Introductions and Explanations Who Am I?
Greetings fellow multiplayer enthusiasts. My name is Kyle "Prid3" Brecht and at the time of writing this I'm a 15+ year MTG veteran who's been playing and following the game competitively (across all relevant duel formats) for well over a decade. That being said whereas most Magic players spend the vast majority of their recreational time dueling/drafting/testing the bulk of my personal playtime has been spent at kitchen tables slinging spells in large multiplayer matches with my friends, family and acquaintances. Be it Cube, Constructed and/or EDH I've literally played tens of thousands of hours of multiplayer Magic in my lifetime and so I consider myself to be an expert on the subject as a whole. With that in mind I'd like to offer you my take on how Magic's latest set will affect the global multiplayer scene as a whole. That is, unlike similar set reviews this one is going to be purely focused on multiplayer formats and dynamics with absolutely no emphasis on duel and/or limited Magic. While I understand that this sort of content won't appeal to everyone it's my belief that multiplayer Magic is played by a relatively high % of the casual MTG playerbase and so it's my hope that most of you will be able to extract meaningful value from my expertise.
My Philosophy
I'm a fiercely competitive player and my set reviews are going to reflect that. That is to say that this is largely going to be a competitive multiplayer set review and so don’t expect me to put any emphasis on subjective measures such as fun factor, flavor nor self-imposed restrictions. While I recognize that terms such as "casual" and "competitive" carry many negative stigmas in the MTG community rest assured that I don’t use either maliciously. As far as I'm concerned it's a simple matter of mindset and how players approach the game from a mental perspective. "Competitive" Magic players such as myself typically build decks with the goal of maximizing our overall match win % given an expected metagame. "Casual" players on the other hand tend to consider a wide variety of variables and factors beyond winning alone. Clearly it's a spectrum as opposed to a binary set of data points but the key thing that I wanted to stress is that these terms have absolutely no bearing on a person’s worth nor morality. That is, no one is inherently better or worse than anyone else for thinking about a game in a different way. The only reason why I’m going to focus entirely on "what wins" is because every other variable is too subjective to make any definitive, sweeping claims about. That being said all other things being equal we'd all rather win games than lose them.
Grading Scale: A: Oppressive cards that completely warp the game around them. These are format definers that dominate games in which they're left unchecked and crush adversaries who aren't employing similarly powered strategies. This makes them must-have competitive staples with limitless potential. Think Gray Merchant of Asphodel, Humility, Consecrated Sphinx, Sylvan Primordial, Purphoros, God of the Forge. B: Formidable cards that will enable you to pull ahead of the pack. Winning decks should be clamoring to field them as they figure to significantly improve your overall win %. This makes them top-priority acquisition targets for players of all skill-levels. Think Grave Pact, Rolling Earthquake, Wrath of God, Recurring Insight, Tendershoot Dryad. C: Powerful cards that will enable you to keep pace with the rest of the field. A list full of C's won't crush a table but a solid foundation of them should be good enough to keep you competitive. Think Fleshbag Marauder, Clever Impersonator, Scab-Clan Berserker, Realm Seekers, Oreskos Explorer. D: Marginal playables with which to flesh out your lists in the absence of reasonable alternatives. I strongly encourage that you enlist substitutes if it's a realistic option since they're unlikely to yield impressive win %s. F: Weak cards that shouldn't be played. Niche: Immensely powerful-yet-narrow cards that are Bs/As in decks that actively want them and Fs/Ds everywhere else. Think Waste Not, Repercussion, Limited Resources, Intruder Alarm, Oath of Druids. Sideboard: Tremendously powerful-yet-niche cards that you shouldn't maindeck against unknown adversaries but that have competitive applications in known metagames with clearly defined threats and strategies. Think Dystopia, Energy Flux, Compost, Stony Silence, Ruination. +/-: Used to denote a better or worse N. That is, a B+ represents a strong B whereas C- implies a weak C.
Notes
The primary distinction that separates EDH from other formats is the abundance of resources that's inherently offered to the players. Namely:
A free mulligan;
An extra 1-2 "cards in hand" (your Commander(s));
An additional 20 life;
An automatic draw step on your first turn and;
A permanent mana sink (your Commander(s)).
When compared to a typical duel format the difference is nothing shy of monumental. Imagine a game of Legacy where you start the game on the play with a mulligan. You're going to end your turn with 6 cards available to you vs the 8 of your adversary. The game hasn't even started and you're already significantly far behind on resources! Conversely, take the same scenario in EDH (mull on the play) where you'll end the turn with 9-10 cards in hand (counting your Commander(s)) which is a 50%+ increase at no cost. Nothing! You're practically swimming in cards.
Moreover, EDH is (typically) a high-health multiplayer format which affords you the opportunity to field oppressive draw engines that don't possess nearly as much power anywhere else. A short list includes things like:
Some of these abuse the high health total, others the increased player count, but ultimately the idea here is that the three "good colors" can draw way more cards than what is reasonable.
With all of this in mind EDH decks are going to be built and played very differently than decks in other formats. Going back to my initial example in Legacy, it's easy to see why a card like Chrome Mox isn't played more heavily. Turn that 6 card hand into a virtual 5 card hand and you're not going to be winning many games against someone boasting 8 themselves. There's simply too few resources left to work with. EDH, on the other hand, doesn't have that problem. The extra cards that you're afforded coupled with those aforementioned draw engines are more than enough to ensure that "cards in hand" will never be a consistent bottle-neck. The result?
Ramp is king. Because you have such a high health total to buffer against aggro and because you get to see so many additional cards in every game the vast majority of EDH games are won and lost on the back of mana and ramp. This is why virtually all optimized lists with include things like Ancient Tomb, Gemstone Cavern, Chrome Mox, Mox Diamond, Mana Crypt, Mana Vault and Sol Ring. Most of those are obvious but even the 1-for-2s that set you back on cards are nothing short of bombs. You're going to see far more cards than you'll ever need and so anything that enables you to cast more spells per circuit is extremely powerful. This further extends to rituals such as Lotus Petal, Dark Ritual, High Tide and Seething Song which provide a sizable boost of mana at a trivial cost. Mana quickly becomes the only resource that matters and so anything that enables you to cheat on it becomes the driving force of your games.
As you read this review you'll often see me reference this Abundance of Resources. Rather than having me explain it each and every time I'll cover it once and simply call back to it as needed. Please keep it in mind as you read because it (by-and-large applies to everything EDH related regardless of whether it's directly referenced or not.
Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx got a nice boost in this set for two reasons. Note that I say "Nykthos" but what I actually mean is "any decent Devotion-matters" card. First, there's an entire cycle of "Benalish Marshals" at rare that brings an entirely new set of 3 drops to the table. While they're all extremely lackluster options in a vacuum they're essentially Thran Dynamos once you have a Nykthos in play so the rest of the body is a bonus. Treat them as ramp spells as opposed to 5/4s for 3. Otherwise that Sagas (such as History of Benalia) are "temporary spells" that can assist with fueling devotion for multiple turns before being sacrificed. While this is certainly a minor consideration at best every little bit helps when its your ramp spell of choice. I'm not actually going to review Benalish Marshal, Tempest Djinn or Steel Leaf Champion but keep them in mind if you need something budget-minded that foots the bill.
I'm not going bother grading/analyzing/reviewing overly weak cards such as Hallar, the Firefletcher, Ghitu Journeymage, Cabal Paladin and Caligo Skin-Witch. After all, even though they say "each opponent" they're far too weak to ever make the cut. It's possible that I should review Cabal Paladin because it has the most potential of the lot (it's great with recursive engines such as Scrap Trawler for example) but the reality is that Artifact-based alternatives such as Blasting Station and Aetherflux Reservoir will always supplant it. If you want me to review them, just pretend that I assigned them all Fs and then scroll to the top of the page read up on what that means. That's about all that I have to say about them :P.
Depending on my mood I'll often review cards like Slither Blade that are utterly worthless in 99.999% of all decks in all formats but that are all-stars in extremely niche circumstances. After all, the card is utterly bonkers in Edric, Spymaster of Trest decks (EDH or Constructed) because it's resilient, unblockble and it's even a Rogue for Notorious Throng which is easily one of the best cards in the deck. Dominaria has so much going on that I'm largely going to ignore these unless they jump off the page as being exceptional cards for specific archetypes. I'm going to ignore anything that falls into "this deck could/might play this" category.
White
Grade: Sideboard D
While "Ghostly Prisons" arguably possess reasonable multiplayer (MP) value as a means of deterring early-game aggression the existence of alternatives such as Windborn Muse and Archangel of Tithes renders this one nearly unplayable in the grand scheme of things. "The fourth best card for the job" rarely makes the cut. Being Legendary is especially odd given that this effect needs to be stacked to feel relevant. Moreover, the reason why these taxing effects are actually marginal playables at best is because they're irrelevant in the face of the strongest multiplayer strategies and archetypes. Combo/Ramp/Control/Stax/etc. decks couldn't care less about trying to attack you and even aggro decks can often drain you out with reach and/or remove them with relative ease. It's also miserable to cast one of these on turn 3 against players jamming things like Worn Powerstone and Rhystic Study because you're almost falling impossibly far behind when that happens. Pretty soon players are hardcasting Eldrazi, paying 8 mana and turning them sideways at you as you're contemplating where you went wrong in life. This is why I'm extremely unimpressed with "Walls" in general; they never seem to matter against players fielding the right kinds of cards. If your meta is (for whatever reason) extremely aggressive then they become reasonable sideboard cards but even that's dubious at best.
Note that as of Dominaria these cards are essentially unplayable in 2HG given that your opponents can simply attack your ally instead. Bummer!
Grade: D+
White doesn't get access to card selection and/or draw so a "2 mana look 5" goes a lot further here than it would for other colors. I'd still rather open most games with a mana rock instead but it's both cheap and flexible enough to make cut in decks with enough hits. For those wondering about the math, assuming a 60 card deck you'd need 18 hits to be 85% on this thing. For EDH you'd need 30. It doesn't really matter what they are as long as you can nab something and with every Paradox Engine that gets printed its stock will continue to rise. At 2 CMC it'll never be a staple but it's definitely a card worth acquiring if you ever plan on exploring White-based Artifact/Legendary builds.
EDIT: I highly recommend that everyone reads this article by Frank Karsten.
EDH Grade: Niche C+
Cost reduction mechanics such as these tend to be oppressive in decks that actively want them but nearly worthless everywhere else. The only reasonable use-case that I can conceive for her is in Sram, Senior Edificer EDH decks that features a throng of 0-1 CMC equipment spells that it can use to combo off into Aetherflux Reservoir. Note that this only relevant for EDH since you can already field more than enough 0 CMC alternatives in Constructed which means that your Sram decks can already combo off without any additional support.
EDH Grade: D+
What Evra gains in EDH that she lacks in regular MP is certainty. After all, if I'm playing a generic Control deck in 60 card constructed I can't blindly jam cards like Gods Willing and Apostle's Blessing into my list on the off-chance that I draw my 1-of Evra. They're going to be dead draws the vast majority of the time so you cannot justify their inclusion. This is where the Command Zone shines since it removes consistency concerns from the equation. Otherwise she's essentially a 1-card win condition as long as you're able to protect and connect with her. Just ramp her out, swing, flip and counter removal with your slew of 1 CMC protection spells and Silence effects. The deck is relatively mindless and essentially builds itself since it's basically just the White version of Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon. Otherwise I don't recommend playing with this card in Constructed since she's far too vulnerable to removal and, again, you won't be able to justify the inclusion of protection such as Gods Willing to make her a consistent attacker. Attack, flip her p/t, die horribly to 2 removal spells is sad times :(. You could make the argument that she's a Sideboard card in that respect but I'm not going to buy into that. Even Mudhole starts to sound promising when you cite the "no one will have anything that matters" defense.
Grade: C+
I'm a huge fan of mass land destruction in MP because it's one of the only consistent ways to end games outside of degenerate combo kills. After all, it's as easy as "get ahead, nuke the lands, win the game." That might sound overly simplistic but it really is that simple in my experience. I can't even begin to count the number of times that someone has curved something like EOT Cyclonic Rift into Consecrated Sphinx into Armageddon only to immediately prompt a concession from the rest of the table. The fact that players eventually get some of their lands back is bothersome but it's mostly going to be a case of "too little, too late" so I'm not overly concerned about it. You should have all-but sealed the deal by then so I don't expect it to matter much. What makes this card so unique is that it's an Enchantment which is something that White can legitimately tutor for, cheat out and/or recur. Clearly it doesn't hold a candle to Armageddon in a straight 1v1 fistfight but it'll be key for formats such as EDH where you can only run a handful of copies of the effect and have no reliable way to tutor/draw into them. It's going to be a fantastic addition to White's roster in that sense and I look forward to jamming it for many years to come.
Grade: D+
I dislike "Baneslayer Angels" in MP since they're expensive, vulnerable to removal, slow clocks and far too "fair" to warrant their investment. That being said they're still reasonable playables in smaller tables where players aren't fielding traditional multiplayer archetypes and strategies. As such you can never discount them entirely since they're great ways to gum up the ground, gain some life and exert some pressure as needed. They're also especially powerful in Black decks given their ability to compliment card draw spells/engines such as Necropotence and Necrologia which are already obscenely degenerate in formats such as EDH.
The primary thing that's going to prevent him from being oppressive is that White lacks the card draw and tutors needed to consistently assemble these types of combos. It's also extremely difficult to naturally draw into the right mix without their help and so consistency will always be his Achilles's heel. Given enough time/tutors/card draw spells I'm sure that he'll get there eventually though and I'm excited to build a Staxy, Combo Artifact-based build. It will never be top tier because Monowhite lacks far too many tools to be a serious contender so you're always going to be better off playing something like Breya, Etherium Shaper instead. Even if she (arguably) brings less to the table in terms of her body its the additional colors that make the exchange worth your while. Teshar is still extremely close to being extremely good however and I wouldn't fault anyone for building around him.
Grade: B
This card is absolutely bonkers. I'm already giggling maniacally at the thought of curving Ajani, Caller of the Pride into Elspeth, Knight-Errant into URB or any reasonably similar sequence. 5 mana to exile everything is an absurd rate even if you're forced to jump through an extra hoop. White has so many amazing Planeswalkers and Legendaries that it barely even feels like a requirement and the payoff is gargantuan. After all, URB will legitimately be a 5 mana Cyclonic Rift that exiles (yes, exiles!) in some scenarios and that's completely messed-up. I have to say that I'm loving all of these new, powerful, White mass removal spells (looking at you Tragic Arrogance and Hour of Revelation) and I'm glad that Wizards is starting to show some love to the "bad colors." I'm definitely going to playing the heck out of this thing in every multiplayer format for a long, long time in any deck that can reasonably support it. That's mostly going to be EDH because the Legendary is almost "free" but don't discount its Constructed applications either.
While some of you may feel that I'm unfairly dismissing The Antiquities War's 3rd mode (your robots become 5/5s) I don't consider it to be a viable win condition in any multiplayer format. They can be chumped/killed/etc. and you're not going to have enough stuff to swing for lethal in the first place. As such I don't assign much value to it because that's not what MP games are about. The same thing more-or-less applies to The Mirari Conjecture because doubling spells is cool and all but not when it's happening 2 turns later. There's simply no compelling reason to risk tapping out for draw spells/value engines as marginal as these.
Grade: B
Into the Roil has always been a reasonable playable and its twin brother will certainly follow in those footsteps. Blue is one of the privileged colors that can afford to waste cards on marginal tempo plays such as these because it tends to draw far more cards than it could ever hope to play. Otherwise there's nothing new, exciting, flashing or noteworthy about Blink of an Eye other than "it's interaction on turn 2 that cantrips on turn 6 if needed." It's no Chain of Vapor or Cyclonic Rift but it's still good enough to make the cut if you're looking for some additional interaction in your lists.
Grade: D
Even though "Confiscates" technically scale with the number of adversaries (more players = better targets to choose from) this effect sadly isn't worth the 6 mana investment. There's far more practical things to be doing with your time and mana at that stage of the game which is why you rarely see these types of theft effects being played. I wouldn't laugh anyone out of the room for sleeving them up but there's significantly more powerful things to be spending your mana on. Such as...
Grade: C
Things like this! I'm a huge fan of extra turn effects in multiplayer since they scale extremely well with the increased player count. After all, they enable you to steal a significantly larger % of the total turns being played in a given circuit relative to the value that they offer in duels.
2 Player Game
Each circuit has 2 turns (yours, theirs) so each player takes 50% of the total turns. A Time Walk temporarily bumps that number up to 3 and since you're taking 2 of them that's 2/3 = 66% of the total turns being played for the circuit. That's an increase of 32% over what you were previously getting (which was 50%) and so that's your "steal factor" for the play.
4 Player Game
Each circuit has 4 turns (Player A's, B's, C's and D's) so each player takes 25% of the total turns. A Time Walk temporarily bumps that number up to 5 and since you're taking 2 of them that's 2/5 = 40% of the total turns being played. That's an increase of 62.5% over what you were previously getting (which was 25%) and so that's your "steal factor" for the play.
As you can see assuming a 4 player game Time Walks provide you with nearly twice the value (195.3125% but who's counting?) that they would otherwise offer in duels.
Boring math aside extra turn effects are fantastic ways to surge ahead of the field by making additional land drops, activating Planeswalkers, abusing card advantage engines and chaining into more extra turn spells. I don't know about the rest of you but I'm more than happy to Twincast a Time Stretch and then Snapcaster Mage it to take all of the turns. If the rest of the table wants to keep playing, hey, that's on them :). As to how good KTS is, the reality is that it's basically the worst version of the effect ever printed. The bounce is largely irrelevant and the high mana cost + conditional nature make it significantly less appealing than the alternatives. What it does offer is (I'm assuming) affordability since things like Temporal Manipulation cannot be acquired on a budget. Otherwise even a "bad" Time Warp is still a bonkers MP Magic card and it doesn't seem overly difficult to support. Blue already has some amazing Legendarie creatures (such as Baral, Chief of Compliance, Jace, Vryn's Prodigy and Venser, Shaper Savant and most of its Planeswalkers are equally powerful. As such you don't have to go too far out of your way to enable it and the effect is stellar.
Grade: Sideboard C+
This card is extremely difficult to grade because it's basically a combination of Niche/Sideboard without being stellar at either. It's a wonky Counterspell variant that can be employed to thwart creature-based combos that would otherwise end the game on the spot. So, for example, if an opponent Tooth and Nails for a Zealous Conscripts and Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker you can Flash this in to disrupt the combo and sweep them away on the following turn. The reason why this wouldn't be strictly worse than a regular Counterspell is that it's both a creature and that it's cheap to cast. As such you can do things like Survival of the Fittest/Chord of Calling to tutor for one and cast it in response to a Laboratory Maniac kill or something along those lines. You can also recur it with things like Phyrexian Reclamation which opens up additional possibilities and play patterns. The card is basically unplayable outside of combo-ridden metas, it just doesn't do enough on average, but a deck full of Green tutors might want a copy as a niche interaction spell.
Wizard's Retort won't have any impact on Constructed/Cube but should definitely be played in every Wizards-based EDH deck. After all, Counterspell is one heck of a MP Magic card and you should play every functional reprint that you can get your hands on. It deals with any troublesome spell for the low investment of 2 mana and 1 card which is perfect when you're trying to thwart game-ending bombs and break-up degenerate combos. Gaining access to permission is easily one of the primary reasons to play Blue given that it's one of the only reliable way to profitably interact with whatever broken things that your adversaries are going to be doing. It's one of the strongest catch-alls ever printed and you'd be foolish to omit it from your lists.
EDH Grade: Niche C+
The most broken aspect of this card is that it's essentially a 1-card win condition when paired with things like Ghostly Flicker and Illusionist's Stratagem assuming that you have a single relevant Wizard in play (such as Sea Gate Oracle). From there you can draw your entire deck and trigger Laboratory Maniac or whatever. Blue has a slew of tutors such as Mystical Tutor and Merchant Scroll to find one and if all else fails there's no shortage of oppressive draw spells/engines that you can employ to dig into your necessary components. Otherwise she's a rather lackluster Commander given that Wizards already has access to a couple of Godlyalternatives which means that if you're fielding Naru (either in the Command Zone or in the 99) it's only because of her potential to act as a degenerate combo piece.
EDH Grade: C+
Opt is a surprisingly difficult card to grade. Don't get me wrong, it's a solid card in a vacuum and if it were in (literally) any color then it would see significantly more play. However, the fact that it's in Blue means that it virtually never makes sense to field it in formats such as Cube or Constructed. After all, you should always elect to field alternatives such as Mystic Remora, Brainstorm, Ponder, Preordain, Gitaxian Probe, Thought Scour, Impulse and Search for Azcanta instead which means that you're never going find any slots for it. Period. This is why I don't even bother grading it (I didn't grade it in my Ixalan set review for example) because even though the card is decent in a vacuum there's zero incentive for anyone to purchase and play with it. That being said this particular set review is branching out into EDH which means that I can safely give it a once-over without feeling as though I'm wasting everyone's time.
Cantrips are extremely powerful in EDH given that they enable you to smooth your draws and thus cheat on things like lands during deck construction. You're often fielding upwards of 40 which means that if you ever find yourself on the wrong end of variance then it can make for a miserable play experience. Adding a slew of cantrips to your list will enable you double or triple the number of cards that you see in the opening turns of the game (on average) in order to drastically reduce the likelihood (and/or mitigate the impact) of mana-screw/flood. Moreover, you'll also be sculpting a strong mix of ramp, card draw, tutors, interaction and payoff spells along the way which leads to a steady play experience. What separates Opt from the rest of the pack is that it's an Instant which means that you can sandbag it until EOT (assuming that you need to hold up mana for and/or represent interaction). Everyone can plainly see why it's weaker than alternatives such as Preordain when you're jamming it Main Phase but the fact that it doesn't force you to tap mana on your turn is how it earns its keep.
Now, the reason why Opt doesn't see more play (it's not an EDH staple by any means) is because there's better things to be doing with your time, mana and (most importantly) deckslots than wasting them on marginal filler such as Opt. It's still a totally reasonable addition and I've seen it played in extremely competitive decks before but the problem is that your flex-slots are extremely tight and so it virtually never survives the cuts. After all, it only digs a maximum of 2 cards (whereas Ponder sees twice as many for the same quantity of mana) which barely qualifies as filtering when all's said and done. I still want to stress that this card isn't bad per say, it's merely in the color that has access to vastly superior alternatives.
Grade: Niche B
Precognition Field is a stellar card advantage engine for spell-based builds given their ability to consistently lean on cheap cantrips to all-but control their draws (often referred to as Xeroxing). For example, imagine a deck with something along of the lines of 8-12x Fetchland, 4x Preordain, 4x Ponder and 4x Brainstorm. Not only is your deck full of "hits" and/or ways to shuffle away "misses" but you're also going to be consistently controlling the top card of your library every turn of every game. As such Precognition Field can easily represent a virtual 3+ cards per circuit (sometimes many, many more) as you're casting a slew of "Xerox" spells that continually Scry additional "hits" to the top. These types of value chains can feel utterly oppressive to play against because it often feels as though your adversary is playing with their entire deck as their hand. Precognition Field certainly imposes some rather extremely deckbuilding requirements but the payoff is undeniably there if you're willing to follow them.
That being said Precognition Field isn't functionally playable outside of extremely niche Constructed decks and/or EDH given that it's a "strictly worse" version of Future Sight and/or Magus of the Future. I'm using the term loosely here because it's 4 mana vs 5 (and thus isn't strictly worse by definition) but Future Sight offers far too much additional power + flexibility and since the effect is worthless in multiples decks rarely want to field more than a single copy of it. If your deck is literally nothing but Lands, Instants and Sorceries then the card is utterly bonkers but those are going to be so few and far between that it's barely worth consideration. Otherwise, the only compelling argument that I've heard is that Precognition Field is an infinite mana sink that can enable you to "draw" (i.e. dig through) your entire deck for something like Laboratory Maniac or Walking Ballista to win the match. This is relevant when you have access to infinite colorless mana but not infinite colored mana. I'm still not buying it outside of extremely narrow builds because at that point you're probably mostly building it to prove a point.
With respect to EDH I would only consider it in decks like Mizzix of the Izmagnus and Melek, Izzet Paragon. It's not a "must have" for these archetypes by any means but it does seem eminently reasonable. The key thing to remember here is that even if the card isn't great in your nut draws it's a nice fail-safe for when things go awry. I've already explained how it can reasonably "draw" multiple cards every circuit (harder in EDH but still doable) and that's often what you'll need to claw back into a game in which you've fallen behind.
Grade: D-
We're going to need a bigger boat O.O. All jokes aside an 8 mana 8/8 is unplayable trash in MP so you have to treat Big Slim as a 10 drop if you're going to field him. That means support him with plenty of ramp and ways to buy time. With that in mind I can somewhat imagine playing him a Blue-based Control deck that fields things like Scourge of Fleets and Breaching Leviathan as its finishers. You'll want a lot of mana doublers (High Tide, Extraplanar Lens, Gauntlet of Power, Caged Sun) and a lot of mass removal (Cyclonic Rift, Engulf the Shore, Evacuation) and the idea here is that eventually you'll be casting a "Plague Wind fatty" every turn. This all seems like a stretch but I happen to have a soft spot for one-sided mass removal when I'm playing Blue because the only thing more fun than casting Cyclonic Rift is casting one every turn ;).
Grade: Niche D
Tetsuko is a card that seems interesting but the more that you think about her the less compelling that she seems. With respect to EDH the fact that she's Monoblue means that your card pool is too shallow to build anything worthwhile. In Constructed you can support her with various saboteur effects in other colors but otherwise I don't see how you're making her work. She arguably has some value for things like Edric, Spymaster of Trest EDH but even then most of your creatures already have evasion and you don't really want to be casting a 2 CMC spell that's this conditional. She seems very win-more to me are largely unexciting as a result. I'm more than happy to be wrong about this card but with the current card pool I can't concoct a reasonable decklist that adequately abuses her effect.
EDH Grade: C+
Free spells are always scary and free permission is even scarier. This is easily one of the strongest interaction spells printed in the past ~5 and it will see a fair amount of play. Not so much in Constructed where you can field 4 copies of cards like Swan Song and Counterspell but it's definitely piqued my interest for Cube and EDH. It's not Mana Drain levels of good or anything but given that Blue decks often field 6-10 permission spells I expect Unwind to be a staple for years to come.
Before moving on, let me quickly touch on something. Rewind is unplayable trash and there's no two ways about it. In fact I'd wager dollars to donuts that almost none of you (myself included) have even seen one cast in MP. The card sucks and I don't advocate fielding it under any circumstance. With that in mind why am I so excited about a 3 mana Negate when we already have a 4 mana Counterspell? Aren't they basically the same thing? Isn't the less conditional card stronger? Nope, absolutely not! In the world of Blue-based permission mana reigns supreme. The reason why Swan Swong, Counterspell and Negate tower above the competition is because they consistently get the job done for the least amount of mana. Rewind may seem reasonable but then you realize that you virtually cannot tap any of your mana at Sorcery speed if you want to represent it and that places an immense burden on your resources. Believe me when I say that that one extra mana is many orders of magnitude more relevant than it might otherwise seem because it changes things from "I can't cast any other spells" to "I can still cast my cheap cantrips/tutors/removal spells" without dropping your shields.
Now, I haven't exactly explained what makes this card so good have I? What makes Unwind such an powerful permission spell is that it enables you to play draw-go Control without ever having to take risks. The only mana that you'll ever need to tap at Sorcery speed will be for cheap tutors/cantrips that leave the majority of your mana unaccounted for. From there you can sit back, assess the situation, and take action as needed. Someone casts a powerful spell? Negate it and follow-up with an Azcanta, the Sunken Ruin activation (or two!) or a juicy Thirst for Knowledge/Fact or Fiction. No spell gets cast? You still get to draw your cards :). You get to counter anything that matters for free and then draw your cards at EOT to ensure that you're never falling behind on resources as a result of your 1-for-1 trades. There's no cost or risk or anything because you have full control of every action at every stage of the game.
Also, let's be real, I've only begun to scratch the surface of what this thing can do. What if you're untapping Cloudposts or other nonsense lands like Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx? Playing 2HG? Imagine this: your ally jams a threat. Someone tries to Counterspell it. You counter back, untap your ally's lands and they proceed to cast another threat. That's a freaking 8 mana swing on turn 3, there's no recovering from that! This card is quite good and I cannot wait to start jamming it in 2HG and EDH.
Black
Grade: D+
This is one of the strongest 2 CMC Black spot removal spells ever printed and competes favorably with alternatives such as Go for the Throat outside of EDH. That being said 2 CMC spot removal is lackluster at best in MP given that you have no incentive to trade with people on a 1-for-1 basis. Occasionally it's required to deal with game-ending bombs but even then I recommend sticking to 0-1 CMC alternatives such as Slaughter Pact, Snuff Out, Murderous Cut and Curtains' Call as much as humanely possible. Every mana counts so try to avoid these 2 CMC alternatives.
Grade: Niche D
I'm somewhat interested in curving one of these into a Gray Merchant of Asphodel since that's a lot of bang for your buck. 4 mana for "5 damage" is nearly Fiery Confluence levels of burn which is relevant for various aggressively-slanted Black builds. That being said I detest the third mode on this thing and would much rather have "nothing" instead. I definitely don't want to trade half of my life for a generic, evasionless beater that dies to removal at no benefit. Granted, by the time that it comes out it should basically be OTKing players so if you do manage to connect with anyone they're probably screwed. It's not all bad in that sense which is why I could somewhat envision a world where I give this card a shot in drain decks. Still seems unlikely though.
