fierce Empath
1x Angel of Finality
1x Trostani, Selesnya's Voice
1x Temur Sabertooth
1x Whisperwood Elemental
1x Woodland Bellower
1x Linvala, the Preserver
1x Sun Titan
1x Sylvan Primordial
1x Luminate Primordial
1x Sandstone Oracle
3x Swords to Plowshares
4x Eerie Interlude
1x Aura Shards
2x Cathars' Crusade
Hanweir Militia Captain/Westvale Cult Leader: Turn 1 Carpet of Flowers/Utopia Sprawl, turn 2 this, turn 3 Sylvan Offering/Secure the Wastes/Spectral Procession is interesting but at the end of the day it's still a slow, conditional token producer. I like that the flipped mode has a sizable body but not enough to justify fielding her in traditional token shells.
Grade D+
11x Forest
4x Canopy Vista
4x Sunpetal Grove
2x Gavony Township
1x Westvale Abbey
Creatures (5)
4x Hanweir Militia Captain
1x Trostani, Selesnya's Voice
4x Carpet of Flowers
4x Utopia Sprawl
4x Sylvan Offering
4x Secure the Wastes
2x Intangible Virtue
1x Aura Shards
4x Benevolent Offering
2x Parallel Lives
2x Increasing Devotion
2x Shamanic Revelation
2x Cathars' Crusade
2x Hour of Reckoning
Nahiri's Machinations: I like the effect well enough in formats such as EDH and/or in Sun Titan decks but not enough to waste a card on it. While cool it's far too low-impact and conditional to justify fielding it.
Grade F+
Odric, Lunarch Marshal: As with Nahiri's Machinations this is a cool effect but not one that most decks can justify wasting an actual deck slot on. Bluntly put I've never actually seen a Concerted Effort-like spell cast in a multiplayer setting in my ~16 years playing and have no reason to think that I ever will. They're notoriously overrated and rarely-if-ever provide meaningful value.
Grade D+
Open the Armory: Any reliable 1-3 CMC tutor is conceivably playable and Open the Armory is no exception. Between Umezawa's Jitte, Sword of Fire and Ice, Loxodon Warhammer, Bonehoard, Angelic Destiny and even Batterskull there's countless amazing targets to fetch and you never know what the future will hold. That being said I will caution you that Steelshaper's Gift is currently played far too liberally and (more importantly) in too large of quantities. Dedicated Equipment/Aura decks can easily support 1-2 of these but please don't start every White deck with 4 or anything. Equipment are slow + mana-intensive to begin with and require creature-based support to accomplish anything meaningful. Drawing an Open the Armory at some point is fine and even if you don't happen to see one, hey, that's fine too. It sure beats drawing 2-3 Equipment and 2-3 of these and not having anything relevant to do with your resources. I will stress that any cheap, reliable tutor is playable though and so I do encourage most people to grab a playset or two even if they don't plan on using them right away. At some point you'll probably want to play a deck with a fair amount of Auras/Equipment at which point having access to some of these could easily be relevant. As long as you don't go overboard and slot 4 into every list they should perform adequately.
Grade C-
Thraben Inspector: While it's no Wall of Omens (which isn't an especially competitive card to begin with) it's still an Elvish Visionary for your mass blink decks, your sacrifice decks, on and on and on. Moreover, if you desperately need a 1 drop (for whatever reason) and can't afford Weathered Wayfarer and/or Mother of Runes then this is likely your 3rd best option in a vacuum assuming that you're not looking for lifegain. I'm not a fan of running marginal 1 drops in general and I would never play this under normal circumstances but a cheap ($ wise) 1 drop that cantrips is somewhat tolerable.
Grade D
Topplegeist: I've tested Citadel Siege in small numbers in various defensive decks and never found the card to be especially powerful. It's certainly decent at keeping single, large beaters at bay but in general it doesn't do enough to justify its deckslot. There is some advantage to playing a 1 CMC creature version of the spell, namely recursion effects such as Ojutai's Command and Sun Titan. That being said a 1/1 for 1 isn't even close to being a relevant card in a MP setting and the ETB trigger is basically worthless so suffice it to say that the Geist here isn't exactly toppling his competition. I'm fine with running out cards like Mother of Runes or Weathered Wayfarer early on but I'm not especially interested in working for my 1 drops. While this functions as a passable form of defense in decks with cheap spells/self-mill/etc. in general I'd advise you to steer clear of these marginal defensive threats. It's not reliable (or even good) early nor is it fantastic later on and so if you really want this effect just run the consistent, durable Enchantment.
Grade D+
Closing Thoughts: The safest investment by a country mile is Eerie Interlude which is unquestionably powerful and playable in countless archetypes. It's a no-risk acquisition relevant in any creature-based shell (regardless of colors) that will still provide solid value 5 years from now. Be it Cube/Constructed/EDH it's fantastic in any MP setting and so you can't ask for much more than that. Next there's Declaration in Stone which I expect to be solid for the EDH/Cube communities but less for for Constructed where you can simply field 4x Swords to Plowshares. Otherwise tutors are always safe bets which makes Open the Armory a solid option and ultimately one that I do recommend acquiring at some point (although it's not a top-priority). Finally, Archangel Avacyn is a stupidly strong 5 drop for creature-based shells, especially ones that can blink her at instant-speed. Continuously Boros Charming your own field while Flamebreaking everyone else's is a ridiculously nasty combo in multiplayer that creature-based strategies will struggle immensely to beat.
Confirm Suspicions: I suspect that most people will overrate this hunk of junk and let me confirm that it's unplayable. 11 mana to counter a spell and draw 3 cards is laughable so please don't go treating this as a generic Cryptic Command alternative. It's far too slow and weak to compete with Blue's best draw and counterspells so go ahead and ignore it.
Grade D
Engulf the Shore: I've said it before and I'll say it again; mass bounce (not named Cyclonic Rift) is criminally underrated in MP settings. Not only does it act as temporary Wrath of Gods to stifle aggression but since most playable Blue creature have powerful ETB triggers it's almost always beneficial to bounce your own dudes. In the case of cards like Archaeomancer that means infinite instant-speed mass removal spells and you better believe that I'm going to build and play that deck. Otherwise you can always choose to build your decks with the effect in mind and field things like Hunted Phantasm that circumvent it. Obviously we've seen mass bounce in Blue before except it's never been this fast nor this cheap. As much as I love Whelming Wave I can't hold it up alongside Fact or Fiction and/or Forbid and Evacuation is a bit too slow at 5 CMC. By the way, you better get used to seeing that Engulf + Fact or Fiction combo because the ability to choose between casting your mass removal spell, your draw spell or even your counterspell is going to leave most people feeling helplessly engulfed. Between Vedalken Shackles, Flow of Ideas and Scourge of Fleets "Island matters" is also starting to become a real thing for Blue to the point where it's starting to seem worthwhile to exclude big mana such as Cloudpost and Glimmerpost from your lists. Shackles alone was never quite good enough to justify their dismissal but now I'm not so shore. For what it's worth I still think that you can play Cloud + Glimmer in your Engulf the Shore decks but at that point you're probably better off with Whelming Wave or Evacuation so mise. For anyone wondering "but muh Evacuations" just think about the difference between Wrath of God and Hallowed Burial. Power rarely offsets a loss of speed given 2 similar effects and so any time that you can get a cheaper version of an already powerful spell then you're probably looking at a winner. I personally see this as a staple for mono-Blue decks and highly recommend picking them up at some point. Between Wrathing the board, recurring my sweet ETB triggers and abusing Archaeomancer to no end this is exactly where I want to be in a MP setting.
Grade B-
24x Island
Creatures (14)
4x Augur of Bolas
4x Archaeomancer
2x Mulldrifter
1x Ætherling
2x Scourge of Fleets
1x Diluvian Primordial
4x Preordain
2x Counterspell
1x Cyclonic Rift
1x Curse of the Swine
2x Vedalken Shackles
4x Engulf the Shore
4x Fact or Fiction
2x Rite of Replication
2x Flow of Ideas
Epiphany at the Drownyard: Sorry to drown your hopes but this is the kind of card that looks a lot better than it actually is. Just bear with me for now because I'm sure that most of you will reach the same epiphany soon enough. First and foremost your opponent gets to choose the pile which means that unlike similar spells there's no guarantee that you'll get the exact card/effect that you're digging for. This is why cards like Steam Augury are many orders of magnitude weaker than ones like Fact or Fiction and typically don't see much play as a result. Moreover when you're casting it for low sums of mana (X<=3) you're not getting much value as compared to cards like Thirst for Knowledge and Fact or Fiction and it doesn't exactly scale well from there either. When all's said and done you need to be jamming this at X>=5 but at that point why not have cards like Blue Sun's Zenith in your deck?. After all, X draw spells typically dig you into everything you need and then some and since you'll typically overdraw in the process you can always discard anything that you wanted in your bin. Bear in mind that you have to be playing a deck that cares a fair amount about its graveyard to justify fielding Epiphany at the Drownyard whereas generic draw spells such as Mystic Remora, Rhystic Study, Trade Secrets, Recurring Insight, etc. don't have that requirement. Blue already has plenty of powerful draw spells that are always good and that don't leave anything up to chance. Clearly Epiphany at the Drownyard is still a reasonably powerful card and so it won't get an abysmal grade but given that Blue is the king of card draw there's very little incentive to field these kinds of marginal alternatives. Mystic Remora is 50 times better and costs a buck so why bother? If you want to draw some cards and bin some junk for Treasure Cruises, Reanimation, whatever then so be it but given that cards like Trade Secrets can do it for 3 mana I can't envision myself ever reaching for these.
Grade C-
Essence Flux: First of all ignore the sentence about Spirits. It's irrelevant. The real meat of this card is that it's a pseudo-Preordain that has significantly more value later on when you can blink things like Diluvian Primordial or even an Evoke'd Mulldrifter (yes, you get to keep your 2/2 flier!). Early on you can hit things like Augur of Bolas, Sea Gate Oracle, Treasure Mage, etc. and later on you can blank removal spells while copying absurd ETB triggers which is always sweet. Now, obviously the problem with this card is that Preordain is relevant 100% of the time whereas this thing isn't. Sometimes you have no creatures in play or the targeted creature is killed in response. Otherwise it can't be used to fix your early draw steps which is where reliable cantrips shine. It's not a perfect card by any means but Preordain will never trigger a Scourge of Fleets for you so I don't hate running cards that actually scale well as the game progresses. It's a not going to be a competitive staple but a couple can go long way given enough ETB triggers and the Evoke'd Mulldrifter interaction alone is enough to get my juices running.
Grade D+
Forgotten Creation: As much as I like this card on a conceptual level it's too slow to be legitimately competitive. A free, continuous self-mill/Dredge//Madness/Delirium/Reanimator enabler is sweet but at the same time a 4 mana 3/3 that doesn't do anything the turn that cast it isn't going to make the final cut in most lists. Oh, and no, I don't even care that "it dies to removal" nor do I think for a second that people will actively gun it down. I just don't want a 4 CMC card in my deck that doesn't do anything. Maybe on the following turns I'll get some value from it but even then it's an all-or-nothing deal and if your hand has good cards in it (hint: winning decks typically have a lot of them!) then you don't always want to swap for a new one at random. I understand that a good deck will have mostly good cards and you can argue "pitching a good hand is fine because you'll draw into another one" but experienced Mages already know that you typically develop strategies based on information that you collect as the game progresses. Tossing your well-laid plans to the wind carries inherent drawbacks that aren't easy to overlook. Otherwise the card doesn't do much when your hand is low/empty and Skulk is probably the worst evasion mechanic ever printed which is all the more reason why this card doesn't excite me. I'm not trying to downplay the fact that binning 6 cards is sweet when your deck has cards like Animate Dead, Eternal Witness, Past in Flames and Treasure Cruise but I also want to stress how cards like Careful Study reliably bin them immediately and for significantly less mana. Believe me when I say that I like the effect, I just want it on something faster and more reliable.
Grade C-
Geralf's Masterpiece: It's my unfortunate duty to inform you that Geralf's master work is a master flop. Even in Ux self-mill decks powered by cards such as Life from the Loam/Squee, Goblin Nabob/Veilborn Ghoul this still isn't where I want to be if I'm looking to close a MP game out. At 3 cards per pop it's realistically not much of a Reanimator/Madness/Dredge enabler either and as a generic threat it's hard to imagine getting much mileage out of a 5 mana ~4/4 flier in an average MP match. Conditional + awkward cards almost never get there (even if they're relatively powerful) and I have no reason to believe that this card will fare any better. The throwback to Griselbrand is certainly nostalgic but suffice it to say that the cards are worlds apart with respect to their competitive applications.
Grade D
Jace, Unraveler of Secrets: Blue has plenty of access to powerful Upheaval-like effects to protect Planeswalkers and if you're ever able to combo his emblem with an Arcane Laboratory (or any variation thereof) then that's game. Outside of Blue there's things like Armageddon, Wildfire and Doubling Season that make it relatively easy to combo-off so suffice it to say that Jace could easily find himself in various competitive combo shells. While I don't consider him to be remotely playable as a generic threat the one-two punch of Arcane Lab into Emblem is certainly powerful enough to justify building around and I wouldn't be surprised to see him crop up every now and then as a result.