Grade: D+
I've always been a fan of true Control cards and instant speed draw spells certainly foot the bill. It's no Fact or Fiction but it's still a decent way to use your mana at EOT assuming that you weren't forced to spend it on interaction. Draw 3 discard 1 is also better in Black than most other colors given its general love of all things graveyard-related. I get that you have to pitch one of the cards that you drew and not any card from your hand but it still seems fine to me. My only issue with these types of cards is that they tend to lose out to alternatives such as Night's Whisper that offer the same card advantage for half the mana. It's still Sorcery vs Instant so it's not a completely lopsided affair (ok, that's a lie, it still is) but it's tough to pass on a Sign in Blood when you're looking for quick and dirty card draw. I like this a heck of a lot more than Ancient Craving for example, I wouldn't fault anyone for fielding it, it's just that Black has access to far more powerful tools for generating card advantage.
Grade: C
While Belzenlok may look impressive it's imperative to stress that he's essentially a bad Phyrexian Gargantua and won't see much play as a result. Ok, maybe "bad" isn't the right term to use but you're trading a better body for worse card advantage (on average) but it's close either way. Be it EDH or Constructed your deck is extremely unlikely to have significantly more than a 20% probability of drawing multiple cards so you should treat him like the biggest, baddest Dusk Legion Zealot on the block. That's still fine, I'm not hating on him, but he's no Grave Titan, Massacre Wurm, Kokusho, the Evening Star, Demon of Dark Schemes, Oblivion Sower, etc. The best deck for him by a country mile is my patented and ultra competitive (ITS NOT UTTER JANK LA LA LA CAN'T HEAR YOU) Demon Control Deck. Otherwise you kinda want to play him in a deck full of cantripping threats and drain spells such as Dusk Legion Zealot, Phyrexian Rager, Crypt Ghast, Gonti, Lord of Luxury and Gray Merchant of Ashpodel. The idea here is that you're always drawing cards and draining the table while building towards your game-ending bombs.
Grade: Niche C
I know that I'm going to sound like a broken record but Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, Sanguimancy and Gray Merchant of Asphodel are incredibly obnoxious Magic cards and this is definitely going to be a staple for the Devotion archetype. I dislike Geralf's Messenger since he's a bad blocker who doesn't scale whereas Dead Shade blocks well and scales amazingly by comparison. He threatens to OTK anyone who's been drained by a Gary and pumping Nykthos mana into him is an easy way to go for the kill. Beyond that he's also castable off of Dark Ritual on turn 1 and while I wouldn't advocate doing this for beatdown reasons going turn 1 Dark Ritual -> Dread Shade, turn 2 Gifted Aetherborn, turn 3 Dread Shade, turn 4 Phyrexian Obliterator, turn 5 Gray Merchant of Asphodel deals 14 damage to each opponent and drains 42 life (setting up for Sanguimancy). Heck, that's assuming that you never even entered the Red Zone! Not only are you playing relevant blockers at every turn of the game but you're also threatening lethal on basically everyone (you can attack after casting Gary) and you never put yourself in any danger at any point. Even if you don't, no big deal, just untap, jam a Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx and cast something like Exsanguinate or Torment of Hailfire to seal the deal.
Grade: C
While this isn't going to be the next Dark Intimations I'm having a hard time finding something to dislike about this Uncommon. Assuming a 4 player game it's a 5 mana 7-for-1 and even though I'm fully expecting to lose value on some of those sacs/discards it's still basically a Tidings. There's no shame in playing Tidings. I like that he he can recur Planeswalkers as well since that can be extremely relevant for "Death Cloud" decks that need durable threats to seal the deal once the board has been sufficiently nuked. It's extremely flexible and powerful in that sense. You don't even have to build around the effect in any way, shape or form because it's always going to be good. That being said I do want to curve something like: Waste Not -> Arterial Flow -> Syphon Mind -> The Eldest Reborn -> Capital Punishment or something along those lines whenever possible but basically any Black deck can justify running some number of these. Black has no shortage of powerful 5+ CMC spells so it's not going to be a staple or anything but I'm definitely going to be picking some of these up to playtest. By the way, did I mention that it's only an Uncommon? My faith in Wizards has been reborn!
Grade: B
This card is absolutely bonkers and will become a staple tutor for years to come. At first glance it may seem like a slower version of Jarad's Orders until you realize that it has no restrictions whatsoever. As such you can fetch anything and everything under the sun and you're not forced to be playing a multicolored deck to support it. If you want a Skullclamp in hand and a Reassembling Skeleton in the bin then it's yours. Griselbrand in the GY and Animate Dead in hand? No problemo. Haakon, Stromgald Scourge + Nameless Inversion, Filth + Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, Dakmor Salvage + Cabal Coffers, the list is endless. Fatty + reanimation spell is the obvious choice but even then it's only the tip of the iceberg. After all, I've only been touching on some of the obvious Black cards. Hermit Druid + Anger can win the game outright. Same thing for Lion's Eye Diamond/Cabal Ritual + Yawgmoth's Will and/or Past in Flames + Mana Geyser. In that sense it feels like you're cheating no matter how you slice it. The downside of this card is that it's 5 mana and doesn't have an immediate impact on the game but unless your meta is especially cutthroat that shouldn't be a problem for most of you. This will be especially true in EDH where players are already casting Diabolic Tutor in droves and I can guarantee you that this card is many orders of magnitude more powerful. I just couldn't envision a world where this isn't an auto-include and I know that I'm personally going to be picking up copies for most of my lists. It's essentially a double Demonic Tutor as far I'm concerned and there's just no world where that doesn't make the cut.
Grade: D
Although I basically consider this card to be an F I did want to highlight its potential in decks with cards like Plague Spitter, Pyrohemia, Pestilence, Thrashing Wumpus and Pestilence Demon. I still don't think that it's ever worth your while to field it but I didn't want to leave any value off of the table. There's far too many 7+ CMC spells that always "do things" so something this marginal + conditional shouldn't entice anyone in the slightest.
EDH Grade: B
This, to me, is the best Black card in the set. It's many orders of magnitude more relevant than Cabal Stronghold for example and that's coming from a dire-hard Monoblack mage. I've been unabashedly gushing over this guy ever since he was spoiled and I cannot overstate how good that he is. One thing that you notice when you literally play thousands of games of Monoblack Magic is that a good chunk of your "good" spells aren't always good. For example, when I open with Jet Medallion into Crypt Ghast and look at a hand of Swamp, Chrome Mox, Exsanguinate, Living Death, Gray Merchant of Asphodel and Rise of the Dark Realms I don't actually have any good plays. These are fantastic cards and I want them in my deck, I'm not suggesting otherwise, but they don't do anything for me on turn 4. As such the more that I played the more that I found myself drawn to cards like Army of the Damned, Void Winnower and Emrakul, the Promised End that you can fire-and-forget at any stage of the game. True story, the first time that I added Army of the Damned to my decks I did it as a joke. I was thinking to myself "ha ha, look at this silly card" and threw it in. Then I cast it and it won me the game outright. Cool, but that's just a fluke, right? Played another game and yet again it instantly sealed the deal for me. Played another game and another and another and the one constant across all of them was that I was winning every game were I just jammed a turn 4-5 Army of the Damned. Pretty soon that became my go-to Demonic Tutor target and here I am still playing it all these years later. I'm not saying that it's oppressive or anything because clearly it's not. It's expensive, the clock isn't that fast and it "dies" to a couple of mass removal spells. That being said it's also a card that you can blindly jam on turn 4 with no setup and immediately ask the table "do you have it? No? Then you're going to lose very quickly."
That brings us to Josu Vess, Lich Knight which is a card that's going to change the way that I build and play my decks, especially in formats like EDH where I can make it my Commander. As I was previously alluding to what makes this card so good is the fact that it's always good. There's no setup required for this monstrously powerful 1-card win condition. Can you pair it with Strionic Resonator, Panharmonicon, Coat of Arms and various other nonsense? Sure! Do you have to? Nope! You can build a generic Monoblack ramp deck with tons of ramp, card draw, interaction, etc. and no other spells that matter. You don't need them! Nothing is going to beat casting Army of the Damned once you have the mana to do so which means that you don't need to waste deck slots on a slew of expensive finishers. You'll want some (I'm still going to field things like Ugin, the Spirit Dragon and Emrakul, the Promised End for example) but I'm not going to waste time on more than a handful. Rather, I can now take all of those previously marginal (but necessary) slots and convert them to more discard, more removal, more tutors, more protection, on and on and on. It's the best of all worlds because you maintain the ability to grind the table out with your swarm of undead minions but you're doing so in a more consistent and interactive way.
With respect to how you make this card into an "endgame bomb," I won't go into all of the ways but the main card(s) that I do want to highlight are Unholy Grotto and Volrath's Stronghold. They have next-to-no opportunity cost and enable you you bypass things like Commander tax to ensure that you're able to cast Josu every turn past a certain stage of the game. This applies to any MP format but I do want to stress that I'm not suggesting that you hardcast the guy 8 times in Commander by paying 26 mana (or whatever). There's easy ways to cap it and you can and should abuse them. Otherwise your deck doesn't need much in the way of finishers because you'll eventually draw one and you don't need much more than that. Only exile effects and mass land destruction are problematic from there on out but even those can be mitigated with sac outlets and such. Exile also doesn't apply to EDH where you can easily re-cast him a couple of times if needed.
Grade: Sideboard B
While it might seem cool to build around this type of effect (Reliquary Tower, Thought Vessel, Exsanguinate, Kokusho, the Evening Star, etc.) the fact that you just lose to any form of mass removal makes it unplayable trash as far as I'm concerned. There's tons that see consistent play and this isn't worth the risk when everyone and their mother has things like Bane of Progress and Ugin, Spirit Dragon floatign around. If you can literally cite the decklists of your opposition card-for-card then sure, it could have some niche applications, but that's a tall order from where I'm sitting.
Grade: C
This is card is certainly interesting if nothing else. The first mode is essentially the "balance" mode because it prevents it from being too powerful. It will occasionally protect something from the mass removal effect on the following turn but essentially offers zero value as far as I'm concerned. Moving on to the second mode, Duneblast is a strong card at 7 mana and who are we to complain about a 4 CMC alternative? The last mode is also fantastic since it denies resources from each adversary while leaving yours untouched. I wouldn't play it in a huge swath of decks if it said "each player" so I'm glad that it's not symmetrical. Still, the primary application of this card is "Suspend 1: Damnation" and that's what most people will be fielding it as. As such I'm struggling to get excited over it because I'm more than willing to invest in cards like Toxic Deluge, Damnation, Languish and Mutilate regardless of their cost. Because of this Phyrexian Scriptures will virtually never make the cut in my decks except in very specific circumstances. That being said I have spent a lot of time thinking about this card because it does offer some unique advantages over the alternatives.
First of all it can be significantly better to "suspend" your mass removal spells early on rather than immediately casting them. Imagine that you're playing a control deck that opens on turn 2 Jet Medallion and you want something to cast on turn 3. The other players probably won't have much going on and it typically wouldn't make much sense to cast a Damnation that early into the game. That being said you'll still desperately want to cast your Syphon Mind on the following turn and so floating mana now could be disastrous. In this scenario you can elect to "suspend" Phyrexian Scriptures on turn 3 as a way to clear the board on turn 4 and Time Walk your adversaries from being able to cast their creatures. Moreover, it essentially enables you to cast both Damnation and Syphon Mind on turn 4 without falling behind on board and taking a bunch of damage in the process. This doesn't just work on turn 3 either as later on you can set up for the aforementioned Duneblast by protecting a key threat (such as Crypt Ghast and setting up a big mass removal spell + bomby finisher turn. The problem is obviously that you sometimes you need to Wrath the board on turn 3 and come turn 8 you won't always have time to suspend Phyrexian Scriptures before dying which is where these tactics tend to fall apart. They're great when you can set them up but that isn't always possible.
Moving on, the card is extremely potent when paired with Hex Parasite. Anything that can manipulate counters is clearly powerful when combined with Sagas but a permanent Plague Wind will certainly feel oppressive for some decks to play against. Remember, it only nukes non-artifact creatures so you don't even have to put the counter on the Parasite to get this combo online. As such you can protect a different creature instead which enables you to preserve your board while wiping out the opposition. The issue here is that players can easily kill your Parasite to prevent this. Recursion can somewhat mitigate this risk but realistically it isn't especially difficult to thwart. You can still "make them have it" but I wouldn't blindly assume that this combo will magically take over the game with any consistency. Think of this an "I'll be happy if this works but I'm not expecting it to" strategy that you're not going all-in on by any means.
Lastly, this card is extremely potent in "Robots" decks. I'm talking Walking Ballista, Arcbound Ravager, Hangarback Walker, Steel Overseer, Cranial Plating, etc. The idea here is that it's literally a 4 mana Plague Wind and since you're playing a Robots deck you can easily justify running Hex Parasite to further the synergies involved. Heck, you may even have cards like Welding Jar to protect it as an added bonus. This, to me, is by far and away the most compelling use for Phyrexian Scriptures. It doesn't take many hits from Cranial Plating to kill someone (usually 2) and having a way to clear every blocker every turn is going to be rough to play against. You're not required to play this in a Robots deck by any means but in general I'd rather have a card like Mutilate in my deck unless I had something that enabled me to take Phyrexian Scriptures above-and-beyond a Damnation with Suspend 1.
EDH Grade: D+
Torgaar brings back many fond memories of Sorin Markov and the many joys of resolving him in EDH. The fact that he only deals 20 damage is somewhat disappointing but the upside here is that you don't have to cast him which means that he also works with recursion and doubling effects (Strionic Resonator, Panharmonicon). Not in the sense that you can double-nuke the same person, but hitting multiple adversaries for 20 is decent for aggressive decks. Heck, you can even pair him with cards like Wound Reflection to immediately kill players off assuming that they're still at or above their starting life total. That being said none of this strikes me as another other than marginal value so I'm not expecting him to waves in any MP format (EDH or otherwise).
What I'm actually interested in doing with this card is targeting myself. Black has plenty of tutors to locate cards like Necrologia and casting one at EOT for 39 (or whatever) sounds pretty good assuming that you can also Necromancy a Torgaar, Famine Incarnate into play. Most instant-speed recursion costs 2-3 mana and Black has access to fast mana such as Dark Ritual if you don't have enough extra floating. Even if you miss on Torgaar as long as you hit Entomb then you can still locate and recur him with ease so you're not all-in on the hitting the perfect cards each and every time.. From there you can jump straight back to 20, fill your GY with millions of goodies and set up for an easy win. If you do happen to have cards like Reliaquary Tower or Thought Vessel even better!
Alternatively you can jam Torgaar as your Commander, field plenty of ways to cheat him out and then rely on having him die or pair him with sac outlets to get him in in the bin. That way you can convert him into a Necrologia for 39 assuming that you field all of the broken Black tutors to consistently locate him. I still think that this is worse than playing Sidisi, Undead Vizier but it's certainly a reasonable option. When people ask me who my Commander is I usually just tell them that it's Necrologia because as long as I'm drawing my 15-20 cards every game then I'm happy.
The primary thing that this card has going for it is that the requirement essentially isn't a cost. Black has some of the best Planeswalkers in the game and a huge % of the creatures that you're already looking to run are Legendary. The problem is that the card itself is rather boring and it's not something that I see myself playing. 5 CMC spot removal is extremely weak so you're mostly playing it as a recursion spell. The ability to choose any critter/Walker from any GY is nice but this isn't a steal by any means. I consider it to be on par with cards like Wretched Confluence which are too fair for my blood. I prefer things like Animate Dead, Dance of the Dead and Necromancy for spot recursion since if I'm going to pay 5 mana for the effect it may as well be on Living Death. I understand that they can't recur 'Walkers and don't have the added utility of removing a threat but I don't think you're getting your money's worth. YVO is still perfectly playable, it's just not a card that's particularly exciting.
Red
Grade: D-
Talk about a premature eruption :/. None of its modes are even remotely powerful/exciting and you definitely don't want to be pitching Mountains to jam an Anger of the Gods on turn 5. I can somewhat get behind the Seething Song on turn 4 mode but you may as well field Seething Song if that 's what you're after :P. Very disappointing.
Grade: Niche C
This card is absolutely perfect for your Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx decks and strategies. They're always on the lookout for relevant spells to jam on turns 2 and 3 that offer more than simple mana symbols. Not only is it a great blocker (3/3 FS is no joke on turn 3) but it also nukes all opposing mana/utility dorks which is extremely relevant in my experience. Given that is also functions as a Thran Dynamo once you find a Nykthos you definitely want to be jamming these in your devotion decks. It's still playable outside of them, the card is decent in vacuum, but I'd stick to things like Anger of the Gods unless you're planning on adding Nykthos.
Grade: Niche C+
While Goblins isn't an explicitly multiplayer-orientated tribe it's Red's strongest one by a fair margin and these are all staples in most builds. The decks tends to win games on the back of "mana and bodies" moreso than anything else which is exactly what these kinds of cards bring to the table. After all, the MP versions of the archetype tend to shift away from the beatdown/mana denial plan and more towards things like Impact Tremors, Kreno, Mob Boss and Purphoros, God of the Forge. Any avid Red Mage should make a concerted effort to acquire them because they're still relevant all these years later so if you're ever planning on building a Goblins deck these are easy go-tos.
Grade: D
They promised a bomb but didn't specify that it wouldn't be a dud. While this is technically Red removal it's not nearly powerful, consistent, nor fast enough to pass muster. I don't even buy the "sometimes you need answers even if they're not great" arguments for cards like these because in my experience they virtually never accomplish anything relevant. I don't recommend acquiring/playing with them if your goal is to win games of Magic.
Grade: D+
Does anyone else get the feeling that Wizards went out of their way to make Red bad in this set? Why are all of their cards so freaking weak relative to their counterparts? Jaya is "fine" but I'm struggling to envision a scenario where she earns her keep. Her mana mode will enable you to protect her with cards like Anger of the Gods and also plays nice with big X spells such as Comet Storm and Jaya's Immolating Inferno but she still feels hopeless outclassed to me. Her mass loot mode might help you set up some sweet Past in Flames plays and works well with her ultimate but I can't say that I'm loving any of this. There's zero "wow factor" whatsoever, just an an extremely lackluster 5 drop.
Grade: C
JII is one of the more interesting Legendary Sorcery spells given that it boasts immense synergy with most of Red's Walkers. After all, the vast majority of them either copy spells or ramp mana both of which are absurd when paired with this type of effect. The go-to spell for this slot at the moment is Comet Storm but assuming a 4 player game you need to sink 5 mana into it just to target your 3 adversaries. JII only eats 2 by comparison so it can easily deal an extra 3-6 damage for next-to-no cost. It might not like sound like much on paper but believe me when I say that every point counts, especially if you're using things like Earthquake, Flamebreak and Breath of Darigaaz to control the board. Red also has a slew of durable bodies such as Norin the Wary, Squee, Goblin Nabob and Squee, the Immortal that are extremely difficult to remove from the board for any significant length of time. I wouldn't blindly jam them into my decks for JII alone but I'd certainly consider the latter assuming that I was already running the former. Beyond that JII is an extremely mindless and consistent way to close games out assuming that you're fielding things like Cloudpost, Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, Gauntlet of Might, Mana Geyser and/or basically any big mana strategy that includes a reasonable number of activators.
Grade: Niche A
Squee is back and annoying as ever! This type of threat is ripe for abuse and lends itself extremely well to degenerate strategies. First and foremost it goes infinite with Food Chain to generate infinite colored mana to spend on creatures. It's an extremely powerful EDH combo that performs just as well in 60 card constructed where it'll routinely clear the table out. While we already haven creatures to enable this combo the more the merrier because it makes the lists that much more consistent. He's also a generic "Reassembling Skeleton" for Stax decks looking to feed cards like Smokestack. Red already has plenty of mass land destruction in the form of cards like Impending Disaster and Ruination so if you can top it off with a nice Squee lock that will all-but seal the deal. He can also be played off of any of Red's "card draw" spell/engines which tend to be things like Faithless Looting and/or Outpost Siege as opposed to actual card draw. You don't exactly care where he ends up as long as he makes an appearance. Otherwise the immortal body is relevant for Equipment such as Bonehoard that will enable you to beat the table into submission if left unchecked. Eventually it becomes a "one hit one kill" scenario and there's always Rogue's Passage to bypass blockers if needed. He obviously works with any decent piece of equipment but this one is both cheap and effective which is what I like about it. There's plenty of others ways to abuse Squee as well, these are just some of the first ones that come to mind when I see him. The effect is just so unique and so powerful (in the right context) that he's impossible to overlook and that's what I like about him.
Green
Grade: C+
I've been loving Oath of Nissa ever since it was printed and it's nice to finally see other colors gaining access to "Preordain" type effects. While it's clearly more limited in scope even if your deck has 20 "misses" you're still 95% to hit (96.666%) so you're only going to whiff once every 20 casts or so. As such you don't even have to playing a pure lands + creatures deck because that still gives you plenty of leeway to add things like Burgeoning, Compost, Beast Within and Selvala's Stampede. Otherwise it's a fantastic way to smooth your draws and ensure that you're digging into a good mix of lands and spells. It also helps locate powerful 1-ofs such as Kessig Wolf Run, Ramunap Excavator, Vizier of the Menagerie and Oracle of Mul Daya that are worthless in multiples but amazing as singletons. It's also fantastic for creature-based combo decks that need reliable ways to locate multiple pieces. Sadly you don't get to chain them off into other cantrips like Preordain and Ponder can but you still get to see plenty of additional cards. All-in-all it's a solid spell that's definitely worth your while to acquire.
Grade: Niche A
From a pure power-level perspective this card is unplayable trash but it's vital for enabling certain graveyard-based and self-mill strategies. For example, if you're playing an Oath of Druids deck then you're probably going to want insurance against getting milled-out given that you're not going to be maindecking more than 4-6 creatures. You want to be able to activate it every turn in order to fight through removal which is why its often ran. Another common example occurs in The Gitrog Monster in EDH where it's a key component for going infinite with Dakmor Salvage. It ensures that you're able to draw your entire library and instantly win the game once you've assembled the Dakmor Salvage + discard outlet + The Gitrog Monster combo and that makes it a pivotal role-player in the archetype. Clearly these aren't the only possible uses for the card but they're perfect examples of how something with next-to-no inherent worth can instantly become an auto-include if it manages to fill a niche role.
Grade: Niche A
This card is absolutely awful. In EDH you're virtually never going to have enough Legendary hits to make it worthwhile and so you may as well field alternatives such as Animist's Awakening and Boundless Realms instead. They're not only better but they're also unconditional. You definitely don't want too many copies of that effect (it's slow, worthless in multiples, etc.) and 2 is way more than enough. In Constructed this card is an abysmal version of Genesis Wave and should never be played in lieu of it. There's significantly better things to be doing with your time and mana.
Note, none of what I just said applies to something like Captain Sisay EDH. If your deck is nothing but hits then clearly this card is bonkers. The value that it generates is obscene, especially when you're cheating things like Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary, Yisan, the Wanderer Bard and Garruk Wildspeaker into play. At that point it's one of the single best spells to be casting at virtually any stage of the game and it's going to put your ramp to better use than almost anything else. The reason why I still think that this card is unplayable trash is because outside of those extremely niche scenarios this isn't where you want to be and I'm trying to make that as clear as possible.
EDH Grade: A
The reason why I'm going focus my discussion on EDH is because Llanowar Elves variants struggle to compete in a world where you can run 4 copies of cards like Carpet of Flowers, Burgeoning, Exploration, Utopia Sprawl and Wild Growth. Arbor Elf sometimes makes the cut because of its degenerate synergy with things like Wild Growth and Overgrowth style ramp spells but even then it's a niche option at best. That being said 1 CMC mana dorks are legitimate bombs in EDH and too few players employ them. After all, a lot of players dislike running Elves because they're going to die. Not "they might die," they're 100% going to die. Someone at some point will cast a mass removal spell and you will lose your dorks. Period. Why, then, am I advocating playing inconsistent forms of ramp that won't persist throughout the entire game?
EDH isn't a battle of resources. As previously explained in my Notes regarding the Abundance of Resources in EDH the games rarely boil down a scrappy battle of 1-for-1 trades and fair exchanges. Rather, you're much more likely to see people casting ridiculously oppressive spells and effects that scale wildly out of control. People don't draw 2-3 cards, they tutor for things like Necropotence and Consecrated Sphinx to draw dozens of them at a time. Either that or they cast things like Mystic Remora and Compost early on and "merely" draw 2-3 extra per circuit. Long story short you're never going to lose the game with no cards in hand and no resources at your disposal. It just doesn't happen unless you eat an All is Dust with a Mindsliver in play or something along those lines. As such you don't have to worry about being 2-for-1d or 3-for-1d (or whatever) because N-for-1s aren't game winning/losing plays in a format where cards aren't a bottleneck.
Mana is the primary bottleneck. That is, EDH isn't a format defined by cards, it's a format defined by ramp. In a world where you can freely play things like Ancient Tomb, Mana Crypt, Mana Vault, Sol Ring, etc. mana will always be king. The more that you have, the more that you can do and the faster that you can do it. As such it's extremely important to have the fastest ramp available to you to ensure that you're starting every game blazing out of the gates. The sooner that you have some ramp the sooner that you can slam that Rhystic Study and since cards won't matter beyond that point you don't need to concern yourself with unfavorable exchanges. You also don't want to fall too far behind from your opponents because they're going to be playing with all of the oppressive ramp themselves and there's nothing worse than auto-losing because you don't draw yours when they draw theirs. Clearly you'd rather have your Sol Ring than a Llanowar Elves but at least you're only one mana behind as opposed to 2. This prevents you from ever falling too far behind in the mana war which, again, is typically what defines EDH as a whole.
This is why the vast majority of MP Green EDH decks should be playing most if-not-all of the 1 CMC dorks. They enable you to cast more spells faster (including your Commander) and even if they're marked for death whatever speed that they can offer you is more important than anything else. When you open the game with an Elf and everyone else goes "land, pass" that's a huge win for you. Now you're the only one casting your Commander/card advantage spell on turn 2 whereas they're playing their mana rock. Come turn 3 you're already jamming a 4 CMC bomb to start surging ahead of the pack. Sure, your creatures will eventually bite the bullet, but it doesn't matter because that's not what the game is about.
Grade: Niche B
Elf? Check. Taps for ludicrous sums of mana? Check. Going to see play? Check! Marwyn is a powerful addition to the Elfball archetype and will instantly become a staple. You're not going to see her in the fastest, most oppressive versions of the deck or anything but assuming that your goal is to fill a deck with Elves and ramp out some Battlecruisers then she's a natural fit for the strategy. She's a shoe-in for EDH for example since any curve of dork -> Marwyn -> Elf will feel fantastic and there's plenty of cards like Timberwatch Elf and Immaculate Magistrate that spiral wildly out of control once she's in play. Toss in cards like Wirewood Symbiote, Vitalize, Mobilize, Devoted Druid, Benefactor's Draught and Great Oak Guardian and suddenly you're doing some very broken things. Cards like Umbral Mantle and Staff of Domination also become easy outs to producing infinite mana which is why they often see play in these shells. Putting all combos aside she's a stellar mana engine who'll frequently come down on turn 2 and threaten to run away with the game if left unchecked. That alone makes her worth the price of admission.
Grade: C
This card is decent but it's largely overshadowed by the other offerings from the set. From a recursion standpoint I don't want to run it over alternatives such as Eternal Witness and Splendid Reclamation given that it's significantly slower, clunkier, harder to tutor for and more difficult to recur. Creatures are significantly easier for Green to manipulate which is why it tends to field things like World Shaper instead. From a simple "mana-to-cards" perspective it's totally reasonable as I'm struggling to envision a world where you get fewer than 5-6 cards out of the deal. Still, as a "7 mana" ramp spell it's not in-line with something like Boundless Realms so you need to be putting the Restock half of this card to work to get any decent valuer out of it. This analysis probably comes across as being unnecessarily harsh or unfairly strict but the reality is that you always have to be evaluating cards against the potential alternatives. A card can be good, but if not "good enough to make the cut" then it's all for naught in the end. I don't see The Mending of Dominaria as the next "big thing" in Green card advantage and wouldn't blame anyone for taking a pass on it. I know that I am.
I'm quite surprised to see Verdant Force reprising his role at rare given that we just had Tendershoot Dryad printed in the previous set. After all, the latter costs 2 less mana and is many orders of magnitude more powerful and so I was expecting him to be an uncommon this time around. Anyways, despite the fact that this card has "each upkeep" printed on it it's something that I've neither played with or against for close to a decade. It typically loses out to alternatives such Avenger of Zendikar and Hornet Queen which provide more consistent value on average. V.Force certainly has his moments and pairs much better with Wildfire effects but he's not the powerhouse that he used to be. He's still a reasonable target to Lure of Prey into the Battlefield on turn 3 but you have to be cheating his manacost as much possible to get any reasonable value out of him. Even then I'd still rather field Tendershoot Dryad so unless you're looking for multiple copies of this effect then he's not worth your time. In that sense I'd only seriously consider in removal-light metas where I could so something like turn 1 Arbor Elf, turn 2 Overgrowth +Lifecrafter's Bestiary/Evolutionary Leap/etc., turn 3 (Lure of Prey +) Verdant Force, turn 4 Tendershoot Dryad, turn 5 Shamanic Revelation/Craterhoof Behemoth or something along those lines. There's simply better things to be doing with your time and mana, especially where there's a strictly better version floating around that costs significantly less mana.
Multicolor
Grade: Niche D
"Orzhoz Knights" isn't really a deck but I'm a big fan of Haakon, Stromgald Scourge in general and Final Parting is a (new +) decent way to bin him while also putting something relevant in hand (like Nameless Inversion or Crib Swap). There's always Buried Alive too if you want to bin dome decent critters to recur. All-in-all these offerings are unexciting at best and I doubt that either will see much play.
Grade: Niche D
While Darigaaz's newest (re)incarnation doesn't hold a candle to alternatives such as Prossh, Skyraider of Kher in Midrange/Ramp/Goodstuffs decks he does have niche applications in "Obzedat, Ghost Council" reanimator shells. The idea here is that these creatures never truly die once they enter the battlefield which means that you can abuse them with temporary recursion such as Footsteps of the Goryo. After all, even if you are forced to sac him at EOT, no big deal, he'll still come back 3 turns later. That being said there's vastly superior ways to build and play these archetypes and I couldn't provide anyone with a compelling argument to employ this over turn 1 Entomb/Faithless Looting, turn 2 Animate Dead on Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur.
Grade: Niche C
This card is deceptively powerful and possesses whole host of potential applications. First of all she's a mass haste enabler which is something that I value quite highly in multiplayer. I'm fond of mass recursion cards and tactics and thus assign a good deal of value to anything that can enable me to immediately swing with my team. After all, one of your primary concerns will always be mass removal so anything that you can do to mitigate its impact is fantastic. She also has Flash which means that you can sneak her in after someone resolves a Wrath to Raise Dead your squad. This furthers your resilience against mass removal which is something that I can definitely get behind. Still, these are only the basic use-cases since there's plenty of additional ways to abuse her.
Garna doesn't actually care where the creatures come from, only that they hit the graveyard this turn. This means that if you employ sacrifice, cycling, self-mill or discard-based tactics of any variety she can recur those as well. This is relevant for things like Street Wraith, Faithless Looting, Mesmeric Orb, Magus of the Bazaar, Stinkweed Imp and much, much more. Magus of the Bazaar (all looters in general) catches my eye in particular because I already enjoy fielding that card in the deck that I'm about to discuss.
Garna seems spectacular in "Aristocrats" style decks that seek pair sac outlets with value dorks and drainers. What you can do is build a board, cast Garna, sac your team to your Phyrexian Altar/Ashnod's Altar/Altar of Dementia (or whatever) and pair that with things like Semblance Anvil, Pawn of Ulamog and Pitiless Plunderer to produce mana in the process. That mana can then be used to recast your creatures and repeat this sequence ad nauseam. If mana is tight you can also lean on "cheat engines" such as Sneak Attack which only requires a single card like Phyrexian Altar or Pitiless Plunderer to go infinite. Heck, even if you take out all of the infinite combos the basics shell of "Garna in Aristocrats" still seems promising to me given that she's essentially functions as an permanent mass recursion engine. As long as you keep sacrificing her while her trigger is still on the stack you can Raise Dead your entire team as much as you want while abusing things like Ashnod's Altar (Targeting yourself) to dig further and further for everything that you need.
Grade: C
This is another card that's deceptively powerful in my mind given that she's a ridiculously powerful ramp engine for token-based builds. MP decks are often creature-light/less which means that there's almost always someone who you can freely attack as needed which is ideal when you need to connect with a saboteur effect. In one of my previous set reviews I pegged Dowsing Dagger as the best overall card in the set and it's been nothing but bonkers for me ever since. It's not just me either, every other day I see a deck in the cEDH discord that employs it. If you deck has creatures and can reliably hit 4 mana for turn 4 it's easily one of the strongest ramp spells in the game. These kinds of cards are joke because they prey on the fact that someone will be open at which point they scale wildly out-of-control.
Radha will excel in "Cryptolith Rite" style decks and archetypes that abuse multi-bodied threats (such as Mogg War Marshal and Hordeling Outburst) which flood the board early on. From there you can lean on your powerful mana engines to ramp out insane bombs such as Ruric Thar, the Unbowed, Prossh, Skyraider of Kher, Avenger of Zendilar and Craterhoof Behemoth or simply use Aggravated Assault to take all of the turns. Most of those extra combat spells are stellar in these types of builds but the "Hellkite Chargers" have the most potential to end the game on the spot. What makes these decks so unbelievably scary is that a simple curve of 1 drop -> Mogg War Marshal -> Hordeling Outburst means that Radha is already producing 7 mana on turn 4 which is already enough for things like Hornet Queen and Avenger of Zendikar. Not only are you ramping out fatties, but you're also beating people down while you do it. Obviously things can go sideways if people start slamming mass removal but the upside is that you're going to crush them in the games where they don't have it. It's still a risk, I'm not suggesting otherwise, but the payoff is insanely high if it works.
EDH Grade: A+
With respect to Constructed this card already exists in the form of Vedalken Archmage which doesn't see any play. It's too slow, conditional and vulnerable to removal to justify including. That being said she's definitely going to be an oppressive Commander :).
In a world of ramp and card draw one of the best possible things to be doing is simultaneously ramping while drawing cards. After all, Sol Ring is already bonkers enough to begin with and a Sol Ring that cantrips is utterly ludicrous. Your deck was already going to be playing a ton of Artifact-based ramp to begin and converting them all into 2-for-1s is utterly absurd. Even if you aren't actively trying to do anything broken (combo kills, etc.) she's still going to feel oppressive for the sole reason that your ramp is consistently digging you into action. It either digs into more ramp, more card draw or some variety of payoff. What's worse is that because you're playing both Blue and Red not only do you have access to all of the relevant permission to protect Jhoira, but you also have access to By Force and Vandalize effects that neuter the ramp coming from your opposition. Back to Basics, Blood Moon, Ruination, you can hate on both Artifacts and lands as much as you want while prancing merrily along as you draw + ramp your entire deck into play.
Moving on to oppressive applications, did I mention how dumb Paradox Engine is? Want to know what it likes? Ramp and card draw. Want to know what it LOVES? Ramp that draws cards. I'm sorry, but this is mindless. It's not even shooting fish in a barrel; it's shooting whales with a nuke. Every Artifact-based Blue deck is already fielding Paradox Engine and every decent way to tutor for it and Jhoira instantly turns it into a 2 card win condition. Just draw and cast your deck and Aetherflux Reservoir everyone to death (or whatever). Otherwise there's also a slew of infinite mana combos such as Power Artifact/Rings of Brighthearth + Basalt Monolith and Dramatic Reversal + Isochron Scepter both of which are already mainstays in these archetypes. With Jhoira around it'll be trivial to find your combo pieces at a reasonable clip and winning will be effortless from there.
Still, Jhoira is going to struggle to beat decks that field permanents such as... wait what's that? Sorry? Oh, nevermind, a little bird just informed me that Words of Wind is still a card and so your opponents won't have any permanents in play. My bad team, didn't mean to frighten all of the soon-to-be Jhoira players into thinking that their deck might drop a game. Yeah if your opponents try to do something as unsightly as dirty the board with their plebeian permanents just go ahead and get rid of them, all of them, forever and ever.
Grade: A
Look, it's not my fault that Wizards decided to print all of these Battlecruisers in the same set and I'll be damned if I don't discuss some of the best ways to abuse them. Muldy G is not only in the right colors (for EDH) but it's also a "Sun Titan," except instead of being a fair and balanced card that only recurs a single permanent each circuit it randomly decided to go ahead and cast Yawgmoth's Will instead. Because you know, why not? I'm obviously being slightly hyperbolic here but I don't think that people quite grasp just how ludicrously powerful that this card is. To be clear, I'm legitimately happy to cast Sun Titan in multiplayer (it's one of the strongest midrange threats) and more often than not I'm recurring a Fetchland or Myriad Landscape to keep my ramp train chugging along. Muldy G not only acts as mini-Primeval Titan in the same way that Sun Titan does but it also enables you to recur things like Urza's Bauble, Mishra's Bauble, Tormod's Crypt, Lion's Eye Diamond, Animate Dead, Dance of the Dead, Phantasmal Image, Sakura-Tribe Elder, Pernicious Deed, Necromancy and Eternal Witness as well. It blows my mind that I keep reading comments along the lines of "it's too slow at 6 and would have been better at 5" because believe me when I say that you absolutely do not want to see this card cost 5. It's plenty good at 6! While it seems well-tailored for Stax builds that feature things like Tangle Wire, Contamination, Infernal Darkness and Smokestack as long as your deck has relevant permanents this is exactly where you want to be. Be it Cube, Constructed or EDH (both as the Commander or in the 99) this is easily one of the strongest midrange threats ever printed (it's easily on-par with the Titans, including pseudo-Titans such as Ghave, Guru of Spores) and will see play for years to come. If EDH is your speed then you can do fun things with Lion's Eye Diamond, Phantasmal Image and Animate Dead but even if you throw all infinite combos by the wayside this is basically like putting a pseudo Sun Titan/Primeval Titan in your CZ and trust me when I say that it's going to be every bit as sweet and powerful as that sounds.
Grade: Niche D
I've never been impressed with the "Super Friends" archetype in any MP format as 'Walkers tend to match up poorly against most of the other commonly played card advantage engines. Things like Mystic Remora and Compost do more for less so I don't see them very often. Moreover, the bar for "expensive spells that don't impact the board" is quite in those lists for a couple of reasons. First, very few 'Walkers significantly impact the board in MP and thus struggle to survive in creature-based metas. As such your flex slots typically need to be used on removal to ensure their survival. Otherwise they have to compete with things like Doubling Season and Deepglow Skate which tend to win out over most of the alternatives.
With that in mind this card seems playable but unexciting. Blinking a permanent is worth roughly a card and given most 'Walkers have a +1 that generates card advantage you only need a couple to transform this into a 3-for-1 the turn that it enters the battlefield. From there it will "draw" another 2-3 cards per turn depending on your 'Walker count which is quite powerful. It's also relevant to note that it enables to quickly builds towards Ultimates which can often take over the game outright. As such you're actively building towards a win condition while simultaneously drawing a whack of cards which is always a fantastic place to be. My issue, again, is that this card is heinous when things are going poorly. If I have 2 'Walkers in play I'd much rather slam a card like Armageddon or Devastation because it accomplishes the same thing while also interacting with your adversaries.
Grade: Niche D
This card is impossible to grade without adding a slew of "ifs, ands or buts" so I'm not going to bother. Mass recursion is incredibly competitive and things like Living Death and Patriarch's Bidding are some of my favorite spells to build around. Even the "bad ones" like Twilight's Call are back-breaking in my experience and so I place a massive premium on this effect. My issue with this card is that I can't envision a deck that would actually play it. It's 7 mana, you need to be playing Orzhov colors, it only recurs Legends and you also need a Legend in play. If I could just Buried Alive and recur Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite, Razaketh, the Foulblooded and Iona, Shield of Emeria then I'd probably still run it but the fact that I have to jump through another hoop is giving me serious doubts. The effect is utterly ridonkulous assuming that you can support it I just can't be bothered to dance around like a monkey trying to meet them.
I do want to stress that this card is the real deal in the right deck. After all, its recurs all Legendary permanents including things like lands and Planeswalkers. This makes it an ideal finisher for a slow Control deck full of removal, Planeswalkers and bomby finishers. I still can't bring myself to give it a decent grade because that's just far too niche but power-level wise the card is easily a C+ or B once it resolves.
Grade: Niche D
While I'm rather unimpressed with Rona in general there's enough going ton with her to warrant some discussion. First are foremost she's essentially a Snapcaster Mage for Artifacts which will be her primary application in all likelihood. She can obviously recur other card types are well but that will likely be the "Plan B" for the later stages of the game. Early on you can recur that Mana Crypt or Sol Ring that was eaten by that Manglehorn and later on she's more than happy to nab Tezzeret the Seeker. Moreover, (while I realize that it's largely unaffordable) she possesses strong synergy with Lion's Eye Diamond which is a card that gains a great deal of value in EDH where you always have a "card in hand" that isn't actually in your hand. For example, I've cast more than my fair share of turn 1 Daretti, Scrap Savants in EDH off of the back of it only to recur something like Ward of Bones, Sandstone Oracle and/or Possessed Portal shortly after. The idea here is that it enables some relatively degenerate sequences and often makes the cut if you can afford it. Otherwise she's a "reasonable" card advantage engine and while I'm using the term generously it's still possible to activate her a couple of times and have it be relevant. That's a lot of mana to draw not a lot of cards but it's more of a Plan F than anything else. I still don't think that I'm ever going to field her (Blue and Black are flooded with superior alternatives) but I do think that there's room in this world for a Snapcaster Mage for Artifacts.
Grade: Niche C
This card has a couple of interesting applications that probably aren't obvious. First of all it's clearly relevant in "saprolings matter" decks that feature cards like Tendershoot Dryad and Verdant Force. Mass drain is no joke and assuming that you also have a sac outlet and Zulaport Cutthroat then it doesn't take long to drain the table out. Moreover, those types of decks have incentive to field things like Ashnod's Altar and Parallel Lives which is already a 3-card instant win combo with Slimefoot. You pay 4 mana to make your 2 saprolings, sac them both for mana, drain the table for 2 and and repeat ad nauseam. Otherwise this card is an outlet for infinite colorless mana. Even if you assemble Rings of Brighthearth + Basalt Monolith (or whatever) you still need something to do with it and this puts an arbitrarily large army into play. Mass removal doesn't save anyone either since players need to remove Slimefoot first which is another hoop that you're forcing them to jump through.
Otherwise the card is "reasonable" midrange value engine ala Luminarch Ascension. The idea is that while Slimefoot isn't the strongest infinite mana outlet the card is still valuable outside of combo kills. After all, you can pump excess mana into him to create tokens at EOT. The reason why I put "reasonable" in quotations is because I don't buy this argument and I've only heard from other players. I personally think that paying 4 mana to put a 1/1 into play will never have a significant impact on a MP game that hasn't already been won or lost and so I don't see this as a genetic midrange "value threat." It might create a chump blocker or two but otherwise I don't want this outside of combo kills.
Grade: B-
I'm not going to rehash my entire Jhoira spiel so let's stick to the truncated version of "ramp that draws card is good." Simple enough right? This card is stellar in decks that feature "extra land cards" such as Exploration, Burgeoning, Summer Bloom, Azusa, Lost But Seeking and Wayward Swordtooth in addition to mass draw spells such as Mystic Remora, Rhystic Study, Windfall, etc. Draw spells aren't as important when you already have engines like these floating around but they help ensure that you'll still a full grip once they resolve. After all, 5 drops aren't the quickest things to get into play and she's not going to feel special if you're already spent on resources.
It's equally important to note that Tatyova works with most of the cards that people are already playing in their decks. For example, most Green decks are playing Ramunap Excavator and once you pair him a Fetchland and Azusa, Lost But Seeking you can basically dump your entire manabase into play while drawing most of your deck. She also works with things like Primeval Titan, Sylvan Primordial and Boundless Realms that accomplish the same thing. Heck, even a simple Fetchland with no added strings attached still reads "draw 2 cards" and that's a fine place to be in the grand scheme of things. It means that her floor is still quite high and her ceiling is essentially "draw your deck."
My primary issue with Tatyova is that she's slower, more conditional and has much more competition. Blue and Green are two of the best colors which makes it difficult for anything to eek out a deck slot. This is especially true once you get to 5+ CMC spells where you're already inundated with superior alternatives. She'll still do fine in decks that can support her (which is most of them) but she's not a "must have" by any means since there already plenty of other ways to generate card advantage when you're playing Simic.
Grade: C+
Teferi is a powerful midrange Planeswalker that follows closely in the footsteps of cards like Ob Nixilis Reignited. His +1 not only generates card advantage but's it's also a pseudo-Worn Powerstone for instant-speed spells and effects. I'm very much attracted to the thought of being able to cast him with plenty of mana floating to fuel removal, bounce, permission, card draw, etc. Moreover, it's fantastic in Staxed-based builds that employ things like Stasis and Winter Orb to severely hinder mana production. As such I could easily see him being paired with Teferi, Temporal Mage alongside those types of spells. Moving on, his -3 is a reasonable form of interaction that deals with any nonland permanent. I recognize that paying 5 mana to Oust something isn't ideal but the upside here is that it's still removal when you desperately need it (whereas alternatives such as Jace's Ingenuity aren't). Otherwise his Ultimate essentially wins the game (not on the spot but fair decks can't compete against that effect) which means that you're threatening to win the game outright if he goes unchecked. This makes him ideal for mass land destruction decks given that it's trivially easy to win after curving him into something like Devastation. All-in-all he's a reasonable playable who threatens to seize control of the game if left unchecked and that's what you're looking for in a 5 mana spell.
EDH Grade: C
I'm extremely disappointed that Wizards decided to print the "fixed" Soulfire Grand Master at 6 CMC since it kills any hope of the EDH deck being remotely decent. I'm not going to bother discussing this card in Constructed given that it's many orders of magnitude weaker than its 2 CMC cousin because this card was clearly printed for Commander and nothing else.
The gameplan for the deck is simple. Ramp out FaS, jam some cards like Blasphemous Act, draw a ton of cards off of Well of Lost Dreams and win the game off the back of cards like Aetherflux Reservoir, Test of Endurance and Felidar Sovereign. While Red and White lack the consistency and power of the other colors, this can largely be offset if you never play against other people. For example, Boros decks are fantastic at beating cats because if they happen to fall asleep throughout the match then you can often squeak out a win while they're none the wiser. It's crucial to understand where your deck shines and why so that you can pick your spots accordingly.
Since I'm only partially joking, I will say that there are some semi-reasonable combos with this pair. First of White and Red has access to cards like Silence, Pyroblast and Red Elemental Blast to help win "counter wars." White also has a slew of cheap protection such as Gods Willing that can protect FaS from opposing removal and/or your own burn spells. Red gives you access to Treasonous Ogre which is well and truly busted when you're pumping that mana into X spells. Paying 39 life for 13 life is fantastic when you're immediately gaining it back 5 times over. Mana Geyser is another bonkers spell in these decks and often turns like Jaya's Immolating Inferno into an OTK. Lastly, the deck can field additional win conditions in the form of cards like Luminarch Ascension, Repercussion, Dictate of the Twin Gods, Assemble the Legion and Vicious Shadows so it's not as though you're all-in on the lifegain plan.
Colorless + Artifact + Land
Grade: B
While the newest version of Karn might read as an "artifacts matter" card I see him as more of a colorless Phyrexian Arena. Most of my ideal MP draws involve jamming a mana rock on turn 2 and a card advantage engine on turn 3 so more than happy to slam him in order to start drawing some cards. Moreover, unlike most alternatives Karn draws a card immediately which actually puts him fairly far ahead of the the pack. Even if it's usually going to be the worst of my top 2, it doesn't matter, I'm still drawing 2 cards per turn (often starting on turn 2-3) and I can easily live with that. His -2 can also be used to protect himself since you'll probably have some Artifacts in your list regardless and you can always add things like Vault of Whispers and/or Darksteel Citadel to artificially bolster your count. That being said it's completely optional because I'd still happily play him in deck with zero artifacts. As long as I'm able to open with Wild Growth into Courser of Kruphix into Karn (or whatever) I'm happy enough to play a long, grindy, value game with the rest of the table.
Karn will shines in Control decks that can adequately protect him. There's no greater feeling than jamming some Artifact-based ramp, clearing the board, resolving a Karn and then following up with something like Death Cloud, Armageddon or Wildfire. Not only are you the only person drawing multiple cards per turn but you also still have your Artifact-based mana kicking around which puts you massively ahead of the pack. Even if mass land destruction isn't your thing there's nothing wrong with removal and permission so feel free to play that instead if it's more your speed. Again, you don't have to be overly concerned with unfavorable exchanges when you're drawing multiple cards per turn which makes cards like Counterspell even sweeter than they already are. I'm once again going to bring up the fact that Karn draws an extra card immediately which only exacerbates the advantage that he builds for you when you're trying to keep things "fair" (because he's not really fair).
Otherwise, the fact that he's colorless makes him extremely flexible when it comes to deckbuilding. You can basically jam into any deck of any color and call it a day. He also works extremely well with all of the fast mana played in EDH (such as Mana Vault) because he doesn't have any color requirements and gives you plenty of gas to abuse it. It's trivially easy to slam him on turn 2 assuming that he's in your opening grip and from there it's kinda like you're playing with a Jace, the Mindsculptor (kinda). Overall he's an extremely powerful Planeswalker that will see a lot of play for years to come.
Grade: D
While this set boasts a slew of reasonable offerings for the Equipment slot I've become so unimpressed with the card type as a whole that I barely even consider them to be playables. Some exceptions obviously apply (Blade of Selves for example) but by and large I don't think that you're doing yourself any favors by adding them to your lists. They're not actively bad per se, they just don't bring enough to the table to justify their slots. After all, anything that isn't ramp, card draw, interaction or a bomby finisher has a steep hill to climb to earn its keep.
What I like about Equipment is that it enables you to scale irrelevant dorks into legitimate threats as the game progresses. You can't just start your curve at 4 and call it a day which often necessitates playing utility dorks that lose their combat luster rater quickly. Equipment is the perfect way to circumvent this flaw since it converts even the most pathetic 1/1 into a legitimate threat. As such you can easily justify fielding them in small numbers to ensure that you have a gameplan for your anemic dorks going late. We're talking 1-2 copies total, less is more when it comes to these types of effects, but the first piece of Equipment is almost always relevant enough to earn its keep.
Grade: Sideboard/Niche C+
Wizards has started taking "sideboard cards" very seriously in recent years and take a rather heavy-handed approach to "balancing the meta" as it were. This card is clearly designed to hose things like Tron and Storm and needless to say it excels at doing both. Moving back to multiplayer, this is one of the strongest Stax/hate cards ever printed and it's definitely going to be a staple moving forward. It's clearly abysmal if everyone is playing "fair and balanced" Magic with "fair" lands, creatures and spells but it's a huge boon to those of us who're losing to degenerate nonsense.
The first mode of this card is stellar at hosing oppressive mana engines such as Cloudpost, Urza's Mine, Cabal Coffers, Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx and Gaea's Cradle. The list of offenders clearly stretches well beyond those 5 but they're some of the primary villains in my experience. More often than not these kinds of lands take over the game by providing their controller with an insurmountable mana advantage relative to his or her adversaries. You simply get to do more with less and that's inherently broken. Damping Sphere puts a damper on that parade but turning them all into anemic Wastes. They're not rendered entirely useless, you still get to play Magic, you're just forced to play fair like everyone else.
The second mode of this card is fantastic at hindering the "good colors," namely Blue and Black. After all, they lean on the raw power-level of cantrips, card draw, tutors and cheap interaction spells to sculpt their gameplan while messing with their adversaries. I find that my primary bottle-neck when fielding them is mana (as opposed to cards in hand) because even when I'm using all of it ever turn I still find myself wishing for more. That's exactly what Damping Sphere is seeking to punish. It puts an even tighter premium on mana which means that the game becomes less about card quantity (a fight which Red and White will never win) and more about card quality. You're not going to be able to cast the 20 cards sitting in your which means that the person who only has 5 isn't hopelessly outclassed.
Moreover, the second mode of this card also hoses the vast majority of oppressive combo kills. Most of them tend to be Storm-based kills of some variety that require you to cast numerous spells on the same turn. Note, I use the term "Storm" loosely because I can't remember the last time that I've even seen an actual Storm spell cast. What I'm actually referring to are things like:
These and many, many, many more are common sequences in my EDH games and they often mean that games are ending on the 4th turn. What makes Damping Sphere so perfect is that it thwarts any and all attempts to win the game via long sequences of spells. You can still manage 1 or 2 (maybe 3 if you're lucky) but even then it's going to force all of these decks to play fair until it gets removed. It's not unbeatable by any means, any EOT removal -> untap -> win sequence will still get there, but at least you're forcing people to have the interaction and use it before going off.
Finally, it's important to remember that this card offers both of those services simultaneously. If it only hosed mana or only hosed Storm then it wouldn't be nearly as exciting. Still playable (the Storm half anyways, the other half not so much) but not nearly as good. I greatly appreciate that it's a "catch all" that stops a lot of unfair shenanigans and keeps people on a somewhat even playing field regardless of what anyone is doing.
Grade: B
Gilded Lotus is one of the most powerful ramp spells ever printed and it's definitely something that everyone should own. You could blindly any EDH decks with one and it would virtually always make the cut in the final build. It's also a staple for Cube and a powerhouse in any ramp-based Constructed deck so please pick some of these up while they're cheap. Grab some Coalition Relics from M25 too while you're at it because everything that I'm about to say applies to both. Consider it a 2-for-1 special!
Starting from the top it's "fast mana" which always has and always will be the most competitive way to ramp. "Fast mana," in this context, means "a card that immediately produces mana" as opposed to something that doesn't. What makes fast mana so absurd is that it can be instantly put to use which makes it faster and more reliable than the alternatives. Let's say that you want to Wrath the board to stabilize it but that you're also looking to power out your 8 drops, which do you choose to do? Why not both! With fast mana you can enact sequences such as "turn 5 cast Thran Dynamo + Sublime Exhalation" or "cast Gilded Lotus + Anger of the Gods" which almost feels like cheating when you do it. It also means that you can chain ramp into more ramp which is extremely common and relevant for formats such as EDH where you have an Abundance of Resources to work with. It's not just ramp or removal either. Card draw, permission, spot removal, the world is your oyster. If you want to cast Thran Dynamo with an Island floating to hold up Negate and then cast Fact or Fiction at EOT if nothing scary happens then you can just as easily do that too.
Moving on, it's also solid ramp. While a "5 mana ramp 3" wouldn't be exciting in a vacuum it's still going to power you straight into your 8+ CMC bombs which can often win games outright (even in MP). I know that I probably sound like a broken record by now but MP truly is a "go big or go home" format so you need to be doing something above and beyond the norm to consistently seal the deal. This is certainly one the better way to enable some of those over-the-top finishers which is why I always advocate playing with these types of spells in MP. It's not that ramp is inherently good or bad, it merely supports the kinds of spells that you should be playing to give yourself the best opportunity to win.
Moreover, it's durable. While it's clearly susceptible to Artifact hate it dodges things like Back to Basics, Blood Moon, Armageddon and plenty of additional MP all-stars. This is relevant for not only dodging opposing hate, but also for building around your own. For example, I'm extremely fond of Death Cloud and Wildfire decks and this has always been one of the strongest ramp spells in the archetype. Not only does it produce 3 mana, it's also colored which is incredibly relevant when you want to start casting spells again. After all, you can have all of the Worn Powerstones and Thran Dynamos in the world but unless you have a Mountain or two then you're not going to be jamming that Anger of the Gods or Inferno Titan anytime soon.
Lastly, the fact that it produces colored mana is incredibly relevant. When you look at the commonly played ramp spells in MP formats such as EDH they tend to be things like Mana Crypt, Mana Vault, Sol Ring, Worn Powerstone and Thran Dynamo that only produce colorless mana. As such you can often find yourself bottle-necked on colored sources even when you have plenty of colorless to spare. This is where a card like Gilded Lotus shines because it ensures a healthy mix of colored-to-colorless which is crucial when you're trying to play an interactive game of Magic against multiple adversaries. After all, you can be "representing" 5 mana but if it's all colorless then your adversaries don't have to fear permission/interaction from your side of the board. Gilded Lotus, on the other hand, enables you to immediately jam that Forbid or Curtains' Call which isn't a feat that most of the alternatives can boast. It's an utterly fantastic card in that sense and, again, it's one that everyone should own and play with.
Grade: Niche A
This card is extremely powerful as a degenerate combo piece for "extra combat phase" cards/commanders such as Combat Celebrant, Godo, Bandit Warlord and Aurelia, the Warleader. This is mostly relevant for EDH since you can start the game with either of the latter cards "in your hand" (in the CZ) which converts this 2-card combo into a (more-or-less) 1-card combo instead. In the case of Godo it's literally a 1-card, 11 mana combo since Godo searches for the damned thing himself. On a personal note, I cannot wait to jam a turn 1-2 Treasonous Ogre and blitz the table down before they can even process what's happening to them. My newest mission in life is to turn 1 kill in EDH playing Monored and I'll be damned if I don't make it happen!
About the combo, I've seen a lot of people get it wrong so let me quickly explain how it works. Main phase you equip Helm of the Host and move to combat. Combat starts and you create a token (a token which is granted haste by HotH). You attack with the token and trigger the extra combat phase. Repeat. A lot of people seem to think/say things like "blockers get you" and other nonsense but it's not true. Even if there's 50 billion points of toughness in play your tokens will eat through all of it and the original copy never has to enter combat.
While Godo is the (theoretically) best card to pair with HotH it's not a perfect kill. Only one creature gets to attack on each of the combat combat phases which means that you cannot kill through (for example) enough first strikers, indestructible creatures, "Fog Banks," etc. What you need to do in these scenarios is kill everyone else and hope to untap and kill the remaining player on the following turn. After all, the tokens don't die at EOT so you'll still have a ton of power in play once the dust settles. You can still lose if your opponent untaps and kills you, that's life, but otherwise it's a 2-turn clock. Aurelia/Celebrant clearly don't share this weakness since you can attack and kill everyone else first then send your army of Aurelias/Celebrants at the player with the "Banelsayer Angel" (or whatever).
Outside of EDH and Godo this card is rather unimpressive given the high mana cost. It's basically a Blade of Selves that costs more and does less. I understand that the tokens persist which is the "upside" that it offers but it's far too slow and conditional to warrant serious consideration outside of degenerate combo kills. This, to me, is a card that's sometimes relevant outside of combo applications (you will sometimes Equip it and it will sometimes be fine) but your primary focus should be on some sort of combo kill. The main deck that comes to mind for this is the "Sunforger" deck that features cards like Stoneforge Mystic, Puresteel Paladin and Stonehewer Giant which can bypass the steep mana requirements. Turn 6 Godo + Equip + swing is no joke!