Grade D+
Manic Scribe: Even if we put terrible mill decks aside (they're not competitive) mass mill does have niche competitive applications worth discussing. Cards like Animate Dead, Wight of Precinct Six, Undead Alchemist and Consuming Aberration can do silly things with the effect so there are legitimatly powerful reasons to field these kinds of enablers in multiplayer. Hell, I've even played a Chancellor of the Spires deck full of Mortivores (there's a ton of them now) so believe me when I say that I can appreciate the fact that some people want to fill graveyards early and often. The biggest strike against this card is that a 2 mana 0/3 is missing a point of toughness to be a relevant blocker and as a general rule of thumb enablers that need enabling tend to suck. Whereas Altar of the Brood and Mesmeric Orb only ask for a bit of mana and a card Manic Scribe makes you jump through hoops. On that note if you're in the market for a powerful Delirum enabler to support this guy look no further than Mesmeric Orb because that card is gas! Anyway, I hope it's obvious that this type of threat has absolutely no generic value so unless you're trying to go very deep on "graveyards matter" then this probably isn't the card for you. If you want something for a dedicated mill deck I'd recommend taking a pass on this one unless your list is already weak to removal. There's typically no incentive to open yourself up to it if you can help it and mill decks usually want a lot of mass removal to begin with.
Grade D-
Ongoing Investigation: Let's investigate this card's playability together shall we? Military Intelligence provides the same effect free of charge and sees next-to-no play because it's far too weak and unreliable to compete with the likes of Mystic Remora and Rhystic Study. Well wait, what about a conditional Treasure Trove? That card sees play right? Yeah... no, it really doesn't. Not ever. A weak hybrid of a cards that sees no play is, you guessed it, unplayable trash. Investigation over.
Grade D
Pieces of the Puzzle: While some of you may be puzzled as to why I'm even reviewing this card it won't take me long to put the pieces together for you. Careful Study and its many variants have long-since been employed by Reanimator strategies to cheat giant fatties into play as early as turn 1. Storm decks have historically also relied on self-mill effects to fuel cards like Pyromancer Ascension, Deep Analysis and Past in Flames into order to enable win conditions such as Guttersnipe, Jeskai Ascendancy and Mind's Desire. Pieces of the Puzzle may not be the ideal candidate for the role but it's clear that it has some potential to act a self-mill enabler for any "spells matter" archetype. It's true that it's slow, conditional and that it can't pitch key cards stranded in your hand but given that it can mill over new ones and/or dig into missing pieces it's conceivable that this type of spell could see play. We're not looking at the next Frantic Search or anything but basically any "spells matter" deck could reasonably field a small number of these to decent effect.
Grade C-
6x Island
4x Dismal Backwater
4x Dimir Guildgate
1x Swamp
Creatures (17)
4x Hapless Researcher
4x Merfolk Looter
4x Sphinx of the Steel Wind
3x Archetype of Endurance
1x Tidespout Tyrant
1x Blazing Archon
4x Ponder
4x Preordain
4x Careful Study
4x Reanimate
4x Breakthrough
4x Exhume
2x Victimize
2x Pieces of the Puzzle
Pore Over the Pages: Poor Frantic Search, how far you're fallen. Land untappers are extremely scary in a world of cards like Tolarian Academy, Gaea's Cradle, Cloudpost, Cabal Coffers, Nyktho,s Shrine to Nyx and even Karoos such as Dimir Aqueduct are totally (un?)reasonable to abuse. Otherwise looting cards is a mainstay for Blue as it enables any number of "graveyard matters" shenanigans such as Animate Dead, Past in Flames and/or Treasure Cruise. While I think this card is ultimately too slow and fair to compete with cards like Fact or Fiction and Peregrine Drake it combines multiple unfair elements into one cards which makes it a stronger enabler than it might otherwise seem. Not enough to make it a staple in anything but it's definitely closer than what you might expect.
Grade D+
Rise from the Tides: Given enough Careful Studys and Thought Scours this could theoretically put a ton of tokens into play, especially if you have cards like Recoup, Mizzix's Mastery and Past in Flames to recur it. In that sense it's kinda like a bad Empty the Warrens but is has the advantage of still being a relevant draw even if you haven't cast (m)any other spells that turn. That swing alone could easily turn the tides of a game and give rise to a new champion. At 6 CMC it'll never be a true staple for Storm decks (it's no Mind's Desire) but as a value finisher I could see it working as a 1-2 of. This is especially true for decks with cards like Jeskai Ascendancy that can do silly things with mass amounts of creature tokens as chaining draw spells into Treasure Cruises could easily leave you with more than enough power to clobber the field in a single swing.
Grade C-
Thing in the Ice/Awoken Horror: Ludevic's Test Subject is back and this time he's better than ever. I have a thing for these defensive, scaling threats that act as a reasonable deterrents early on that eventually awaken into legitimate horrors as the game progresses. I'm somewhat embarrassed to admit that I've historically given these marginal playables more credit than they deserve since realistically they shouldn't be your go-to 2 drops unless you're well and truly desperate for something to fill out the lower-half of your curve. That being said Thing in the Ice may finally break that mold since this card strikes me as being significantly more powerful than his brethren. As a matter of fact that's putting it lightly because from where I'm sitting we're looking at a competitive staple. As it sits the only (budget-minded) 2 drops that I'm happy to blindly jam in my spell-based decks are things like Merfolk Looter and Augur of Bolas and the difference in power-level between them and Thing in the Ice is gargantuan in my mind. Given the choice of "marginal value" or "bomby finisher + mass removal spell" there's nothing to even consider. For starters the baseline stats are passable in the sense that very few 1-3 CMC beaters will be able to slog past an 0/4 Wall (especially if you're curving out with other threats as well). While that isn't a relevant consideration for everyone it certainly is for players who operate within aggressive multiplayer metas. Developing an early board presence can be crucial to one's success in those spheres which and that's where cheap threats shine. While the card lacks immediate (or even short-term) impact the prospect of generating a 2 CMC Scourge of Fleets is busted and given that Blue is the king of cheap cantrips casting 4 spells isn't an especially difficult requirement. Even if you assume 1 spell per turn flipping this on turn 6 is still reasonable and realistically speaking you can easily get there in 2-3 if you're making a concerted effort to do so. It's also relevant to note that unlike similar cards this one doesn't require further mana investments (not directly anyways) which means that you get to keep playing Magic while building towards your "bomb." This crippling weakness is ultimately why cards like Ludevic's Test Subject aren't actually playable (despite my historic comments suggesting otherwise) and I'm glad to see that Wizards really pushed this little guy. Even if people kill it, meh, I'm not going to lose sleep over having my 2 drop die to removal. If people want to 1-for-1 me in the color that has access to cards like Mystic Remora, Rhystic Study and Recurring Insight then so be it. After all, unlike similar cards you're never going to sink ~12 mana into the thing only to have it die for no value so you're never truly getting blown out if/when this bites the dust. Your deck will have other threats/relevant spells and if people want to axe your 2 drops then God bless. I've said it before and I'll say it again but I'd rather cast a creature that can stomp an entire table but that dies to removal (Master Transmuter) than a creature that always provides value but that can't possibly win a game of Magic (Solemn Simulacrum). The former unquestionably wins more games in the long-run so even if it leads to more variance/risk there's no point in playing it safe if it doesn't convert to game wins. While this card is a relatively weak topdeck in the later stages of the game it's an absurd early-game threat that isn't useless as time passes which is everything that I'm looking for in a cheap multiplayer threat. Even if it's a touch slow and liable to draw removal 2 mana for a 7/8 "Scourge of Fleets" is absolutely nuts and so I'm willing to undertake a bit of risk. I will stress that this card does require support and that you can't blindly jam it into any Blue deck and expect it to kick some serious butt. Still, in the context of a spell-based deck this is easily the single strongest threat that you can run out on turn 2 in my opinion.
Grade B-
18x Island
4x Evolving Wilds
2x Terramorphic Expanse
Creatures (14)
4x Thing in the Ice
4x Chasm Skulker
2x Talrand, Sky Summoner
4x Psychosis Crawler
4x Brainstorm
4x Preordain
2x Cyclonic Rift
4x Trade Secrets
2x Forbid
4x Rite of Replication
2x Recurring Insight
1x Blatant Thievery
Trail of Evidence: The last thing that Blue "spells matter" decks need are do-nothing Enchantments that require a ton of mana. I'm fine with something like Jace's Sanctum but in general I'm looking for a Talrand, Sky Summoner as opposed to a Treasure Trove.
Grade F
Welcome to the Fold: There's absolutely no reason to field this over Clone, Control Magic, Rite of Replication, Mind Control etc. and no amount of "Merfolk Looters" will change that.
Grade D
Closing Thoughts: Engulf the Shore is a no-brainer acquisition for dedicated Blue mages and I want to add that people seriously need to start fielding more than 1x Cyclonic Rift to their Control decks to deal with opposing creatures. That doesn't cut it people! Otherwise Thing in the Ice is bonkers in "spells matter" decks but it's not worth the ridiculous pricetag that it's currently sitting at. Siege Rhino saw all the Standard/Modern play in the world and it never cost 20 bucks so you can probably wait until it plummets in value before acquiring them. I do think that the card is bonkers though as a 2 mana "Scourge of Fleets" is an insane amount of value for a single card.
Asylum Visitor: Even as someone who loves playing with cards like Smallpox, Delirium Skeins, Pox, Necrogen Mists, Bottomless Pit, Death Cloud and Mindslicer I can't imagine actually finding room for this type of threat in any of my Constructed lists. As a generic value engine it's lackluster compared to bombs such as Waste Not and Geth's Grimoire and win conditions such as Shrieking Affliction and Quest for the Nihil Stone frequently kill too fast for a card like this to matter. It also doesn't protect you in the same way that cards like Ensnaring Bridge and Noetic Scales do nor does it answer opposing threats on the board. The obvious advantage to this type of threat is that when you Delirium Skeins/Mindslicer with a Necrogen Mists/Bottomless Pit in play then you're probably going to start drawing a ton of cards and since you get to Madness the thing out you also get to offset most of the card disadvantage that you inflict upon yourself. The problem that I have with this plan is that I'd rather have something that could actually win the game in the short-run like Quest for the Nihil Stone since I don't exactly want to play a long game after pissing people off with mass discard spells. I want to kill them as quickly possible before they band together to eliminate me. Early beats + Poxes/Death Clouds + global hate doesn't leave you with much life to fool around with and so jamming a Baleful Force into play is significantly less appealing than it otherwise could be. It's even a creature that dies to removal whereas these kinds of decks can typically ignore it altogether. It's not as though I even want creatures in my 16 Wrath.decks and so you can probably see why I'm so torn on this card.
While I don't think that this will ever be a competitive staple for the reasons outlined above I still think that this is a powerful magic card. Baleful Force is criminally underrated in my opinion and much like his Forceful brother I expect this thing to shine in formats like EDH where health totals are higher and where it's more realistic to jam things like Sire of Insanity, Cabal Conditioning, Myojin of Night's Reach and Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur into your lists. When supported with the likes of Necrogen Mists, Bottomless Pit and Mindslicer it's very reasonable to think that you could lock most players at 0 cards and bury them in a sea of card advantage. While this plan could obviously still work to some extent in Constructed you'd have to know a lot about your metagame and the speed of the decks involved. This isn't what you want against aggro/midrange but it's stellar against combo/control given enough discard effects. Again, I wouldn't put on the same level as Waste Not or Geth's Grimoire but it's a reasonable alternative if you're looking for something new. I do expect it to be quite powerful in EDH though so I do recommend acquiring this guy if that's your format of choice.
Grade C
Behold the Beyond: Lo and behold Wizards has reverted back to their original stance of "Black tutors have to suck now." Guess they learned their lesson with Dark Petition. Why people think that this card is playable is beyond me because this thing is a steaming pile of garbage. Increasing Ambition and Diabolic Revelation both see next-to-no play and while they're not strict upgrades I can assure you that pitching your hand is a very real cost. Even in formats like EDH this will never enable truly degenerate combo decks given that you can already field Sidisi, Undead Vizier as your general and she has multiple 1(ish) card combo kills in Buried Alive and Ad Nauseam. I'm not denying that on some level it reads "untap, you win the game" but Sidisi does the same thing for 2 less mana and since you always have access to her it's a no-brainer as to why BtB isn't going to pass muster. I get that not everything has to be turn 4 wins and blah blah blah but I can't let every random expensive spell get a free pass in EDH and act like they're all somehow amazing. I haven't played either of the aforementioned tutors in years, both seem vastly superior to me and since I can't imagine running all 3 I can't envision the scenario where this would see play. For the record the card that you should all be playing is Necrologia which for some unknown reason still isn't in 100% of Black EDH decks. Why? No frikkin clue but it sure as Hell should be. You're allowed to run cards like Vampiric Tutor, Demonic Tutor, Diabolic Intent, Praetor's Grasp, Necropotence, Phyrexian Arena, Syphon Mind, Graveborn Muse, Necrologia, Sidisi, Undead Vizier, Rune-Scarred Demon and that's just a sample of the Black cards let alone what colors like Blue and Green also have to offer. Who's still wasting their time with 5+ mana tutors? I obviously can't stop any of you from playing this thing if you still want to but let's not kid ourselves into thinking that we've stumbled upon a powerful new tool for combo/control decks. It's the 10th best card for the job at best.