Lastly, I want to stress that this Godo kill is legitimately good in any format and in any Red deck. "Good" doesn't mean "oppressive" but it's 1-card combo that reliably defeats any number of adversaries for 11 mana and that's a solid place to be. This is true for both Constructed and EDH assuming that you add the combo into the 99 as backup win condition. That is, no, he doesn't have to be your Commander for this combo to be relevant. After all, any Red deck can play Godo at their leisure. The downside to this tactic is that sometimes you'll naturally draw HotH which is essentially always going to be bad. The card is almost assuredly going to be worthless until the game is already won/lost. Still, the threat of drawing a dead card is completely offset (in my opinion anyways) by the opportunity of fielding a 1-card win condition in multiplayer. Your deck has be able to produce the 11 mana needed to combo off but insofar as it can then I'm totally willing to take a chance on it.
Grade: Niche F
I wanted to briefly discuss this card in the context of "Nekusar, the Mindrazer decks" Note that it doesn't have to be that exact EDH deck or anything, I'm referring to any deck that wants to curve turn 1 Dark Ritual + Underworld Dreams, turn 2 Liliana's Caress, turn 3 Windfall or something along those lines. This card is utter jank even in those archetypes as it's far too slow, vulnerable and weak to ever make the cut. Be it EDH or Constructed this isn't where you want to be so please don't bother with this trash. Cool throwback to Howling Mine, bad card.
Grade: Niche C
Cost reduction mechanics are always frightening given their ability to scale wildly over-the-top of adversaries who aren't equipped to deal with them. For example, you can fill a deck full of cards like Etherium Sculptor, Cloud Key, Foundry Inspector and Jhoira's Familiar that enables it to cast the majority of its spells for free. From there it can lean on powerful card advantage spells/engines such as Bottled Cloister, The Immortal Sun, Mind's Eye and Sandstone Oracle to draw throngs of cards that it can instantly cast. Sandstone Oracle is particularly oppressive because it'll often be drawing 5-7 cards per cast and there's nothing stopping you from pairing it with something like Crystal Shard. Otherwise I'm more than happy to dump all of my mana into Mind's Eye when I'm cheating everything into play and even Bottled Cloister is a solid "Phyrexian Arena" variant when you don't have cards in hand to begin with. Winning the game should be fairly trivial from there, especially if you're taking cards like Steel Overseer, Chief of the Foundry and The Immortal Sun into account. Clearly this isn't the only possible way to build around Jhoira's Familiar but it does showcase its strongest use-case (in my opinion anyways) and it does highlight why these cards are always significantly more powerful than they may otherwise seem.
Grade: Sideboard C
I'm giving this card a Sideboard grade given that it's essentially a 1-card win condition assuming that you're playing a deck with enough "hits" to reliably trigger it in a removal-light meta. After all, insofar as you're dumping all of your excess mana into producing an army of robots then it doesn't take long to produce the ~20 or so bodies required to clear the table out. That being said this plan seems dubious at best given that it's slow, inconsistent and extremely vulnerable to mass removal. After all, players will have ample opportunity to dig into answers given that it takes numerous turns to produce an army large enough to threaten serious damage. As such I'm largely unimpressed with the card in a vacuum, but, again, if your adversaries "don't have it" then it'll certainly wipe them out in short order. Treat it like a terrible version of Assemble of the Legion and you (probably) won't be disappointed.
Grade: Niche A
This is picture-perfect example of a "niche" card. It's basically always going to be the best card in any deck that actively wants it but utterly worthless everywhere else. While I'm mostly going to be discussing its applications in EDH I did want to quickly touch on its potential impact on Constructed as well. This card will be absolutely bonkers in White-based Stax decks that field things like Legion's Landing, Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, Eight-and-a-Half-Tails, Thalia, Heretic Cathar, Brimaz, King of Oreskos and Hokori, Dust Drinker. Between Mox Amber and Legion's Landing you can easily recover from the effects of mass land destruction (Limited Resources, Armageddon and Cataclysm for example) that will utterly demolish your adversaries by comparison. Selvala, Explorer Returned is another card that comes to mind for that deck since it's both Legendary and it produces mana which is perfect when you're slinging a slew of Armageddons. That being said this only one-of-many possible applications for the card since the only thing that it asks for is a critical mass of cheap Legendaries to fuel it. It literally doesn't matter what they are as long as you have enough of them.
Moving on to EDH this card is definitely going to make some waves. People are surprisingly torn on how good that this figures to be but I'm firmly planted in the "it's awesome" camp. Bloom Tender is already one of the stronger cards in the format for 2-3 color decks largely due to the fact that you can reliably enact sequences such as "turn 1 mana dork, turn 2 Derevi, Empyrial Tactician" (aka turn 1 dork, turn 2 Commander) to fuel it. It's ridiculously strong as long as your plan involves casting your Commander as a reasonable clip and that should encompass most (but not all) of them. Mox Amber is similar in the sense that it becomes a bonkers Magic card assuming that you meet a trivial requirement. And look, I get it. This isn't a turn 1-2 "I win" card. Who cares? If you plan on playing 10-12 turns of Magic then who are you to scoff at a Mox on turn 3-4? Even if it doesn't enable ridiculously oppressive sequences it's still bloody good if you plan on playing Magic after casting your Commander.
With that in mind, this card isn't for everyone. If you're playing Thrasios, Triton Hero and Tymna the Weaver then it's a shoe-in but if you're on Kozilek, Butcher of Truth Control then not so much. Personally I often field a Sidisi, Undead Vizier MBC deck where she has a bad habit of offing herself so this isn't the right card for me. The point isn't that "this card is always broken," but rather "when this card is good it's very good." Even if you're not jamming your Commander until turn 3-4 it's still going to be extremely powerful insofar as you're going to be playing Magic for another 5+ turns so please don't go thinking that you need to be on Isamaru, Hound of Konda to get your money's worth. Turn 2 Fellwar Stone, turn 3 Commander is still plenty quick enough for this to be an auto include.
Grade: Niche C+
Now this is an interesting card! While the first is anemic at best the second is a strictly better version of Worn Powerstone (which is already a busted card) and from there it's quickly scaling into Thran Dynamo territory and beyond. That being said you have been making a concerted effort to acquire multiples given that "3 mana ramp 1" barely qualifies as playable so you can't go thinking "well even the first is fine." It's not. As such I'm classifying this card as "niche" because I don't believe that it will see play outside of Blue decks. While you can technically start any build with 4x Powerstone Shard and "hope to get lucky" I think that you're much better served by building around the thing to some extent. I'm also not suggesting that it can only be played in Blue decks since Black has draw + tutors and Green has Ancient Stirrings but I'm mostly expecting to see this out of Blue decks.
Now, let me briefly explain why what I just said isn't "bad." After all, isn't it "bad" to build around ramp? The answer is "no, not if it makes sense to do so." See, I haven't listed any bad cards throughout this analysis. It's not as though I'm sitting here telling people to add Ember Shot to their decks or anything. Rather, I'm advocating for cards that you're already happy to field and are probably playing. That's the key thing that prevents this from being a bad card; you don't have to go out your way to support it. Even if someone destroys your first Powerstone, no big deal, your deck is still full of cantrips, ramp, tutors, card draw, etc. and you'll find plenty of other uses for it.
With that in mind I do think that Powerstone Shard is over-hyped. I maintain that it's completely find in Blue-based Artifact shells but if you're blindly starting your Red decks with 4 of them then you're doing a disservice to Worn Powerstone and all of its glory. Very few decks are going to reliably see 2 or more copies per game and assuming that you're ( on average) drawing 2 or fewer then it's the clear-cut winner. That doesn't just apply to Worn Powerstone either. Assuming that you're drawing 2 or fewer of any ramp spell then Fellwar Stone, Signets, Mind Stone and more all become vastly superior options. For Powerstone Shard to supplant the competition your plan has to involve reliably seeing 3 or more every game and that's no small task. As such I highly recommend sticking the tried, tested and true unless you're going that extra mile to break the damned thing.
Grade: C
Quicksilver Amulet has always been a casual all-star and the thing is surprisingly competitive to boot. After all, it not only enables you to bypass the high mana cost of cards like Emrakul, the Promised End but it also allows you to ignore the steep color requirements of things like Progenitus. Moreover, and almost more importantly, it lets you to play the game entirely at instant-speed. You can sit back, hold mana up for your interaction and sneak something into play at EOT once it's safe to drop the shields. This gives it a huge edge over tradition forms of ramp which still force you to cast your spells at "regular speed." You even get that extra "do they have it" mind-game edge where you adversaries will be hesitant to attack you as long as you're representing the activation. Your hand could be full of blanks but they'll be none the wiser and far too afraid to attack into your "might-be behemoth." It can often function as a "No Mercy" in that sense which is stellar when you're looking to buy the time needed to cast your Thirst for Knowledges and Fact or Fictions.
The being said the card has some fatal flaws that will prevent it from ever rising too high in the ranks. First of all it's extremely slow since you literally have to sink 8 mana into it before it yields a return. Just compare that to Thran Dynamo which only requires 4 (and immediately taps for 3) and the difference in speed becomes obvious. Moreover, it only works with a small subset of permanents as opposed to working with everything. As such I especially dislike it in decks that feature the "good colors" (Black, Green, Blue) given that I'm often leaning heavily on X spells and card draw to pull ahead of the pack. If I'm looking to jam Exsanguinate, Genesis Wave and/or Sphinx's Revelation then you better damn well believe that I need my ramp to do most of the heavy lifting.
Grade: C
While this may come as a shock to most people I'm genuinely disinterested in this card as a whole. It's fine if you're building on a budget and want something with a bit more oomph than 24x Swamp but this isn't the "big new hotness" for Monoblack or anything along those lines. What makes Cabal Coffers such an unbelievably broken card is its degenerate synergy with Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth. After all, the card becomes utterly bonkers when it counts every land you control (itself included). Once you take that away and bump the activation cost up by 1 what you're left with is rather unimpressive by comparison. Remember, this card cannot ramp you until you have at least 6 lands in play and all 5 of the other ones have to be basic Swamps. From there the card obviously starts to look decent but if you've missed any land drops or field any other nonbasics then it takes a long time to get the payoff that you're looking for. While lot of people are fixated on the fact that "it inherently taps for mana so it's always useful" I don't understand what the argument here is. "Not bad" and "good" are two very different things and people aren't praising Wastes for a reason.
With respect to building around this card, there isn't much that anyone needs to know. You'll want 24-26 lands with 2-3 of Cabal Strongholds ensure that you'll reliably make your drops without flooding out on an effect that's weak in multiples. Clearly once you have 10+ lands in play then the second and third start to feel relevant but in general you don't want to be jamming 4 of these in your 22-24 land brews and drawing them en masse early on. Try to field an above average quantity of draw as well (maybe field 4x Sign in Blood where you'd typically on play 2) to ensure that you'll be hitting your drops and digging into action/bombs as the game progresses.
Grade: C+
Checklands are some of my favorite duals since they're the right mix of power, flexibility and cost. After all, they almost always ETBU starting on turn 2 (you only need 12 hits to consistently make that happen) and they don't even check for basics so they still work with things like Shocklands. As such they tend to win out over alternatives such as Fastands except in very niche scenarios. For example, my Rakdos Aggro deck needs to be able to curve turn 1 Vicious Conquistador into turn 2 Eidolon of the Great Revel which is a scenario where a card like Blackcleave Cliffs shines. Very few decks have such strict mana requirements however and the overwhelming majority of decks can afford to employ the "turn 1 basic, turn 2 Checkland" curve. Otherwise they're fantastic forms of color fixing that virtually never ETB beyond the first turn of the game. As such they're extremely worthwhile investments that still stand the test of time all these years later.
Conclusion
It's no secret that I'm incredibly excited for Dominaria as it's easily one of the most compelling multiplayer sets ever printed. It's impact on formats such as EDH is going to be significantly higher than certain Commander products which is pretty crazy when you think about it. We very rarely see this many bombs jammed into the same set and while most of them are build-around-mes as opposed to generic playables I personally cannot wait to test a whole slew of them out. That being said one thing that I'm struggling to do this time around is come up with a "Top 10 list" that actually makes sense. How do I weigh Constructed vs EDH? How much value do I assign to combo pieces? Do I include reprints? Do I include Commanders? There's a ton of factors to consider, especially given that the best cards have niche uses as opposed to broad applications. Here's what I settled on:
That being said the rankings are almost meaningless so don't pay too much attention to them. The first 3 cards are not only powerful, but they're also colorless and playable in numerous formats. Mox Amber is heinous in Cube but otherwise all 3 are going to see tons of play in EDH, Constructed and Cube for years to come. Mox has the most raw potential so I gave it #1 and Lotus is a reprint and thus got bumped to 3. Karn is great and I'm happy enough giving him the #2 seed. These are the kinds of things that you should be striving to do in your MP decks; ramping and drawing cards.
The next batch of cards are sheer power. I gave Squee the Immortal an A grade primarily because Food Chain is a degenerate combo enabler in EDH that needs to be banned. With every "Misthollow Griffin" that gets printed the card becomes that much more obscene and so I expect to lose a lot of games to that pairing. I also lumped Helm of the Host in there (again for EDH) because 1-card combos are extremely powerful even if they're 11 mana. "Cast Godo, win" is playable in basically any Red deck that can get there. He doesn't have to be your Commander or anything either. Just drawing him, casting him and winning is still extremely relevant. Jhoira is going to be bonkers in EDH as an oppressive draw engine but largely unplayable elsewhere. Muldrotha is the newest Sultai Titan and will see a lot of play in all formats but only in 3+ color decks. That makes him relatively niche by comparison.
Moving right along we have Damping Sphere which is a promising Stax piece that's decent at hosing big mana and high spell count strategies. It's being slightly overrated by the MTG populace in general but the card is nothing to scoff at when it's hitting the field early on. It's also another colorless card which always gives it a huge bump in my books because it means that it's playable in any deck of any deck and in any format. As such even if doesn't have the most raw power I'm still attracted to the flexibility that it offers during deckbuilding.
The last cards I don't feel very strongly about and you could largely toss anything into the slots. Adventurous Impulse is stellar card filtering, playable in any format and relevant for nearly any Green archetype. The consistency that it brings to your draws will be much appreciated. Otherwise Final Parting is essentially a double-Demonic Tutor and will shine in slower formats such as EDH. It's still perfectly playable in Constructed as well but won't see much play outside of singleton formats. To round out the list I added Urza's Ruinous Blast because 5 CMC mass exile is fantastic, especially if it's in the form of a Cyclonic Rift.
I'll be making some slight tweaks to the review over the coming days but I wanted to put out what I had so that people could start reading up on it. I'm a rather messy typer so I'll try to iron out the typos and broken links as I plug along and I'll add any cards that players felt that I might have overlooked. Let me know if there's anything that you'd like to see added to the review. Some of the grades will likely make some slight bumps upwards or downwards but everything should be close-ish to where I want it.
So, Cabal Stronghold I believe still works with Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, however it will only count your basic lands.. So I can see a case for putting it in 2 color EDH decks (especially those that need to fetch a lot of basics) as a land that can tap for extra mana, but it isn't going to power out 7 mana on turn 4 like an early Coffers/Urborg setup would.
Of course, in monoblack you still play it.
Next, you described the abundance of resources argument well. I've been trying to talk to my group for a while on building better decks simply from "having more stuff"
I made The Scarab God as a deck that doesn't have the absolutely insane synergies that my other decks have but simply a plan to simply have more mana and more cards than the opposition, and as a pure goodstuff deck that I did not optimize it still wins a fair portion of games.
Also, your evaluation of burst mana is also true. I find cards such as Mana Geyser and Gilded Lotus to be extremely good. Tempo still matters quite a lot in EDH but you do this through acceleration rather than by attacking.
Also, on Tatyova, Benthic Druid. In EDH I find it comparable to The Gitrog Monster (which is to say insane). It has a stronger draw engine but is more suspectible to disruption, as the extra land drop that the frog gets is relevant for recasting him in the face of removal and Cabal Coffers is a card that helps cover for commander tax.
However, in the event that they don't shoot her, all it takes is one Scapeshift for things to go out of control.
Personally, I'll stick with the frog, because pairing it with Oppression is oppressive.
My only suggestion would be to maybe make two different grades, one for EDH and one for constructed, since so many of the comments say something along the lines of "this is a bomb in EDH but crappy for constructed".
So, Cabal Stronghold I believe still works with Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, however it will only count your basic lands.. So I can see a case for putting it in 2 color EDH decks (especially those that need to fetch a lot of basics) as a land that can tap for extra mana, but it isn't going to power out 7 mana on turn 4 like an early Coffers/Urborg setup would.
I don't buy it. If your plan is to fetch multiple lands with a card like Hour of Promise and if one of them is going to be Urborg then the other is always going to be Coffers. This plan only makes sense if you're going to fetch all 3, but even that sucks because now (at least) 2 of your lands aren't basics so Stronghold is probably barely ramping you. I'm not saying that you're wrong, your point is totally correct, but I had considered this when writing this review. I just couldn't think of a way to make that "good." I actually thing that Cabal Stronghold kind of sucks and I'm probably not even going to be playing in most of my Monoblack decks which is extremely disappointing :/. Wizards really went out of their way to make it bad.
That's a bit of a stretch. I can see where you're coming from but Gitrog is significantly more powerful because he gives you access to Black and Black is better than Blue for this type of Commander. An incomplete list of reasons includes:
Better ramp. Things like Lake of the Dead, Dark Ritual and Heartless Summoning (sometimes Culling the Weak as well, depends on your quantity of mana dorks and whatnot) are fantastic at cheating 5+ CMC spells into play and Gitrog doesn't really care about card disadvantage. Blue, while powerful, doesn't bring anything to to table for this. This basically goes back to my Abundance of Resources argument since Black is better at getting your Commander into play and that's extremely powerful even if it costs you extra cards along the way.
Necrologia. Putting all combos/degenerate nonsense aside when people ask me what my Commander I'm playing my answer is always "Necrologia." My goal in every EDH game that I play (regardless of who my Commander is) is to spend my first tutor on it, draw 20 cards, jam all of my fast mana, sculpt a perfect 7 card hand and sculpt a perfect graveyard for all of my "graveyard matters" cards. Blue has good draw and I'm not suggesting otherwise but I prefer the raw power of Necrologia when I'm trying to support:
Seasons Past. Gitrog is very spell-based and the combo of tutors + Seasons Past means that you can play an "infinite value" game even if your Commander is getting hated on. If all else fails you can still draw a new hand every turn and that's a spectacular place to be. Gitrog is very much a "big mana" card and the single best use for it is often "the card that lets you pick up your graveyard and play it as though it were your hand."
Instant wins. Dakmor Salvage, Stinkweed Imp and/or Golgari Grave-Troll pair with any discard outlet (Putrid Imp, Noose Constrictor, etc.) to win the game on the spot. Tatyova doesn't possess that type of free "I win" sequence and so I'd much rather be on Gitrog than her. I'm kinda cheating on this point a little bit since Dakmore Salvage is the only one of these three that's a 100% guaranteed kill whereas the others are ~99.76% or something along those lines. Close enough! Hell, Final Parting is only going to exacerbate this issue because it bins Dakmor Salvage and puts Putrid Imp in hand (or whatever) which is an auto-win if you curve it after a Gitrog.
Thanks. I'm not overly sold on using rituals in a table where my stuff is guaranteed to be targeted, but running Mana Vault should be okay.
I'm not really up for easy instant win stuff, but even without them the tutors are great and discard is an amazing alternative to counterspells.
I've been liking Mindslicer a lot in a list where holding fetchlands or Ghost Quarter can refill a hand.
Also since I own it I use Yawgmoth's Will as my Seasons' Past. The mana savings plus the ability to play lands plus my low curve allows for it.
Lastly, thanks for your analysis on the stronghold. I guess a couple of my decks can still use it as a low opportunity cost include but it isn't for most decks.
On my head to head with Gitrog v. Tatyova, I don't think I've dropped a game.
Also since I own it I use Yawgmoth's Will as my Seasons' Past. The mana savings plus the ability to play lands plus my low curve allows for it.
Yawg Win is solid but highly overrated in my experience. I actually prefer Seasons Past in the "fair" versions of the deck. Note that Seasons Past can recur lands (0 is a CMC) and it puts "big mana" to better use. After all, it's not just one Seasons Past. When you Demonic Tutor for Seasons Past then its the 2 drop that you recur so when SP gets moved back to the bottom of your lib you can tutor for it immediately. As such it's a Yawg Win every turn past a certain point. I also own Yawg Win but I actually prefer SP when I'm not playing the combo versions of the deck.
On my head to head with Gitrog v. Tatyova, I don't think I've dropped a game.
I doubt doubt it, but I also bet I could run it over with my combo-based Gitrog build. Games look very different when you have access to such a consistent kill. I'm not saying that combo decks are fun play against/a good fit for every meta, but I also don't think that it's fair to compare decks if you're not comparing "the best version" of them. After all, if the argument is simply "I can beat a bad version of X with Y" then that holds true for any deck. My argument is "Gitrog is significantly better than Tatyova because the best versions of Gitrog reliably win the game on turn 4 against any number of adversaries while still having a more powerful gameplan should the games go long." It's not fun and not everyone will be willing/able to play those versions of the deck as a result but it's not particularly close.
To give you an idea, one of the biggest cEDH tourneys last year was taken down by combo-based Gitrog piloted by Leptys. The guy has been playing the deck for years and is a monster at the tables. His primer is a must-read for people who want to see what the deck can do when it's pushed to its limits. He's the single best pilot in the world as far as the cEDH community is concerned so if you're interested in seeing the deck in its most broken form check out his stuff.
Entertaining read, as usual -- there is a lot to like about this set, and I have picked up more singles from Dominaria than probably the previous 4 or 5 sets combined. I did notice this:
Quote from RE: Mox Amber »
This card will be absolutely bonkers in White-based Stax decks that field things like Legion's Landing, Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit, Thalia, Heretic Cathar, Brimaz, King of Oreskos and Hokori, Dust Drinker. Between Mox Amber and Legion's Landing you can easily recover from the effects of mass land destruction (Armageddon and Cataclysm for example) that will utterly demolish your adversaries by comparison.
I'm not sure if you were implying that Legion's Landing "turns on" Mox Amber, but unfortunately it doesn't work that way (creatures only). Still, I agree the card is better than some people are giving it credit for.
I'm not sure if you were implying that Legion's Landing "turns on" Mox Amber, but unfortunately it doesn't work that way (creatures only). Still, I agree the card is better than some people are giving it credit for.
I did eventually learn about that but it wasn't until after I wrote that blurb. I still decided to keep it though because I actually like LL in Armageddon decks. It's easy to forgo triggering it (you're not an aggro deck) and flipping it post Limited Resources/Armageddon is a big game. I did miss the fact that it only triggers off of critters/Walkers though.
Thanks for the review Prid3. Appreciate it.
I agree with you, this set looks like a ripper (especially when you factor in the previous 5 years and compare).
3 vs 4 mana is extremely significant. I'm a huge fan of cards like Sapphire Medallion and Baral, Chief of Compliance and Unwind is fairly bonkers when you're reducing its cost. This, to me, is very much like Arterial Flow vs Unnerve. Not a super fair comparison because Flow is strictly better but the idea here is that I don't think that the card is any good at 4 mana but when you drop it to 3 it suddenly becomes a legitimate playable.
I haven't actually seen a deck run multiple Gaea's Blessings since Memory's Journey and the Eldrazi were printed so I did mean singleton. There's usually a stronger mix of cards that you can run. That being said 2x Blessing is cheap and easy so maybe I'm not giving it enough credit. I'll tweak the language a bit to make it more ambiguous.
Corrected the Genesis Wave and LED pricing. I had no idea that GW came back in M25! Very happy to see that :).
They're both good cards - and what really gets me about these in the world of Dark Ritual - is they're both fairly cheap for now.
I'll be grabbing both of these, some memorials, aswell as a few others.
Cards I'm looking at not in Prid3s' review (there's not many either! ;));
Llanowar Scout.
For someone on Posts, Tron, Coffers etc., this card seems useful-ish using tutors like Sylvan Scrying, Living Wish, Expedition Map etc. I think it's fair to compare this to Explore. This card lends itself to responding to an opponent, I might potentially land a Glacial Chasm at instant speed, for example. Life from the Loam says hi too.
I'm going to be grabbing some of these.
Valduk, Keeper of the Flame
Very niche I know. But then I also play a R/W Sunforger deck with Puresteel Paladin & Stoneforge Mystic.
I'm not sure how this might work in that build, but the possibility of attacking with a mob of elementals each attack phase is making me think!
I'm gonna grab 1 and see how it goes.
Cards I'm looking at not in Prid3s' review (there's not many either! ;));
Llanowar Scout.
For someone on Posts, Tron, Coffers etc., this card seems useful-ish using tutors like Sylvan Scrying, Living Wish, Expedition Map etc. I think it's fair to compare this to Explore. This card lends itself to responding to an opponent, I might potentially land a Glacial Chasm at instant speed, for example. Life from the Loam says hi too.
I'm going to be grabbing some of these.
Oh snap! I totally forgot STS was a card! Never mind me then.... LOL
Yeah I was literally going to post the exact same thing as him. I actually agree with you and I legitimately run STS in my Bounceland decks with Burgeoning. Card is great. That being said you don't need more than 4 and there's zero incentive to pay more than 1 mana for the effect.
Even if the card is boring there's only ~6 playable bounce spells that you can even consider fielding (it being one of them) and so giving it a D grade is nonsensical. From a purely "I want to win games" perspective it's the third best option overall with the only reasonable competition being Winds of Rebuke.
Otherwise the only card that got a bump was Teferi, Hero of Dominaria. I need a more consistent grade scale for PWers and going forward it will look something like:
Even if the card is boring there's only ~6 playable bounce spells that you can even consider fielding (it being one of them) and so giving it a D grade is nonsensical. From a purely "I want to win games" perspective it's the third best option overall with the only reasonable competition being Winds of Rebuke.
Even if the card is boring there's only ~6 playable bounce spells that you can even consider fielding (it being one of them) and so giving it a D grade is nonsensical. From a purely "I want to win games" perspective it's the third best option overall with the only reasonable competition being Winds of Rebuke.
I honestly can't remember the last time that I've played with or against that card but I guess it's still the go-to option for big mana decks and/or ones that feature Nevinyrral's Disk. I did say that there were ~6 playable bounce spells because those aren't the only 4-5 that you can play but they're basically the only ones that I see nowadays :P.
Introductions and Explanations
Who Am I?
Greetings fellow multiplayer enthusiasts. My name is Kyle "Prid3" Brecht and at the time of writing this I'm a 15+ year MTG veteran who's been playing and following the game competitively (across all relevant duel formats) for well over a decade. That being said whereas most Magic players spend the vast majority of their recreational time dueling/drafting/testing the bulk of my personal playtime has been spent at kitchen tables slinging spells in large multiplayer matches with my friends, family and acquaintances. Be it Cube, Constructed and/or EDH I've literally played tens of thousands of hours of multiplayer Magic in my lifetime and so I consider myself to be an expert on the subject as a whole. With that in mind I'd like to offer you my take on how Magic's latest set will affect the global multiplayer scene as a whole. That is, unlike similar set reviews this one is going to be purely focused on multiplayer formats and dynamics with absolutely no emphasis on duel and/or limited Magic. While I understand that this sort of content won't appeal to everyone it's my belief that multiplayer Magic is played by a relatively high % of the casual MTG playerbase and so it's my hope that most of you will be able to extract meaningful value from my expertise.
My Philosophy
I'm a fiercely competitive player and my set reviews are going to reflect that. That is to say that this is largely going to be a competitive multiplayer set review and so don’t expect me to put any emphasis on subjective measures such as fun factor, flavor nor self-imposed restrictions. While I recognize that terms such as "casual" and "competitive" carry many negative stigmas in the MTG community rest assured that I don’t use either maliciously. As far as I'm concerned it's a simple matter of mindset and how players approach the game from a mental perspective. "Competitive" Magic players such as myself typically build decks with the goal of maximizing our overall match win % given an expected metagame. "Casual" players on the other hand tend to consider a wide variety of variables and factors beyond winning alone. Clearly it's a spectrum as opposed to a binary set of data points but the key thing that I wanted to stress is that these terms have absolutely no bearing on a person’s worth nor morality. That is, no one is inherently better or worse than anyone else for thinking about a game in a different way. The only reason why I’m going to focus entirely on "what wins" is because every other variable is too subjective to make any definitive, sweeping claims about. That being said all other things being equal we'd all rather win games than lose them.
Grading Scale:
A: Oppressive cards that completely warp the game around them. These are format definers that dominate games in which they're left unchecked and crush adversaries who aren't employing similarly powered strategies. This makes them must-have competitive staples with limitless potential. Think Gray Merchant of Asphodel, Humility, Consecrated Sphinx, Sylvan Primordial, Purphoros, God of the Forge.
B: Formidable cards that will enable you to pull ahead of the pack. Winning decks should be clamoring to field them as they figure to significantly improve your overall win %. This makes them top-priority acquisition targets for players of all skill-levels. Think Grave Pact, Rolling Earthquake, Wrath of God, Recurring Insight, Tendershoot Dryad.
C: Powerful cards that will enable you to keep pace with the rest of the field. A list full of C's won't crush a table but a solid foundation of them should be good enough to keep you competitive. Think Fleshbag Marauder, Clever Impersonator, Scab-Clan Berserker, Realm Seekers, Oreskos Explorer.