Grade D
Biting Rain: Toxic Deluge is oppressive, Massacre is unbelievably strong, Drown in Sorrow is marginally playable, Infest is bad, Biting Rain is nigh unplayable.
Grade D
Call the Bloodline: Who you gunna call? Not the Bloodline apparently. I've build Veilborn Ghoul decks in the past (usually in Faithless Looting decks with Squee, Goblin Nabob) and I can assure you that they're not very good. A 1 mana 1/1 lifelink isn't much of a card unless you're buffing/Equipping it and even if you produce 10 of them it's not as though you'll typically have good attacks on anyone. Given enough time, mass removal, mana, etc. you can eventually grind everyone out but in the real-world someone else will always enact a more powerful gameplan before you can seal the deal. Given enough Bloodghasts and Lords this might be fine in vampire tribal but even then I'm skeptical.
Grade D-
Creeping Dread: I've been playing the Megrim deck since before some of you were born and as much I'd like to say that this is a playable enabler + win condition for dedicated discard decks the dreaded reality is that it isn't. I have a creeping suspicion that most of you will disagree with me but there's no doubt in my mind that this card is unplayable. Cards like Shrieking Affliction, Quest for the Nihil Stone, Waste Not and even Wheel of Torture are significantly cheaper and more reliable than Creeping Dread and I'm unwilling to bet on hitting enough lands to nuke everyone down in a reasonable time-frame. It's a ridiculous gambit to make given that other cards are guaranteed to do their jobs. Moveover it's too slow to act as reliable discard engine and can't compete with the likes of Necrogen Mists and Bottomless Pit on that front. Discard decks need to be fast and brutal because people are going to hate your guts for fielding mass discard and you better believe that they'll team-up against you. Time isn't on your side and even if a card is "efficient" deckslots wise if it's not efficient mana wise then it's garbage. Believe me when I say that I understand that Shrieking Affliction into Necrogen Mists is 2 cards whereas this is one but I'm telling you that you'll die if you tap out for a 4 drop that doesn't do anything. You turn 4 play needs to be a Pox, Mutilate, Ensnaring Bridge, Noetic Scales or some other card that actually affects the board. I'd bet on my life that I've cast more Waste Nots, Smallpoxes, Poxes, Mindslicers, Geth's Grimoires, etc. than most of you combined and so if I'm sitting here telling you that this isn't a card that I'll be acquiring and fielding myself I hope that speaks volumes as to how marginal that it is.
Grade D
Diregraf Colossus: First Relentless Dead and now this? The hits just keep on coming for the Zombie tribe. Most of you are probably aware of the Carrion Feeder + Gravecrawler synergy by now and since the Crawler is cast from your bin this particular interaction seems rather absurd with Diregraf Colossus kicking around. It's also important to note that threats like Fleshbag Marauder and Sidisi, Undead Vizier are "spell creatures" and that both aspects of casting and sacrificing zombies works well with him. Early on it means that you get more tokens and later it just means that you get a larger threat. In that sense the Colossus fits the bill of a cheap threat that's relevant both early and late which is exactly what I'm looking for when I'm trying to flesh out my lists. "Corpses matter" is even a recurring theme in the Zombie tribe as seen on cards like Corpse Augur and Tombstone Stairwell. The latter packs a serious punch in decks with cards like Vengeful Dead and/or ones pairing with Carrion Feeder with Gravecrawler so you can see where the various synergies start to come into play. Otherwise we mustn't forget good old Gray Merchant of Asphodel who is the unquestioned king of the Zombie underworld. All-in-all this makes for extremely interesting possibility with respect to building Zombie tribal decks.
Grade C+
20x Swamp
3x Unholy Grotto
2x Crypt of Agadeem
Creatures (30)
4x Carrion Feeder
4x Gravecrawler
3x Wight of Precinct Six
3x Diregraf Colossus
4x Fleshbag Marauder
3x Vengeful Dead
4x Grave Defiler
4x Gray Merchant of Asphodel
1x Sidisi, Undead Vizier
1x Shadows of the Past
1x Buried Alive
1x Tombstone Stairwell
2x Dictate of Erebos
Elusive Tormentor/Insidious Mist: "Unkillable" threats such as Sengir Nosferatu have always been some of the most overrated multiplayer cards in the game. I'm not saying this with with insidious intent so please wipe those misty eyes of yours and hear me out. I'm sure that we've all dreamed of scenarios in which they dominate creature combat and/or removal warfare but in practice they're far too slow and weak to actually seal the deal. In that sense any plan that involves beating a table down with a small, resilient threat is inherently doomed to fail since it will virtually never get the job done in a reasonable amount of time. While it's true that MP games are long and grindy in general they're not so weak that a durdly threat will be able to smash ~15 times before someone else is capable of enacting a significantly more powerful gameplan. In practice these evasive, resilient beaters never get there and pinning your hopes and dreams on them can only end in disaster.
Clearly that means that Elusive Tormentor is unplayable right? ... right? WRONG!
Insidious Mist is bonkers. Yeah, you heard me, bonkers. The combination of Hexproof + Indestructible + Unblockable makes Insidious Mist one of the premier multiplayer finishers in the game. Slap a Nighthowler/Bonehoard on that baby and watch as people futilely resist your onslaught. You obviously have to tread carefully when you're playing with a card this scary and that frequently means treating it as a 7-8 drop that you can "protect" by flipping multiple times (in response to removal) if needed. Still, even if this thing costs you 8 mana and 4 cards it doesn't freaking matter if you curved Mutilate into Bonehoard into one of these. This card, when supported, can reliably clear a multiplayer table out and that's not a feat that most threats can boast. I cannot stress how stupidly uninteractive and powerful this combination of keywords is because so many decks will literally be drawing dead to this type of threat. Sure, you can interact with cards like Bonehoard easily enough but Black is the king of creature revival and given that it can recur both Insidious Mist and Nighthowler I think that a lot of players will struggle to topple this ensemble. Regardless of what you pair it with it's going to make people miserable and I'm excited to see if people can come up with something better than mass removal + "Mortivores" to seal the deal.
Before I finish this entry I will caution everyone that this card is not being graded in a vacuum. If you simply add this to your deck as a generic threat then don't come tormenting me about how it sucked. It's being graded under the assumption that you, as a smart deckbuilder, will build around the fact that your deck now has an Indestructible + Hexproof + Unblockable threat that it can abuse to smash the rest of the table to pieces with powerful Equipment/Auras/etc. I'm giving this card an extremely high grade because it's such a unique threat with an absurd amount of potential both now and in the future. I personally consider this to be a must-have staple since there's literally no other card in the game that brings such a stupidly powerful + uninteractive combination of keywords together for such a low cost (cards and mana wise). I don't really care who/what/where/when/how/why you slap on it but insofar as your deck is looking to Voltron up a creature and smash in the Red Zone this is easily one of the strongest finishers in the game. Obviously the card needs support and only works with a relatively small subset of cards (hence why it's not getting an A) but let me assure you that this card is going to be miserable to play against.
Grade B
24x Swamp
Creatures (15)
3x Reassembling Skeleton
4x Nighthowler
4x Fleshbag Marauder
4x Elusive Tormentor
4x Mind Stone
1x Shadows of the Past
4x Underworld Connections
4x Bonehoard
4x Mutilate
1x Whip of Erebos
2x Crux of Fate
1x Decree of Pain
Ever After: 6 mana is too much to pay for a 3-4 mana effect. Wake the Dead and Victimize are already good enough if you're trying to revive a 2-card combo such as Triskelion + Mikaeus, the Lunarch or Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker + Pestermite and if you're simply in the market for a generic "value" revival spell then Living Death is probably where you want to be. I would never put this in my decks over cards like Reanimate, Animate Dead, Dance of the Dead, Necromancy, etc. and even in formats like EDH it's not as though you want a jillion revival effects to begin with. I understand that those cards only revival a single threat whereas this recurs 2 but for 6 mana? Really? I'll take any threat from any GY for 1-3 mana than 2 from my own for 6.
For the record I don't value the "self-recursion" aspect of this card at all. I think that "Beacon of Unrest" style recursion is hideously overrated and rarely-if-ever relevant. If your deck is able to produce infinite mana, sure, Blue Sun's Zenith has a relevant upside. Maybe your Constructed deck has Trade Secrets which frequently allows you to draw the entire thing. Again, I can see how how this type of recursion would be relevant for those kinds of decks as well. For the 99.999999% of other decks it's completely trivial to the point where it doesn't even warrant discussion. It doesn't add any significant value to the card and shouldn't factor into the equation at all. If the base is bad then it's unplayable. Period.
Grade D+
From Under the Floorboards: Hmmm... a 5 CMC Zombie spell that gains life. Where have I seen that before? Like most X spells this one has theoretical implications for multiplayer but in practice I don't expect it to make any serious breakthroughs. Colour me surprised if it ends up pulling the rug from under me. With respect to the base card having your Sorcery-speed threat ETBT is a major drawback since unlike a duel if you ever find yourself vulnerable you're usually looking at ~10 damage per circuit as opposed to ~4. Whereas the 3 life would typically offset that (or close enough) it doesn't scale nearly well enough when more adversaries are involved. While the Madness mode enables you to circumvent these awkward timings I dislike its conditional aspect and do consider that to be a serious drawback. I hate having to support marginal cards and you really do have to build with this card in mind. If the payoff was there then sure but it's not as though we're talking about turn 2 Oona's Prowler into turn 3 Animate Dead on Griselbrand or anything. This is where I personally think that Madness falls short (especially in colors like Black) because as long as you're playing with cheap + consistent discard outlets why go for value when you can play to win? Hell, it's not even an auto-win when X = [insert arbitrarily large number] whereas cards like Exsanguinate are. Sorry team but From Under the Floorboards is a marginal value threat at best.
Grade D+
Indulgent Aristocrat: I was overly critical of Vampiric Rites back when I initially reviewed it and I've since happily played as a 1-of in various lists. It's not amazing or anything, no deck realistically wants more than 1-2 copies but ultimately it's still a decent form of card advantage, lifegain and a way to dodge exile effects.
Oh, sorry, were you expecting me to actually review this card? Ok, ok, fine! I won't starve you any longer so let's indulge that insatiable appetite of yours. Vampire.deck isn't really a "thing" in multiplayer despite the fact that the tribe is loved in general. However, the fact that Bloodghast is a free recursive threat makes this type of effect intriguing and once you toss Blood Artist and Pawn of Ulamog onto the grill suddenly you're cooking with gas. Moreover, the tribe has recently received an insane buff in the form of Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet which has blown all of my expectations of him away. He's now on my short-list for best Black 4 drops period. Toss in a bit of card draw and some removal and you're suddenly looking at a sweet deck. Alternatively you can go the lifelink route with cards like Vampire Nighthawk and Kalitas which also seems reasonably powerful.
The problem? This style of deck costs a million dollars for no good reason. I'd post a budget one if I could but I legitimately can't so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
Grade D-
17x Swamp
4x Evolving Wilds
2x Leechridden Swamp
1x Bojuka Bog
1x Crypt of Agadeem
Creatures (25)
2x Indulgent Aristocrat
2x Viscera Seer
4x Bloodghast
4x Blood Artist
4x Pawn of Ulamog
2x Bloodline Keeper
2x Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
4x Malakir Bloodwitch
1x Anowon, the Ruin Sage
4x Dark Prophecy
1x Buried Alive
3x Contamination
2x Grave Pact
Mindwrack Demon: This is going to be one of my most played cards from this set and my mind is already wracked with different shells that I intend to test him in. I don't know if it'll get there in the end but I love the idea of jamming a giant flier who self-mills with a seemingly manageable drawback in a whole host of Bx archetypes. Fetchlands, powerful tutors, creature spells and more all take some of the bite out of his requirements and I love the idea of slotting him in decks with powerful forms of recursion such as Animate Dead and Living Death (which want to be playing with cards like Buried Alive regardless). It's also important to remember that other colors house powerful self-mill effects such as Faithless Looting, Careful Study, Satyr Wayfinder, Mulch, Grisly Salvage and more all of which are amazing cards in Reanimator decks to begin with. They're also cheap enough to make Mindwrack Demon a consistently safe 4 drop (or so I hope) that won't be taxing your life total too badly early on. Otherwise Black will always welcome more ways to fuel its Oversold Cemeterys, Animate Deads, Vengeful Pharaohs, Demigod of Revenges, on and on and on and since it doesn't have an especially high quantity of relevant 4 drops that it can currently field I'm very excited to see how this card will play out.
Global Grade C-
8x Forest
1x Swamp
1x Mountain
4x Evolving Wilds
4x Savage Lands
4x Golgari Rot Farm
Creatures (22)
4x Satyr Wayfinder
4x Skullwinder
4x Mindwrack Demon
1x Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
1x Chromanticore
1x Woodland Bellower
1x Sire of Insanity
1x Bane of Progress
1x Massacre Wurm
2x Sylvan Primordial
1x Sepulchral Primordial
1x Sphinx of the Steel Wind
4x Utopia Sprawl
4x Grisly Salvage
4x Buried Alive
4x Living Death
8x Swamp
6x Mountain
4x Evolving Wilds
2x Terramorphic Expanse
4x Rakdos Carnarium
Creatures (26)
2x Grenzo, Dungeon Warden
2x Reassembling Skeleton
1x Tymaret, the Murder King
2x Alesha, Who Smiles at Death
4x Nighthowler
3x Crow of Dark Tidings
4x Mindwrack Demon
1x Olivia Voldaren
4x Demigod of Revenge
1x Sidisi, Undead Vizier
2x Duplicant
3x Faithless Looting
1x Oversold Cemetery
2x Buried Alive
1x Whip of Erebos
2x Living Death
1x Palace Siege
Relentless Dead: Now this is a card that excites me. My absolute favorite multiplayer threats are things like Scavenging Ooze and Stoneforge Mystic that are just as good on turn 8 as they are on turn 2 and Relentless Dead certainly qualifies as a relevant threat at every stage of the game. After all, anyone can reach 6 mana and cast a card like Consecrated Sphinx and so the real struggle that us deckbuilders face is how we go about filling the bottom half of our curves. Luckily for us Black mages Wizards has been relentlessly pushing the Zombie tribe for the past few years and about the only thing that it's been missing is another powerful 2 drop that it can pair with Wight of Precinct Six. Between Unholy Grotto, Gravecrawler, Carrion Feeder, Fleshbag Marauder, Lord of the Undead, Corpse Augur, Vengeful Dead, Graveborn Muse, Gray Merchant of Asphodel and Sidisi, Undead Vizier it has the rest of the curve covered and so I'm ecstatic to have a new BB 2 drop that I can blindly jam into my Gray Merchant of Asphodel decks. Cheap, recursive threats are always welcome in Black period given its plethora of cards like Contamination, Attrition and Pestilence and I'm glad to finally have one that can A) block and B) doesn't enter the battlefield tapped. I love that it can naturally recur a ton of creatures that I'm already extremely happy to play and the evasion is a nice bonus if you do decide to pair him with cards like Nighthowler and Bonehoard. My only gripe with this card is that it's a mythic which will undoubtedly balloon its pricetag to unreasonable amounts despite the fact that it's a typical recursive zombie that we've seen hundreds of times before at rare. That being said I still absolutely love the raw power and versatility that it brings to Black decks and I can't wait to jam it into all sorts of brews. I want to stress that there's a ton of archetypes that naturally play a throng of Zombies so please don't think of this as some niche tribal card with limited applications. A huge % of Black's relevant threat base is zombies and so you don't have to work hard at all to get some serious value from the recursion that it offers. This is a must-have staple for any avid Black mage as it will undoubtedly be a major player for years to come. This will become all too apparent the first time that you play a deck with 4x Relentless Dead and 4x Gray Merchant of Asphodel so start brewing boys and girls!
Grade B
21x Swamp
2x Unholy Grotto
1x Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
1x Bojuka Bog
Creatures (30)
4x Wight of Precinct Six
4x Relentless Dead
4x Fleshbag Marauder
4x Diregraf Colossus
4x Corpse Augur
4x Grave Defiler
4x Gray Merchant of Asphodel
2x Sidisi, Undead Vizier
2x Exsanguinate
1x Pestilence
2x Zombie Apocalypse
Sinister Concoction: "BB, Discard a card: Destroy target creature" is mostly unplayable but any cheap discard outlet piques my interest for reanimator strategies. Historically they've employed the services of cards like Putrid Imp and Oona's Prowler to fill that role however neither provides much additional value past their intial discards. Cheap bodies are decent and a 3/1 flier is reasonable deterrent but ultimately they don't accomplish much past the first 3 turns of the game. A hard removal spell is somewhat intriguing on the other hand. It's not as though you're ever planning to cast the fatties trapped in your grip (which means that it's realistically not a 2-for-1) and having a cheap form of interaction can definitely be useful at times. Visible removal such as this can also have relevant psychological applications in the sense that it incentivizes people to focus their attention elsewhere. Attacking into someone who can unquestionably kill your threats is disheartening and often functions as an effective deterrent. This card is also a solid Delirium and Madness enabler which could certainly be relevant at some point in the future. Even if it's not with this set you never know what the future will hold. The self-mill is arguably relevant given that Black is the king of recursion but a single card is marginal value at best which is why I don't put much emphasis on it. All-in-all there's enough niche applications for this card to interest me which means that even though we're not looking at the Black Swords to Plowshares there's definitely room for this type of enabler in multiplayer.
Grade D
To the Slaughter: Diabolic Edict sees no competitive multiplayer play and nor will this. It's too slow, unreliable and the format tends to be significantly more creature-based which makes it that much harder to hit the things that you actually care about. Cards like Toxic Deluge exist for a reason and they blow Edicts out of the water.
Grade D
Tooth Collector: Unlike Mindwrack Demon I don't think that the payoff is worthwhile for a card Tooth Collector. As a a generic 3 CMC removal spell it's a far cry from Fleshbag Marauder/Merciless Executioner and even though its "activated mode" is reasonably powerful I'm not willing to work for a buffed Cuombajj Witches. In MP I want my threats to have relevant + immediate impact as much as possible and -1/-1 to a single threat doesn't even come close to qualifying. That isn't to say that every card has to be a Massacre Wurm but at least cards like Ophiomancer combo with things like Attrition and Contamination to do something reasonably powerful whereas Tooth Collector doesn't possess many relevant, unfair combo/synergy applications. Had it been a 2/3 or something I probably would have tested 1-2 in a shell similar to the one that I posted for Mindwrack Demon but unfortunately at 3 power it doesn't work nearly as well. This is a "close but no cigar" 3 drop and you'll have to pull my teeth before you can convince me to sleeve it up.
Grade D
Triskaidekaphobia: Turn 2 Dark Ritual + 13phobia, turn 3 Pox brings everyone to 13 and I'm going to make it my mission to win with that deck once. I'm certain that it'll take me 50 tries but some day I'll get there. I think that this is a terrible combo card in general and strongly discourage people from trying to use silly things like Soul Conduit and Repay in Kind to try and pick people off. Those decks are slow, unreliable and basically just terrible. Where I like this card is as a generic 1-of in generic decks. Why? Politics! When you have a card that says "people at 13 lose" then the entire table gets to work together to make the dream happen. X burn spells, pump effects, lifeloss, suddenly everyone has a massive incentive to actively use resources to bring people to a specific number. Yeah, sure, they could do it to you too. That's life. It doesn't change the fact that the best use for this card (in my opinion) is to bring some chaos to your games by incorporating a new loss condition. I want to stress that I don't think that this is an actively good card nor do I recommend fielding it in large amounts. Still, I could definitely see myself slotting the 1 in random Black decks if only to mise kills every now and then.
Grade D+
Closing Thoughts: Relentless Dead is a self-recurring (relevant for cards like Contamination) blocker/threat/revival engine that's stupidly good in Gray Merchant of Asphodel decks. It's among the best Black 2 drops in the game and I fully expect it to be a competitive staple for years to come. Otherwise there's Elusive Tormentor which is one of the most hideously uninteractive cards that I've ever seen and I cannot wait to slap things like Nighthowler on it and watch and people are powerless to thwart my Hexproof, Unblockable and Indestructible threat. Otherwise I'm a huge fan of Diregraf Colossus and highly recommend it to anyone who builds Zombie decks on a regular basis. I want to stress that "Zombie deck" doesn't necessarily mean "Zombie Tribal" since there's so many generically powerful Zombie printed nowadays. Things like Wight of Precinct Six, Fleshbag Marauder, Corpse Augur, Graveborn Muse, Gray Merchant of Asphodel, Sidisi, Undead Vizier and many more are objectively good cards that just so happen to have the Zombie subtype. Diregraf Colossus is trivially easy to support if desired and by no means do you have to invest in a bunch lords and/or other "zombie matter" cards.
Avacyn's Judgment: Some people are probably excited to play this in Faithless Looting, Daretti, Scrap Savant style decks but I judge it unworthy. Rolling Thunder is many orders of magnitude weaker than Earthquake mass removal variants in a multiplayer setting and as such I don't see how you could ever find room in your decks for more than a singleton. Trust me, I get it. When you discard this as opposed to an Earthquake you offset the inherent card disadvantage which basically makes it a "free spell." Furthermore, Rolling Thunder doesn't nail your own dudes whereas mass removal such as Blasphemous Act does. Who cares? Mass removal will almost always trump targeted effects in practice because when you need to clear the board you need to clear the board. It's naive to assume that you'll only have to worry about a handful of small threats which you'll be able to remove while preserving your own battalion. More players = more draw steps = more must-answer threats and so you want the nuclear strike as opposed to the RPG. Otherwise deck slots aren't free resources and adding anything to your list carries a very significant opportunity cost. A "free, bad card" is still a bad card and it's always coming at the cost of an actively good one. In that sense I expect people to value this thing much higher than they actually should. It's a marginal playable at best for decks that have a critical mass of discard outlets.
Grade D+
Burn from Within: Sorcery-speed X spells with trivial upsides don't make the cut. Also let's not kid ourselves; this isn't a realistic answer to cards like Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger or Blightsteel Colossus in formats such as EDH.
Grade D-
Devils' Playground: Red generally lends itself well to token strategies because of cards like Tempt with Vengeance, Impact Tremors, Ogre Battledriver and Purphoros, God of the Forge. That being said 6 mana for 4 tokens is a laughable rate compared to what things like Mogg Infestation typically offer and a handful of pings isn't nearly enough to offset that. As a generic threat in a random Red decks this is a far-cry from things like Inferno Titan which ultimately renders it virtually unplayable.
Grade D-
Flameblade Angel: A 6 mana 4/4 flier with a conditional + garbage effect is unplayable trash. Next.
Grade D-
Gibbering Fiend: No, it's not even good in dedicated burn decks. Never field this.
Grade F
Harness the Storm: Good guy Wizards is giving us deckbuilding hints by putting storm in the name so that we don't accidentally get confused. Much like Pyromancer Ascension this style of card has basically no value outside of silly Recoup/Yawgmoth's Will/Mizzix's Mastery/Past in Flames style decks that combo loot spells with rituals to cheese out a win. This card is surprisingly good with Infernal Tutor and since Dark Petition is the new hotness it doesn't seem especially difficult to Petition for a Petition, cast that newly tutored Petition triggering Harness the Storm for a 3rd Petition and well you probably get the idea by now. You need a whack of mana to pull that off but that's where rituals like Mana Geyser shine. I couldn't imagine playing this type of card in any other setting but insofar as you're playing some broken Storm deck then it seems sweet enough.
Grade D-
4x Swamp
4x Mountain
4x Evolving Wilds
4x Dragonskull Summit
4x Temple of Malice
Spells (40)
4x Faithless Looting
4x Dark Ritual
4x Rite of Flame
4x Tormenting Voice
2x Night's Whisper
4x Cabal Ritual
4x Harness the Storm
2x Ill-Gotten Gains
2x Tendrils of Agony
2x Empty the Warrens
2x Past in Flames
4x Dark Petition
2x Mana Geyser
Insolent Neonate: Hapless Researcher sees large quantities competitive play in Reanimator decks and while his insolent companion is weaker he still enables you to pitch a Griselbrand (or whatever) on turn 1 so that you can Animate Dead it on turn 2. It's actually worth noting that discarding second is an advantage when it comes to Dredgers since the ability to pitch + Dredge immediately is incredibly relevant for graveyard-based strategies. As it stands the only consistent 1 CMC loot spell in Red is Faithless Looting (sorry Burning Inquiry, you don't count!) and while cards like Tormenting Voice and Wild Guess are "fine" the difference between 1 and 2 mana is gargantuan in practice. As such I expect this card to see a relatively high amount of competitive play in any deck that's looking to recur a key spell early on. Now, he's clearly worthless in "normal" decks trying to do fair things so please don't look at his Grade and assume that he's some inherent bomb. I'm grading him under the assumption that he's being paired with degenerate recursion to enable fast and/or uninteractive wins at which point the card is quite insane.
Grade B
4x Bloodstained Mire
4x Polluted Delta
4x Blood Crypt
3x Swamp
3x Mountain
Creatures (12)
4x Insolent Neonate
3x Griselbrand
1x Archetype of Endurance
1x Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
1x Tidespout Tyrant
1x Sphinx of the Steel Wind
1x Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
4x Faithless Looting
4x Entomb
4x Tormenting Voice
4x Exhume
4x Animate Dead
4x Dance of the Dead
1x Buried Alive
4x Massacre
1x Diabolic Servitude
Mad Prophet: I like looters more than most and while cards like Rummaging Goblin and Mad Prophet are marginally playable they never make the final cut over cheaper + more reliable alternatives such as Faithless Looting and Tormenting Voice. Realistically speaking you can't play a 4 drop that loots a single card per turn and still expect that compete with the likes of Crypt Ghast and Deathreap Ritual which makes these marginal value engines mostly unplayable (even in decks that care about filling their graveyards).