D: Marginal playables with which to flesh out your lists in the absence of reasonable alternatives. I strongly encourage that you enlist substitutes if it's a realistic option since they're unlikely to yield impressive win %s.
F: Weak cards that shouldn't be played.
Niche: Immensely powerful-yet-narrow cards that are Bs/As in decks that actively want them and Fs/Ds everywhere else. Think Waste Not, Repercussion, Limited Resources, Intruder Alarm, Oath of Druids.
Sideboard: Tremendously powerful-yet-niche cards that you shouldn't maindeck against unknown adversaries but that have competitive applications in known metagames with clearly defined threats and strategies. Think Dystopia, Energy Flux, Compost, Stony Silence, Ruination.
+/-: Used to denote a better or worse N. That is, a B+ represents a strong B whereas C- implies a weak C.
Notes
The primary distinction that separates EDH from other formats is the abundance of resources that's inherently offered to the players. Namely:
A free mulligan;
An extra 1-2 "cards in hand" (your Commander(s));
An additional 20 life;
An automatic draw step on your first turn and;
A permanent mana sink (your Commander(s)).
When compared to a typical duel format the difference is nothing shy of monumental. Imagine a game of Legacy where you start the game on the play with a mulligan. You're going to end your turn with 6 cards available to you vs the 8 of your adversary. The game hasn't even started and you're already significantly far behind on resources! Conversely, take the same scenario in EDH (mull on the play) where you'll end the turn with 9-10 cards in hand (counting your Commander(s)) which is a 50%+ increase at no cost. Nothing! You're practically swimming in cards.
Moreover, EDH is (typically) a high-health multiplayer format which affords you the opportunity to field oppressive draw engines that don't possess nearly as much power anywhere else. A short list includes things like:
Mystic Remora, Rhystic Study, Manifold Insights, Consecrated Sphinx, Recurring Insight, Nezahal, Primal Tide;
Compost, Sylvan Library;
Necropotence, Syphon Mind, Ad Nauseam, and Necrologia.
Some of these abuse the high health total, others the increased player count, but ultimately the idea here is that the three "good colors" can draw way more cards than what is reasonable.
With all of this in mind EDH decks are going to be built and played very differently than decks in other formats. Going back to my initial example in Legacy, it's easy to see why a card like Chrome Mox isn't played more heavily. Turn that 6 card hand into a virtual 5 card hand and you're not going to be winning many games against someone boasting 8 themselves. There's simply too few resources left to work with. EDH, on the other hand, doesn't have that problem. The extra cards that you're afforded coupled with those aforementioned draw engines are more than enough to ensure that "cards in hand" will never be a consistent bottle-neck. The result?
Ramp is king. Because you have such a high health total to buffer against aggro and because you get to see so many additional cards in every game the vast majority of EDH games are won and lost on the back of mana and ramp. This is why virtually all optimized lists with include things like Ancient Tomb, Gemstone Cavern, Chrome Mox, Mox Diamond, Mana Crypt, Mana Vault and Sol Ring. Most of those are obvious but even the 1-for-2s that set you back on cards are nothing short of bombs. You're going to see far more cards than you'll ever need and so anything that enables you to cast more spells per circuit is extremely powerful. This further extends to rituals such as Lotus Petal, Dark Ritual, High Tide and Seething Song which provide a sizable boost of mana at a trivial cost. Mana quickly becomes the only resource that matters and so anything that enables you to cheat on it becomes the driving force of your games.
As you read this review you'll often see me reference this Abundance of Resources. Rather than having me explain it each and every time I'll cover it once and simply call back to it as needed. Please keep it in mind as you read because it (by-and-large applies to everything EDH related regardless of whether it's directly referenced or not.
Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx got a nice boost in this set for two reasons. Note that I say "Nykthos" but what I actually mean is "any decent Devotion-matters" card. First, there's an entire cycle of "Benalish Marshals" at rare that brings an entirely new set of 3 drops to the table. While they're all extremely lackluster options in a vacuum they're essentially Thran Dynamos once you have a Nykthos in play so the rest of the body is a bonus. Treat them as ramp spells as opposed to 5/4s for 3. Otherwise that Sagas (such as History of Benalia) are "temporary spells" that can assist with fueling devotion for multiple turns before being sacrificed. While this is certainly a minor consideration at best every little bit helps when its your ramp spell of choice. I'm not actually going to review Benalish Marshal, Tempest Djinn or Steel Leaf Champion but keep them in mind if you need something budget-minded that foots the bill.
I'm not going bother grading/analyzing/reviewing overly weak cards such as Hallar, the Firefletcher, Ghitu Journeymage, Cabal Paladin and Caligo Skin-Witch. After all, even though they say "each opponent" they're far too weak to ever make the cut. It's possible that I should review Cabal Paladin because it has the most potential of the lot (it's great with recursive engines such as Scrap Trawler for example) but the reality is that Artifact-based alternatives such as Blasting Station and Aetherflux Reservoir will always supplant it. If you want me to review them, just pretend that I assigned them all Fs and then scroll to the top of the page read up on what that means. That's about all that I have to say about them :P.
Depending on my mood I'll often review cards like Slither Blade that are utterly worthless in 99.999% of all decks in all formats but that are all-stars in extremely niche circumstances. After all, the card is utterly bonkers in Edric, Spymaster of Trest decks (EDH or Constructed) because it's resilient, unblockble and it's even a Rogue for Notorious Throng which is easily one of the best cards in the deck. Dominaria has so much going on that I'm largely going to ignore these unless they jump off the page as being exceptional cards for specific archetypes. I'm going to ignore anything that falls into "this deck could/might play this" category.
Grade: Sideboard D
While "Ghostly Prisons" arguably possess reasonable multiplayer (MP) value as a means of deterring early-game aggression the existence of alternatives such as Windborn Muse and Archangel of Tithes renders this one nearly unplayable in the grand scheme of things. "The fourth best card for the job" rarely makes the cut. Being Legendary is especially odd given that this effect needs to be stacked to feel relevant. Moreover, the reason why these taxing effects are actually marginal playables at best is because they're irrelevant in the face of the strongest multiplayer strategies and archetypes. Combo/Ramp/Control/Stax/etc. decks couldn't care less about trying to attack you and even aggro decks can often drain you out with reach and/or remove them with relative ease. It's also miserable to cast one of these on turn 3 against players jamming things like Worn Powerstone and Rhystic Study because you're almost falling impossibly far behind when that happens. Pretty soon players are hardcasting Eldrazi, paying 8 mana and turning them sideways at you as you're contemplating where you went wrong in life. This is why I'm extremely unimpressed with "Walls" in general; they never seem to matter against players fielding the right kinds of cards. If your meta is (for whatever reason) extremely aggressive then they become reasonable sideboard cards but even that's dubious at best.
Note that as of Dominaria these cards are essentially unplayable in 2HG given that your opponents can simply attack your ally instead. Bummer!
Grade: D+
White doesn't get access to card selection and/or draw so a "2 mana look 5" goes a lot further here than it would for other colors. I'd still rather open most games with a mana rock instead but it's both cheap and flexible enough to make cut in decks with enough hits. For those wondering about the math, assuming a 60 card deck you'd need 18 hits to be 85% on this thing. For EDH you'd need 30. It doesn't really matter what they are as long as you can nab something and with every Paradox Engine that gets printed its stock will continue to rise. At 2 CMC it'll never be a staple but it's definitely a card worth acquiring if you ever plan on exploring White-based Artifact/Legendary builds.
EDIT: I highly recommend that everyone reads this article by Frank Karsten.
EDH Grade: Niche C+
Cost reduction mechanics such as these tend to be oppressive in decks that actively want them but nearly worthless everywhere else. The only reasonable use-case that I can conceive for her is in Sram, Senior Edificer EDH decks that features a throng of 0-1 CMC equipment spells that it can use to combo off into Aetherflux Reservoir. Note that this only relevant for EDH since you can already field more than enough 0 CMC alternatives in Constructed which means that your Sram decks can already combo off without any additional support.
EDH Grade: D+
What Evra gains in EDH that she lacks in regular MP is certainty. After all, if I'm playing a generic Control deck in 60 card constructed I can't blindly jam cards like Gods Willing and Apostle's Blessing into my list on the off-chance that I draw my 1-of Evra. They're going to be dead draws the vast majority of the time so you cannot justify their inclusion. This is where the Command Zone shines since it removes consistency concerns from the equation. Otherwise she's essentially a 1-card win condition as long as you're able to protect and connect with her. Just ramp her out, swing, flip and counter removal with your slew of 1 CMC protection spells and Silence effects. The deck is relatively mindless and essentially builds itself since it's basically just the White version of Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon. Otherwise I don't recommend playing with this card in Constructed since she's far too vulnerable to removal and, again, you won't be able to justify the inclusion of protection such as Gods Willing to make her a consistent attacker. Attack, flip her p/t, die horribly to 2 removal spells is sad times :(. You could make the argument that she's a Sideboard card in that respect but I'm not going to buy into that. Even Mudhole starts to sound promising when you cite the "no one will have anything that matters" defense.
Grade: C+
I'm a huge fan of mass land destruction in MP because it's one of the only consistent ways to end games outside of degenerate combo kills. After all, it's as easy as "get ahead, nuke the lands, win the game." That might sound overly simplistic but it really is that simple in my experience. I can't even begin to count the number of times that someone has curved something like EOT Cyclonic Rift into Consecrated Sphinx into Armageddon only to immediately prompt a concession from the rest of the table. The fact that players eventually get some of their lands back is bothersome but it's mostly going to be a case of "too little, too late" so I'm not overly concerned about it. You should have all-but sealed the deal by then so I don't expect it to matter much. What makes this card so unique is that it's an Enchantment which is something that White can legitimately tutor for, cheat out and/or recur. Clearly it doesn't hold a candle to Armageddon in a straight 1v1 fistfight but it'll be key for formats such as EDH where you can only run a handful of copies of the effect and have no reliable way to tutor/draw into them. It's going to be a fantastic addition to White's roster in that sense and I look forward to jamming it for many years to come.
Grade: D+
I dislike "Baneslayer Angels" in MP since they're expensive, vulnerable to removal, slow clocks and far too "fair" to warrant their investment. That being said they're still reasonable playables in smaller tables where players aren't fielding traditional multiplayer archetypes and strategies. As such you can never discount them entirely since they're great ways to gum up the ground, gain some life and exert some pressure as needed. They're also especially powerful in Black decks given their ability to compliment card draw spells/engines such as Necropotence and Necrologia which are already obscenely degenerate in formats such as EDH.
EDH Grade: Niche C+
Teshar is screaming out to be paired with cards like Lotus Bloom, Mox Opal, Mox Amber, Terrarion, Chromatic Star, Chromatic Sphere, Ichor Wellspring, Myr Retriever, Scrap Trawler, Junk Diver, Second Sunrise, Faith's Reward, and Krark-Clan Ironworks given how perfectly he lends himself to the Eggs/KCI archetypes. After all, the ability to recur creatures such as Scrap Trawler and Myr Retriever directly to play is absurd when you have a mana engine floating around. Assuming that you draw the right cards at the right time it can be fairly trivial to draw your deck, generate a ton of mana and win off of a card like Aetherflux Reservoir. You can even field backup win conditions such as the "Bomberman" kill that pairs Auriok Salvagers + Lion's Eye Diamond to generate infinite mana so by no means are you all-in on any one plan. Heck, even if your combos fail let you down you can always fall back on Second Sunrise, Faith's Reward and Open the Vaults to generate more value that you could ever need.
The primary thing that's going to prevent him from being oppressive is that White lacks the card draw and tutors needed to consistently assemble these types of combos. It's also extremely difficult to naturally draw into the right mix without their help and so consistency will always be his Achilles's heel. Given enough time/tutors/card draw spells I'm sure that he'll get there eventually though and I'm excited to build a Staxy, Combo Artifact-based build. It will never be top tier because Monowhite lacks far too many tools to be a serious contender so you're always going to be better off playing something like Breya, Etherium Shaper instead. Even if she (arguably) brings less to the table in terms of her body its the additional colors that make the exchange worth your while. Teshar is still extremely close to being extremely good however and I wouldn't fault anyone for building around him.
Grade: B
This card is absolutely bonkers. I'm already giggling maniacally at the thought of curving Ajani, Caller of the Pride into Elspeth, Knight-Errant into URB or any reasonably similar sequence. 5 mana to exile everything is an absurd rate even if you're forced to jump through an extra hoop. White has so many amazing Planeswalkers and Legendaries that it barely even feels like a requirement and the payoff is gargantuan. After all, URB will legitimately be a 5 mana Cyclonic Rift that exiles (yes, exiles!) in some scenarios and that's completely messed-up. I have to say that I'm loving all of these new, powerful, White mass removal spells (looking at you Tragic Arrogance and Hour of Revelation) and I'm glad that Wizards is starting to show some love to the "bad colors." I'm definitely going to playing the heck out of this thing in every multiplayer format for a long, long time in any deck that can reasonably support it. That's mostly going to be EDH because the Legendary is almost "free" but don't discount its Constructed applications either.
Grade: D
Even though these cards aren't terribly similar they all suffer from being expensive, Sorcery-speed draw/recursion spells in the color that has access to alternatives such as Mystic Remora, Search for Azcanta, Rhystic Study, Manifold Insights, Thirst for Knowledge, Fact or Fiction, Recurring Insight, Consecrated Sphinx, Nezahal, Primal Tide, Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time. The Antiquities War also has to compete with Thoughtcast which draws the same number of cards for 1/4th of the mana and things like Mystic Confluence put most "Tidings" variants (such as Wight of Memory) to shame. They're not terrible cards per say, the competition is far too steep.
While some of you may feel that I'm unfairly dismissing The Antiquities War's 3rd mode (your robots become 5/5s) I don't consider it to be a viable win condition in any multiplayer format. They can be chumped/killed/etc. and you're not going to have enough stuff to swing for lethal in the first place. As such I don't assign much value to it because that's not what MP games are about. The same thing more-or-less applies to The Mirari Conjecture because doubling spells is cool and all but not when it's happening 2 turns later. There's simply no compelling reason to risk tapping out for draw spells/value engines as marginal as these.
Grade: B
Into the Roil has always been a reasonable playable and its twin brother will certainly follow in those footsteps. Blue is one of the privileged colors that can afford to waste cards on marginal tempo plays such as these because it tends to draw far more cards than it could ever hope to play. Otherwise there's nothing new, exciting, flashing or noteworthy about Blink of an Eye other than "it's interaction on turn 2 that cantrips on turn 6 if needed." It's no Chain of Vapor or Cyclonic Rift but it's still good enough to make the cut if you're looking for some additional interaction in your lists.
Grade: D
Even though "Confiscates" technically scale with the number of adversaries (more players = better targets to choose from) this effect sadly isn't worth the 6 mana investment. There's far more practical things to be doing with your time and mana at that stage of the game which is why you rarely see these types of theft effects being played. I wouldn't laugh anyone out of the room for sleeving them up but there's significantly more powerful things to be spending your mana on. Such as...
Grade: C
Things like this! I'm a huge fan of extra turn effects in multiplayer since they scale extremely well with the increased player count. After all, they enable you to steal a significantly larger % of the total turns being played in a given circuit relative to the value that they offer in duels.
2 Player Game
Each circuit has 2 turns (yours, theirs) so each player takes 50% of the total turns. A Time Walk temporarily bumps that number up to 3 and since you're taking 2 of them that's 2/3 = 66% of the total turns being played for the circuit. That's an increase of 32% over what you were previously getting (which was 50%) and so that's your "steal factor" for the play.
4 Player Game
Each circuit has 4 turns (Player A's, B's, C's and D's) so each player takes 25% of the total turns. A Time Walk temporarily bumps that number up to 5 and since you're taking 2 of them that's 2/5 = 40% of the total turns being played. That's an increase of 62.5% over what you were previously getting (which was 25%) and so that's your "steal factor" for the play.
As you can see assuming a 4 player game Time Walks provide you with nearly twice the value (195.3125% but who's counting?) that they would otherwise offer in duels.
Boring math aside extra turn effects are fantastic ways to surge ahead of the field by making additional land drops, activating Planeswalkers, abusing card advantage engines and chaining into more extra turn spells. I don't know about the rest of you but I'm more than happy to Twincast a Time Stretch and then Snapcaster Mage it to take all of the turns. If the rest of the table wants to keep playing, hey, that's on them :). As to how good KTS is, the reality is that it's basically the worst version of the effect ever printed. The bounce is largely irrelevant and the high mana cost + conditional nature make it significantly less appealing than the alternatives. What it does offer is (I'm assuming) affordability since things like Temporal Manipulation cannot be acquired on a budget. Otherwise even a "bad" Time Warp is still a bonkers MP Magic card and it doesn't seem overly difficult to support. Blue already has some amazing Legendarie creatures (such as Baral, Chief of Compliance, Jace, Vryn's Prodigy and Venser, Shaper Savant and most of its Planeswalkers are equally powerful. As such you don't have to go too far out of your way to enable it and the effect is stellar.
Grade: Sideboard C+
This card is extremely difficult to grade because it's basically a combination of Niche/Sideboard without being stellar at either. It's a wonky Counterspell variant that can be employed to thwart creature-based combos that would otherwise end the game on the spot. So, for example, if an opponent Tooth and Nails for a Zealous Conscripts and Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker you can Flash this in to disrupt the combo and sweep them away on the following turn. The reason why this wouldn't be strictly worse than a regular Counterspell is that it's both a creature and that it's cheap to cast. As such you can do things like Survival of the Fittest/Chord of Calling to tutor for one and cast it in response to a Laboratory Maniac kill or something along those lines. You can also recur it with things like Phyrexian Reclamation which opens up additional possibilities and play patterns. The card is basically unplayable outside of combo-ridden metas, it just doesn't do enough on average, but a deck full of Green tutors might want a copy as a niche interaction spell.
Grade: Niche B
Naban, Dean of Iteration is a solid 1-2 of for any Panharmonicon-based Wizard deck full of ETB triggers, Strionic Resonators, Ghostly Flickers, Crystal Shard, etc. Obviously you can only field the one if you're playing EDH but he does seem sweet in decks like Azami, Lady of Scrolls and Inalla, Archmage Ritualist (especially Inalla, that's some sweet value right there). I don't have much else to add given that these types of decks basically build themselves. Just open Gatherer, type "Wizard" and "ETB" and jam every Snapcaster Mage, Trophy Mage, Champion of Wits, Sea Gate Oracle and Venser, Shaper Savant into the list.
Wizard's Retort won't have any impact on Constructed/Cube but should definitely be played in every Wizards-based EDH deck. After all, Counterspell is one heck of a MP Magic card and you should play every functional reprint that you can get your hands on. It deals with any troublesome spell for the low investment of 2 mana and 1 card which is perfect when you're trying to thwart game-ending bombs and break-up degenerate combos. Gaining access to permission is easily one of the primary reasons to play Blue given that it's one of the only reliable way to profitably interact with whatever broken things that your adversaries are going to be doing. It's one of the strongest catch-alls ever printed and you'd be foolish to omit it from your lists.
EDH Grade: Niche C+
The most broken aspect of this card is that it's essentially a 1-card win condition when paired with things like Ghostly Flicker and Illusionist's Stratagem assuming that you have a single relevant Wizard in play (such as Sea Gate Oracle). From there you can draw your entire deck and trigger Laboratory Maniac or whatever. Blue has a slew of tutors such as Mystical Tutor and Merchant Scroll to find one and if all else fails there's no shortage of oppressive draw spells/engines that you can employ to dig into your necessary components. Otherwise she's a rather lackluster Commander given that Wizards already has access to a couple of Godly alternatives which means that if you're fielding Naru (either in the Command Zone or in the 99) it's only because of her potential to act as a degenerate combo piece.
EDH Grade: C+
Opt is a surprisingly difficult card to grade. Don't get me wrong, it's a solid card in a vacuum and if it were in (literally) any color then it would see significantly more play. However, the fact that it's in Blue means that it virtually never makes sense to field it in formats such as Cube or Constructed. After all, you should always elect to field alternatives such as Mystic Remora, Brainstorm, Ponder, Preordain, Gitaxian Probe, Thought Scour, Impulse and Search for Azcanta instead which means that you're never going find any slots for it. Period. This is why I don't even bother grading it (I didn't grade it in my Ixalan set review for example) because even though the card is decent in a vacuum there's zero incentive for anyone to purchase and play with it. That being said this particular set review is branching out into EDH which means that I can safely give it a once-over without feeling as though I'm wasting everyone's time.
Cantrips are extremely powerful in EDH given that they enable you to smooth your draws and thus cheat on things like lands during deck construction. You're often fielding upwards of 40 which means that if you ever find yourself on the wrong end of variance then it can make for a miserable play experience. Adding a slew of cantrips to your list will enable you double or triple the number of cards that you see in the opening turns of the game (on average) in order to drastically reduce the likelihood (and/or mitigate the impact) of mana-screw/flood. Moreover, you'll also be sculpting a strong mix of ramp, card draw, tutors, interaction and payoff spells along the way which leads to a steady play experience. What separates Opt from the rest of the pack is that it's an Instant which means that you can sandbag it until EOT (assuming that you need to hold up mana for and/or represent interaction). Everyone can plainly see why it's weaker than alternatives such as Preordain when you're jamming it Main Phase but the fact that it doesn't force you to tap mana on your turn is how it earns its keep.
Now, the reason why Opt doesn't see more play (it's not an EDH staple by any means) is because there's better things to be doing with your time, mana and (most importantly) deckslots than wasting them on marginal filler such as Opt. It's still a totally reasonable addition and I've seen it played in extremely competitive decks before but the problem is that your flex-slots are extremely tight and so it virtually never survives the cuts. After all, it only digs a maximum of 2 cards (whereas Ponder sees twice as many for the same quantity of mana) which barely qualifies as filtering when all's said and done. I still want to stress that this card isn't bad per say, it's merely in the color that has access to vastly superior alternatives.
Grade: Niche B
Precognition Field is a stellar card advantage engine for spell-based builds given their ability to consistently lean on cheap cantrips to all-but control their draws (often referred to as Xeroxing). For example, imagine a deck with something along of the lines of 8-12x Fetchland, 4x Preordain, 4x Ponder and 4x Brainstorm. Not only is your deck full of "hits" and/or ways to shuffle away "misses" but you're also going to be consistently controlling the top card of your library every turn of every game. As such Precognition Field can easily represent a virtual 3+ cards per circuit (sometimes many, many more) as you're casting a slew of "Xerox" spells that continually Scry additional "hits" to the top. These types of value chains can feel utterly oppressive to play against because it often feels as though your adversary is playing with their entire deck as their hand. Precognition Field certainly imposes some rather extremely deckbuilding requirements but the payoff is undeniably there if you're willing to follow them.
That being said Precognition Field isn't functionally playable outside of extremely niche Constructed decks and/or EDH given that it's a "strictly worse" version of Future Sight and/or Magus of the Future. I'm using the term loosely here because it's 4 mana vs 5 (and thus isn't strictly worse by definition) but Future Sight offers far too much additional power + flexibility and since the effect is worthless in multiples decks rarely want to field more than a single copy of it. If your deck is literally nothing but Lands, Instants and Sorceries then the card is utterly bonkers but those are going to be so few and far between that it's barely worth consideration. Otherwise, the only compelling argument that I've heard is that Precognition Field is an infinite mana sink that can enable you to "draw" (i.e. dig through) your entire deck for something like Laboratory Maniac or Walking Ballista to win the match. This is relevant when you have access to infinite colorless mana but not infinite colored mana. I'm still not buying it outside of extremely narrow builds because at that point you're probably mostly building it to prove a point.
With respect to EDH I would only consider it in decks like Mizzix of the Izmagnus and Melek, Izzet Paragon. It's not a "must have" for these archetypes by any means but it does seem eminently reasonable. The key thing to remember here is that even if the card isn't great in your nut draws it's a nice fail-safe for when things go awry. I've already explained how it can reasonably "draw" multiple cards every circuit (harder in EDH but still doable) and that's often what you'll need to claw back into a game in which you've fallen behind.
Grade: D-
We're going to need a bigger boat O.O. All jokes aside an 8 mana 8/8 is unplayable trash in MP so you have to treat Big Slim as a 10 drop if you're going to field him. That means support him with plenty of ramp and ways to buy time. With that in mind I can somewhat imagine playing him a Blue-based Control deck that fields things like Scourge of Fleets and Breaching Leviathan as its finishers. You'll want a lot of mana doublers (High Tide, Extraplanar Lens, Gauntlet of Power, Caged Sun) and a lot of mass removal (Cyclonic Rift, Engulf the Shore, Evacuation) and the idea here is that eventually you'll be casting a "Plague Wind fatty" every turn. This all seems like a stretch but I happen to have a soft spot for one-sided mass removal when I'm playing Blue because the only thing more fun than casting Cyclonic Rift is casting one every turn ;).
Grade: Niche D
Tetsuko is a card that seems interesting but the more that you think about her the less compelling that she seems. With respect to EDH the fact that she's Monoblue means that your card pool is too shallow to build anything worthwhile. In Constructed you can support her with various saboteur effects in other colors but otherwise I don't see how you're making her work. She arguably has some value for things like Edric, Spymaster of Trest EDH but even then most of your creatures already have evasion and you don't really want to be casting a 2 CMC spell that's this conditional. She seems very win-more to me are largely unexciting as a result. I'm more than happy to be wrong about this card but with the current card pool I can't concoct a reasonable decklist that adequately abuses her effect.
EDH Grade: C+
Free spells are always scary and free permission is even scarier. This is easily one of the strongest interaction spells printed in the past ~5 and it will see a fair amount of play. Not so much in Constructed where you can field 4 copies of cards like Swan Song and Counterspell but it's definitely piqued my interest for Cube and EDH. It's not Mana Drain levels of good or anything but given that Blue decks often field 6-10 permission spells I expect Unwind to be a staple for years to come.
Before moving on, let me quickly touch on something. Rewind is unplayable trash and there's no two ways about it. In fact I'd wager dollars to donuts that almost none of you (myself included) have even seen one cast in MP. The card sucks and I don't advocate fielding it under any circumstance. With that in mind why am I so excited about a 3 mana Negate when we already have a 4 mana Counterspell? Aren't they basically the same thing? Isn't the less conditional card stronger? Nope, absolutely not! In the world of Blue-based permission mana reigns supreme. The reason why Swan Swong, Counterspell and Negate tower above the competition is because they consistently get the job done for the least amount of mana. Rewind may seem reasonable but then you realize that you virtually cannot tap any of your mana at Sorcery speed if you want to represent it and that places an immense burden on your resources. Believe me when I say that that one extra mana is many orders of magnitude more relevant than it might otherwise seem because it changes things from "I can't cast any other spells" to "I can still cast my cheap cantrips/tutors/removal spells" without dropping your shields.
Now, I haven't exactly explained what makes this card so good have I? What makes Unwind such an powerful permission spell is that it enables you to play draw-go Control without ever having to take risks. The only mana that you'll ever need to tap at Sorcery speed will be for cheap tutors/cantrips that leave the majority of your mana unaccounted for. From there you can sit back, assess the situation, and take action as needed. Someone casts a powerful spell? Negate it and follow-up with an Azcanta, the Sunken Ruin activation (or two!) or a juicy Thirst for Knowledge/Fact or Fiction. No spell gets cast? You still get to draw your cards :). You get to counter anything that matters for free and then draw your cards at EOT to ensure that you're never falling behind on resources as a result of your 1-for-1 trades. There's no cost or risk or anything because you have full control of every action at every stage of the game.
Also, let's be real, I've only begun to scratch the surface of what this thing can do. What if you're untapping Cloudposts or other nonsense lands like Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx? Playing 2HG? Imagine this: your ally jams a threat. Someone tries to Counterspell it. You counter back, untap your ally's lands and they proceed to cast another threat. That's a freaking 8 mana swing on turn 3, there's no recovering from that! This card is quite good and I cannot wait to start jamming it in 2HG and EDH.
Grade: D+
This is one of the strongest 2 CMC Black spot removal spells ever printed and competes favorably with alternatives such as Go for the Throat outside of EDH. That being said 2 CMC spot removal is lackluster at best in MP given that you have no incentive to trade with people on a 1-for-1 basis. Occasionally it's required to deal with game-ending bombs but even then I recommend sticking to 0-1 CMC alternatives such as Slaughter Pact, Snuff Out, Murderous Cut and Curtains' Call as much as humanely possible. Every mana counts so try to avoid these 2 CMC alternatives.
Grade: Niche D
I'm somewhat interested in curving one of these into a Gray Merchant of Asphodel since that's a lot of bang for your buck. 4 mana for "5 damage" is nearly Fiery Confluence levels of burn which is relevant for various aggressively-slanted Black builds. That being said I detest the third mode on this thing and would much rather have "nothing" instead. I definitely don't want to trade half of my life for a generic, evasionless beater that dies to removal at no benefit. Granted, by the time that it comes out it should basically be OTKing players so if you do manage to connect with anyone they're probably screwed. It's not all bad in that sense which is why I could somewhat envision a world where I give this card a shot in drain decks. Still seems unlikely though.