Grade D+
Sin Prodder: Much like Browbeat this is a card with high-highs and low-lows and I'm very interested in hearing what other people think about it. For starters I think that it's garbage in EDH and nigh-worthless in low-to-the-ground decks since taking 2 to bin Price of Progress is a no-brainer. While I realize that this will never draw you into more lands I do kind of like it in midrange/ramp decks with fatties however. It be will difficult for people to randomly take 6 to prevent you from drawing an Inferno Titan for example and assuming that it survives for many circuits then it could easily nab you 4+ cards. This is especially true for decks filled with spells such as Blasphemous Act that have high printed mana costs but inherent cost reduction mechanics. Taking 1 from Earthquake is nothing but 9 isn't an easy pill to swallow. I get that Sin Prodder's slow and vulnerable to removal but at the same time what Red 3 drops aren't? Goblin Matron if your deck has Goblins and Imperial Recruiter if you have $800.00 burning a hole in your pocket? Clearly we're not talking about the next Outpost Siege and I'm not trying to downplay how unfortunate it is that you'll never be able to draw lands with this guy but a 3/2 for 3 is a decent blocker and drawing ~0.4 cards per turn seems reasonable for Red. Since most of you are probably trying to prod me for a definitive answer by now I'll cut to the chase and provide my final verdict. Ultimately I think that this card is too weak and unreliable to see serious competitive play in any multiplayer format. Your opponents would have to be idiots to forgo taking small amounts of damage in order to force you to bin cards like Vandalblast, Earthquake, Sudden Demise, Mizzium Mortars, Purphoros, God of the Forge, etc. and even though you'll draw a 5+ drops every now and then those will be the exception as opposed to the norm. Otherwise it's important to stress that taking 5-8 from Mana Geyser/Insurrection is still better than losing to them and that you'll also get randomly hosed by lifegain decks that can afford to take the big hits when needed. For all these reasons and more I think that this card is actually quite weak and I feel that most people are overrating it in general. I truly am in interested in hearing what others have to say about it however and encourage everyone to discuss it in the comments.
Grade C
Tormenting Voice: It's no Faithless Looting but Tormenting Voice is still significantly more competitive than most people realize. In fact, I personally consider it to be a must-have staple even at the highest levels of play. While Red's graveyard/combo/prison offerings aren't on the same level at Blue's it's still the second-best color for the job assuming that your goal is to assemble key combo pieces while binning others. This fuels countless "I win the game" graveyard cards such as Animate Dead, Mizzix's Mastery and Past in Flames while also digging for combos/key cards such as Confusion in the Ranks, Sneak Attack and Splinter Twin + Pestermite. Otherwise it fuels oppressive Delve spells such as Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time while also supporting value engines such as Goblin Welder and Daretti, Scrap Savant. These tactics are more are all extremely competitive gameplans in formats such as Constructed and EDH which, again, is why I consider Tormenting Voice to be a true staple of the color. Good versions of the best decks will happily run it and if that's not good enough for you then nothing ever will be.
Grade B
Vessel of Volatility: Cards like Rite of Flame, Seething Song, Simian Spirit Guide, Treasonous Ogre, Mana Geyser and more have been competitive staples across multiple Magic formats for many, many years. From Storm decks to turn 1 Daretti, Scrap Savants in EDH to Comet Storm combo kills there's any number of reasons why you'd 2-for-1 yourself (or more) to accelerate a key threat into play. 5 mana on turn 3 nets you a Sneak Attack + Worldspine Wurm activation, a Confusion in the Ranks, a Siege-Gang Commander for board presence or any number of other powerful sequences. While this ritual is clearly far less abusable than most (it's an Enchantment as opposed to an Instant/Sorcery, it doesn't net any mana the turn that you cast it) I still refuse to discount a cheap Dark Ritual that allows you to jump the curve by 2 full turns. I've used Generator Servant to attack with a ton of hasty Scourge of the Thrones, Inferno Titans and Balefire Dragons in my day and while this card is clearly different it's still more-or-less comparable to Seething Song. I don't have an amazing new deck idea for this card just yet, it would merely be a rehash of the Storm deck I've already posted but at the same time this is a card that you should go out of your way to acquire even if you can't find an immediate home for it. Pick them up for free after a draft, nab them from your friends before they chuck their commons in the trash, take that second to collect a playset of these in case you ever need them.
Grade C
Wolf of Devil's Breach: A vanilla 5/5 for 5. Thanks Wizards.
Grade D-
Closing Thoughts: Insolent Neonate is a welcome addition to Red's competitive Reanimator arsenal. The ability to bin a key spell on turn 1 can lead to a number of virtual wins on turns 2-3 making this a must-have bomb for fans of the archetype. Moving on, Tormenting Voice is amazing but it's obviously been printed so many times and at such a low rarity that most people should have them by now. If you don't, hey, grab 'em. The card is awesome. Otherwise Vessel of Volatility is another "Seething Song" type spell that allows you to jump the curve by 2 full turns which can be important for fast combo decks. That's turn 1 Faithless Looting (binning Enter the Infinite) into a turn 3 Overmaster + Mizzix's Mastery, turn 3 Sneak Attack + activate for Worldspine Wurm or even a turn 1 Norin the Wary into turn 3 Confusion in the Ranks. These are obviously just random examples and there's countless others but you can see why having access to more "Seething Songs" could be relevant (if not now, in the future). Besides, it's a freaking common. Just pick them up at some point even if you never use them. Anyone who drafts/buys sealed product/has friends/visits local game stores/etc. should easily be able to nab them for free because most players will throw out commons such as these anyways.
Autumnal Gloom/Ancient of the Equinox: As crappy as this card might seem it's still a self-mill enabler that comes with a Trampling, Hexproof body. While a 4/4 might not accomplish anything on its own if you can slap a Nighthowler and/or Bonehoard on it then those are the two keywords that you're looking for. I would never, ever, ever put this card in my decks as a generic "value" engine but insofar as you're converting it into an actual win condition then it's semi-reasonable.
Grade F+
Clip Wings: As much as I love Innocent Blood I don't foresee myself playing with removal this niche unless it's on the same power-level as a card like Whirlwind. If you desperately need cheap flying interaction then it's somewhat playable but I personally don't think that winning lists should bother with this type of effect. Don't clip your decks' wings by adding every random card that says "each opponent" to them under the assumption that they're all automatically amazing in a MP setting.
Grade D-
Cryptolith Rite: This card is poorly understood and underrated. Most people seem to treat it as a generic ramp spell that you'd slot in decks full of creatures like Elvish Mystic. They couldn't be more wrong. This is the card that you play in your creature-based/token shells that don't have access to and/or don't want to run a bunch of generic ramp. Whereas the traditional stuff is stellar if you're looking to jump the curve by 1-2 turns early on it's not especially apt at helping you reach 8-10 mana unless you dedicated 12-16 slots for it. This is where a card like Cryptolith Rite shines as it enables you to turn cards like Tempt with Vengeance, Sylvan Offering, Grave Titan, Prossh, Skyraider of Kher and some lands into 8-10 drops such as Tooth and Nail, Insurrection and Primal Surge. That is, it allows you to play a normal game of Magic but also opens back-door outs to cast insanely expensive + powerful spells long before you otherwise could. Otherwise I want to highlight the obvious synergy that it has with Wall of Roots and it's these interactions that showcase how this type of "fancy ramp" can still operate alongside its consistent cousins.
Alternatively it can do silly things with cards like Nettle Sentinel, Midnight Guard and Intruder Alarm and you can probably imagine how easy it would be to draw and cast your entire deck using things like Glimpse of Nature, Temur Ascendancy, Beck // Call and Soul of the Harvest. It's a very interesting combo card in that sense as it allows you to play the Heritage Druid + Nettle Sentinel game outside of the dedicated Elf deck. While I couldn't a post a version that trumps the best versions of the current Elf combo lists the point isn't that "it's the best deck" and merely that "it exists." Either way I don't think that it's nearly as weak as people seem to think but the main thing is that you can't treat it like a generic Sakura-Tribe Elder ramp spell. As long as you keep in that mind I think that you'll be pleasantly surprised with its performance.
Grade B-
Deathcap Cultivator: Sorry buddy but you're no Sakura-Tribe Elder. The ability to sometimes trade-up with larger threats doesn't offset the fact that it randomly dies to sweepers at no benefit. You're significantly better off fielding 1 CMC accelerators such as Utopia Sprawl and Carpet of Flowers if you're in the market for cheap ramp and if you have to run the 2 CMC stuff try to stick the ones that fetch actual lands if possible.
Grade C-
Duskwatch Recruiter/Krallenhorde Howler: While I typically dislike fielding these kinds of middling threats they do serve a crucial role for players who play in extremely aggressive metas. The Recruiter serves as a passable 2 drop (a Grizzly Bears usually gets the job done on turn 2) who scales decently well into the lategame where he becomes a persistent (albeit slow) draw engine. It's also critical to note that Krallenhorde Howler functions as a pseudo-Wall of Roots in the sense that it offers solid early-game protection while functioning as a reasonable form of ramp. Ultimately this is how Duskwatch Recruiter was able to conscript my loyalty since untapping with Krallenhorde Howler on turn 3 is going to be relatively powerful sequence for most creature-based decks. Otherwise the Recruiter enables you to pay 3 mana to "draw a card" with the added bonus of digging for key silver-bullets such as Bane of Progress when needed. While I wouldn't expect most winning decks to spin their wheels paying 3 mana to draw a card in the developing stages of the game having the option to do so is frequently going to be relevant later on. Otherwise the 2/2 body should mostly suffice early on because literally anything should function as an effective deterrent on turn 2. I want to reinforce the idea that I would prefer to start all my decks with cards like Carpet of Flowers and other forms of ramp whenever possible but if you desperately need early board presence that threatens small attackers then this is certainly a decent option. I think that people will overrate this card in general however, primarily because "creatures cost 1 less" is significantly worse than affecting all spells. The fact that you can't curve a turn 2 Duskwatch Recruiter into a turn 3 Frontier Siege/Tempt with Discovery (or any other variation thereof) is a massive strike against it that far too many people will overlook. That being said Green Mages accustomed to dealing with aggro should probably still acquire these but otherwise their competitive applications are limited at best.
Grade C+
Sage of Ancient Lore/Werewolf of Ancient Hunger: Step up your game Wizards! Blizzard's Ancient of Lore let's us draw TWO cards. In general these Maro-esque cards are exceptionally weak in Green ramp decks since you rarely hit the mid-to-late stages of the game with a reasonably-sized grip. Cards like Sandstone Oracle and Kozilek, the Great Distortion can assist on that front but at the same time I'd never build around this type of threat. Maybe if I were playing an UG deck with things like Mystic Remora, Trade Secrets, Rhystic Study, Recurring Insight etc. then I'd be more inclined to slot him in but even then it's only a couple of extra stats. Best-case scenario is that it's a 7/7 which would still be dwarfed by 3 drops such as Managorger Hydra. Real-world this guy is probably a 4/4 (maybe 5/5) after the draw which is... something I guess? I'll take my free cards where I can get them but paying 5 mana to draw a card and put a ~4/4 into play isn't exciting in the least. I expect something better than an Elvish Visionary who hit the gym really hard last week for that sum of mana. Sure, it's fine from a "value" perspective but from a "I want to win games" perspective it's trivial. In that sense he's worthless compared to cards like Seedborn Muse, Genesis and Titania, Protector of Argoth that "actually do stuff" as opposed to drawing a card and putting a dorky body into play. The real meat of this card clearly lies in his flipped form in that a Vigilance, Trampling Multani, Maro-Sorcerer is a very real threat that will quickly end games on his own. Clearly he loses points in formats such as EDH where health totals are higher and he's obviously better in oh, say, 6 player games than in 3 player ones but it's fairly easy for this thing to be making lethal attacks each and every turn. Well, that's assuming that you can keep him flipped but I guess Arcane Laboratory et al. exist for a reason. Who know, this could easily be a finisher for your Possibility Storm/Knowledge Pool lockdown deck. Otherwise you can Fling him with cards like Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord if you're so inclined but realistically your best bet is to simply cast this guy, hope he flips and hope that gets in for massive damage. If he dies, meh, you drew a card, forced removal and took a line that could legitimately kill people. Some might see that as a victory in the sense that you drew a card and traded 2-for-1 but I personally couldn't care less about trivial advantages such as those. That being said I'm more willing than most to take risks and put cards in my decks that can legitimately end games and whereas cards like Thragtusk or Whisperwood Elemental never will this guy has the potential (albeit slim) to actually mow players off one-by-one. If you could reliably flip him and keep him there (no, I'm not going to add cards like Immerwolf to my decks) I would like the card a fair amount and would definitely test him in various creature-based shells that employ things like Dense Foliage to blank spot removal. That being said I hate how everyone else has control over my threat and since I've experienced very little success with the other Werewolves I don't see why this one would be any different. The card seems sweet when it works, I just don't expect him to very often.
Grade C-
Seasons Past: Creature-based recursion such as Eternal Witness, Skullwinder and Greenwarden of Murasa tend to vastly out-perform their spell-based alternatives in that Green is brimming with creature-based tutors but devoid of effects that care about spells. From Oath of Nissa to Green Sun's Zenith to Survival of the Fittest to Chord of Calling to Genesis Wave to Defense of the Heart to Lurking Predators to Nissa's Revelation "creatures matter" is a defining characteristic of the color whereas spells are typically left by the wayside. This is why you'll frequently see Green decks full of Eternal Witnesses with no Regrowths in sight even though the latter is arguably significantly more powerful in a vacuum. At the end of the day Genesis Waveing into Greenwarden of Murasa is a big game whereas a card like Season Past will unhappily slink to the bottom of your library. While I like the card as a whole and do think that it's quite powerful ultimately it's not a creature and so I don't expect it to have many competitive applications in any multiplayer format. Most Green decks could easily support 1 however and as long as you're recurring 5+ cards with this then it does seem absolutely fantastic. Personally I'm going to stick to the creature-based alternatives as long as it's an option but by no means is the card actively bad. As to when this card breaks-even, again, I have it at 5 cards. Hamonize is what I expect to pay for a draw 3 in Green and Opportunity is the most I'll pay for 4 (but I do expect it to be unconditional and instant-speed) so when you're talking about a 6 CMC Sorcery with 2 very big restrictions (the cards have to be in your GY and they must have different mana costs) I want at LEAST 5 cards for my trouble. Binning 5 cards with unique mana costs takes a long time which is why I wouldn't advise running more than 1 of these in general. For those curious about EDH it's basically in the same boat. The most competitive decks will never run it but your average value deck easily could.
For the record I don't value the "self-recursion" aspect of this card at all. I think that "Beacon of Unrest" style recursion is hideously overrated and rarely-if-ever relevant in the slightest. If your deck is able to produce infinite mana, sure, Blue Sun's Zenith has a relevant upside. I'll agree to that. Maybe your Constructed deck has Trade Secrets which frequently allows you to draw your entire deck. Again, I can see how how this type of recursion would be relevant for those kinds of decks as well. For the 99.999999% of other decks it's completely trivial to the point where it doesn't even warrant discussion. It doesn't add any significant value to the card and shouldn't factor into the equation at all.
Grade C
Second Harvest: Unlike Parallel Lives and other similar token doublers you can actually cast this card after-the-fact and still get value from your spell. Since it's generally a better idea to develop your board and then cast your value spells (to avoid taking too much unnecessary damage) it's clear that Second Harvest offers some advantages over its alternatives. That being said the one-time deal leaves me less than impressed and unfortunately there's no second-wind great enough to save this harvest. When I reach for a card to fill this type of role I typically look to Shamanic Revelation since I'd rather draw ~5 cards than put another set of tokens into play. Why open yourself up to mass removal when you can simply refill your hand? Also, while it's "more convenient" than a card like Parallel Lives it's many orders of magnitude less powerful. A turn ~3 Parallel Lives into any sequence of mass token spells will set you up to win most games whereas this is more of a generic threat. If you can ramp out an early Sylvan Offering and follow it up with one of these that's "fine" but, again, I'd still rather play Shamanic Revelation or any variation thereof. If you're going for a very fast Beastmaster Ascension/Cathars' Crusade kill or something then it might make sense to max out on actual token producers but I still think that your best bet is to play a more value-focused game. That isn't to say that you shouldn't put cards like Cathars' Crusade in your deck, I'm mostly implying that you should respect mass removal and field some actual card draw.
Grade D+
Tireless Tracker: In multiplayer a good rule of thumb is to value creatures at their immediate impact and how they advance your gameplan in the short-run. This, by the way, is why cards like Solemn Simulacrum are mostly unplayable. A 4 mana Rampant Growth is horrifically weak and the prospect of a "free card" down the road isn't nearly enough to offset that. In the case of the Tracker your 3 mana nets you nothing inherently but you can follow it up with (Fetch)lands to start amassing a reservoir of Clues. This gives you a steady source of card draw in the mid-to-late stages of the game especially if you can pair it with cards like Scapeshift, Primeval Titan and Sylvan Primordial. Where Tireless Tracker falls short is in the early game where you want cards that help you right now as opposed to later on. Whereas a card like Basalt Monolith enables a turn 3-4 Sylvan Primordial the Tracker will only begin to yield dividends multiple turns down the road. While the best decks will never field this it's a fantastic value-engine for casual decks that figures to draw an absurd amount of cards over time. Insofar as you're in the market for a "Courser of Kruphix" as opposed to a Worn Powerstone then the payoff is definitely there.
Grade B
Traverse the Ulvenwald: So this is what the unholy union of Lay of the Land and Demonic Tutor looks like eh? If the former wasn't so heinously unplayable I'd be more interested in the competitive applications for this card but unfortunately a gutted Green Sun's Zenith isn't going to pass muster. The ability to tutor for any creature or land is obviously insanely powerful but the moment that have to jump through real hoops to achieve it is when you're suddenly not talking about a competitive staple. At some point you'll be able to fetch anything from Cloudpost to Sylvan Primordial but since it has zero early-game value it's important to temper your expectations and appreciate this card for what it is; a budget + bad Green Sun's Zenith. Now, the fact that Oath of Nissa is Legendary is surprisingly useful in this instance since binning extras is quite handy when you're trying to hit Delirium. There's even cards like Expedition Map which you want in your Cloudpost decks to begin with and that also make their way to the graveyard early on. Otherwise creatures and lands are easy-peasey for Green so as long as you get a Nature's Lore/Sylvan Scrying (or whatever) in the bin then it's not unreasonable to think that generic Green deck could have Delirium by turn 5-6 in a typical multiplayer match. As to why you would bother jumping through these hoops first the answer is basically "because it's cheap." I don't know how much this card will actually cost a few months from now but what I do know is that cards like Green Sun's Zenith, Survival of the Fittest and Chord of Calling aren't free and that Birthing Pod doesn't work in every archetype. While Green has fantastic creature tutors in general most of them are old, expensive, difficult to acquire, etc. whereas Transverse the Ulvenwald is significantly less likely to be. I could be wrong obviously but let's roll with that for now. In that sense even though the base card is completely unplayable it still becomes a "Demonic Tutor" (not quite but you get the idea) eventually and in the context of budget-minded Magic that a fine place to be. You won't see this in the best versions of the best decks but assuming that you're playing casually with friends this card is freaking amazing when it "gets there" so don't worry too too much about what other people have to say about it.
Grade C+
Ulvenwald Hydra: Primeval Titan this is not but it's still a creature-based threat that tutors up lands like Kessig Wolf Run, Gaea's Cradle and Cloudpost. As such it's going to be a competitive staple that should see a fair amount of play in every multiplayer format. Being a creature is a significant competitive advantage in a world of cards like Worldly Tutor, Green Sun's Zenith, Survival of the Fittest, Chord of Calling, Birthing Pod, etc. and it's nice that Green also has access to cards like Ancient Stirrings, Expedition Map, Crop Rotation and Sylvan Scrying to make it's ramp strategies that much more reliable. Otherwise Reach is always a decent keyword to have on your bombs although it would have been nice if this had Trample as well. It's not a big deal either way since a big blocker who ramps you towards your Sylvan Primordials and Eldrazi is still a big game.
Grade B+
15x Forest
4x Cloudpost
4x Glimmerpost
1x Stomping Ground
1x Kessig Wolf Run
Creatures (21)
4x Wall of Roots
2x Courser of Kruphix
4x Ulvenwald Hydra
4x Sylvan Primordial
1x Sandstone Oracle
1x Myr Battlesphere
4x Artisan of Kozilek
1x Kozilek, the Great Distortion
4x Crop Rotation
2x Expedition Map
2x Sylvan Scrying
4x Tempt with Discovery
2x Nissa's Revelation
Ulvenwald Mysteries: I hope it's no mystery that when you add "nontoken" to a draw engine that you can kills most of its competitive applications goodbye. Even then cards like Grim Haruspex are still fine Magic cards that I routinely field myself but Hell if I'm going to pay 2 mana per corpse to get my value. Conditional + mana intensive aren't the adjectives that you want describing, well, anything so feel free to take a pass on this on this one.
Grade D-
Closing Thoughts: Ulvenwald Hydra isn't the Primeval Titan that we want but its the one that we deserve. From Cloudpost to Gaea's Cradle it can fetch any number of oppressive lands making it one of the more competitive 6 drops on the market. Be it Cube, Constructed or EDH I'd happily field it in any format and in any quantity making it a must-have staple for avid Green mages. Next there's Cryptolith Rite which I expect to be a staple in any token/creature-based list that isn't already filled with mana dorks. After all, curving Sylvan Offering into Tooth and Nail is a big game. While Tireless Tracker doesn't offer the same short-run impact as cards like Worn Powerstone and Basalt Monolith much like Courser of Kruphix it's a fantastic card advantage engine for midrange/ramp strategies. Unfortunately you basically need a ton of good Fecthlands to make it truly competitive but even if you don't it's still a solid 3 drop in any casual multiplayer setting. Lastly Traverse the Ulvenwald has a fair amount of potential and insofar as your games are slow enough to support it then I'd definitely give a shot. Cards like Cloudpost and Sylvan Primordial are many orders of magnitude more powerful than the other cards in your decks and the flexibility to tutor for them as needed is extremely powerful. It's never going to have a home in fast combo decks and the like but when it comes to slow, fair games of Magic it's hard to pass up on a 1 CMC Demonic Tutor.
Altered Ego: This is the easiest B of my life. Clone is already a solid card and tacking 2 relevant upsides onto it is good enough to bump the letter Grade in my books. While some may dismiss the X +1/+1 counters I personally think that it's fantastic when you take the time to think about the kinds of decks that will actually play this thing. Think Prophet of Kruphix decks that have bounce (Cloudstone Curio, Crystal Shard, Temur Sabertooth), big mana (Primeval Titan, Sylvan Primordial) and Prime Speaker Zegana. Drawing more cards from copying your Zeganas is fantastic, Cloneing Sylvan Primordials is stupid and since the Sylvan-father routinely dumps your entire manabase into play jamming a giant dude and then giving it Trample with Kessig Wolf Run or Nylea, God of the Hunt is quite powerful. I think that Altered Ego is a noticeable upgrade to Clone in that sense and that's without acknowledging the "can't be countered" clause. Much like Clever Impersonator I think that this is easily a competitive staple that any UG deck should strongly consider.
Grade C+
4x Breeding Pool
10x Forest
4x Hinterland Harbor
4x Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
Creatures (30)
4x Arbor Elf
4x Kiora's Follower
2x Coiling Oracle
2x Genesis Hydra
3x Wistful Selkie
1x Skullwinder
2x Altered Ego
1x Temur Sabertooth
1x Nylea, God of the Hunt
3x Prophet of Kruphix
2x Prime Speaker Zegana
1x Deadeye Navigator
4x Sylvan Primordial
4x Utopia Sprawl
2x Wild Growth
2x Cloudstone Curio
Anguished Unmaking: As much as I come down on spot removal in general an instant-speed Vindicate that exiles is still good enough to earn my seal of approval. Trading 1-for-1 is obviously a weak exchange in a MP setting (it's virtual card disadvantage) but since you can't beat cards like Consecrated Sphinx and Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur without it your hands are tied on that front. Otherwise it's a blanket answer-all to any threat from any opponent which means that you'll always get decent value out of the effect. I've liked Utter End well enough and since I'd rather pay 3 life than hold a 4th land hostage this is a clear upgrade in my mind. Most of my WB decks are lifegain-focused anyways and in formats like EDH you have more than enough life to play around with regardless. While it's true that Vindicate can nail annoying lands such as Gaea's Cradle and Cabal Coffers I've never been fond of Sorcery-speed removal in a MP setting given that I never want to use it until it's absolute necessary. Again, it's virtual card disadvantage so firing it off willy-nilly is pointless and I'd rather have as much control over the timing as possible. I also think that the exile clause is going to be a relevant bonus a reasonably large % of the time and since the 3 life doesn't especially bother me I can safely say that I'll be slotting a couple of these into most of my WB concoctions for the foreseeable future. For the record I don't think that this card is better than Grasp of Fate but in the interest of diversity I usually try to vary my decks to keep things fresh.
Grade C+
Fevered Visions: Grading these kinds of cards never makes any sense because they have no generic value. This card has to be played in a "Nekusar, the Mindrazer" style deck that pairs mass card draw with Underworld Dreams and/or Molten Psyche style win conditions. I like this card a fair amount in that archetype as it functions as both an engine and a win condition rolled into one. This makes it significantly more valuable than most people realize and I'm sure that fans of the archetype are ecstatic to see this. It's also somewhat relevant to note that the draw happens at EOT which makes it significantly harder for other people to take advantage of their extra draw steps before you can. Otherwise there's not much to say because this goes in exactly 1 archetype and since it's more of an EDH deck than a Constructed one odds are most people are going to play it regardless.
Grade C
Olivia, Mobilized for War: That's uhh... quite the name for a card. It sounds like something a 5 year old would pick out for him or herself. Tangent aside I personally I see Olivia as a duel card with extremely limited multiplayer applications. The only compelling use for her that I could conceive of is that you can field her in decks with cards like Squee, Goblin Nabob and Veilborn Ghoul at which point you can grant Haste to all of your Inferno Titans, Scourge of the Thrones, Balefire Dragons, Myr Battlespheres, etc. "for free." As a generic 3/3 flier for 3 she gums up the board well enough early on (I'm not expecting miracles from 2-3 drops) and since Red has a number of creatures that generate a ton of value when they attack she could theoretically provide decent value. That being said you'd have to justify the Squee, Goblin Nabobs in your list with looting, equipment, etc. because otherwise there'd be no point in running her over cards like Hammer of Purphoros, Anger, Ogre Battledriver, etc. This is especially true ever since Flamekin Village was printed because that card is a total house.