Grade: D+
I've always been a fan of true Control cards and instant speed draw spells certainly foot the bill. It's no Fact or Fiction but it's still a decent way to use your mana at EOT assuming that you weren't forced to spend it on interaction. Draw 3 discard 1 is also better in Black than most other colors given its general love of all things graveyard-related. I get that you have to pitch one of the cards that you drew and not any card from your hand but it still seems fine to me. My only issue with these types of cards is that they tend to lose out to alternatives such as Night's Whisper that offer the same card advantage for half the mana. It's still Sorcery vs Instant so it's not a completely lopsided affair (ok, that's a lie, it still is) but it's tough to pass on a Sign in Blood when you're looking for quick and dirty card draw. I like this a heck of a lot more than Ancient Craving for example, I wouldn't fault anyone for fielding it, it's just that Black has access to far more powerful tools for generating card advantage.
Grade: C
While Belzenlok may look impressive it's imperative to stress that he's essentially a bad Phyrexian Gargantua and won't see much play as a result. Ok, maybe "bad" isn't the right term to use but you're trading a better body for worse card advantage (on average) but it's close either way. Be it EDH or Constructed your deck is extremely unlikely to have significantly more than a 20% probability of drawing multiple cards so you should treat him like the biggest, baddest Dusk Legion Zealot on the block. That's still fine, I'm not hating on him, but he's no Grave Titan, Massacre Wurm, Kokusho, the Evening Star, Demon of Dark Schemes, Oblivion Sower, etc. The best deck for him by a country mile is my patented and ultra competitive (ITS NOT UTTER JANK LA LA LA CAN'T HEAR YOU) Demon Control Deck. Otherwise you kinda want to play him in a deck full of cantripping threats and drain spells such as Dusk Legion Zealot, Phyrexian Rager, Crypt Ghast, Gonti, Lord of Luxury and Gray Merchant of Ashpodel. The idea here is that you're always drawing cards and draining the table while building towards your game-ending bombs.
Grade: Niche C
I know that I'm going to sound like a broken record but Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, Sanguimancy and Gray Merchant of Asphodel are incredibly obnoxious Magic cards and this is definitely going to be a staple for the Devotion archetype. I dislike Geralf's Messenger since he's a bad blocker who doesn't scale whereas Dead Shade blocks well and scales amazingly by comparison. He threatens to OTK anyone who's been drained by a Gary and pumping Nykthos mana into him is an easy way to go for the kill. Beyond that he's also castable off of Dark Ritual on turn 1 and while I wouldn't advocate doing this for beatdown reasons going turn 1 Dark Ritual -> Dread Shade, turn 2 Gifted Aetherborn, turn 3 Dread Shade, turn 4 Phyrexian Obliterator, turn 5 Gray Merchant of Asphodel deals 14 damage to each opponent and drains 42 life (setting up for Sanguimancy). Heck, that's assuming that you never even entered the Red Zone! Not only are you playing relevant blockers at every turn of the game but you're also threatening lethal on basically everyone (you can attack after casting Gary) and you never put yourself in any danger at any point. Even if you don't, no big deal, just untap, jam a Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx and cast something like Exsanguinate or Torment of Hailfire to seal the deal.
Grade: C
While this isn't going to be the next Dark Intimations I'm having a hard time finding something to dislike about this Uncommon. Assuming a 4 player game it's a 5 mana 7-for-1 and even though I'm fully expecting to lose value on some of those sacs/discards it's still basically a Tidings. There's no shame in playing Tidings. I like that he he can recur Planeswalkers as well since that can be extremely relevant for "Death Cloud" decks that need durable threats to seal the deal once the board has been sufficiently nuked. It's extremely flexible and powerful in that sense. You don't even have to build around the effect in any way, shape or form because it's always going to be good. That being said I do want to curve something like: Waste Not -> Arterial Flow -> Syphon Mind -> The Eldest Reborn -> Capital Punishment or something along those lines whenever possible but basically any Black deck can justify running some number of these. Black has no shortage of powerful 5+ CMC spells so it's not going to be a staple or anything but I'm definitely going to be picking some of these up to playtest. By the way, did I mention that it's only an Uncommon? My faith in Wizards has been reborn!
Grade: B
This card is absolutely bonkers and will become a staple tutor for years to come. At first glance it may seem like a slower version of Jarad's Orders until you realize that it has no restrictions whatsoever. As such you can fetch anything and everything under the sun and you're not forced to be playing a multicolored deck to support it. If you want a Skullclamp in hand and a Reassembling Skeleton in the bin then it's yours. Griselbrand in the GY and Animate Dead in hand? No problemo. Haakon, Stromgald Scourge + Nameless Inversion, Filth + Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, Dakmor Salvage + Cabal Coffers, the list is endless. Fatty + reanimation spell is the obvious choice but even then it's only the tip of the iceberg. After all, I've only been touching on some of the obvious Black cards. Hermit Druid + Anger can win the game outright. Same thing for Lion's Eye Diamond/Cabal Ritual + Yawgmoth's Will and/or Past in Flames + Mana Geyser. In that sense it feels like you're cheating no matter how you slice it. The downside of this card is that it's 5 mana and doesn't have an immediate impact on the game but unless your meta is especially cutthroat that shouldn't be a problem for most of you. This will be especially true in EDH where players are already casting Diabolic Tutor in droves and I can guarantee you that this card is many orders of magnitude more powerful. I just couldn't envision a world where this isn't an auto-include and I know that I'm personally going to be picking up copies for most of my lists. It's essentially a double Demonic Tutor as far I'm concerned and there's just no world where that doesn't make the cut.
Grade: D
Although I basically consider this card to be an F I did want to highlight its potential in decks with cards like Plague Spitter, Pyrohemia, Pestilence, Thrashing Wumpus and Pestilence Demon. I still don't think that it's ever worth your while to field it but I didn't want to leave any value off of the table. There's far too many 7+ CMC spells that always "do things" so something this marginal + conditional shouldn't entice anyone in the slightest.
EDH Grade: B
This, to me, is the best Black card in the set. It's many orders of magnitude more relevant than Cabal Stronghold for example and that's coming from a dire-hard Monoblack mage. I've been unabashedly gushing over this guy ever since he was spoiled and I cannot overstate how good that he is. One thing that you notice when you literally play thousands of games of Monoblack Magic is that a good chunk of your "good" spells aren't always good. For example, when I open with Jet Medallion into Crypt Ghast and look at a hand of Swamp, Chrome Mox, Exsanguinate, Living Death, Gray Merchant of Asphodel and Rise of the Dark Realms I don't actually have any good plays. These are fantastic cards and I want them in my deck, I'm not suggesting otherwise, but they don't do anything for me on turn 4. As such the more that I played the more that I found myself drawn to cards like Army of the Damned, Void Winnower and Emrakul, the Promised End that you can fire-and-forget at any stage of the game. True story, the first time that I added Army of the Damned to my decks I did it as a joke. I was thinking to myself "ha ha, look at this silly card" and threw it in. Then I cast it and it won me the game outright. Cool, but that's just a fluke, right? Played another game and yet again it instantly sealed the deal for me. Played another game and another and another and the one constant across all of them was that I was winning every game were I just jammed a turn 4-5 Army of the Damned. Pretty soon that became my go-to Demonic Tutor target and here I am still playing it all these years later. I'm not saying that it's oppressive or anything because clearly it's not. It's expensive, the clock isn't that fast and it "dies" to a couple of mass removal spells. That being said it's also a card that you can blindly jam on turn 4 with no setup and immediately ask the table "do you have it? No? Then you're going to lose very quickly."
That brings us to Josu Vess, Lich Knight which is a card that's going to change the way that I build and play my decks, especially in formats like EDH where I can make it my Commander. As I was previously alluding to what makes this card so good is the fact that it's always good. There's no setup required for this monstrously powerful 1-card win condition. Can you pair it with Strionic Resonator, Panharmonicon, Coat of Arms and various other nonsense? Sure! Do you have to? Nope! You can build a generic Monoblack ramp deck with tons of ramp, card draw, interaction, etc. and no other spells that matter. You don't need them! Nothing is going to beat casting Army of the Damned once you have the mana to do so which means that you don't need to waste deck slots on a slew of expensive finishers. You'll want some (I'm still going to field things like Ugin, the Spirit Dragon and Emrakul, the Promised End for example) but I'm not going to waste time on more than a handful. Rather, I can now take all of those previously marginal (but necessary) slots and convert them to more discard, more removal, more tutors, more protection, on and on and on. It's the best of all worlds because you maintain the ability to grind the table out with your swarm of undead minions but you're doing so in a more consistent and interactive way.
With respect to how you make this card into an "endgame bomb," I won't go into all of the ways but the main card(s) that I do want to highlight are Unholy Grotto and Volrath's Stronghold. They have next-to-no opportunity cost and enable you you bypass things like Commander tax to ensure that you're able to cast Josu every turn past a certain stage of the game. This applies to any MP format but I do want to stress that I'm not suggesting that you hardcast the guy 8 times in Commander by paying 26 mana (or whatever). There's easy ways to cap it and you can and should abuse them. Otherwise your deck doesn't need much in the way of finishers because you'll eventually draw one and you don't need much more than that. Only exile effects and mass land destruction are problematic from there on out but even those can be mitigated with sac outlets and such. Exile also doesn't apply to EDH where you can easily re-cast him a couple of times if needed.
Grade: Sideboard B
While it might seem cool to build around this type of effect (Reliquary Tower, Thought Vessel, Exsanguinate, Kokusho, the Evening Star, etc.) the fact that you just lose to any form of mass removal makes it unplayable trash as far as I'm concerned. There's tons that see consistent play and this isn't worth the risk when everyone and their mother has things like Bane of Progress and Ugin, Spirit Dragon floatign around. If you can literally cite the decklists of your opposition card-for-card then sure, it could have some niche applications, but that's a tall order from where I'm sitting.
Grade: C
This is card is certainly interesting if nothing else. The first mode is essentially the "balance" mode because it prevents it from being too powerful. It will occasionally protect something from the mass removal effect on the following turn but essentially offers zero value as far as I'm concerned. Moving on to the second mode, Duneblast is a strong card at 7 mana and who are we to complain about a 4 CMC alternative? The last mode is also fantastic since it denies resources from each adversary while leaving yours untouched. I wouldn't play it in a huge swath of decks if it said "each player" so I'm glad that it's not symmetrical. Still, the primary application of this card is "Suspend 1: Damnation" and that's what most people will be fielding it as. As such I'm struggling to get excited over it because I'm more than willing to invest in cards like Toxic Deluge, Damnation, Languish and Mutilate regardless of their cost. Because of this Phyrexian Scriptures will virtually never make the cut in my decks except in very specific circumstances. That being said I have spent a lot of time thinking about this card because it does offer some unique advantages over the alternatives.
First of all it can be significantly better to "suspend" your mass removal spells early on rather than immediately casting them. Imagine that you're playing a control deck that opens on turn 2 Jet Medallion and you want something to cast on turn 3. The other players probably won't have much going on and it typically wouldn't make much sense to cast a Damnation that early into the game. That being said you'll still desperately want to cast your Syphon Mind on the following turn and so floating mana now could be disastrous. In this scenario you can elect to "suspend" Phyrexian Scriptures on turn 3 as a way to clear the board on turn 4 and Time Walk your adversaries from being able to cast their creatures. Moreover, it essentially enables you to cast both Damnation and Syphon Mind on turn 4 without falling behind on board and taking a bunch of damage in the process. This doesn't just work on turn 3 either as later on you can set up for the aforementioned Duneblast by protecting a key threat (such as Crypt Ghast and setting up a big mass removal spell + bomby finisher turn. The problem is obviously that you sometimes you need to Wrath the board on turn 3 and come turn 8 you won't always have time to suspend Phyrexian Scriptures before dying which is where these tactics tend to fall apart. They're great when you can set them up but that isn't always possible.
Moving on, the card is extremely potent when paired with Hex Parasite. Anything that can manipulate counters is clearly powerful when combined with Sagas but a permanent Plague Wind will certainly feel oppressive for some decks to play against. Remember, it only nukes non-artifact creatures so you don't even have to put the counter on the Parasite to get this combo online. As such you can protect a different creature instead which enables you to preserve your board while wiping out the opposition. The issue here is that players can easily kill your Parasite to prevent this. Recursion can somewhat mitigate this risk but realistically it isn't especially difficult to thwart. You can still "make them have it" but I wouldn't blindly assume that this combo will magically take over the game with any consistency. Think of this an "I'll be happy if this works but I'm not expecting it to" strategy that you're not going all-in on by any means.
Lastly, this card is extremely potent in "Robots" decks. I'm talking Walking Ballista, Arcbound Ravager, Hangarback Walker, Steel Overseer, Cranial Plating, etc. The idea here is that it's literally a 4 mana Plague Wind and since you're playing a Robots deck you can easily justify running Hex Parasite to further the synergies involved. Heck, you may even have cards like Welding Jar to protect it as an added bonus. This, to me, is by far and away the most compelling use for Phyrexian Scriptures. It doesn't take many hits from Cranial Plating to kill someone (usually 2) and having a way to clear every blocker every turn is going to be rough to play against. You're not required to play this in a Robots deck by any means but in general I'd rather have a card like Mutilate in my deck unless I had something that enabled me to take Phyrexian Scriptures above-and-beyond a Damnation with Suspend 1.
EDH Grade: D+
Torgaar brings back many fond memories of Sorin Markov and the many joys of resolving him in EDH. The fact that he only deals 20 damage is somewhat disappointing but the upside here is that you don't have to cast him which means that he also works with recursion and doubling effects (Strionic Resonator, Panharmonicon). Not in the sense that you can double-nuke the same person, but hitting multiple adversaries for 20 is decent for aggressive decks. Heck, you can even pair him with cards like Wound Reflection to immediately kill players off assuming that they're still at or above their starting life total. That being said none of this strikes me as another other than marginal value so I'm not expecting him to waves in any MP format (EDH or otherwise).
What I'm actually interested in doing with this card is targeting myself. Black has plenty of tutors to locate cards like Necrologia and casting one at EOT for 39 (or whatever) sounds pretty good assuming that you can also Necromancy a Torgaar, Famine Incarnate into play. Most instant-speed recursion costs 2-3 mana and Black has access to fast mana such as Dark Ritual if you don't have enough extra floating. Even if you miss on Torgaar as long as you hit Entomb then you can still locate and recur him with ease so you're not all-in on the hitting the perfect cards each and every time.. From there you can jump straight back to 20, fill your GY with millions of goodies and set up for an easy win. If you do happen to have cards like Reliaquary Tower or Thought Vessel even better!
Alternatively you can jam Torgaar as your Commander, field plenty of ways to cheat him out and then rely on having him die or pair him with sac outlets to get him in in the bin. That way you can convert him into a Necrologia for 39 assuming that you field all of the broken Black tutors to consistently locate him. I still think that this is worse than playing Sidisi, Undead Vizier but it's certainly a reasonable option. When people ask me who my Commander is I usually just tell them that it's Necrologia because as long as I'm drawing my 15-20 cards every game then I'm happy.
Grade: D
The only thing that this card has going for it is that Black has access to throngs of tutors (Vampiric Tutor, Diabolic Intent, Diabolic Tutor, Beseech the Queen, Dark Servitude, etc.) that enable you to locate Buried Alive (BA). From there you can BA for Reassembling Skeleton + Bloodghast + Razaketh, the Foulblooded (or something similar) to start making some nasty plays. The card is unplayable in constructed since Hell's Caretaker is already a card and it sees zero play but tutors + BA make it somewhat reasonable for EDH.
Grade: C
The primary thing that this card has going for it is that the requirement essentially isn't a cost. Black has some of the best Planeswalkers in the game and a huge % of the creatures that you're already looking to run are Legendary. The problem is that the card itself is rather boring and it's not something that I see myself playing. 5 CMC spot removal is extremely weak so you're mostly playing it as a recursion spell. The ability to choose any critter/Walker from any GY is nice but this isn't a steal by any means. I consider it to be on par with cards like Wretched Confluence which are too fair for my blood. I prefer things like Animate Dead, Dance of the Dead and Necromancy for spot recursion since if I'm going to pay 5 mana for the effect it may as well be on Living Death. I understand that they can't recur 'Walkers and don't have the added utility of removing a threat but I don't think you're getting your money's worth. YVO is still perfectly playable, it's just not a card that's particularly exciting.
Grade: D-
Talk about a premature eruption :/. None of its modes are even remotely powerful/exciting and you definitely don't want to be pitching Mountains to jam an Anger of the Gods on turn 5. I can somewhat get behind the Seething Song on turn 4 mode but you may as well field Seething Song if that 's what you're after :P. Very disappointing.
Grade: Niche C
This card is absolutely perfect for your Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx decks and strategies. They're always on the lookout for relevant spells to jam on turns 2 and 3 that offer more than simple mana symbols. Not only is it a great blocker (3/3 FS is no joke on turn 3) but it also nukes all opposing mana/utility dorks which is extremely relevant in my experience. Given that is also functions as a Thran Dynamo once you find a Nykthos you definitely want to be jamming these in your devotion decks. It's still playable outside of them, the card is decent in vacuum, but I'd stick to things like Anger of the Gods unless you're planning on adding Nykthos.
Grade: Niche C+
While Goblins isn't an explicitly multiplayer-orientated tribe it's Red's strongest one by a fair margin and these are all staples in most builds. The decks tends to win games on the back of "mana and bodies" moreso than anything else which is exactly what these kinds of cards bring to the table. After all, the MP versions of the archetype tend to shift away from the beatdown/mana denial plan and more towards things like Impact Tremors, Kreno, Mob Boss and Purphoros, God of the Forge. Any avid Red Mage should make a concerted effort to acquire them because they're still relevant all these years later so if you're ever planning on building a Goblins deck these are easy go-tos.
Grade: D
They promised a bomb but didn't specify that it wouldn't be a dud. While this is technically Red removal it's not nearly powerful, consistent, nor fast enough to pass muster. I don't even buy the "sometimes you need answers even if they're not great" arguments for cards like these because in my experience they virtually never accomplish anything relevant. I don't recommend acquiring/playing with them if your goal is to win games of Magic.
Grade: D+
Does anyone else get the feeling that Wizards went out of their way to make Red bad in this set? Why are all of their cards so freaking weak relative to their counterparts? Jaya is "fine" but I'm struggling to envision a scenario where she earns her keep. Her mana mode will enable you to protect her with cards like Anger of the Gods and also plays nice with big X spells such as Comet Storm and Jaya's Immolating Inferno but she still feels hopeless outclassed to me. Her mass loot mode might help you set up some sweet Past in Flames plays and works well with her ultimate but I can't say that I'm loving any of this. There's zero "wow factor" whatsoever, just an an extremely lackluster 5 drop.
Grade: C
JII is one of the more interesting Legendary Sorcery spells given that it boasts immense synergy with most of Red's Walkers. After all, the vast majority of them either copy spells or ramp mana both of which are absurd when paired with this type of effect. The go-to spell for this slot at the moment is Comet Storm but assuming a 4 player game you need to sink 5 mana into it just to target your 3 adversaries. JII only eats 2 by comparison so it can easily deal an extra 3-6 damage for next-to-no cost. It might not like sound like much on paper but believe me when I say that every point counts, especially if you're using things like Earthquake, Flamebreak and Breath of Darigaaz to control the board. Red also has a slew of durable bodies such as Norin the Wary, Squee, Goblin Nabob and Squee, the Immortal that are extremely difficult to remove from the board for any significant length of time. I wouldn't blindly jam them into my decks for JII alone but I'd certainly consider the latter assuming that I was already running the former. Beyond that JII is an extremely mindless and consistent way to close games out assuming that you're fielding things like Cloudpost, Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, Gauntlet of Might, Mana Geyser and/or basically any big mana strategy that includes a reasonable number of activators.
Grade: Niche A
Squee is back and annoying as ever! This type of threat is ripe for abuse and lends itself extremely well to degenerate strategies. First and foremost it goes infinite with Food Chain to generate infinite colored mana to spend on creatures. It's an extremely powerful EDH combo that performs just as well in 60 card constructed where it'll routinely clear the table out. While we already haven creatures to enable this combo the more the merrier because it makes the lists that much more consistent. He's also a generic "Reassembling Skeleton" for Stax decks looking to feed cards like Smokestack. Red already has plenty of mass land destruction in the form of cards like Impending Disaster and Ruination so if you can top it off with a nice Squee lock that will all-but seal the deal. He can also be played off of any of Red's "card draw" spell/engines which tend to be things like Faithless Looting and/or Outpost Siege as opposed to actual card draw. You don't exactly care where he ends up as long as he makes an appearance. Otherwise the immortal body is relevant for Equipment such as Bonehoard that will enable you to beat the table into submission if left unchecked. Eventually it becomes a "one hit one kill" scenario and there's always Rogue's Passage to bypass blockers if needed. He obviously works with any decent piece of equipment but this one is both cheap and effective which is what I like about it. There's plenty of others ways to abuse Squee as well, these are just some of the first ones that come to mind when I see him. The effect is just so unique and so powerful (in the right context) that he's impossible to overlook and that's what I like about him.
Grade: C+
I've been loving Oath of Nissa ever since it was printed and it's nice to finally see other colors gaining access to "Preordain" type effects. While it's clearly more limited in scope even if your deck has 20 "misses" you're still 95% to hit (96.666%) so you're only going to whiff once every 20 casts or so. As such you don't even have to playing a pure lands + creatures deck because that still gives you plenty of leeway to add things like Burgeoning, Compost, Beast Within and Selvala's Stampede. Otherwise it's a fantastic way to smooth your draws and ensure that you're digging into a good mix of lands and spells. It also helps locate powerful 1-ofs such as Kessig Wolf Run, Ramunap Excavator, Vizier of the Menagerie and Oracle of Mul Daya that are worthless in multiples but amazing as singletons. It's also fantastic for creature-based combo decks that need reliable ways to locate multiple pieces. Sadly you don't get to chain them off into other cantrips like Preordain and Ponder can but you still get to see plenty of additional cards. All-in-all it's a solid spell that's definitely worth your while to acquire.
Grade: Niche A
From a pure power-level perspective this card is unplayable trash but it's vital for enabling certain graveyard-based and self-mill strategies. For example, if you're playing an Oath of Druids deck then you're probably going to want insurance against getting milled-out given that you're not going to be maindecking more than 4-6 creatures. You want to be able to activate it every turn in order to fight through removal which is why its often ran. Another common example occurs in The Gitrog Monster in EDH where it's a key component for going infinite with Dakmor Salvage. It ensures that you're able to draw your entire library and instantly win the game once you've assembled the Dakmor Salvage + discard outlet + The Gitrog Monster combo and that makes it a pivotal role-player in the archetype. Clearly these aren't the only possible uses for the card but they're perfect examples of how something with next-to-no inherent worth can instantly become an auto-include if it manages to fill a niche role.
Grade: Niche A
This card is absolutely awful. In EDH you're virtually never going to have enough Legendary hits to make it worthwhile and so you may as well field alternatives such as Animist's Awakening and Boundless Realms instead. They're not only better but they're also unconditional. You definitely don't want too many copies of that effect (it's slow, worthless in multiples, etc.) and 2 is way more than enough. In Constructed this card is an abysmal version of Genesis Wave and should never be played in lieu of it. There's significantly better things to be doing with your time and mana.
Note, none of what I just said applies to something like Captain Sisay EDH. If your deck is nothing but hits then clearly this card is bonkers. The value that it generates is obscene, especially when you're cheating things like Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary, Yisan, the Wanderer Bard and Garruk Wildspeaker into play. At that point it's one of the single best spells to be casting at virtually any stage of the game and it's going to put your ramp to better use than almost anything else. The reason why I still think that this card is unplayable trash is because outside of those extremely niche scenarios this isn't where you want to be and I'm trying to make that as clear as possible.
EDH Grade: A
The reason why I'm going focus my discussion on EDH is because Llanowar Elves variants struggle to compete in a world where you can run 4 copies of cards like Carpet of Flowers, Burgeoning, Exploration, Utopia Sprawl and Wild Growth. Arbor Elf sometimes makes the cut because of its degenerate synergy with things like Wild Growth and Overgrowth style ramp spells but even then it's a niche option at best. That being said 1 CMC mana dorks are legitimate bombs in EDH and too few players employ them. After all, a lot of players dislike running Elves because they're going to die. Not "they might die," they're 100% going to die. Someone at some point will cast a mass removal spell and you will lose your dorks. Period. Why, then, am I advocating playing inconsistent forms of ramp that won't persist throughout the entire game?
EDH isn't a battle of resources. As previously explained in my Notes regarding the Abundance of Resources in EDH the games rarely boil down a scrappy battle of 1-for-1 trades and fair exchanges. Rather, you're much more likely to see people casting ridiculously oppressive spells and effects that scale wildly out of control. People don't draw 2-3 cards, they tutor for things like Necropotence and Consecrated Sphinx to draw dozens of them at a time. Either that or they cast things like Mystic Remora and Compost early on and "merely" draw 2-3 extra per circuit. Long story short you're never going to lose the game with no cards in hand and no resources at your disposal. It just doesn't happen unless you eat an All is Dust with a Mindsliver in play or something along those lines. As such you don't have to worry about being 2-for-1d or 3-for-1d (or whatever) because N-for-1s aren't game winning/losing plays in a format where cards aren't a bottleneck.
Mana is the primary bottleneck. That is, EDH isn't a format defined by cards, it's a format defined by ramp. In a world where you can freely play things like Ancient Tomb, Mana Crypt, Mana Vault, Sol Ring, etc. mana will always be king. The more that you have, the more that you can do and the faster that you can do it. As such it's extremely important to have the fastest ramp available to you to ensure that you're starting every game blazing out of the gates. The sooner that you have some ramp the sooner that you can slam that Rhystic Study and since cards won't matter beyond that point you don't need to concern yourself with unfavorable exchanges. You also don't want to fall too far behind from your opponents because they're going to be playing with all of the oppressive ramp themselves and there's nothing worse than auto-losing because you don't draw yours when they draw theirs. Clearly you'd rather have your Sol Ring than a Llanowar Elves but at least you're only one mana behind as opposed to 2. This prevents you from ever falling too far behind in the mana war which, again, is typically what defines EDH as a whole.
It's easy being Green. The reality is that Green (alongside Blue and Black) is one of the "good" colors that gets to employ oppressive tutors and card advantage spells such as Green Sun's Zenith, Survival of the Fittest, Compost, Sylvan Library, Evolutionary Leap, Ramunap Excavator, Lifecrafter's Bestiary, Eldritch Evolution, Harmonize, Oracle of Mul Daya, Birthing Pod, Lurking Predators, Rishkar's Expertise, Selvala's Stampede, Lurking Predators on and on and on. As such it's nearly impossible to find yourself running out of resources and it will never happen through traditional means. Again, the only realistic way to find yourself lacking on action is if you're hit with something along the lines of All is Dust with a Mindslicer in play because otherwise you have all the tools that you need to succeed.
This is why the vast majority of MP Green EDH decks should be playing most if-not-all of the 1 CMC dorks. They enable you to cast more spells faster (including your Commander) and even if they're marked for death whatever speed that they can offer you is more important than anything else. When you open the game with an Elf and everyone else goes "land, pass" that's a huge win for you. Now you're the only one casting your Commander/card advantage spell on turn 2 whereas they're playing their mana rock. Come turn 3 you're already jamming a 4 CMC bomb to start surging ahead of the pack. Sure, your creatures will eventually bite the bullet, but it doesn't matter because that's not what the game is about.
Grade: Niche B
Elf? Check. Taps for ludicrous sums of mana? Check. Going to see play? Check! Marwyn is a powerful addition to the Elfball archetype and will instantly become a staple. You're not going to see her in the fastest, most oppressive versions of the deck or anything but assuming that your goal is to fill a deck with Elves and ramp out some Battlecruisers then she's a natural fit for the strategy. She's a shoe-in for EDH for example since any curve of dork -> Marwyn -> Elf will feel fantastic and there's plenty of cards like Timberwatch Elf and Immaculate Magistrate that spiral wildly out of control once she's in play. Toss in cards like Wirewood Symbiote, Vitalize, Mobilize, Devoted Druid, Benefactor's Draught and Great Oak Guardian and suddenly you're doing some very broken things. Cards like Umbral Mantle and Staff of Domination also become easy outs to producing infinite mana which is why they often see play in these shells. Putting all combos aside she's a stellar mana engine who'll frequently come down on turn 2 and threaten to run away with the game if left unchecked. That alone makes her worth the price of admission.
Grade: C
This card is decent but it's largely overshadowed by the other offerings from the set. From a recursion standpoint I don't want to run it over alternatives such as Eternal Witness and Splendid Reclamation given that it's significantly slower, clunkier, harder to tutor for and more difficult to recur. Creatures are significantly easier for Green to manipulate which is why it tends to field things like World Shaper instead. From a simple "mana-to-cards" perspective it's totally reasonable as I'm struggling to envision a world where you get fewer than 5-6 cards out of the deal. Still, as a "7 mana" ramp spell it's not in-line with something like Boundless Realms so you need to be putting the Restock half of this card to work to get any decent valuer out of it. This analysis probably comes across as being unnecessarily harsh or unfairly strict but the reality is that you always have to be evaluating cards against the potential alternatives. A card can be good, but if not "good enough to make the cut" then it's all for naught in the end. I don't see The Mending of Dominaria as the next "big thing" in Green card advantage and wouldn't blame anyone for taking a pass on it. I know that I am.