The inherent problem with that design is that it's a total trap (i.e. not worth your time, effort and resources). Red is the king of consistent Haste enabling and you can basically solve all of your problems by jamming 2-3x Flamekin Village over basic Mountains. Otherwise Anger, Ogre Battledriver and Urabrask the Hidden are actual bombs that don't ask anything of you. Since a 3/3 flier for 3 isn't a relevant threat in a multiplayer setting (it can block 1-3 drops but it's not winning any games for you) she doesn't have that going for her and I don't want to skew my deck to support an effect that I can easily acquire with no strings attached. While a 3/3 flier for 3 can actually win games in a duel setting her body is trivial in multiplayer and once you take it out of the equation her persistent effect isn't very good. Yeah, sure, she enables Madness, supports reanimator strategies, fuels Delve/Delirium and a bunch of other nonsense. Doesn't interest me. Faithless Looting is the Red "graveyard matters" spell and if you're looking to do busted things with it then jam 4 and never look back. Still need a bit a of help? There's nothing wrong with Tormenting Voice which is weaker but marginally playable. Either way the key points to emphasize here is that when don't care about the body (for whatever reason) then power, efficiency and reliability tend to matter more than anything else and Olivia is lacking on all 3 fronts.
If people disagree with my assessment that a 3/3 flier is a trivial body that's totally fine. The awesome part about multiplayer is that every meta is different. I frequently play with 8 players and so when I see a 3/3 for 3 it doesn't even register as a card that would ever hit the Red Zone. 3/140 is close enough to 0% (it's just over 2% or something) that I'd rather have the extra blocker and avoid pissing someone off and possibly triggering (significant) retribution. That doesn't mean that I'm inherently right it's merely how I like to approach the game. Still, hey, I play a ton of 4 player games too (especially online) and even then I don't care about a 3/3 flier for 3. Granted I always build my decks in such a way that I don't need to worry about marginal value or small beaters but the fact remains that getting in for 3 is a drop in the bucket when you're trying to chew through 60 points of life. I will never initiate races or promote trades and even going 3-for-1 (i.e. attacking with Olivia and getting hit by oh, say, Elvish Mystic) isn't an exchange that I'm willing to actively pursue. Even though it's a "fair trade" from a mathematical perspective that math doesn't take experience and technical ability into account and I'd rather preserve my own life if it means that I can play longer games (on average) in which everyone is forced to make more decisions.
Grade D+
Prized Amalgam: To some this will be a prized possession but to most it's little more than an amalgamation of disappointment and and displeasure. While recurring threats certainly have a home in multiplayer formats they tend to lose most of their luster when they have to be supported. Whereas Reassembling Skeleton will fuel a Contamination indefinitely or a pack of Bloodghasts merely ask that you have a land ETB the effect isn't nearly as useful when you actually have to work for it. Clearly he's meant to be paired with cards like Gravecrawler but it's not as though a 3/3 is a relevant threat in a MP setting nor does the card have any obvious + abusive synergies. The fact that he ETBT is also annoying and while he can still block on the following turn, again, we're talking about a 3/3 here. I wouldn't be surprised to see him pop up in self-mill decks, Dredge decks, zombie decks, etc. but at the same time I doubt that he'll be actively good.
While I won't spend too much time on the subject I will note that his potential for Dredge decks is at least somewhat intriguing. For the record we're talking about the Golgari Thug, Stinkweed Imp and Golgari Grave-Troll monstrosities that abuse Narcomoeba, Bridge from Below and Dread Return to no end. He's still a Black creature for Ichorid and unlike Bloodghast he can actually block which isn't something that the deck it typically good at doing. Assuming that your list has Leyline of the Voids (hint: it needs them) they could potentially help you create throngs of Bridge From Below tokens over time. This is especially true if you have an Undiscovered Paradise to fuel your Bloodghasts or even a card like Dakmor Salvage.
Grade C
Sigarda, Heron's Grace: A conditional Ant Queen that's harder to cast? Needless to say she's a far cry from Sigarda, Host of Herons and it's sad to see just how far she's fallen from grace. I like the Ivory Mask effect well enough but a 4/5 flier for 5 with a crappy ability doesn't pass muster in modern day Magic and so I feel that you're better off focusing your attention towards more powerful spells and effects.
Grade D
Sorin, Grim Nemesis: Phyrexian Arena is fine (but hardly worth 6 mana), Death Grasp is lame and Storm Herd is meh which means that Sorin is unlikely to make any waves in the multiplayer scene. His only redeeming quality, in my mind, is that if you can stick him for a turn then nuke the world with card like Jokulhaups or Death Cloud then his +1 (or -9, whatever) will eventually win the game against any number of players. He's kinda like Liliana Vess in that sense except he can't tutor for your big finisher the turn that you cast him and 6 CMC is a lot more than 5. I'd still rather have a card like Assemble the Legion that can't die to creatures/burn/etc. but that strategy is certainly competitive so I'll give him what little credit he deserves. Otherwise the card seems extremely weak to me and I wouldn't advise fielding him as a generic finisher.
Grade C+
The Gitrog Monster: This is my current pick for "best card in the set." As a matter of fact I had to read and re-read it 4-5 times just to ensure that I wasn't losing my mind because it seems way too good to be true. Crack Fetchland draw a card. Dredge Life From the Loam/Stinkweed Imp/Golgari Grave-Troll draw a card. Activate Molten Voxtex/Seismic Assault draw a card. Smallpox draw a card. Activate Liliana of the Veil and/or trigger Necrogen Mists draw a card. Cycle Tranquil Thicket draw a card. Cast Mox Diamond draw a card. Cast Devastating Dreams/Wildfire/Destructive Force, survive, draw a card. Cast Life from the Loam, get everything back and do it all again? Toss in Dakmor Salvage? I'm hooked baby! This thing is bananas overpowered and will literally bury an entire table in card advantage if left unchecked for even a handful of turns. It pairs stupidly well with cards like Crop Rotation, Knight of the Reliquary, Titania, Protector of Argoth, etc. and it's big enough to tangle with literally anything the turn that you cast it. Otherwise I'll take as many Exploration effects as I can get and even though he naturally offsets his own I don't exactly care. After all, you better believe that I'm going to pair him with Life from the Loam and cycling lands anyways. The card's one and only "weakness" is that it dies to removal at no significant benefit as putting an extra land from your hand into play is marginal at best. Much like Consecrated Sphinx people will kill it if they're able to as they'll surely lose otherwise. This is literally the only thing preventing The Gitrog Monster from being an A+ bomb auto-include in any deck that could reasonably support it. Make no mistake though; the card is still outrageous. There aren't many 3-5 CMC cards that you can blindly run out and outright win games with and this certainly qualifies as one that can. We haven't seen a card with a power-level this high in a long time and it would ridiculous for any avid multiplayer Mage to forgo acquiring them. This is exactly what you want to be doing in a multiplayer setting.
Grade A
4x Bloodfell Caves
4x Rugged Highlands
4x Evolving Wilds
4x Dakmor Salvage
2x Forgotten Cave
2x Tranquil Thicket
2x Mountain
2x Forest
1x Bojuka Bog
4x The Gitrog Monster
1x Vengeful Pharaoh
Spells (30)
4x Faithless Looting
2x Molten Vortex
1x Flame Jab
1x Darkblast
1x Raven's Crime
4x Fellwar Stone
4x Life from the Loam
4x Smallpox
2x Devastating Dreams
4x Firespout
2x Necrogen Mists
1x Worm Harvest
Closing Thoughts: The Gitrog Monster is among the strongest cards in the set and has limitless competitive applications in Life from the Loam style decks as far as I'm concerned. Otherwise both Altered Ego and Anguished Unmaking are legitimately amazing spells that could realistically make the cut in any deck of their respective colors. I think that Vindicate is insanely overrated and that far too few Mages appreciate just how powerful a 3 mana unconditional, instant-speed, exile spell actually is. Otherwise I love me some Clones in multiplayer, especially ones that do silly things in Prime Speaker Zegana + Sylvan Primordial decks.
Brain in a Jar: "Brain in a jar" is an accurate description of the people who think that this is a powerful Magic card. A slow, awkward, inconsistent version of Vedalken Orrery that "color fixes" doesn't entice me in the slightest and for the life of me I don't understand why anyone would want to play with this trash. Unlike Æther Vial this can't be used to protect your key spells from counter magic and the fact that it can't be used to cheese 0 CMC spells (such as Restore Balance) is a total drag. I also want to stress that you need the spells to already be in your hand which, quite frankly, is laughable. If it were a Birthing Pod of sorts then maybe you could do something cool with untapping effects (such as Hidden Strings and Turnabout) but as it stands a huge % of the time you're simply going to charge the Jar for no effect. The Scry activated ability is reminiscent of Jar of Eyeballs in that it's heinously weak and unlikely to provide serious value in a typical multiplayer match (or any match for that matter). Obviously the idea here is that you can use it to regulate the counters but that's marginal value at best. Even in dream scenarios where you find yourself going-off with Thrummingbirds/Unwinding Clocks/Inexorable Tides (or whatever) this is is still going to be a far cry from overpowered given that you still need the right spells in your hand to abuse it. Between the card disadvantage, the insane time and mana requirements and the conditional nature of the effect there's significantly better ways to go about winning MP games. If you're well and truly desperate for a way to cast Wrath of Gods at instant-speed then do what you gotta do but make no mistake; this isn't a bomb, it's not "good in EDH" and it's not "fine for casual." It's merely a bad card.
Grade D-
Corrupted Grafstone: Why is this card a rare? It's a freaking conditional manarock. Whatever. In Constructed we have things like Fellwar Stone and Simic Signet that ETB untapped and that always tap for colored mana which makes something like this basically unplayable. There's absolutely no reason to field it over any number of significantly more powerful and consistent alternatives. When it comes to Cube, again, there's no shortage of manarocks that always work and so there's no world in which this makes the final cut. That being said this is an amazing EDH staple. No wait, sorry, I got that mixed up. It's utter garbage in EDH. Anyone lauding its worth in that format is completely off their rockers as far as I'm concerned. Even as someone who routinely fields cards like Fractured Powerstone and Prismatic Lens I have absolutely no clue what anyone sees in this trash. People have read the card text right? You cast it on turn 2 and it doesn't do anything. I don't care if it can tap for mana on turn 4 or whatever. That's meaningless. When I put manarocks in my EDH decks it's so that I can jam them into play early and often and that usually means chaining them together. Your turn 1 Gemstone Caverns, Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, Mana Vault, etc. are frequently used to immediately cast other manarocks and on turns 2-3 it's important to have ones that inherently tap for mana so that you can (for example) chain your Fellwar Stone into your Grim Monolith. The reality is that your graveyard doesn't start with a colored card in it and I want to remind everyone that colorless isn't a color so Fetchlands don't count. Speed and consistency are everything in EDH and I absolutely refuse to acknowledge a ramp spell that doesn't actually accelerate you in the developing stages of the game. Let's call a spade a spade and recognize that "Rampant Growth" is a marginal card to begin with and a conditional Rampant Growth is unplayable trash. There's far too many consistent cards to waste any time with this nonsense. This card will undoubtedly cause a lot of controversy and divide among the multiplayer communities (especially the EDH crowd) but I'm personally of the opinion that that this is the 10th best card for the job.
Grade D-
Magnifying Glass: Maybe you can use this to look for cards that are actually playable. Please don't field this in any format (including EDH) because there isn't a universe in which "9 mana draw a card" qualifies as a playable Magic card.
Grade F
Tamiyo's Journal: This card is unplayable trash in every format including EDH. Don't like it? Go write in your journal about how the big mean Internet man yelled at you for all I care. One the primary reasons why I write these reviews is to spare people the embarrassment of investing any time/money/energy into obvious traps such as this and let me be the first person to assure you that this card is horrifically bad. For the low-low price of 11 mana and 4 turns you too can Concentrate! Sounds really freaking terrible when you put it that way doesn't it? I'll spare us all the trouble of comparing it to cards like Mind's Eye and Staff of Nin and address the reasons why this card still sucks for colors like Red/White that don't have much access to card draw/tutoring. I'm positive that as some people were reading this entry they were also thinking to themselves "we obviously knew that it was weak for Black/Blue/Green but you never stopped to consider its applications for Red/White." Wrong. Even as someone who plays Daretti, Scrap Savant in EDH I can assure that Tamiyo's Journal has no place in any EDH archetype/color combo. It's an incredibly unreliable form of tutoring, a heinously weak form of card draw and EDH isn't so slow that you can spend 7 mana over 2 turns to draw a card. Even if Wizards prints some stupidly powerful form of Clue generation (they won't) you'd still have to draw both cards in your 100 card singleton deck (not going to happen) and even then, so what? Congratulations, you've assembled a specific 2 card combo to build your own Sidisi, Undead Vizier. In what Universe is that a powerful line? Even if you could magically draw Bygone Bishop (or whatever) every game your "combo" isn't remotely close to powerful/unfair/broken and if that's not enough to convince you that this card is hot-garbage then I don't know what is. People often makes logical leaps in the vein of "powerful forms of card draw win games therefore I must run card draw" and ignore the fact that ultimately your goal is to win the game of Magic. The result? They trick themselves into running cards that cannot possibly win games of Magic. If you don't own/can't afford/can't get access to other forms of card draw play something else! If your opponent is paying three mana to draw twelve cards you fire back by paying thirteen mana to draw four cards then you're still going to lose. Given a lack of alternatives don't look for substitutes; simply add powerful cards that fill other roles.
Grade F+
Closing Thoughts: Another set where every Artifact is a steaming pile of trash that won't make the cut in bad Limited decks.
Choked Estuary et al: These "show lands" (or whatever) are relatively consistent early on but quickly become Guildgates as the game progresses. This reduces their effectiveness in Control/Ramp decks that are seeking to cast powerful 5-6 drops on curve but makes them relatively decent in faster combo decks. Given that they're not Fetchable and lose value as the game progresses (whereas most gain) this makes them relatively weak options as multiplayer games tend drag on much longer than duels. It's also less important to have a fast start in multiplayer and since you can typically afford to "waste" your first turn with an ETBT land it's usually better to field something like Dragonskull Summit that will still have value in the mid and late stages of the game. Granted most of this is trivial nonsense because when it comes to your manabase people are more-or-less forced to play with what they own and/or can afford. Graven Cairns could be the best card for your deck but if it's 8 bucks whereas Temple of Malice is 1 then price will win out over functionality. In that sense I struggle to give lands functional grades because telling someone that Misty Rainforest and Underground Sea are good cards doesn't magically enable them to afford either. "Show lands" such as Choked Estuary don't stack-up well compared to many of the "good" dual lands and since they're only a slight improvement over the bad ones I wouldn't advise anyone to shell out a bunch of cash for them for the purposes of casual play. Assuming that they cost 5 bucks (or whatever) I'd rather jam some Dimir Aqueducts in my brews and put that money to better use.
Grade D+
Drownyard Temple: I completely misread this card when it was initially spoiled and thought that was some horrendous Delirium enabler. In hindsight I don't know what the Hell that I was thinking since there's no way Wizards would ever print something that weak at rare. It's at times like these that I wish that I was a drinker so I could drown my embarrassment away but unfortunately that's not in the cards. Anyways, now that I actually understand what this card does my opinion of it has vastly improved. While it may not seem like much it's an extremely unique card in the sense that it's ramp that doesn't require spell slots in your lists. In the context of brews with cheap discard outlets such as Faithless Looting, Merfolk Looter, Oona's Prowler, etc. you can bin these early on and return them on turn ~3 in addition to your land for the turn. Oh, did I forget to mention that you can do this at instant-speed (i.e. at end of turn) to bluff removal/counters/etc. until then? No? Because you can! Most of you undoubtedly realize that a colorless Manalith would be unplayable trash in every format but that's not what we're talking about here. Drownyard Temple, unlike actual ramp, doesn't consume spell slots and can be cast at instant-speed once the coast is clear. Whereas running 4x Fellwar Stone not only carries a legitimate deckbuilding opportunity cost but it also "lowers the shields" with respect to removal. Conversely if your 24-26 land deck has some cheap discard and some Drownyard Temples then you still get the ramp (albeit less quickly and consistently) without having to allocate any space for them. It's not amazing ramp by any means but remember that we're talking about a land that ETBU and that taps for mana. Who cares if you have to use them as normal lands? Who cares if you aren't able to recur them early on? It doesn't exactly matter now does it? Moreover it's important to stress that when you loot + recur these not only are you ramping but you're also effectively drawing a card. It's not much but hey, it's something! In addition they're relevant for decks with a lot of mass land destruction and basically anything with a bunch of Smallpoxes, Armageddons, Smokestacks, Wildfires, Possessed Portals etc. will probably want at least 1 of them (if not 4). Now, I'm clearly not suggesting that you should add cards like Faithless Looting and Merfolk Looter to generic decks just so that you can support these but if you're going to run those kinds of cards anyways then that's where Drownyard Temple should enter the equation. Even if you can't afford to run the full four 1-2 probably isn't going to kill your manabase and "free" ramp is almost always going to be awesome. Finally, for those of you who still aren't convinced it's important to remember that the closest proxy to this effect is Gemstone Caverns which is an A+ bomb in every multiplayer format. Clearly the Temple is many orders of magnitude weaker but Magic doesn't have many "free ramp lands" that allow you to break the 1 land per turn rule (without the help of cards like Exploration). The ability to turn a generic land that ETBU and that taps for mana into a legitimate ramp spell (that even draws card!) is more-or-less unheard of and the condition is rather trivial to meet in my opinion. Its applications may be niche but they're undeniably powerful.
Grade C+
Forsaken Sanctuary et al: Guildgates are fine if you can't afford anything else. They get the job done which is all that matters. They obviously have to be awarded a low grade because the cards themselves are quite weak but please don't feel ashamed about having to play them if that's all that you can afford. That's perfectly reasonable.
Grade D-
Warped Landscape: Not even the most warped metagame could support this trash. Don't field it anywhere (even EDH).
Grade F-
Westvale Abbey/Ormendahl, Profane Prince: Man this card is f***ing sweet! Bah, my bad, too much time spent hanging around
profanityprofane princes. Between cards like Secure the Wastes, Tempt with Vengeance, Sylvan Offering, Lingering Souls, Siege-Gang Commander and Prossh, Skyraider of Kher amassing an army of 5 or more creatures is a reasonably simple task. All things considered the Prince here's a solid finisher in that he's a giant, hasted, flying, indestructible and lifelinked beater that kills in 2 hits. That doesn't exactly leave much room for interaction now does it? Much like Gavony Township the Abbey here doesn't eat actual spell slots in your decks and since it's a land that ETBU and that taps for mana there's very little risk associated with jamming one into your brews. Unlike the Township I sincerely doubt that any deck will want to run 3-4 (I'm thinking 1, 2 tops) but as a last resort I don't see a compelling reason to exclude this from your token decks unless your mana requirements are especially strict. It's never going to be your Plan A but come turn 7-8 if you've got nothing but some Increasing Devotion dorks sitting around why not convert them into a threat that can pressure people in a meaningful way? With respect to the "tap 6 lands and pay 1 life to put a 1/1 into play" you'll obviously activate it some % of the time but let's not make mountains out of moguls. It's an extremely minor upside at best and odds are it won't be relevant in the vast majority of your games. Still, hey, you're not paying anything for the effect so as long as your deck want to plop a big dumb flier into play you may as well take the free 1/1s where you can get them.Grade C
Closing Thoughts: Drownyard Temple is stellar for players who build a lot of MLD, Stax, graveyard-based and/or looting decks and I highly recommend acquiring them at your earliest convenience. Free ramp isn't something that gets printed very often making it one of the most unique and powerful lands that we've seen in many sets. Otherwise Westvale Abbey is perfect for Token decks and/or for Control players in the market for a low-opportunity cost finisher. Adding 1-2 (or even 3-4!) to any 1-2 color deck realistically carries very little risk and/or opportunity cost making this is a relatively safe investment with long-term competitive applications.
Closing Thoughts
Shadows Over Innistrad will go down as a wild success in my books as the overall power-level of the set is completely off-the-charts. Ever color except Red received multiple competitive playables and the gold card were on a entirely different tier from the ones that we've seen in recent sets. Moreover, SOI broke the trend of sets not containing powerful utility and/or cheap 2-3 CMC threats that scale well as the game progresses. I like the balanced mix of spells and creatures and there's ton of new, unique effects that seem extremely competitive for players of all skill levels. The only significant strike against the set is that Red received nothing beyond a Tormenting Voice reprint but I'm more than willing to overlook that flaw given its net contributions to the multiplayer scene as a whole. I'm ecstatic to try a host of new cards in dozens of archetypes which is head-and-shoulders above where I was at with Oath of the Gatewatch.
Top 10 Cards in the Set
10. Engulf the Shore
9. Anguished Unmaking
8. Insidious Mist (Elusive Tormentor)
7. Ulvenwald Hydra
6. Declaration in Stone
5. Cryptolith Rite
4. Thing in the Ice
3. Archangel Avacyn
2. Relentless Dead
1. The Gitrog Monster
Overall Grade: B-
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
Thanks! You and/or anyone else should feel free to shoot any constructive criticism my way. I'm always trying to improve my process in order to provide the highest quality product possible.
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
Yeah I can't stress enough how "free" it is to add zombies to your deck when cards like Wight of Precinct Six, Fleshbag marauder, Corpse Augur, Graveborn Muse, Gray Merchant of Asphodel and Sidisi, Undead Vizier are being printed. These are not "good zombies for my zombie tribal deck." These are good cards for my good deck. I'm already happily playing them as-is so Wizards keep throwing me bones like Unholy Grotto and Relentless Dead then you better believe that I'm going to snag all of that sweet sweet value for myself. I've been dying for a durable 2 drop for my Gray Merchant decks that isn't Bloodghast (BLOCK DAMN YOU!) and this is so much better than what I could have ever hoped for. That being said I can't in good conscience give a Grizzly Bears an A Grade which is why I felt that a B was more appropriate. The card is very good but it's not like a Humility that you can blindly jam in a White deck for devastating results.
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
My meta: 3 or 4 player free for all, anything goes but boring games or broken decks cause a vote to end that game.
I understand 'Tickling your inner Johnny' but I look at Mindwrack Demon and all I see is average-power-level midrange beater whose best case seems to be avoiding unplayableness to achieve (frankly) mediocre stats. I'm pretty underwhelmed by this guy in almost any constructed application I can think of, but particularly multiplayer where his 'chances' are worst.
Fully-powered 600-Card "Dream Cube" https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/dreamcube
450-Card "Artificer's Cube" https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/artificer
Cubing in Indianapolis...send me a PM!!
While true I still think that the "winning line" is to add a card like Fellwar Stone to your deck that will consistently provide you with ramp + color fixing. The bad doesn't outweigh the good in this instance, at least not in my opinion. At 2 to cast + 1 to activate + the requirement of the spells already being your hand it just doesn't feel powerful enough to justify the (in all likelihood) 4 deckslots that the card would require. Much Æther Vial this card loses almost all of its effectiveness over time and so any deck that wants to see it want to see it on turn 2 and that means playing the full 4 which is a very taxing requirement. I think that you'll will significantly more games jamming Fellwar Stone/Mind Stone/Basalt Monolith/whatever into your decks and running that out early on instead. I get it, they're very different cards, but I still think that you win significantly more games when your turn 2 play is Fellwar Stone.
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 could be convinced that the card is a D but that won't stop me from trying to make him work. He's an aggressively costed, defensive 4 drop who provides immediate value and who combos naturally with everything that I want to be doing in my Black decks. Much like Bloodline Keeper he comes with some nice flying defense and it's fairly trivial to enable him if you can curve a Buried Alive into the guy. Things like Nighthowler and Sphinx of the Steel Wind pull double duty as card types and the existence of Fetchlands (even bad ones such as Evolving Wilds) means that getting the 4 card types isn't especially difficult. All-in-all I think that this card is enough better than most other Ds that it warrants a higher grade and a fair amount of testing.
I'm ready and willing to be wrong about that one but I love me some self-mill and I'm glad that Black is finally starting to get some awesome Mythics again.
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
A C- is a surprisingly decent grade for a middling ramp spell/draw engine which is a testament to how relevant the card is against aggressive, creature-based strategies. When you're competing with the likes of Utopia Sprawl, Carpet of Flowers, Exploration, etc. it's extremely difficult for 2 CMC ramp to compete to the point where you almost need to be o-par with a card like Wall of Roots that offers both defense and ramp. I don't think for a second that the Recruiters are a competitive staple that should be played in a wide variety of Green decks (especially in formats such as EDH) but if you're desperate for early-game board presence then it's certainly a decent, budget-minded option that isn't horrifically weak in the later stages of the game (like, oh, say, Strangleroot Geist is).
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
Hey, I've even played Cuombajj Witches at BB in black decks that want to max out on devotion. This is obviously a huge step up. I assume they'll eventually notice that they've given a lot of these the zombie creature type and the next good black multiplayer creature will be a thrull or something.
What sort of 4 drops do you generally play in your self-mill/GY-focused decks?
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
Gisela,Blade of Goldnight WR
Sigarda,Heron's Grace WG
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 don't think multiple BOOM is possible.
My meta: 3 or 4 player free for all, anything goes but boring games or broken decks cause a vote to end that game.
For each creature that dies her final triggered ability will trigger at the beginning of the next upkeep. It's the same thing with Thraben Sentry:
If multiple creatures you control die simultaneously, Thraben Sentry's ability will trigger that many times. Each time one of those abilities resolves, you may transform the creature, even if it's Thraben Militia at the time.
While this wasn't especially easy to trigger with the Sentry since the creatures had to die simultaneously the fact that Avacyn has a delayed trigger makes it significantly more likely that you'll be able to pull the old fliperoo multiple times at the beginning of the next upkeep.
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
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/shadows-over-innistrad-mechanics
Figured as much and updated my review to reflect the new rulings. It doesn't change anything since I was already anticipating this nerf but at least we know now!
I'm also extremely excited about Thing in the Ice and Elusive Tormentor. This set is shaping-up nicely!
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 like both of those. Elusive Tormentor is going to be fun, I think. Not sure what a deck would look like yet, but I like the looks of it. Thing in the Ice is going to be solid in blue in the same way that Crush of Tentacles is. Not super hard to get the most out of it, and gives you a really solid board presence as well. Soul Swallower seems like it has some potential, too. Getting Delirium online isn't exactly trivial, but it's not like Fetchland (even a Terramorphic expanse or something) + Sakura-Tribe Elder + like Harmonize isn't a totally feasible line of play for a green deck, and then you're 3/4 of the way there. I wish he triggered more often, though. Only on your upkeep sucks some of the fun out of it.
I'm probably going to take pass on reviewing cards like Soul Swallower unless there's sufficient interest from the community to see those kinds of cards analyzed. To me it's a Managorger Hydra/Forgotten Ancient with a steep requirement for absolutely no benefit and in the context of a generic fatty that dies to removal that makes it a D tops.
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