Grade: D+
Multani is an powerful creature with a slew of potential applications. The most compelling aspect of the body is that he innately comes with Trample which lessens the burden on cards such as Kessig Wolf Run. It means that you can jam your cards like Sylvan Primordial and Boundless Realms in order to dump your manabase into play and then begin attacking with multiple OTK threats each circuit. After all, your Kessig Wolf Run mana can be dumped into one while Multani attacks another. Should he die, no big deal, you'll have plenty of spare lands to fuel him and effects such as Exploration, Burgeoning, Azusa, Lost but Seeking, Wayward Swordtooth, Oracle of Mul Daya, etc. will enable you to immediately replay them. Otherwise he also doubles as a landfall engine for things like Lotus Cobra, Tireless Tracker, Rampaging Baloths, Avenger of Zendikar and Omnath, Locus of Rage. You can even graveyard-based decks built entirely around cards like Life from the Loam, Stinkweed Imp and Golgari Grave-Troll in order to fuel Centaur Vinecrasher, Worm Harvest and/or Multani, Yavimaya's Avatar among other things.
Grade: C
I'm quite surprised to see Verdant Force reprising his role at rare given that we just had Tendershoot Dryad printed in the previous set. After all, the latter costs 2 less mana and is many orders of magnitude more powerful and so I was expecting him to be an uncommon this time around. Anyways, despite the fact that this card has "each upkeep" printed on it it's something that I've neither played with or against for close to a decade. It typically loses out to alternatives such Avenger of Zendikar and Hornet Queen which provide more consistent value on average. V.Force certainly has his moments and pairs much better with Wildfire effects but he's not the powerhouse that he used to be. He's still a reasonable target to Lure of Prey into the Battlefield on turn 3 but you have to be cheating his manacost as much possible to get any reasonable value out of him. Even then I'd still rather field Tendershoot Dryad so unless you're looking for multiple copies of this effect then he's not worth your time. In that sense I'd only seriously consider in removal-light metas where I could so something like turn 1 Arbor Elf, turn 2 Overgrowth +Lifecrafter's Bestiary/Evolutionary Leap/etc., turn 3 (Lure of Prey +) Verdant Force, turn 4 Tendershoot Dryad, turn 5 Shamanic Revelation/Craterhoof Behemoth or something along those lines. There's simply better things to be doing with your time and mana, especially where there's a strictly better version floating around that costs significantly less mana.
Grade: Niche D
"Orzhoz Knights" isn't really a deck but I'm a big fan of Haakon, Stromgald Scourge in general and Final Parting is a (new +) decent way to bin him while also putting something relevant in hand (like Nameless Inversion or Crib Swap). There's always Buried Alive too if you want to bin dome decent critters to recur. All-in-all these offerings are unexciting at best and I doubt that either will see much play.
Grade: Niche D
While Darigaaz's newest (re)incarnation doesn't hold a candle to alternatives such as Prossh, Skyraider of Kher in Midrange/Ramp/Goodstuffs decks he does have niche applications in "Obzedat, Ghost Council" reanimator shells. The idea here is that these creatures never truly die once they enter the battlefield which means that you can abuse them with temporary recursion such as Footsteps of the Goryo. After all, even if you are forced to sac him at EOT, no big deal, he'll still come back 3 turns later. That being said there's vastly superior ways to build and play these archetypes and I couldn't provide anyone with a compelling argument to employ this over turn 1 Entomb/Faithless Looting, turn 2 Animate Dead on Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur.
Grade: Niche C
This card is deceptively powerful and possesses whole host of potential applications. First of all she's a mass haste enabler which is something that I value quite highly in multiplayer. I'm fond of mass recursion cards and tactics and thus assign a good deal of value to anything that can enable me to immediately swing with my team. After all, one of your primary concerns will always be mass removal so anything that you can do to mitigate its impact is fantastic. She also has Flash which means that you can sneak her in after someone resolves a Wrath to Raise Dead your squad. This furthers your resilience against mass removal which is something that I can definitely get behind. Still, these are only the basic use-cases since there's plenty of additional ways to abuse her.
Garna doesn't actually care where the creatures come from, only that they hit the graveyard this turn. This means that if you employ sacrifice, cycling, self-mill or discard-based tactics of any variety she can recur those as well. This is relevant for things like Street Wraith, Faithless Looting, Mesmeric Orb, Magus of the Bazaar, Stinkweed Imp and much, much more. Magus of the Bazaar (all looters in general) catches my eye in particular because I already enjoy fielding that card in the deck that I'm about to discuss.
Garna seems spectacular in "Aristocrats" style decks that seek pair sac outlets with value dorks and drainers. What you can do is build a board, cast Garna, sac your team to your Phyrexian Altar/Ashnod's Altar/Altar of Dementia (or whatever) and pair that with things like Semblance Anvil, Pawn of Ulamog and Pitiless Plunderer to produce mana in the process. That mana can then be used to recast your creatures and repeat this sequence ad nauseam. If mana is tight you can also lean on "cheat engines" such as Sneak Attack which only requires a single card like Phyrexian Altar or Pitiless Plunderer to go infinite. Heck, even if you take out all of the infinite combos the basics shell of "Garna in Aristocrats" still seems promising to me given that she's essentially functions as an permanent mass recursion engine. As long as you keep sacrificing her while her trigger is still on the stack you can Raise Dead your entire team as much as you want while abusing things like Ashnod's Altar (Targeting yourself) to dig further and further for everything that you need.
Grade: C
This is another card that's deceptively powerful in my mind given that she's a ridiculously powerful ramp engine for token-based builds. MP decks are often creature-light/less which means that there's almost always someone who you can freely attack as needed which is ideal when you need to connect with a saboteur effect. In one of my previous set reviews I pegged Dowsing Dagger as the best overall card in the set and it's been nothing but bonkers for me ever since. It's not just me either, every other day I see a deck in the cEDH discord that employs it. If you deck has creatures and can reliably hit 4 mana for turn 4 it's easily one of the strongest ramp spells in the game. These kinds of cards are joke because they prey on the fact that someone will be open at which point they scale wildly out-of-control.
Radha will excel in "Cryptolith Rite" style decks and archetypes that abuse multi-bodied threats (such as Mogg War Marshal and Hordeling Outburst) which flood the board early on. From there you can lean on your powerful mana engines to ramp out insane bombs such as Ruric Thar, the Unbowed, Prossh, Skyraider of Kher, Avenger of Zendilar and Craterhoof Behemoth or simply use Aggravated Assault to take all of the turns. Most of those extra combat spells are stellar in these types of builds but the "Hellkite Chargers" have the most potential to end the game on the spot. What makes these decks so unbelievably scary is that a simple curve of 1 drop -> Mogg War Marshal -> Hordeling Outburst means that Radha is already producing 7 mana on turn 4 which is already enough for things like Hornet Queen and Avenger of Zendikar. Not only are you ramping out fatties, but you're also beating people down while you do it. Obviously things can go sideways if people start slamming mass removal but the upside is that you're going to crush them in the games where they don't have it. It's still a risk, I'm not suggesting otherwise, but the payoff is insanely high if it works.
EDH Grade: A+
With respect to Constructed this card already exists in the form of Vedalken Archmage which doesn't see any play. It's too slow, conditional and vulnerable to removal to justify including. That being said she's definitely going to be an oppressive Commander :).
In a world of ramp and card draw one of the best possible things to be doing is simultaneously ramping while drawing cards. After all, Sol Ring is already bonkers enough to begin with and a Sol Ring that cantrips is utterly ludicrous. Your deck was already going to be playing a ton of Artifact-based ramp to begin and converting them all into 2-for-1s is utterly absurd. Even if you aren't actively trying to do anything broken (combo kills, etc.) she's still going to feel oppressive for the sole reason that your ramp is consistently digging you into action. It either digs into more ramp, more card draw or some variety of payoff. What's worse is that because you're playing both Blue and Red not only do you have access to all of the relevant permission to protect Jhoira, but you also have access to By Force and Vandalize effects that neuter the ramp coming from your opposition. Back to Basics, Blood Moon, Ruination, you can hate on both Artifacts and lands as much as you want while prancing merrily along as you draw + ramp your entire deck into play.
Moving on to oppressive applications, did I mention how dumb Paradox Engine is? Want to know what it likes? Ramp and card draw. Want to know what it LOVES? Ramp that draws cards. I'm sorry, but this is mindless. It's not even shooting fish in a barrel; it's shooting whales with a nuke. Every Artifact-based Blue deck is already fielding Paradox Engine and every decent way to tutor for it and Jhoira instantly turns it into a 2 card win condition. Just draw and cast your deck and Aetherflux Reservoir everyone to death (or whatever). Otherwise there's also a slew of infinite mana combos such as Power Artifact/Rings of Brighthearth + Basalt Monolith and Dramatic Reversal + Isochron Scepter both of which are already mainstays in these archetypes. With Jhoira around it'll be trivial to find your combo pieces at a reasonable clip and winning will be effortless from there.
Still, Jhoira is going to struggle to beat decks that field permanents such as... wait what's that? Sorry? Oh, nevermind, a little bird just informed me that Words of Wind is still a card and so your opponents won't have any permanents in play. My bad team, didn't mean to frighten all of the soon-to-be Jhoira players into thinking that their deck might drop a game. Yeah if your opponents try to do something as unsightly as dirty the board with their plebeian permanents just go ahead and get rid of them, all of them, forever and ever.
Grade: A
Look, it's not my fault that Wizards decided to print all of these Battlecruisers in the same set and I'll be damned if I don't discuss some of the best ways to abuse them. Muldy G is not only in the right colors (for EDH) but it's also a "Sun Titan," except instead of being a fair and balanced card that only recurs a single permanent each circuit it randomly decided to go ahead and cast Yawgmoth's Will instead. Because you know, why not? I'm obviously being slightly hyperbolic here but I don't think that people quite grasp just how ludicrously powerful that this card is. To be clear, I'm legitimately happy to cast Sun Titan in multiplayer (it's one of the strongest midrange threats) and more often than not I'm recurring a Fetchland or Myriad Landscape to keep my ramp train chugging along. Muldy G not only acts as mini-Primeval Titan in the same way that Sun Titan does but it also enables you to recur things like Urza's Bauble, Mishra's Bauble, Tormod's Crypt, Lion's Eye Diamond, Animate Dead, Dance of the Dead, Phantasmal Image, Sakura-Tribe Elder, Pernicious Deed, Necromancy and Eternal Witness as well. It blows my mind that I keep reading comments along the lines of "it's too slow at 6 and would have been better at 5" because believe me when I say that you absolutely do not want to see this card cost 5. It's plenty good at 6! While it seems well-tailored for Stax builds that feature things like Tangle Wire, Contamination, Infernal Darkness and Smokestack as long as your deck has relevant permanents this is exactly where you want to be. Be it Cube, Constructed or EDH (both as the Commander or in the 99) this is easily one of the strongest midrange threats ever printed (it's easily on-par with the Titans, including pseudo-Titans such as Ghave, Guru of Spores) and will see play for years to come. If EDH is your speed then you can do fun things with Lion's Eye Diamond, Phantasmal Image and Animate Dead but even if you throw all infinite combos by the wayside this is basically like putting a pseudo Sun Titan/Primeval Titan in your CZ and trust me when I say that it's going to be every bit as sweet and powerful as that sounds.
Grade: Niche D
I've never been impressed with the "Super Friends" archetype in any MP format as 'Walkers tend to match up poorly against most of the other commonly played card advantage engines. Things like Mystic Remora and Compost do more for less so I don't see them very often. Moreover, the bar for "expensive spells that don't impact the board" is quite in those lists for a couple of reasons. First, very few 'Walkers significantly impact the board in MP and thus struggle to survive in creature-based metas. As such your flex slots typically need to be used on removal to ensure their survival. Otherwise they have to compete with things like Doubling Season and Deepglow Skate which tend to win out over most of the alternatives.
With that in mind this card seems playable but unexciting. Blinking a permanent is worth roughly a card and given most 'Walkers have a +1 that generates card advantage you only need a couple to transform this into a 3-for-1 the turn that it enters the battlefield. From there it will "draw" another 2-3 cards per turn depending on your 'Walker count which is quite powerful. It's also relevant to note that it enables to quickly builds towards Ultimates which can often take over the game outright. As such you're actively building towards a win condition while simultaneously drawing a whack of cards which is always a fantastic place to be. My issue, again, is that this card is heinous when things are going poorly. If I have 2 'Walkers in play I'd much rather slam a card like Armageddon or Devastation because it accomplishes the same thing while also interacting with your adversaries.
Grade: Niche D
This card is impossible to grade without adding a slew of "ifs, ands or buts" so I'm not going to bother. Mass recursion is incredibly competitive and things like Living Death and Patriarch's Bidding are some of my favorite spells to build around. Even the "bad ones" like Twilight's Call are back-breaking in my experience and so I place a massive premium on this effect. My issue with this card is that I can't envision a deck that would actually play it. It's 7 mana, you need to be playing Orzhov colors, it only recurs Legends and you also need a Legend in play. If I could just Buried Alive and recur Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite, Razaketh, the Foulblooded and Iona, Shield of Emeria then I'd probably still run it but the fact that I have to jump through another hoop is giving me serious doubts. The effect is utterly ridonkulous assuming that you can support it I just can't be bothered to dance around like a monkey trying to meet them.
I do want to stress that this card is the real deal in the right deck. After all, its recurs all Legendary permanents including things like lands and Planeswalkers. This makes it an ideal finisher for a slow Control deck full of removal, Planeswalkers and bomby finishers. I still can't bring myself to give it a decent grade because that's just far too niche but power-level wise the card is easily a C+ or B once it resolves.
Grade: Niche D
While I'm rather unimpressed with Rona in general there's enough going ton with her to warrant some discussion. First are foremost she's essentially a Snapcaster Mage for Artifacts which will be her primary application in all likelihood. She can obviously recur other card types are well but that will likely be the "Plan B" for the later stages of the game. Early on you can recur that Mana Crypt or Sol Ring that was eaten by that Manglehorn and later on she's more than happy to nab Tezzeret the Seeker. Moreover, (while I realize that it's largely unaffordable) she possesses strong synergy with Lion's Eye Diamond which is a card that gains a great deal of value in EDH where you always have a "card in hand" that isn't actually in your hand. For example, I've cast more than my fair share of turn 1 Daretti, Scrap Savants in EDH off of the back of it only to recur something like Ward of Bones, Sandstone Oracle and/or Possessed Portal shortly after. The idea here is that it enables some relatively degenerate sequences and often makes the cut if you can afford it. Otherwise she's a "reasonable" card advantage engine and while I'm using the term generously it's still possible to activate her a couple of times and have it be relevant. That's a lot of mana to draw not a lot of cards but it's more of a Plan F than anything else. I still don't think that I'm ever going to field her (Blue and Black are flooded with superior alternatives) but I do think that there's room in this world for a Snapcaster Mage for Artifacts.
Grade: Niche C
This card has a couple of interesting applications that probably aren't obvious. First of all it's clearly relevant in "saprolings matter" decks that feature cards like Tendershoot Dryad and Verdant Force. Mass drain is no joke and assuming that you also have a sac outlet and Zulaport Cutthroat then it doesn't take long to drain the table out. Moreover, those types of decks have incentive to field things like Ashnod's Altar and Parallel Lives which is already a 3-card instant win combo with Slimefoot. You pay 4 mana to make your 2 saprolings, sac them both for mana, drain the table for 2 and and repeat ad nauseam. Otherwise this card is an outlet for infinite colorless mana. Even if you assemble Rings of Brighthearth + Basalt Monolith (or whatever) you still need something to do with it and this puts an arbitrarily large army into play. Mass removal doesn't save anyone either since players need to remove Slimefoot first which is another hoop that you're forcing them to jump through.
Otherwise the card is "reasonable" midrange value engine ala Luminarch Ascension. The idea is that while Slimefoot isn't the strongest infinite mana outlet the card is still valuable outside of combo kills. After all, you can pump excess mana into him to create tokens at EOT. The reason why I put "reasonable" in quotations is because I don't buy this argument and I've only heard from other players. I personally think that paying 4 mana to put a 1/1 into play will never have a significant impact on a MP game that hasn't already been won or lost and so I don't see this as a genetic midrange "value threat." It might create a chump blocker or two but otherwise I don't want this outside of combo kills.
Grade: B-
I'm not going to rehash my entire Jhoira spiel so let's stick to the truncated version of "ramp that draws card is good." Simple enough right? This card is stellar in decks that feature "extra land cards" such as Exploration, Burgeoning, Summer Bloom, Azusa, Lost But Seeking and Wayward Swordtooth in addition to mass draw spells such as Mystic Remora, Rhystic Study, Windfall, etc. Draw spells aren't as important when you already have engines like these floating around but they help ensure that you'll still a full grip once they resolve. After all, 5 drops aren't the quickest things to get into play and she's not going to feel special if you're already spent on resources.
It's equally important to note that Tatyova works with most of the cards that people are already playing in their decks. For example, most Green decks are playing Ramunap Excavator and once you pair him a Fetchland and Azusa, Lost But Seeking you can basically dump your entire manabase into play while drawing most of your deck. She also works with things like Primeval Titan, Sylvan Primordial and Boundless Realms that accomplish the same thing. Heck, even a simple Fetchland with no added strings attached still reads "draw 2 cards" and that's a fine place to be in the grand scheme of things. It means that her floor is still quite high and her ceiling is essentially "draw your deck."
My primary issue with Tatyova is that she's slower, more conditional and has much more competition. Blue and Green are two of the best colors which makes it difficult for anything to eek out a deck slot. This is especially true once you get to 5+ CMC spells where you're already inundated with superior alternatives. She'll still do fine in decks that can support her (which is most of them) but she's not a "must have" by any means since there already plenty of other ways to generate card advantage when you're playing Simic.
Grade: C+
Teferi is a powerful midrange Planeswalker that follows closely in the footsteps of cards like Ob Nixilis Reignited. His +1 not only generates card advantage but's it's also a pseudo-Worn Powerstone for instant-speed spells and effects. I'm very much attracted to the thought of being able to cast him with plenty of mana floating to fuel removal, bounce, permission, card draw, etc. Moreover, it's fantastic in Staxed-based builds that employ things like Stasis and Winter Orb to severely hinder mana production. As such I could easily see him being paired with Teferi, Temporal Mage alongside those types of spells. Moving on, his -3 is a reasonable form of interaction that deals with any nonland permanent. I recognize that paying 5 mana to Oust something isn't ideal but the upside here is that it's still removal when you desperately need it (whereas alternatives such as Jace's Ingenuity aren't). Otherwise his Ultimate essentially wins the game (not on the spot but fair decks can't compete against that effect) which means that you're threatening to win the game outright if he goes unchecked. This makes him ideal for mass land destruction decks given that it's trivially easy to win after curving him into something like Devastation. All-in-all he's a reasonable playable who threatens to seize control of the game if left unchecked and that's what you're looking for in a 5 mana spell.
EDH Grade: C
I'm extremely disappointed that Wizards decided to print the "fixed" Soulfire Grand Master at 6 CMC since it kills any hope of the EDH deck being remotely decent. I'm not going to bother discussing this card in Constructed given that it's many orders of magnitude weaker than its 2 CMC cousin because this card was clearly printed for Commander and nothing else.
The gameplan for the deck is simple. Ramp out FaS, jam some cards like Blasphemous Act, draw a ton of cards off of Well of Lost Dreams and win the game off the back of cards like Aetherflux Reservoir, Test of Endurance and Felidar Sovereign. While Red and White lack the consistency and power of the other colors, this can largely be offset if you never play against other people. For example, Boros decks are fantastic at beating cats because if they happen to fall asleep throughout the match then you can often squeak out a win while they're none the wiser. It's crucial to understand where your deck shines and why so that you can pick your spots accordingly.
Since I'm only partially joking, I will say that there are some semi-reasonable combos with this pair. First of White and Red has access to cards like Silence, Pyroblast and Red Elemental Blast to help win "counter wars." White also has a slew of cheap protection such as Gods Willing that can protect FaS from opposing removal and/or your own burn spells. Red gives you access to Treasonous Ogre which is well and truly busted when you're pumping that mana into X spells. Paying 39 life for 13 life is fantastic when you're immediately gaining it back 5 times over. Mana Geyser is another bonkers spell in these decks and often turns like Jaya's Immolating Inferno into an OTK. Lastly, the deck can field additional win conditions in the form of cards like Luminarch Ascension, Repercussion, Dictate of the Twin Gods, Assemble the Legion and Vicious Shadows so it's not as though you're all-in on the lifegain plan.
Grade: B
While the newest version of Karn might read as an "artifacts matter" card I see him as more of a colorless Phyrexian Arena. Most of my ideal MP draws involve jamming a mana rock on turn 2 and a card advantage engine on turn 3 so more than happy to slam him in order to start drawing some cards. Moreover, unlike most alternatives Karn draws a card immediately which actually puts him fairly far ahead of the the pack. Even if it's usually going to be the worst of my top 2, it doesn't matter, I'm still drawing 2 cards per turn (often starting on turn 2-3) and I can easily live with that. His -2 can also be used to protect himself since you'll probably have some Artifacts in your list regardless and you can always add things like Vault of Whispers and/or Darksteel Citadel to artificially bolster your count. That being said it's completely optional because I'd still happily play him in deck with zero artifacts. As long as I'm able to open with Wild Growth into Courser of Kruphix into Karn (or whatever) I'm happy enough to play a long, grindy, value game with the rest of the table.
Karn will shines in Control decks that can adequately protect him. There's no greater feeling than jamming some Artifact-based ramp, clearing the board, resolving a Karn and then following up with something like Death Cloud, Armageddon or Wildfire. Not only are you the only person drawing multiple cards per turn but you also still have your Artifact-based mana kicking around which puts you massively ahead of the pack. Even if mass land destruction isn't your thing there's nothing wrong with removal and permission so feel free to play that instead if it's more your speed. Again, you don't have to be overly concerned with unfavorable exchanges when you're drawing multiple cards per turn which makes cards like Counterspell even sweeter than they already are. I'm once again going to bring up the fact that Karn draws an extra card immediately which only exacerbates the advantage that he builds for you when you're trying to keep things "fair" (because he's not really fair).
Otherwise, the fact that he's colorless makes him extremely flexible when it comes to deckbuilding. You can basically jam into any deck of any color and call it a day. He also works extremely well with all of the fast mana played in EDH (such as Mana Vault) because he doesn't have any color requirements and gives you plenty of gas to abuse it. It's trivially easy to slam him on turn 2 assuming that he's in your opening grip and from there it's kinda like you're playing with a Jace, the Mindsculptor (kinda). Overall he's an extremely powerful Planeswalker that will see a lot of play for years to come.
Grade: D
While this set boasts a slew of reasonable offerings for the Equipment slot I've become so unimpressed with the card type as a whole that I barely even consider them to be playables. Some exceptions obviously apply (Blade of Selves for example) but by and large I don't think that you're doing yourself any favors by adding them to your lists. They're not actively bad per se, they just don't bring enough to the table to justify their slots. After all, anything that isn't ramp, card draw, interaction or a bomby finisher has a steep hill to climb to earn its keep.
What I like about Equipment is that it enables you to scale irrelevant dorks into legitimate threats as the game progresses. You can't just start your curve at 4 and call it a day which often necessitates playing utility dorks that lose their combat luster rater quickly. Equipment is the perfect way to circumvent this flaw since it converts even the most pathetic 1/1 into a legitimate threat. As such you can easily justify fielding them in small numbers to ensure that you have a gameplan for your anemic dorks going late. We're talking 1-2 copies total, less is more when it comes to these types of effects, but the first piece of Equipment is almost always relevant enough to earn its keep.
Grade: Sideboard/Niche C+
Wizards has started taking "sideboard cards" very seriously in recent years and take a rather heavy-handed approach to "balancing the meta" as it were. This card is clearly designed to hose things like Tron and Storm and needless to say it excels at doing both. Moving back to multiplayer, this is one of the strongest Stax/hate cards ever printed and it's definitely going to be a staple moving forward. It's clearly abysmal if everyone is playing "fair and balanced" Magic with "fair" lands, creatures and spells but it's a huge boon to those of us who're losing to degenerate nonsense.
The first mode of this card is stellar at hosing oppressive mana engines such as Cloudpost, Urza's Mine, Cabal Coffers, Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx and Gaea's Cradle. The list of offenders clearly stretches well beyond those 5 but they're some of the primary villains in my experience. More often than not these kinds of lands take over the game by providing their controller with an insurmountable mana advantage relative to his or her adversaries. You simply get to do more with less and that's inherently broken. Damping Sphere puts a damper on that parade but turning them all into anemic Wastes. They're not rendered entirely useless, you still get to play Magic, you're just forced to play fair like everyone else.
The second mode of this card is fantastic at hindering the "good colors," namely Blue and Black. After all, they lean on the raw power-level of cantrips, card draw, tutors and cheap interaction spells to sculpt their gameplan while messing with their adversaries. I find that my primary bottle-neck when fielding them is mana (as opposed to cards in hand) because even when I'm using all of it ever turn I still find myself wishing for more. That's exactly what Damping Sphere is seeking to punish. It puts an even tighter premium on mana which means that the game becomes less about card quantity (a fight which Red and White will never win) and more about card quality. You're not going to be able to cast the 20 cards sitting in your which means that the person who only has 5 isn't hopelessly outclassed.
Moreover, the second mode of this card also hoses the vast majority of oppressive combo kills. Most of them tend to be Storm-based kills of some variety that require you to cast numerous spells on the same turn. Note, I use the term "Storm" loosely because I can't remember the last time that I've even seen an actual Storm spell cast. What I'm actually referring to are things like:
Hermit Druid to mill your deck -> cast Narcomoeba and Unearth Fatesticher -> Dread Return on Laboratory Maniac -> Deep Analysis;
Lion's Eye Diamond/Rituals -> Tutor/Intuition -> Yawgmoth's Will/Past in Flames/Mizzix's Mastery;
Any Enter the Infinite kill (usually fast mana + Laboratory Maniac + Gitaxian Probe);
Doomsday -> Gush/Gitaxian Probe + Laboratory Maniac;
EOT Ad Nauseam -> Untap -> cast Aetherflux Reservoir + a ton of cheap spells;
Necropotence -> use fast mana to cast Shimmer Myr + Aetherflux Reservoir -> cast all of your cheap/free Artifact spells.
These and many, many, many more are common sequences in my EDH games and they often mean that games are ending on the 4th turn. What makes Damping Sphere so perfect is that it thwarts any and all attempts to win the game via long sequences of spells. You can still manage 1 or 2 (maybe 3 if you're lucky) but even then it's going to force all of these decks to play fair until it gets removed. It's not unbeatable by any means, any EOT removal -> untap -> win sequence will still get there, but at least you're forcing people to have the interaction and use it before going off.
Finally, it's important to remember that this card offers both of those services simultaneously. If it only hosed mana or only hosed Storm then it wouldn't be nearly as exciting. Still playable (the Storm half anyways, the other half not so much) but not nearly as good. I greatly appreciate that it's a "catch all" that stops a lot of unfair shenanigans and keeps people on a somewhat even playing field regardless of what anyone is doing.
Grade: B
Gilded Lotus is one of the most powerful ramp spells ever printed and it's definitely something that everyone should own. You could blindly any EDH decks with one and it would virtually always make the cut in the final build. It's also a staple for Cube and a powerhouse in any ramp-based Constructed deck so please pick some of these up while they're cheap. Grab some Coalition Relics from M25 too while you're at it because everything that I'm about to say applies to both. Consider it a 2-for-1 special!
Starting from the top it's "fast mana" which always has and always will be the most competitive way to ramp. "Fast mana," in this context, means "a card that immediately produces mana" as opposed to something that doesn't. What makes fast mana so absurd is that it can be instantly put to use which makes it faster and more reliable than the alternatives. Let's say that you want to Wrath the board to stabilize it but that you're also looking to power out your 8 drops, which do you choose to do? Why not both! With fast mana you can enact sequences such as "turn 5 cast Thran Dynamo + Sublime Exhalation" or "cast Gilded Lotus + Anger of the Gods" which almost feels like cheating when you do it. It also means that you can chain ramp into more ramp which is extremely common and relevant for formats such as EDH where you have an Abundance of Resources to work with. It's not just ramp or removal either. Card draw, permission, spot removal, the world is your oyster. If you want to cast Thran Dynamo with an Island floating to hold up Negate and then cast Fact or Fiction at EOT if nothing scary happens then you can just as easily do that too.
Moving on, it's also solid ramp. While a "5 mana ramp 3" wouldn't be exciting in a vacuum it's still going to power you straight into your 8+ CMC bombs which can often win games outright (even in MP). I know that I probably sound like a broken record by now but MP truly is a "go big or go home" format so you need to be doing something above and beyond the norm to consistently seal the deal. This is certainly one the better way to enable some of those over-the-top finishers which is why I always advocate playing with these types of spells in MP. It's not that ramp is inherently good or bad, it merely supports the kinds of spells that you should be playing to give yourself the best opportunity to win.
Moreover, it's durable. While it's clearly susceptible to Artifact hate it dodges things like Back to Basics, Blood Moon, Armageddon and plenty of additional MP all-stars. This is relevant for not only dodging opposing hate, but also for building around your own. For example, I'm extremely fond of Death Cloud and Wildfire decks and this has always been one of the strongest ramp spells in the archetype. Not only does it produce 3 mana, it's also colored which is incredibly relevant when you want to start casting spells again. After all, you can have all of the Worn Powerstones and Thran Dynamos in the world but unless you have a Mountain or two then you're not going to be jamming that Anger of the Gods or Inferno Titan anytime soon.
Lastly, the fact that it produces colored mana is incredibly relevant. When you look at the commonly played ramp spells in MP formats such as EDH they tend to be things like Mana Crypt, Mana Vault, Sol Ring, Worn Powerstone and Thran Dynamo that only produce colorless mana. As such you can often find yourself bottle-necked on colored sources even when you have plenty of colorless to spare. This is where a card like Gilded Lotus shines because it ensures a healthy mix of colored-to-colorless which is crucial when you're trying to play an interactive game of Magic against multiple adversaries. After all, you can be "representing" 5 mana but if it's all colorless then your adversaries don't have to fear permission/interaction from your side of the board. Gilded Lotus, on the other hand, enables you to immediately jam that Forbid or Curtains' Call which isn't a feat that most of the alternatives can boast. It's an utterly fantastic card in that sense and, again, it's one that everyone should own and play with.
Grade: Niche A
This card is extremely powerful as a degenerate combo piece for "extra combat phase" cards/commanders such as Combat Celebrant, Godo, Bandit Warlord and Aurelia, the Warleader. This is mostly relevant for EDH since you can start the game with either of the latter cards "in your hand" (in the CZ) which converts this 2-card combo into a (more-or-less) 1-card combo instead. In the case of Godo it's literally a 1-card, 11 mana combo since Godo searches for the damned thing himself. On a personal note, I cannot wait to jam a turn 1-2 Treasonous Ogre and blitz the table down before they can even process what's happening to them. My newest mission in life is to turn 1 kill in EDH playing Monored and I'll be damned if I don't make it happen!
About the combo, I've seen a lot of people get it wrong so let me quickly explain how it works. Main phase you equip Helm of the Host and move to combat. Combat starts and you create a token (a token which is granted haste by HotH). You attack with the token and trigger the extra combat phase. Repeat. A lot of people seem to think/say things like "blockers get you" and other nonsense but it's not true. Even if there's 50 billion points of toughness in play your tokens will eat through all of it and the original copy never has to enter combat.
While Godo is the (theoretically) best card to pair with HotH it's not a perfect kill. Only one creature gets to attack on each of the combat combat phases which means that you cannot kill through (for example) enough first strikers, indestructible creatures, "Fog Banks," etc. What you need to do in these scenarios is kill everyone else and hope to untap and kill the remaining player on the following turn. After all, the tokens don't die at EOT so you'll still have a ton of power in play once the dust settles. You can still lose if your opponent untaps and kills you, that's life, but otherwise it's a 2-turn clock. Aurelia/Celebrant clearly don't share this weakness since you can attack and kill everyone else first then send your army of Aurelias/Celebrants at the player with the "Banelsayer Angel" (or whatever).
Outside of EDH and Godo this card is rather unimpressive given the high mana cost. It's basically a Blade of Selves that costs more and does less. I understand that the tokens persist which is the "upside" that it offers but it's far too slow and conditional to warrant serious consideration outside of degenerate combo kills. This, to me, is a card that's sometimes relevant outside of combo applications (you will sometimes Equip it and it will sometimes be fine) but your primary focus should be on some sort of combo kill. The main deck that comes to mind for this is the "Sunforger" deck that features cards like Stoneforge Mystic, Puresteel Paladin and Stonehewer Giant which can bypass the steep mana requirements. Turn 6 Godo + Equip + swing is no joke!
Lastly, I want to stress that this Godo kill is legitimately good in any format and in any Red deck. "Good" doesn't mean "oppressive" but it's 1-card combo that reliably defeats any number of adversaries for 11 mana and that's a solid place to be. This is true for both Constructed and EDH assuming that you add the combo into the 99 as backup win condition. That is, no, he doesn't have to be your Commander for this combo to be relevant. After all, any Red deck can play Godo at their leisure. The downside to this tactic is that sometimes you'll naturally draw HotH which is essentially always going to be bad. The card is almost assuredly going to be worthless until the game is already won/lost. Still, the threat of drawing a dead card is completely offset (in my opinion anyways) by the opportunity of fielding a 1-card win condition in multiplayer. Your deck has be able to produce the 11 mana needed to combo off but insofar as it can then I'm totally willing to take a chance on it.
Grade: Niche F
I wanted to briefly discuss this card in the context of "Nekusar, the Mindrazer decks" Note that it doesn't have to be that exact EDH deck or anything, I'm referring to any deck that wants to curve turn 1 Dark Ritual + Underworld Dreams, turn 2 Liliana's Caress, turn 3 Windfall or something along those lines. This card is utter jank even in those archetypes as it's far too slow, vulnerable and weak to ever make the cut. Be it EDH or Constructed this isn't where you want to be so please don't bother with this trash. Cool throwback to Howling Mine, bad card.
Grade: Niche C
Cost reduction mechanics are always frightening given their ability to scale wildly over-the-top of adversaries who aren't equipped to deal with them. For example, you can fill a deck full of cards like Etherium Sculptor, Cloud Key, Foundry Inspector and Jhoira's Familiar that enables it to cast the majority of its spells for free. From there it can lean on powerful card advantage spells/engines such as Bottled Cloister, The Immortal Sun, Mind's Eye and Sandstone Oracle to draw throngs of cards that it can instantly cast. Sandstone Oracle is particularly oppressive because it'll often be drawing 5-7 cards per cast and there's nothing stopping you from pairing it with something like Crystal Shard. Otherwise I'm more than happy to dump all of my mana into Mind's Eye when I'm cheating everything into play and even Bottled Cloister is a solid "Phyrexian Arena" variant when you don't have cards in hand to begin with. Winning the game should be fairly trivial from there, especially if you're taking cards like Steel Overseer, Chief of the Foundry and The Immortal Sun into account. Clearly this isn't the only possible way to build around Jhoira's Familiar but it does showcase its strongest use-case (in my opinion anyways) and it does highlight why these cards are always significantly more powerful than they may otherwise seem.
Grade: Sideboard C
I'm giving this card a Sideboard grade given that it's essentially a 1-card win condition assuming that you're playing a deck with enough "hits" to reliably trigger it in a removal-light meta. After all, insofar as you're dumping all of your excess mana into producing an army of robots then it doesn't take long to produce the ~20 or so bodies required to clear the table out. That being said this plan seems dubious at best given that it's slow, inconsistent and extremely vulnerable to mass removal. After all, players will have ample opportunity to dig into answers given that it takes numerous turns to produce an army large enough to threaten serious damage. As such I'm largely unimpressed with the card in a vacuum, but, again, if your adversaries "don't have it" then it'll certainly wipe them out in short order. Treat it like a terrible version of Assemble of the Legion and you (probably) won't be disappointed.
Grade: Niche A
This is picture-perfect example of a "niche" card. It's basically always going to be the best card in any deck that actively wants it but utterly worthless everywhere else. While I'm mostly going to be discussing its applications in EDH I did want to quickly touch on its potential impact on Constructed as well. This card will be absolutely bonkers in White-based Stax decks that field things like Legion's Landing, Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, Eight-and-a-Half-Tails, Thalia, Heretic Cathar, Brimaz, King of Oreskos and Hokori, Dust Drinker. Between Mox Amber and Legion's Landing you can easily recover from the effects of mass land destruction (Limited Resources, Armageddon and Cataclysm for example) that will utterly demolish your adversaries by comparison. Selvala, Explorer Returned is another card that comes to mind for that deck since it's both Legendary and it produces mana which is perfect when you're slinging a slew of Armageddons. That being said this only one-of-many possible applications for the card since the only thing that it asks for is a critical mass of cheap Legendaries to fuel it. It literally doesn't matter what they are as long as you have enough of them.
Moving on to EDH this card is definitely going to make some waves. People are surprisingly torn on how good that this figures to be but I'm firmly planted in the "it's awesome" camp. Bloom Tender is already one of the stronger cards in the format for 2-3 color decks largely due to the fact that you can reliably enact sequences such as "turn 1 mana dork, turn 2 Derevi, Empyrial Tactician" (aka turn 1 dork, turn 2 Commander) to fuel it. It's ridiculously strong as long as your plan involves casting your Commander as a reasonable clip and that should encompass most (but not all) of them. Mox Amber is similar in the sense that it becomes a bonkers Magic card assuming that you meet a trivial requirement. And look, I get it. This isn't a turn 1-2 "I win" card. Who cares? If you plan on playing 10-12 turns of Magic then who are you to scoff at a Mox on turn 3-4? Even if it doesn't enable ridiculously oppressive sequences it's still bloody good if you plan on playing Magic after casting your Commander.
With that in mind, this card isn't for everyone. If you're playing Thrasios, Triton Hero and Tymna the Weaver then it's a shoe-in but if you're on Kozilek, Butcher of Truth Control then not so much. Personally I often field a Sidisi, Undead Vizier MBC deck where she has a bad habit of offing herself so this isn't the right card for me. The point isn't that "this card is always broken," but rather "when this card is good it's very good." Even if you're not jamming your Commander until turn 3-4 it's still going to be extremely powerful insofar as you're going to be playing Magic for another 5+ turns so please don't go thinking that you need to be on Isamaru, Hound of Konda to get your money's worth. Turn 2 Fellwar Stone, turn 3 Commander is still plenty quick enough for this to be an auto include.
Grade: Niche C+
Now this is an interesting card! While the first is anemic at best the second is a strictly better version of Worn Powerstone (which is already a busted card) and from there it's quickly scaling into Thran Dynamo territory and beyond. That being said you have been making a concerted effort to acquire multiples given that "3 mana ramp 1" barely qualifies as playable so you can't go thinking "well even the first is fine." It's not. As such I'm classifying this card as "niche" because I don't believe that it will see play outside of Blue decks. While you can technically start any build with 4x Powerstone Shard and "hope to get lucky" I think that you're much better served by building around the thing to some extent. I'm also not suggesting that it can only be played in Blue decks since Black has draw + tutors and Green has Ancient Stirrings but I'm mostly expecting to see this out of Blue decks.
First and foremost Blue boasts plenty of cheap cantrips/filter effects such as Ponder, Preordain, Brainstorm, Impulse and Glint-Nest Crane to consistently find one for turn 3. From there you can lean on its mass card draw (Mystic Remora, Rhystic Study, Manifold Insights), tutors (Inventors' Fair, Fabricate, Trophy Mage, Whir of Invention) and copy effects (Copy Artifact, Phyrexian Metamorph, Clever Impersonator) to quickly and consistently flood the board with them. What you do with that mana from there is ultimately up to you, getting there is my primary area of interest since that's always going to be the tricky part.
Now, let me briefly explain why what I just said isn't "bad." After all, isn't it "bad" to build around ramp? The answer is "no, not if it makes sense to do so." See, I haven't listed any bad cards throughout this analysis. It's not as though I'm sitting here telling people to add Ember Shot to their decks or anything. Rather, I'm advocating for cards that you're already happy to field and are probably playing. That's the key thing that prevents this from being a bad card; you don't have to go out your way to support it. Even if someone destroys your first Powerstone, no big deal, your deck is still full of cantrips, ramp, tutors, card draw, etc. and you'll find plenty of other uses for it.
With that in mind I do think that Powerstone Shard is over-hyped. I maintain that it's completely find in Blue-based Artifact shells but if you're blindly starting your Red decks with 4 of them then you're doing a disservice to Worn Powerstone and all of its glory. Very few decks are going to reliably see 2 or more copies per game and assuming that you're ( on average) drawing 2 or fewer then it's the clear-cut winner. That doesn't just apply to Worn Powerstone either. Assuming that you're drawing 2 or fewer of any ramp spell then Fellwar Stone, Signets, Mind Stone and more all become vastly superior options. For Powerstone Shard to supplant the competition your plan has to involve reliably seeing 3 or more every game and that's no small task. As such I highly recommend sticking the tried, tested and true unless you're going that extra mile to break the damned thing.
Grade: C
Quicksilver Amulet has always been a casual all-star and the thing is surprisingly competitive to boot. After all, it not only enables you to bypass the high mana cost of cards like Emrakul, the Promised End but it also allows you to ignore the steep color requirements of things like Progenitus. Moreover, and almost more importantly, it lets you to play the game entirely at instant-speed. You can sit back, hold mana up for your interaction and sneak something into play at EOT once it's safe to drop the shields. This gives it a huge edge over tradition forms of ramp which still force you to cast your spells at "regular speed." You even get that extra "do they have it" mind-game edge where you adversaries will be hesitant to attack you as long as you're representing the activation. Your hand could be full of blanks but they'll be none the wiser and far too afraid to attack into your "might-be behemoth." It can often function as a "No Mercy" in that sense which is stellar when you're looking to buy the time needed to cast your Thirst for Knowledges and Fact or Fictions.
The being said the card has some fatal flaws that will prevent it from ever rising too high in the ranks. First of all it's extremely slow since you literally have to sink 8 mana into it before it yields a return. Just compare that to Thran Dynamo which only requires 4 (and immediately taps for 3) and the difference in speed becomes obvious. Moreover, it only works with a small subset of permanents as opposed to working with everything. As such I especially dislike it in decks that feature the "good colors" (Black, Green, Blue) given that I'm often leaning heavily on X spells and card draw to pull ahead of the pack. If I'm looking to jam Exsanguinate, Genesis Wave and/or Sphinx's Revelation then you better damn well believe that I need my ramp to do most of the heavy lifting.
Grade: C
While this may come as a shock to most people I'm genuinely disinterested in this card as a whole. It's fine if you're building on a budget and want something with a bit more oomph than 24x Swamp but this isn't the "big new hotness" for Monoblack or anything along those lines. What makes Cabal Coffers such an unbelievably broken card is its degenerate synergy with Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth. After all, the card becomes utterly bonkers when it counts every land you control (itself included). Once you take that away and bump the activation cost up by 1 what you're left with is rather unimpressive by comparison. Remember, this card cannot ramp you until you have at least 6 lands in play and all 5 of the other ones have to be basic Swamps. From there the card obviously starts to look decent but if you've missed any land drops or field any other nonbasics then it takes a long time to get the payoff that you're looking for. While lot of people are fixated on the fact that "it inherently taps for mana so it's always useful" I don't understand what the argument here is. "Not bad" and "good" are two very different things and people aren't praising Wastes for a reason.
With respect to building around this card, there isn't much that anyone needs to know. You'll want 24-26 lands with 2-3 of Cabal Strongholds ensure that you'll reliably make your drops without flooding out on an effect that's weak in multiples. Clearly once you have 10+ lands in play then the second and third start to feel relevant but in general you don't want to be jamming 4 of these in your 22-24 land brews and drawing them en masse early on. Try to field an above average quantity of draw as well (maybe field 4x Sign in Blood where you'd typically on play 2) to ensure that you'll be hitting your drops and digging into action/bombs as the game progresses.
Grade: C+
Checklands are some of my favorite duals since they're the right mix of power, flexibility and cost. After all, they almost always ETBU starting on turn 2 (you only need 12 hits to consistently make that happen) and they don't even check for basics so they still work with things like Shocklands. As such they tend to win out over alternatives such as Fastands except in very niche scenarios. For example, my Rakdos Aggro deck needs to be able to curve turn 1 Vicious Conquistador into turn 2 Eidolon of the Great Revel which is a scenario where a card like Blackcleave Cliffs shines. Very few decks have such strict mana requirements however and the overwhelming majority of decks can afford to employ the "turn 1 basic, turn 2 Checkland" curve. Otherwise they're fantastic forms of color fixing that virtually never ETB beyond the first turn of the game. As such they're extremely worthwhile investments that still stand the test of time all these years later.
It's no secret that I'm incredibly excited for Dominaria as it's easily one of the most compelling multiplayer sets ever printed. It's impact on formats such as EDH is going to be significantly higher than certain Commander products which is pretty crazy when you think about it. We very rarely see this many bombs jammed into the same set and while most of them are build-around-mes as opposed to generic playables I personally cannot wait to test a whole slew of them out. That being said one thing that I'm struggling to do this time around is come up with a "Top 10 list" that actually makes sense. How do I weigh Constructed vs EDH? How much value do I assign to combo pieces? Do I include reprints? Do I include Commanders? There's a ton of factors to consider, especially given that the best cards have niche uses as opposed to broad applications. Here's what I settled on:
Top 10 Cards in the Set:
10. Urza's Ruinous Blast
9. Final Parting
8. Adventurous Impulse
7. Damping Sphere
6. Muldrotha, the Gravetide
5. Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain
4. Squee, the Immortal, Helm of the Host
3. Gilded Lotus
2. Karn, Scion of Urza
1. Mox Amber
That being said the rankings are almost meaningless so don't pay too much attention to them. The first 3 cards are not only powerful, but they're also colorless and playable in numerous formats. Mox Amber is heinous in Cube but otherwise all 3 are going to see tons of play in EDH, Constructed and Cube for years to come. Mox has the most raw potential so I gave it #1 and Lotus is a reprint and thus got bumped to 3. Karn is great and I'm happy enough giving him the #2 seed. These are the kinds of things that you should be striving to do in your MP decks; ramping and drawing cards.
The next batch of cards are sheer power. I gave Squee the Immortal an A grade primarily because Food Chain is a degenerate combo enabler in EDH that needs to be banned. With every "Misthollow Griffin" that gets printed the card becomes that much more obscene and so I expect to lose a lot of games to that pairing. I also lumped Helm of the Host in there (again for EDH) because 1-card combos are extremely powerful even if they're 11 mana. "Cast Godo, win" is playable in basically any Red deck that can get there. He doesn't have to be your Commander or anything either. Just drawing him, casting him and winning is still extremely relevant. Jhoira is going to be bonkers in EDH as an oppressive draw engine but largely unplayable elsewhere. Muldrotha is the newest Sultai Titan and will see a lot of play in all formats but only in 3+ color decks. That makes him relatively niche by comparison.
Moving right along we have Damping Sphere which is a promising Stax piece that's decent at hosing big mana and high spell count strategies. It's being slightly overrated by the MTG populace in general but the card is nothing to scoff at when it's hitting the field early on. It's also another colorless card which always gives it a huge bump in my books because it means that it's playable in any deck of any deck and in any format. As such even if doesn't have the most raw power I'm still attracted to the flexibility that it offers during deckbuilding.
The last cards I don't feel very strongly about and you could largely toss anything into the slots. Adventurous Impulse is stellar card filtering, playable in any format and relevant for nearly any Green archetype. The consistency that it brings to your draws will be much appreciated. Otherwise Final Parting is essentially a double-Demonic Tutor and will shine in slower formats such as EDH. It's still perfectly playable in Constructed as well but won't see much play outside of singleton formats. To round out the list I added Urza's Ruinous Blast because 5 CMC mass exile is fantastic, especially if it's in the form of a Cyclonic Rift.
Overall Set 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
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
Of course, in monoblack you still play it.
Next, you described the abundance of resources argument well. I've been trying to talk to my group for a while on building better decks simply from "having more stuff"
I made The Scarab God as a deck that doesn't have the absolutely insane synergies that my other decks have but simply a plan to simply have more mana and more cards than the opposition, and as a pure goodstuff deck that I did not optimize it still wins a fair portion of games.
Also, your evaluation of burst mana is also true. I find cards such as Mana Geyser and Gilded Lotus to be extremely good. Tempo still matters quite a lot in EDH but you do this through acceleration rather than by attacking.
Also, on Tatyova, Benthic Druid. In EDH I find it comparable to The Gitrog Monster (which is to say insane). It has a stronger draw engine but is more suspectible to disruption, as the extra land drop that the frog gets is relevant for recasting him in the face of removal and Cabal Coffers is a card that helps cover for commander tax.
However, in the event that they don't shoot her, all it takes is one Scapeshift for things to go out of control.
Personally, I'll stick with the frog, because pairing it with Oppression is oppressive.
The Unidentified Fantastic Flying Girl.
EDH
Xenagos, the God of Stompy
The Gitrog Monster: Oppressive Value.
Marchesa, Marionette Master - Undying Robots
Yuriko, the Hydra Omnivore
I make dolls as a hobby.
My only suggestion would be to maybe make two different grades, one for EDH and one for constructed, since so many of the comments say something along the lines of "this is a bomb in EDH but crappy for constructed".
I don't buy it. If your plan is to fetch multiple lands with a card like Hour of Promise and if one of them is going to be Urborg then the other is always going to be Coffers. This plan only makes sense if you're going to fetch all 3, but even that sucks because now (at least) 2 of your lands aren't basics so Stronghold is probably barely ramping you. I'm not saying that you're wrong, your point is totally correct, but I had considered this when writing this review. I just couldn't think of a way to make that "good." I actually thing that Cabal Stronghold kind of sucks and I'm probably not even going to be playing in most of my Monoblack decks which is extremely disappointing :/. Wizards really went out of their way to make it bad.
That's a bit of a stretch. I can see where you're coming from but Gitrog is significantly more powerful because he gives you access to Black and Black is better than Blue for this type of Commander. An incomplete list of reasons includes:
Better ramp. Things like Lake of the Dead, Dark Ritual and Heartless Summoning (sometimes Culling the Weak as well, depends on your quantity of mana dorks and whatnot) are fantastic at cheating 5+ CMC spells into play and Gitrog doesn't really care about card disadvantage. Blue, while powerful, doesn't bring anything to to table for this. This basically goes back to my Abundance of Resources argument since Black is better at getting your Commander into play and that's extremely powerful even if it costs you extra cards along the way.
Better interaction overall. Blue clearly brings permission to the table and has some decent spot removal, I can't argue against that, but what I can say is that I'd (generally) rather be on the side with Slaughter Pact, Raven's Crime, Duress, Thoughtseize, Inquisition of Kozilek, Mind Twist, Abrupt Decay, Pernicious Deed, Toxic Deluge, Damnation, Snuff Out, Massacre, Unmask, Murderous Cut, etc. EDH is become much more creature and board-focused in my experience and I very much like having access to cheap mass removal. Don't get me wrong, Cyclonic Rift is good, but it's slow.
Better tutors. Bluntly put Blue's non-Artifact tutors are rather anemic (Intuition is great though) whereas Black's suite is utterly bonkers. Vampiric Tutor, Imperial Seal, Demonic Tutor, Diabolic Intent, Grim Tutor, Beseech the Queen, Dark Petition and Final Parting bring a ridiculous amount of consistency to the deck.
Necrologia. Putting all combos/degenerate nonsense aside when people ask me what my Commander I'm playing my answer is always "Necrologia." My goal in every EDH game that I play (regardless of who my Commander is) is to spend my first tutor on it, draw 20 cards, jam all of my fast mana, sculpt a perfect 7 card hand and sculpt a perfect graveyard for all of my "graveyard matters" cards. Blue has good draw and I'm not suggesting otherwise but I prefer the raw power of Necrologia when I'm trying to support:
Raven's Crime, Life from the Loam, Azusa, Lost but Seeking + Ramunap Excavator/Crucible of Worlds, World Shaper, Splendid Reclamation, Titania, Protector of Argoth, Emrakul, the Promised End, etc.
Seasons Past. Gitrog is very spell-based and the combo of tutors + Seasons Past means that you can play an "infinite value" game even if your Commander is getting hated on. If all else fails you can still draw a new hand every turn and that's a spectacular place to be. Gitrog is very much a "big mana" card and the single best use for it is often "the card that lets you pick up your graveyard and play it as though it were your hand."
Instant wins. Dakmor Salvage, Stinkweed Imp and/or Golgari Grave-Troll pair with any discard outlet (Putrid Imp, Noose Constrictor, etc.) to win the game on the spot. Tatyova doesn't possess that type of free "I win" sequence and so I'd much rather be on Gitrog than her. I'm kinda cheating on this point a little bit since Dakmore Salvage is the only one of these three that's a 100% guaranteed kill whereas the others are ~99.76% or something along those lines. Close enough! Hell, Final Parting is only going to exacerbate this issue because it bins Dakmor Salvage and puts Putrid Imp in hand (or whatever) which is an auto-win if you curve it after a Gitrog.
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'm not really up for easy instant win stuff, but even without them the tutors are great and discard is an amazing alternative to counterspells.
I've been liking Mindslicer a lot in a list where holding fetchlands or Ghost Quarter can refill a hand.
Also since I own it I use Yawgmoth's Will as my Seasons' Past. The mana savings plus the ability to play lands plus my low curve allows for it.
Lastly, thanks for your analysis on the stronghold. I guess a couple of my decks can still use it as a low opportunity cost include but it isn't for most decks.
On my head to head with Gitrog v. Tatyova, I don't think I've dropped a game.
The Unidentified Fantastic Flying Girl.
EDH
Xenagos, the God of Stompy
The Gitrog Monster: Oppressive Value.
Marchesa, Marionette Master - Undying Robots
Yuriko, the Hydra Omnivore
I make dolls as a hobby.
Card is bonkers. It's easily one of the strongest resource denial spells/engines in the game.
Yawg Win is solid but highly overrated in my experience. I actually prefer Seasons Past in the "fair" versions of the deck. Note that Seasons Past can recur lands (0 is a CMC) and it puts "big mana" to better use. After all, it's not just one Seasons Past. When you Demonic Tutor for Seasons Past then its the 2 drop that you recur so when SP gets moved back to the bottom of your lib you can tutor for it immediately. As such it's a Yawg Win every turn past a certain point. I also own Yawg Win but I actually prefer SP when I'm not playing the combo versions of the deck.
I doubt doubt it, but I also bet I could run it over with my combo-based Gitrog build. Games look very different when you have access to such a consistent kill. I'm not saying that combo decks are fun play against/a good fit for every meta, but I also don't think that it's fair to compare decks if you're not comparing "the best version" of them. After all, if the argument is simply "I can beat a bad version of X with Y" then that holds true for any deck. My argument is "Gitrog is significantly better than Tatyova because the best versions of Gitrog reliably win the game on turn 4 against any number of adversaries while still having a more powerful gameplan should the games go long." It's not fun and not everyone will be willing/able to play those versions of the deck as a result but it's not particularly close.
To give you an idea, one of the biggest cEDH tourneys last year was taken down by combo-based Gitrog piloted by Leptys. The guy has been playing the deck for years and is a monster at the tables. His primer is a must-read for people who want to see what the deck can do when it's pushed to its limits. He's the single best pilot in the world as far as the cEDH community is concerned so if you're interested in seeing the deck in its most broken form check out his stuff.
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'm not sure if you were implying that Legion's Landing "turns on" Mox Amber, but unfortunately it doesn't work that way (creatures only). Still, I agree the card is better than some people are giving it credit for.
I did eventually learn about that but it wasn't until after I wrote that blurb. I still decided to keep it though because I actually like LL in Armageddon decks. It's easy to forgo triggering it (you're not an aggro deck) and flipping it post Limited Resources/Armageddon is a big game. I did miss the fact that it only triggers off of critters/Walkers though.
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
I agree with you, this set looks like a ripper (especially when you factor in the previous 5 years and compare).
3 vs 4 mana is extremely significant. I'm a huge fan of cards like Sapphire Medallion and Baral, Chief of Compliance and Unwind is fairly bonkers when you're reducing its cost. This, to me, is very much like Arterial Flow vs Unnerve. Not a super fair comparison because Flow is strictly better but the idea here is that I don't think that the card is any good at 4 mana but when you drop it to 3 it suddenly becomes a legitimate playable.
I haven't actually seen a deck run multiple Gaea's Blessings since Memory's Journey and the Eldrazi were printed so I did mean singleton. There's usually a stronger mix of cards that you can run. That being said 2x Blessing is cheap and easy so maybe I'm not giving it enough credit. I'll tweak the language a bit to make it more ambiguous.
Corrected the Genesis Wave and LED pricing. I had no idea that GW came back in M25! Very happy to see that :).
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
They're both good cards - and what really gets me about these in the world of Dark Ritual - is they're both fairly cheap for now.
I'll be grabbing both of these, some memorials, aswell as a few others.
Cards I'm looking at not in Prid3s' review (there's not many either! ;));
Llanowar Scout.
For someone on Posts, Tron, Coffers etc., this card seems useful-ish using tutors like Sylvan Scrying, Living Wish, Expedition Map etc. I think it's fair to compare this to Explore. This card lends itself to responding to an opponent, I might potentially land a Glacial Chasm at instant speed, for example. Life from the Loam says hi too.
I'm going to be grabbing some of these.
Valduk, Keeper of the Flame
Very niche I know. But then I also play a R/W Sunforger deck with Puresteel Paladin & Stoneforge Mystic.
I'm not sure how this might work in that build, but the possibility of attacking with a mob of elementals each attack phase is making me think!
I'm gonna grab 1 and see how it goes.
Unless the Elf type or 1/3 body is relevant, just remember that you've always had access to Sakura-Tribe Scout and Budoka Gardener!
Yeah I was literally going to post the exact same thing as him. I actually agree with you and I legitimately run STS in my Bounceland decks with Burgeoning. Card is great. That being said you don't need more than 4 and there's zero incentive to pay more than 1 mana for the effect.
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
Blink of an Eye has been bumped up to a B grade. I maintain that the card is boring as paint but in terms of "bounce tier list" it's:
Chain of Vapor, Cyclonic Rift >>> Into the Roil, Blink of an Eye >>> irrelevant.
Even if the card is boring there's only ~6 playable bounce spells that you can even consider fielding (it being one of them) and so giving it a D grade is nonsensical. From a purely "I want to win games" perspective it's the third best option overall with the only reasonable competition being Winds of Rebuke.
Otherwise the only card that got a bump was Teferi, Hero of Dominaria. I need a more consistent grade scale for PWers and going forward it will look something like:
A: Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
B: Karn, Scion of Urza
C: Ob Nixilis Reignited
D: Freyalise, Llanowar's Fury
F: Ajani Goldmane
Niche: Daretti, Scrap Savant
Since Teferi is better than Ob Nox but worse than Karn that puts him somewhere in the C+/B-/B range and C+ seems about right.
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
Oh great, you made Capsize cry
I honestly can't remember the last time that I've played with or against that card but I guess it's still the go-to option for big mana decks and/or ones that feature Nevinyrral's Disk. I did say that there were ~6 playable bounce spells because those aren't the only 4-5 that you can play but they're basically the only ones that I see nowadays :P.
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold