Category: serious business

We made it, readers. It’s the last group of cards, the ones that tend to be the most universally applicable across the format: colorless cards. I wrote this part of the review with the intent that you be listening to The Final Countdown by Europe while reading it, so make sure you do that if you want the full intended experience.

You can find the previous reviews here:

White Blue Black Red Green Multicolored

I talked all about the rationale behind my reviews in the White review, so if you missed that, just go back and read that one. I’m not going to waste your time repeating myself. Except for the previous two sentences. And the last one. And that one.

Colorless

Amorphous Axe

There are times when an effect like this can be handy. For example, in your Yuriko deck you might want to make Tormented Soul or Thalakos Seer into honorary Ninjas, or maybe you want to turn Surrak Dragonclaw into a Bear. That said, you should still not play this card – you can get the same effect at a significant discount with Runed Stalactite, or you can just use Arcane Adaptation to induct your whole board! Conspiracy and Xenograft do the same thing, though you have to *really* want to do it to spend five mana. And if you get to pick, Conspiracy’s better than Xenograft, because like Arcane Adaptation it affects your creature cards everywhere, not just on the battlefield.

Arcum’s Astrolabe

Another snow permanent that isn’t embarrassing! It’s not a great card, but it gives you another hit off Scrying Sheets and it gives you some badly-needed fixing, because if you’re snow-themed then you don’t get to run many duals.

Birthing Boughs

Well, it’s a better way to make Sliver or Scarecrow tokens than Riptide Replicator and Volrath’s Laboratory. That’s not saying much. You need to be getting a lot of value out of a 2/2 changeling to want to spend this much mana to make one.

Mox Tantalite

Is the chance at having a Mox on turn four worth the possibility of drawing this card late, when it’s deader than a Darksteel Ingot? I don’t really feel like it is. On its own it ramps you to five mana on 4, which is something that Manalith also does. And that card’s basically unplayable. Run this card if you must, but don’t say I didn’t warn you when you draw it on turn thirteen and it Mox you as it sits uselessly in your hand (or in exile).

Scrapyard Recombiner

Sweet card! But it’s only really as good as the stuff it can tutor up. Did you know that Hangarback Walker is a Construct? So is Crystalline Crawler. Also Metalwork Colossus and Metalworker. Oh, and Myr Battlesphere. Scrap Trawler, too. Don’t forget Steel Overseer. Stuffy Doll? Yup, Construct. Traxos, Scourge of Kroog? Yep. Walking Ballista? Construct. Wurmcoil Engine? Well, it’s not, but guess who is: All five Gearhulks!

Sword of Sinew and Steel

Cards with repeatable permanent destruction always look better than they play, and I expect this to be no exception. You look at this and you think about how you’re going to get in every turn and wreck people’s shit, but what’s actually going to happen is you get one hit off and then nobody plays their toys and Bob decides that he has to kill you or the sword because your repeatable artifact kill means he can’t execute his game plan. It’s nice to get protection from two removal colors, and it’s kinda cute that you can punch someone in the face and then blow up an entirely different player’s stuff, but I don’t think that’s enough to save it.

Sword of Truth and Justice

You had me at proliferate. That’s one of the last words on the card, so it was getting pretty dicey there. I actually find that the Swords don’t make my decks as much as they used to. Proliferate is cool and I like that the two sides of the ability synergize with each other, but the truth is that I already have some Swords I don’t play that are justice good as this one, so I suspect this one would end up outside my decks, just like those.

Enemy-Colored Talismans

It’s about time! I’ve gotten less and less happy with mana rocks that cost three and only ramp me by one, but there aren’t that many good options at two if you really care about having colored mana. These give you another solid option, and I expect the nongreen ones to see a lot of play – they should probably go in most two-color decks that can run them. The BG and UG ones aren’t as important because green has lots of good options for ramp at two, but they’re still perfectly playable. Too late, it occurs to me that I should have included these in the multicolored review instead of in this one. Ah, the folly of youth.

Lands
Cave of Temptation

This is a replacement-level colorless utility land. Turning an extra land into two counters doesn’t seem game-winning to me, but there are decks that don’t mind running colorless lands that might want the effect.

Enemy Canopy Lands

Yeah, so, these are good. If you have them, run them. Nurturing Peatland is probably the most interesting for our format because it synergizes pretty well with The Gitrog Monster and Lord Windgrace. But unless I was running one of those commanders I wouldn’t go out of my way to pick these up. Also, I probably should’ve thrown these in with the multicolored review as well.

Frostwalk Bastion

I think all the snow stuff is cool, and this is no exception. But the bar for colorless lands is pretty high at this point, so I don’t think it’s worth just throwing in a deck that happens to be running snow basics. If you’re monocolored and/or have a snow subtheme, go for it. Especially if you’re green and can fetch this with Into the North.

Hall of Heliod’s Generosity

I do love me some Enchantress decks and I’m excited that this got printed. Do note that it’s typically more difficult for enchantments to end up in the graveyard than creatures or artifacts. Attunement is the classic way for the Replenish deck to fill its yard. Faith Healer is one of my favorite ways to sacrifice enchantments. There’s also Arenson’s Aura and its functional reprint, Teferi’s Care, there’s several Atogs, there’s some effects like Claws of Gix that just let you sacrifice any permanent, and there’s even Ertai, the Corrupted if you don’t mind drawing some hate. You can also look at enchantments that sacrifice themselves, like the Seals, Tattoo Ward, the enchantments from Urza’s Saga that stack verse counters over time (Serra’s Liturgy, Vile Requiem) and especially Sterling Grove. And if you’re sacrificing lots of enchantments, well, you’re going to make a Femeref Enchantress very happy. And yeah, I should’ve probably included this card with the white review.

Prismatic Vista

This is a neat card and I like that it exists, but ONS/ZEN fetches with duals or shocks are still better than this unless you’re many-colored snow or your meta hates hard on nonbasic lands. Also keep in mind that this isn’t *that* much better than Evolving Wilds or Terramorphic Expanse, so if your resources are limited (read: you don’t have a lot of money), they’re probably better spent elsewhere.

Top 3:
3. Enemy Canopy Lands
2. Hall of Heliod’s Generosity
1. Enemy Talismans

The canopy lands end up behind the Ruins of Heliod’s Stronghold because in most circumstances they’ll only be marginally better than whatever other dual you can scrounge up. Ramp is king, and the new talismans are going to be welcome in many Boros, Izzet and Orzhov decks, so they get the top nod. And I do mean top – see below. Now, if I’d put these three where they belonged instead of here, the enemy talismans would’ve taken the top multicolored spot, the Hall would’ve slot in at second in white, and enemy canopy lands would not have made the list. Over here in the colorless, I guess I would’ve picked Sword of Truth and Justice, Scrapyard Recombiner, and Prismatic Vista in some order or other.

Overall top ten:
10. Seasoned Pyromancer
9. Watcher for Tomorrow
8. Fallen Shinobi
7. Winds of Abandon
6. Springbloom Druid
5. Unbound Flourishing
4. Urza, Lord High Artificer
3. Yawgmoth, Thran Physician
2. Morophon, the Boundless
1. Enemy-colored Talismans

When ranking those, I tried to strike a balance between raw power and impact on the format, as measured by how often the cards will show up in decks. Watcher for Tomorrow and Springbloom Druid are less powerful than some cards that didn’t make the list, but they provide good value, aren’t expensive to cast and will likely be cheap to acquire, so I think they’ll see a lot of play. I think Urza’s stronger than Yawgmoth, but I think Yawgmoth pushes in some less-explored directions, so he got the nod over his ancient foe. Morophon is the highest-ranked commander because he just enables so many archetypes that didn’t really have a commander before, and I think that counts for a lot. But I have to give top billing to the enemy Talismans, which I think are about as auto-include as any card in the format gets for Boros, Izzet and Orzhov decks. In those guilds, you should be starting every decklist with Sol Ring, Signet, Talisman and only cutting them if you have a specific reason to do so.

Overall I’m less excited by this set than I was when I started out, which I guess was kind of the point of this review – I don’t want to go out and buy a load of new cards that look exciting when they’re probably just going to get cut. The only cards I see myself picking up without first building a deck with them are the nongreen enemy Talismans and Morophon, because I know I will want to use those sooner or later. I’m almost certainly going to build Ninjas as well, which gets a few great pickups and several more solid ones. I think most of the Slivers in the set are kinda disappointing, but they do at least get a powerful and fun commander to make up for it. And the new commanders in the set are all at least interesting to build around, even if some of them don’t exactly explore uncharted territory.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this trip through Modern Horizons with me. Have fun slinging some cards!

All right, here we are! It’s time to get down to business. This is the section where our bread gets buttered with delicious golden goodness. I’m not going to keep you waiting any longer.

You can find the previous reviews here:

White Blue Black Red Green

I talked all about the rationale behind my reviews in the White review, so if you missed that, just go back and read that one. I’m not going to waste your time repeating myself. Except for the previous two sentences. And the last one.

Multicolored

Cloudshredder Sliver

This is what I’m talking about! Forget clouds; plop one of these in play and your Sliver horde is going to be shredding faces. This is exactly what you want when you’re dumping a bunch of Slivers into play. I also love the callback to the original Skynight Legionnaire, both in art and flavor text.

Collected Conjuring

If you like this card, you’re in good company. I’m a sucker for random value cards like this. Most decks aren’t going to want it; you have to be very dedicated to sorceries to make it good. But I’ve had a Temur sorceries deck idea in my backlog, so I’ve no doubt I will try at some point. Unless this card somehow ends up $10 or more, in which case, the hell with that.

Etchings of the Chosen

If you play this card in your B/W tribal deck, you have chosen well. I mean, most likely, anyway. Sac outlets are good. Making your commander hard to kill is good. Having an anthem effect in a go-wide deck, which most tribal decks tend to be, is good. Three mana is reasonable. Run it!

Fallen Shinobi

This creature just looks fantastic. It’s got two relevant tribes, it’s got a potentially powerful damage trigger, the ninjutsu is only four mana and it’s got a sizeable body. Fallen Shinobi will put in some work in a lot of decks – you don’t have to care about Ninjas to want it.

The First Sliver

Finally, Slivers get their first five-color commander! I do love cascade, and cascading Sliver into Sliver into Sliver sounds like a blast. This is my favorite of all the WUBRG sliver lords. It’s pretty explosive, too. Sliver Legion is more explosive, but that’s like a hundred-dollar card now, apparently. If you make this your Sliver commander, you should pay a bit closer attention to your curve than you might otherwise. You might want to leave Striking Sliver out so that your two-drop Slivers always hit Galerider Sliver, for example.

Good-Fortune Unicorn

At first glance I liked this card a lot, but on further reflection I think it’ll be lucky to see play. It reminds me a lot of Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit. Anafenza’s just an anthem on a stick unless you’re comboing with persist, and the same is true for the Unicorn. If that’s what you’re doing and you want more redundancy, this unicorn’s for you. If not, play Anafenza first. I know she doesn’t trigger for tokens, but who the hell wants to put counters on tokens?

Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis

As a commander:
Nope. I don’t think I would want this to be my commander even if I could spend mana to cast it. On the board it’s just a big dumb trampler. Add the restriction that you can’t spend mana, and it’s going to get prohibitive to try to cast this with a commander tax. You can just let it go to your graveyard, and that’s what you should do when it dies, but you’re not going to be able to count on it always staying there.

In the 99:
At least you don’t have to worry about commander tax here, but I’m still off it. It’s just a big trampler. It can recur itself, but you have to have tons of creatures or you have to start eating your graveyard. In my experience, BG decks that are good at filling the graveyard want to use the cards that are in there, not delve them away for a big beater.

Ice-Fang Coatl

I’m not going to sugarcoatl this one – I don’t think there’s much to say about this card. Obviously if you’re snow-themed, it’s one of the best snow cards in your deck. If you’re exactly UG (which doesn’t have great spot removal) or you’re Snake tribal, put it in. Just make sure you swap out your basics for snow basics first.

Ingenious Infiltrator

Yes. This is exactly what I want out of a Ninja. This vedalken didn’t just infiltrate the palace; he also infiltrated my heart. If you’re playing ninjas and don’t run this, you are wrong.

Kaya’s Guile

Most of the time, you’re picking the first two modes. That’s a playable card; you need to have some way to toast peoples’ graveyards and it’s nice that it doesn’t hit your own. It’s also nice that your graveyard hate gets some incidental board value. I’m not excited about the opportunity to pay six to also make a dork and gain four life, but you know, more options are good.

Lavabelly Sliver

I think Lavabelly Sliver is interesting for the potential to kill outside of the combat step when you do something like Patriarch’s Bidding or Kindred Summons. Even if you don’t kill people outright, incidental lifegain really helps to keep you from randomly dying when someone finds themselves with 15 power on the board while all your creatures are tapped or dead. Probably better if Sliver Queen is your commander, since it’s way easier to dump out a mass of Sliver tokens than Sliver cards.

Lightning Skelemental

If you’re black-red and you were running Ball Lightning, you just got an upgrade. If you’re black-red and you were running Ball Lightning, why?

Munitions Expert

I’ve never run Goblin tribal, so I’m no expert, but this card seems fine in that deck. Terminate or Dreadbore are going to be better most of the time, so make sure you’re really committed to your theme or have a lot of tribal synergies. If neither of those things is true, look elsewhere for your kaboom.

Morophon, the Boundless

As a commander:
I like this card. It enables any tribal deck you could ever want. You can build goofy tribes like Boars, Drones or Rhinos. You can build an Angel deck that can run Maelstrom Archangel, or an Eldrazi deck that can run all the devoid stuff. Jund Werewolves. Sultai Faeries. Wet Mardu Vampires. Five-color Elves. You get the idea. The point is, with this card, you can have Morophon with tribal decks.

That said, it’s seven mana. That is a shitload of mana. So you’re going to want to make sure you have some ramp, because otherwise you’re going to be playing 50% of your games without your commander. Also, you ideally will want to get some use out of Morophon as soon as they hit the board. That means going wide so you can get a good attack in and/or running a bunch of C one-drops and CD two-drops, so you can follow up your 7-drop with some free dorks, maybe even go off with cards like Glimpse of Nature, Vanquisher’s Banner or Beast Whisperer. Elves seem like the best tribe for this, since they’re the most stocked with one-drops that you actively want to cast on turn one in Commander. Druids have a lot of overlap there, too, and also get you Noble Hierarch. Or, you know, get creative – the possibilities are boundless.

In the 99:
It’s hard for me to imagine running this in the 99 unless you’re planning to do something busted. Like, for example, make all your spells free with Jodah, Archmage Eternal. An anthem plus a cost reduction isn’t worth seven mana. So if you’re not doing broken stuff, just leave this guy on the bench and run The Immortal Sun instead.

Nature’s Chant

Aesthetically I’m glad they printed this card. I think that it’s kinda silly that by the rules of the format, this card is narrower in application than Disenchant or Naturalize, but so it goes. It doesn’t mean much for the format either way; there are better ways to get this effect in both colors.

Reap the Past

Another X-spell to double with Unbound Flourishing! Woohoo! I’m not sure this card is actually good, though if you’ve got a way to get rid of the duds it gets significantly better. One thing to note with this card is that you technically aren’t supposed to just shuffle your graveyard in this format; there are older cards that care about what order graveyards are in. If you’re not playing with those, your playgroup will probably be fine with you just ignoring that, but it’s just something to keep in mind.

Sisay, Weatherlight Captain

As a commander:
Is this the best five-color Superfriends commander now? I think she is. Note that her ability puts the card directly onto the battlefield. That’s pretty powerful, and there’s probably something unfair you can do with her in the same vein as General Tazri (though notably, Tazri only needs five mana on one turn to tutor, and Sisay needs eight). That said, she’s pretty narrow, so she’s probably not worth picking up if you just want a 5c goodstuff commander. If that’s the ship you’re planning to sail, choose another captain.

In the 99:
I’m not sure what kind of deck you’re running that you want Sisay but you’d rather always have access to some other five-color commander. Maybe you’re building legendary-matters Child of Alara and you want to have Sisay tutor for indestructible Gods and other legends or something? But that’s just worse than running Sisay and tutoring for Child. I dunno, feels like a stretch to me, but if that’s what you’re into, go right ahead.

Rotwidow Pack

It’s that last little bit, the “each opponent loses 1 life” thing, that makes me pay attention to this card. Four mana for a 2/4 reach is bad and the activation is expensive, but it does potentially add up to a lot of damage quickly. Spider tribal wants this.

Ruination Rioter

If you’re good at loading up your yard with lands (for example, by casting Ruination), you could end up having this thing go to someone’s face for 20. That’s a big enough effect that I think it’s worth considering this guy.

Soulherder

This is the ghost that lives in the Conjurer’s Closet. It’s slightly different from the closet because it returns the card to its owner’s control, which is relevant if you stole it. Knocking two mana off the Closet’s cost seems worth the tradeoff of making it more vulnerable, though if you’re UW and running Closet you probably just want both cards.

Thundering Djinn

Back in the red review I may have mentioned I love killing people by drawing cards. Yeah, that hasn’t changed. Five mana’s a lot, though. For one more, you get The Locust God. The Djinn does hit any target, so if you’re not drawing enough cards to kill someone outright, you can still kill their dudes.

Unsettled Mariner

This card is interesting. The trigger is relevant in almost any deck, regardless of tribal synergies. I’m not sure if it’s good enough in our format, though – how often is someone tapping out to target your stuff? Maybe it’s fine as a deterrent, kind of like Propaganda – Susan decides not to ping your token because she’d have to pay, so she pings Ellen’s token instead, that kind of thing. Doesn’t feel like quite enough to me; I think you need to have some tribal synergies going on to want this.

Wrenn and Six

A value engine I can drop on turn two? Sign me up! If you just recur a couple lands with this, you’ve gotten your mana’s worth. Watch out for lands that kill lands – if you play one of those, the table is going to come wreck Wrenn’s shit. Or maybe you can defend your planeswalker and will just Strip Mine every turn. You make me Six.

Top 3:
3. The First Sliver
2. Fallen Shinobi
1. Morophon, the Boundless

The top two were easy for me here, but the third pick was hard – I really wanted to pick Ingenious Infiltrator because I love Ninjas, but I didn’t feel like I could justify that. The First Sliver is a neat take on the classic 5c Sliver commander. You could even consider it as a generic 5c goodstuff commander; a 5-mana 7/7 with cascade is probably better than Cromat. Sisay’s pretty close here too; 5c superfriends isn’t exactly a new archetype but I like seeing more support for the general legendary-matters theme. On a different day, I could imagine her beating out the Sliver for me.

Fallen Shinobi, meanwhile, gets second because it’s powerful enough that it’s playable outside of Ninja decks while still being variable enough to provide a new and different play experience each time you get it out. But top spot has to go to Morophon, the card that enables approximately one million new and different archetypes. If you like tribal decks, you’re gonna want one of these. I don’t think it’s the best card in the set for Commander, but it’s pretty darn close.

Green, it’s my new obsession
Green – it’s not even a question
Green on the lips of your lover

Yeah, so that doesn’t work. But Green is my favorite color in the format. Moving on!

You can find the previous reviews here:

White Blue Black Red

I talked all about the rationale behind my reviews in the White review, so if you missed that, just go back and read that one. I’m not going to waste your time repeating myself. Except for the previous two sentences. Green cards!

Green
Ayula, Queen Among Bears

As a commander:
I love the idea of this card. It’s so great that it’s a 1G 2/2, and you can make bears that maul your opponents’ stuff. Just bear in mind that there aren’t actually that many Bears to work with, and a lot of the ones we do have are pretty boring. You’ll likely need to use a lot of changelings and Bear token makers. See if your playgroup will let you run Water Gun Balloon Game. Seriously, make sure you’ve actually looked at the bears you’re going to run before you go out and buy this card intending to build the deck.

In the 99:
I’m not sure what deck would want this. Some kind of Surrak Dragonclaw Temur theme deck maybe?

Ayula’s Influence

This is kinda cool if you’re Loaming or playing lands out of your graveyard. Or, of course, if you’re playing Ayula. You can combo with Groundskeeper to let you make as many bears as you have mana for. I don’t think it’s worth it unless you’re doing land shenanigans or if you need more Bears. Decks in our format tend to be mana hungry and can’t bear to part with their lands for measly 2/2s.

Collector Ouphe

When you cast this, someone at the table is going to say the second word in its name pretty loudly. There’s pretty much always a player with a million artifacts, at least in my experience. So if you like ruining peoples’ fun, this is your bear! Note: Not an actual bear. Do not run with Ayula.

Crashing Footfalls

The tokens don’t get haste, and that makes me sad. This is just too slow, and the payoff for cheating it out isn’t there, even in a populate theme deck. Save it for Rhino tribal, where it’s like the fifth best card in the deck.

Deep Forest Hermit

She’s pretty much a direct upgrade over her deranged cousin. You don’t have to choose between spending five mana or blinking her on your upkeep to keep her around like you did with him, giving her much better synergy with Conjurer’s Closet or your draw step. You were planning to blink her, right?

Force of Vigor

I’m basically forced to make a comparison with Return to Dust here. That card gets a lot of play. Exile’s better than destruction, but I’m willing to make that trade-off to be able to hold the spell up and kill two things at instant speed. I’m not sure how often it comes up that you want to kill artifacts and enchantments while you’re tapped out, but having the option is nice, I guess. That said, there’s millions of different Naturalize effects in green, many of which will likely be more synergistic with your deck than Force of Vigor because they are on creatures and you are green. You should probably have effects like this in your deck, but you don’t need to go out of your way for this one.

Glacial Revelation

If you want to expect to hit three cards off this, you need to be half snow. Fifty snow permanents seems like a tall order. If you run 40 snow lands, you might be able to find ten nonland snow permanents that aren’t embarrassing to put in your deck. It does put everything else in the graveyard, so maybe you’re ok with the average case being “draw two lands and mill four spells.”

Hexdrinker

A 2/1 for G is unplayable in the format. I can’t imagine playing a 3G 4/4 with protection from instants either. The nice thing about the protection is that if you untap with this you can sink your mana into it to turn it into mini-Progenitus and you’re pretty unlikely to get disrupted. Is a 6/6 Progenitus worth 8G? Not really, no. I mean, sure you could put this in your Snake tribal deck or your level up deck, but do you even want to? I’m off it – to me, this card looks like nothing but DEAD BEEF.

Llanowar Tribe

The mana cost is tough, but if you can consistently hit GGG on turn 3, this isn’t bad. Cultivate is a more consistent ramp spell, but the Tribe is way more explosive. I’ve run Shaman of Forgotten Ways and Somberwald Sage and been happy with them, and this card is comparable to those. Plus it’s an Elf!

Mother Bear

If you’re building the Bear deck, you’ll want this. It’s better than like half the bears in print currently. No joke.

Rime Tender

In a snow theme deck, this is a mana dork. It’s not the best ramp spell you can play on 2, but it’s not embarrassing. Later on she can give a snow creature pseudo-vigilance or give you multiple activations of your Scrying Sheets. If you’re going snow, you take what you can get.

Savage Swipe

You probably weren’t running Prey Upon, but if you were, this is better. It’s a fine roleplayer in a deck that cares about fighting or has creatures that do things when they get hit. I’m much more willing to grant leeway on a one-mana card than a five- or six-mana card. Just don’t swipe your ass with it when you cast it to kill someone’s only blocker and get in for a ton of damage, you filthy savage.

Scale Up

Single-target pump spells aren’t usually good in this format, but when they scale up to pumping your whole team as well, that’s a bit different. There’s tons of effects like this available and which ones are best are going to be heavily deck-dependent. I like Scale Up in decks with a lot of creatures that get most of their power and toughness from +1/+1 counters. If all your creatures are base 0/0, you are getting a lot of pump out of overloading this.

Springbloom Druid

I like this card. I think it compares pretty favorably to Farhaven Elf, and that card sees a good amount of play. Effects like this and Harrow are very helpful if you’re trying to run 3-5 colors on a manabase of mostly basics. And with new snow toys and several new five-color commanders in this set, you might be more interested in that than normal.

Tempered Sliver

This feels to me like a replacement-level Sliver. You can pretty much throw any Sliver that grants a semi-relevant ability into a Sliver deck and it’ll do stuff. But it’s not better than the ones that boost power immediately, like Muscle Sliver or Might Sliver. If you’re getting to hit someone multiple times with your army of Slivers, you’re probably winning regardless. So in this case, it’s ok to lose your temper.

Treefolk Umbra

I think any aura with totem armor is worth a look. If you’re just going straight Enchantress, this isn’t better than Boar Umbra. If you’re running Doran you could look at this; it’s good to have a bit of redundancy in case your commander gets removed. It’s not the worst in Arcades because you can throw it on your commander and it’ll protect him and make him kill in three swings. But it’s no High Alert or Assault Formation; if you throw this on one of your Walls, that wall still ain’t going anywhere.

Unbound Flourishing

This looks like a lot of fun to play with. The X-spell deck with Rosheen Meanderer is a deck I kick around now and again. I don’t think the effect synergizes with as much stuff as Doubling Season, which hopefully will mean it doesn’t end up as a $50 card forever. Do note that it only doubles X for permanent spells; it copies instants and sorceries. That’s great news for Fireballs that would be lethal anyway, and not as great for Genesis Wave (though it’s probably still pretty great).

Webweaver Changeling

It may look like a spider, but it’s actually secretly one of the best Bears ever printed. Same with Rhinos. Five mana’s too much outside of gimmicky tribal decks, though. Just play Thragtusk instead.

Winding Way

We’ve got a lot of variations on this effect, but I think this is mulch better than most of the alternatives if you’re a creature-heavy deck. I’m almost never happy to cast one of these green top-searchers on three, so two mana’s perfect. And most of the other twos only give you one hit, instead of giving you all of them.

Top 3:

3. Deep Forest Hermit
2. Springbloom Druid
1. Unbound Flourishing

Green got a lot of goodies, and it was tough to narrow the list down to three. Deep Forest Hermit is a solid new take on a classic favorite. Springbloom Druid is going to put in work in a lot of decks. I had to give the nod to the splashy X-doubler, though – the card looks like it’s going to do some powerful, silly things and be a ton of fun. Ayula did not make the list because her supporting cast sucks. Maybe in a few years we’ll have some better Bears and she can take her rightful place as queen.

You’ve read about the best, now read about the rest! Actually, I haven’t covered what I think are the best cards in the set for Commander yet. And I won’t have by the time you finish this part of the review, either.

You can find the previous reviews here:

White Blue Black 

I talked all about the rationale behind my reviews in the White review, so if you missed that, just go back and read that one. I’m not going to waste your time repeating myself; I’m going to tell you about Black cards! Uh, I mean, Red cards. Yeah, definitely didn’t copy/paste that.

Red
Alpine Guide

Don’t run this guide if you’re Green, unless you’re also snow-themed. If you’re not Green, I think he’s actually a decent ramp spell. He may be more vulnerable than a mana rock, but it’s good to diversify the ramp a bit so Vandalblast doesn’t ruin your day. Also note that he can fetch duals and sacrifice basics, so he can provide some permanent color-fixing even if the ramp is only temporary. And the ramp is definitely temporary – the game is going to get to a point where there is no player you can attack with the Guide and expect it to live, so plan for that eventuality. You could try to do something like Humble to make him lose the LTB trigger before he goes away, but that sounds more cute than good.

Aria of Flame

We had this effect already with Sphinx-Bone Wand, which could also hit creatures and didn’t put your opponents up a bunch of life. Seven mana is a lot more than three, though. With the Aria, you can cast it before you cast the rest of your spells. Is it worth it? Well, in a four-player game you’re giving your opponents thirty life. You won’t make that back until the eighth instant or sorcery you cast. Yes, there are proliferate shenanigans you can do, but it seems like a lot of trouble to go to. Just run Guttersnipe or something. Now, if you’re looking to combo this with False Cure or some such nonsense, go forth with my blessing.

Bladeback Sliver

I would expect if you had enough slivers to make this a serious threat, you’d be able to attack profitably instead of just sitting back and pinging. I’m not sure I would want this if it didn’t require being hellbent.

Cleaving Sliver

Four’s a lot, but that’s a hefty power bonus. It’s a slight upgrade to Bonesplitter Sliver since it doesn’t pump opposing Slivers. It might come up with Changelings, anyway. I would definitely run this and Bonesplitter over Battle Sliver and Blade Sliver, but I’d run all of Muscle, Sinew, Predatory, Might and Megantic over this. Combine with Ward Sliver to make dumb jokes about old sitcoms.

Fists of Flame

It’s not a card that goes in every red deck, but there are decks that want this card and that it will play well in, like Zada and Feather. Or you can draw an absurd amount of cards and Falcon Punch someone. That sounds like a good time, too. One of my favorite things to do is kill people by drawing cards. Plus, the name is fun to say.

Force of Rage

This card is not good in our format. It would probably not be worth running at two mana, or if you could cast it for free on your own turn. Run a spell that will make tokens that stick around instead. If you just want a free spell to trigger your Aria of Flame, I suggest looking at Cave-In or Pyrokinesis first.

Goblin Engineer

This is neat. We can play Goblin Welder, but decks that want Welder probably wouldn’t mind playing this, too. It seems tailor-made for Feldon of the Third Path decks, which get to put something juicy in the yard to copy like a Wurmcoil Engine and can then start getting value out of their token copies after they’ve swung.

Goblin Oriflamme

This could be reasonable if you’re tokens and aren’t white or green. The closest cards we have already are Cavalcade of Calamity and Flowstone Surge. You would probably still do better to use mass pump like Mercadia’s Downfall to surprise kill people out of nowhere, but it’s good to remember that this exists now. And of course, it’s an easy swap for Orcish Oriflamme, if you happen to have that in a deck that’s not restricted to white borders or cards printed before 1995.

Hollowhead Sliver

You’d have to have a (yeah, you know) to run this in your Sliver deck. Actually, tap to rummage doesn’t seem that bad, but I don’t think it’s what the Sliver deck wants to be doing. Maybe if you’re trying to combo off with Patriarch’s Bidding or Living Death? Still probably not.

Pashalik Mons

As a commander:
If you wanted to build a mono-red Goblin tribal token deck, you already had a couple Krenkos you could work with. Mons isn’t as efficient at generating a token horde as they are, but the ping trigger lets you attack at a different angle. It also lets you do some cute deathtouch tricks – give Mons a Basilisk Collar and watch the fireworks! There’s one thing that confuses me, though – I don’t see anything this card does that could be remotely confused with Anarchy.

In the 99:
Did you see up there where I was talking about Krenko? Yeah, if you’re Krenko, you want Mons. In fact, most Goblin tribal decks are going to want Mons, because most Goblin tribal decks are going to go wide. Mons doesn’t pump your team, but he does give you value when your board inevitably gets wiped. It’s less good if you don’t have free sac outlets, since you need your creatures to die for direction to sporadically and violently appear.

Planebound Accomplice

If you’re doing something broken with this, like Cloudstone Curio shenanigans with the various planeswalkers that produce RR, then go for it. But don’t just throw it in a Superfriends deck to play fair with it – you won’t accomplice much that way.

Ravenous Giant

You know it’s weird; I could swear that I remember Juzam being played by a black creature. It’s hard to find good-sized Giants for less than 5 mana, so I guess I could see playing this guy in a Giant tribal deck. But a vanilla 5/5 body isn’t exactly the greatest, so you probably only want him if you’re upgrading like, a vanilla 4/3 for 4 or some other draft chaff creature. And if you’re not Giant tribal, play a good card instead of this.

Seasoned Pyromancer

Spicy! Unless you’re specifically Goblins, this card compares pretty favorably to Hordeling Outburst. Sure, if you’re hellbent, this doesn’t make three dudes, but I think when you’re hellbent, you’d rather have one dude + Divination anyway. It’s cheap enough to have some play with madness, and this seems like another card that would be great in Feldon. Just be careful – the discard isn’t optional, so don’t cast this if it’s going to make you discard something you really need to hang on to.

Spiteful Sliver

I like this a lot, in spite of its Gray Ogre physique. The ability is a solid rattlesnake to ward off large attackers, and it’s going to make people holding red sweepers very reluctant to deploy them. Unless the person holding a red sweeper is you, and the sweeper you are holding is Blasphemous Act or Star of Extinction. If you run Spiteful Sliver, you may want to skew your mass removal accordingly.

Tectonic Reformation

We already had Trade Routes and nobody ever played it. Of course, blue has lots of ways to draw extra cards, and red doesn’t. This also triggers stuff that cares about cycling, and Trade Routes doesn’t do that either. And paying one mana to cycle your lands is way better than paying two. I could imagine running this in a deck that wants to get lands into the yard, like maybe Lord Windgrace, or in a cycling theme deck. But don’t just throw it in the 99 to get value out of cashing in extra lands or I’ll nail your decklist to your door.

Top 3:
3. Pashalik Mons
2. Goblin Engineer
1. Seasoned Pyromancer

The pickings here feel a little slimmer than the other colors, but it could just be that I mostly haven’t played and don’t plan to play the kinds of decks these cards go into. I picked Seasoned Pyromancer for the top slot because you can potentially just run him for value in a lot of decks. Goblin Engineer and Pashalik Mons both have a lot more specific requirements, and Mons doesn’t really let you do much you couldn’t already do with other commanders. I guess we do kinda-sorta get a new archetype here with Planebound Accomplice letting you make a goofy planeswalker Curio combo deck, but other than that, it doesn’t feel like there’s a lot to get excited about here.

Much to your chagrin, I’m back again! This part’s for you players out there who will do anything to win. You can find the reviews I’ve already written here:

White Blue

I talked all about the rationale behind my reviews in the White review, so if you missed that, just go back and read that one. I’m not going to waste your time repeating myself; I’m going to tell you about Black cards!

Black

Azra Smokeshaper

This is an interesting design direction for ninjutsu, but I don’t think it’s good. Ninja decks are looking to get value from getting creatures past blockers, not trying to keep their blocked creatures from getting smoked. If the defending player could block, you probably weren’t attacking them in the first place.

Cabal Therapist

Run this in any deck that wants a 1/1 menace for B that makes the entire table instantly hate you and come after you so hard that you’ll be having flashbacks a week later. If you want to sacrifice creatures to shred everyone’s hand, do it right and run Sadistic Hypnotist, you monster.

Changeling Outcast

There are decks that like evasive one-drops. It’s pretty easy to overlook cards like this, but it actually seems like a solid inclusion in Yuriko, the Tiger’s Shadow, for example – don’t forget that this thing is a Ninja. And if you’re just looking for warm bodies of whatever obscure creature type, one mana is the right price.

Cordial Vampire

If you’re a Vampire tribal deck that goes wide, this is an excellent two-drop for you and will play really well with your sac outlets. You are running sac outlets, aren’t you? There’s one thing to be careful of – this guy’s cherry filling appears to be leaking out, so make sure you play with sleeves.

Dead of Winter

If you’re a snow theme deck, you obviously want this. Outside of that context, Toxic Deluge is going to be better almost always. If you’re monoblack with all snow swamps, this might be better than Mutilate, though that ceases to be true if you’re using Urborg. I could also see this in a multicolored deck that isn’t snow-themed but has a lot of snow basics.

Defile

I love paying one mana to kill things. You can’t put this in any black deck, but if you’re heavy or mono-black, or are using tutors to abuse Urborg/Coffers, this is a very good removal spell. It doesn’t kill everything, but it’ll kill enough.

Dregscape Sliver

This card looks great. Two mana is cheap enough that you’ll be able to activate three or four times in a single turn without much trouble, and at that point you should be getting a pretty big hit in. Definitely not among the dregs, as far as Slivers are concerned.

Endling

It’s got a relevant creature type, but it’s super mana-intensive, endling any hope for me to put it in my deck.

Force of Despair

This effect is pretty interesting. Unlike with the other Forces, Force of Despair is unique and not easily replaceable with other cards. There’s quite a bit of nonsense that this can stop that might otherwise kill you, like mass reanimation, mass token generation, Maelstrom Wanderer and its friends, etc. etc. And if the nonsense is hasty, you get to see if it’s coming your way before you pull the trigger. If it’s not, feel free to let someone take a hit before you solve the problem. But, uh, you still need to cast the spell after that – don’t sleep on this and let the turn pass.

Graveshifter

I’ve had Zombie decks where Gravedigger almost made it, and that’s a tribe that’s well-stocked with good cards. Shift him to a weaker tribe like Azra or Aetherborn, and it just might be playable.

Plague Engineer

Seeing the Carrier creature type come back makes me irrationally happy, but I think it’d be too much work to engineer a board state where you’re happy playing this. Sure, you can wipe out someone’s horde of tokens, but you’re black – that is not a hard thing for you to do.

Ransack the Lab

A strategic color-shift. If your plans involve graveyard shenanigans, this is a solid cantrip. Black doesn’t have as many cantrip choices as blue, and usually cares more about the graveyard, so I expect this to see more play than its predecessor.

Return from Extinction

I frequently try to run Aphetto Dredging in my black tribal decks and end up cutting it. Maybe two mana for two creatures is the sweet spot? And this has the flexibility to get back something that doesn’t match your tribe if you need to. I usually try to slavishly adhere to my tribal theme, but even I had a Wirewood Symbiote in my B/G elves deck. I’m willing to give this effect another chance.

Sling-Gang Lieutenant

Well, it’s better than Marsh Flitter if you were running that in your Goblin deck. You probably weren’t, though. I do enjoy the reference to Siege-Gang Commander. It’s kind of a bummer that it doesn’t hit each opponent; as-is at four mana I don’t think this is quite good enough. And of course, you never want this unless you’re Goblins.

Throatseeker

I enjoy the concept of a Vampire Ninja. I’m skeptical that the card is good, but maybe if you’re consistently getting global evasion on your Ninjas, you’re going to end up in racing situations? Sounds dubious, and that stat line doesn’t wow me either. The set has given us a lot of new options for Ninjas, and I think we can afford to be more picky now than we used to be. Seek a better card.

Undead Augur

Two mana, doesn’t say nontoken? Great, I’m in. If you’re Zombie tribal or you just make a lot of zombies, then run it. Careful not to kill yourself. Pair with a sac outlet to make sure mass exile doesn’t ruin your day, and don’t forget that when your Zombie commander dies to the command zone, it does not trigger this.

Venomous Changeling

Look, it’s not good. Let’s not fool ourselves, here. But if you’re looking for an extra Killbot or Eye, you can do worse. A 1/3 deathtouch is a creature that does something. It’s certainly a better 30th tribe member than Impostor of the Sixth Pride or Moonglove Changeling.

Warteye Witch

The effect looks interesting until you realize we’ve gotten it already. We have Catacomb Sifter, we have Reaper of the Wilds and Shadows of the Past that see everybody’s creatures, and we have Midnight Reaper, Dark Prophecy and Grim Haruspex that will just draw you the cards. So if you’re a Goblin deck that makes tokens and sacrifices them for value, go ahead and play Warteye Witch. If you’re not, look at one of the cards I listed above and pick witchever one of those fits your deck the best.

Yawgmoth, Thran Physician

As a commander: Finally, we get the Father of Machines himself! Yawgmoth has a lot of stuff going on. You can build around proliferate (infect or otherwise), madness, -1/-1 counters or his draw engine. Sac outlets that don’t require mana come in handy even when they provide marginal effects, and this one says “draw a card.” He’s powerful and versatile, but unlike his nemesis Urza, I don’t see the words “BAN ME” written on the card. Play him! Do crazy stuff! Have fun!

In the 99:
Yawgmoth is multiple engines in one, and decks that deal in the resources Yawgmoth converts are going to do busted things with him. He interacts very nicely with Hapatra – as long as you have creatures to put counters on, you get to pay one life to draw a card! That’s a bargain. You can do something similar with a couple of undying creatures, or Mikaeus, the Unhallowed plus whatever. You can play him in madness decks, counter decks, Superfriends, token decks, Aristocrats decks… I mean, this is a super versatile card, and it’s only four mana. Also note he’s a Cleric, and one of the common themes of Cleric tribal decks is that they like to nom their creatures. So yeah, Yawgmoth’s great. Play him and your life will be compleat.

Top 3:
3. Force of Despair
2. Defile
1. Yawgmoth, Thran Physician

I don’t see how any of these cards aside from Yawgmoth could be the top pick. He’s fantastic. I’m not sure that he opens up new archetypes necessarily, but he’s a powerful glue card to pull a lot of different ideas together, and I expect him to see a lot of play. Defile may be the best one-mana black removal spell in our format, and though it doesn’t go in every deck, it can go in a lot of them, especially because so many black decks run Coffers/Urborg as part of their ramp package. Force of Despair rounds out the top 3 as a card that brings some new utility and can go in pretty much any black deck, though some might want it more than others. Most of the rest of the cards on the list are specific to individual tribes or narrower themes. And actually, I’m kind of surprised by how lackluster the monoblack Ninjas were – I think the best Ninja in black is Changeling Outcast.

Howdy folks! You can stop holding your breath now, because I’m back to review some blue cards. You can find the review I’ve already written here:

White

I talked all about the rationale behind my reviews last time, so if you missed that, just go back and read it in the white review. It’s time to talk about Magic cards!

Archmage’s Charm

This charm seems solid to me, though you pretty much need to be mono-blue to run it. A lot of charms have the problem that there’s only two modes that you realistically want to use. You’re unlikely to cast Dromar’s Charm for 5 life or Boros Charm for 4 damage. This one reminds me more of Bant Charm or Sultai Charm in that I’m happy with all three modes. The first two are obviously good, but even in our format of eight-drops, snagging a Sol Ring is a big game. Don’t hesitate to fire it off for extra cards if you’re low on gas.

Bazaar Trademage

The body looks sweet, but how often do you see Serendib Efreet do anything? It sounds bazaar, but maybe a three-mana 3/4 flyer isn’t good enough. Now, if you can abuse the Bazaar trigger, like if you’re madness or have a lot of flashback spells, this is a fine card. If you’re a deck that would run Bazaar of Baghdad if you had one – and yes, you can run it; it isn’t banned – then this might be a consideration.

Blizzard Strix

Ugh. I’m a big fan of snow; I almost exclusively run snow-covered basics and for a long time I put Scrying Sheets in every monocolored deck I built. I really want snow to be good. But five mana is where shit gets real in this format. For five mana you could be casting Aetherspouts, Evacuation, Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir, or Surrak Dragonclaw. And you have to be selective about the five-drops you put in your deck, because you will often be committing an entire turn to casting one. If you spend a turn flashing this in, do you feel good about it? It’s a 3/2, so it’s not like there’s a lot of ambush value here. I guess one thing to note is that it hits any permanent, so there’s a little more combo potential here – you can reset a planeswalker, remove a blocker, kill an Aura… but I want to spend two mana to do those kinds of tricks, not five.

Cunning Evasion

When you evaluate this card, keep in mind that it is a punisher card. Your opponents get to decide whether your creature gets bounced or not. Unless your opponents are way less cunning than you, they probably aren’t blocking Mulldrifter. That doesn’t mean it’s unplayable, but it means you need to specifically be attacking with creatures that your opponents really want to block, and that either won’t survive being blocked or that you would really like to be able to cast again. The archetypes that come to my mind that fit that description are Infect and Ninja tribal. I’m skeptical that Infect would want this effect over something like a pump spell that punches through a blocker, but I could be wrong. But Ninjas get to ninjutsu back out, and that could be sweet.

Echo of Eons

You know when it’s worth paying six mana for Timetwister? When it untaps six lands. This is likely an upgrade over Time Reversal if you’re running that; maybe in Nekusar? There will certainly be niche uses for this, but before you go out and buy one for your deck, ask yourself – would you run Timetwister if you owned one? It’s legal in the format, after all. And if you wouldn’t, why would you play a worse card?

Everdream

I’m more excited to draw a card for three mana than to make a vanilla 3/3 for 4, but it still feels like a bit too much. Here’s a dream for you, though: Splice a bunch of sweet effects onto like a pump spell and then Radiate it.

Faerie Seer

If you were expecting me to seer this card with a flippant remark, I’m sorry to disappoint you. I actually like Faerie Seer. Scry 2 isn’t quite “draw a card,” but it’s not that far off either. It’s got two relevant creature types, and I expect it to play wonderfully in a Ninja deck. Could be good in a blink deck, too. It’s no Mulldrifter, but you can get the Seer down on turn 1. There aren’t many one-drops that make profitable blink targets.

Force of Negation

I think this card is interesting… for Modern. In Commander, I find the best application for free counterspells is tapping out for something degenerate and keeping shields up, especially if said degeneracy involves drawing 20+ cards. If you’re tapping out on your own turn, Force of Negation doesn’t help you. We can already run Force of Will, Foil, Pact of Negation, Misdirection, and even Commandeer. I’m saying “no” to this one, and as a master of the arcane, I’m going to savor it.

Marit Lage’s Slumber

Hey, a snow card that isn’t embarrassing! On its own, landfall to scry 1 probably doesn’t make it; we already have Retreat to Coralhelm and people only play that to combo with the untap trigger. Of course, this also lets you make Marit Lage, which is pretty sweet. But not that sweet – the token does not have haste, so even if you have ten snow permanents, it’s going to be two turns after you cast this before you get to attack. It’s pretty likely someone will find a way to deal with your token by then. We’re still talking about a two-mana enchantment that gave you some value in the meantime, so it’s not horrible. It’s just not a reason to play snow. You should put this in your deck if you are snow, but you shouldn’t be snow so that you can run this.

Mirrodin Besieged

The Mirrans’ construction isn’t as efficient as what you’d find on Kaladesh, but I still like this card. It manages to reference the old Siege cycle from Fate Reforged while also being evocative of the mortal combat between the Phyrexians and the Mirrans. You can go the unfair route and build a deck laser-focused around loading up your yard and killing people as fast as possible, but it only kills your opponents one at a time, which means there are better ways to play unfairly. If you’re playing it fair, you need to make sure you have good ways to use Myr tokens. If you have this in your opener, you should probably just slam it and start getting value, rather than holding it for when you can immediately kill someone. Luckily, finding a use for Myr tokens isn’t difficult, so I expect most blue artifact decks would be able to make use of this. Another great thing about Mirrodin Besieged is that it can work early game with any hand – if you’re casting it on turn 3 and you’re loaded with artifacts, go Mirran. If you kept a 6-lander and have no follow up, go Phyrexian and start looting. It’s versatile, powerful, and only costs three mana. Run it!

Mist-Syndicate Naga

I love Ninjas and I’ve built a Ninja deck more than once. You probably don’t want Mist-Syndicate Naga outside of a dedicated Ninja deck, though. The Naga doesn’t provide as much value as a Ninja of the Deep Hours or Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni, but it does threaten to get out of hand pretty fast if there’s someone at the table that can’t block a 3/1. Or if nobody at the table can block your 3/1s…

Moonblade Shinobi

Like Mist-Syndicate Naga, you aren’t going to want this outside of a dedicated Ninja deck. I think it’ll play a little better than it looks, though – the flying token won’t be too hard to turn into another Ninja. I haven’t gone through and counted how many playable Ninjas there are now; if there’s too many, this one would be one of my first cuts.

Phantasmal Form

This card’s pretty forgettable, except for one thing – creatures that have a 0/0 in the bottom right that get all their power and toughness from +1/+1 counters are big phans of this card. Three mana, give Reyhan, Last of the Abzan and Endless One +3/+3 and flying, draw a card, smash someone’s face in. Fun for the whole family!

Phantom Ninja

We’re at the point where three mana for an unblockable creature that does nothing else isn’t really playable in a Ninja deck – if you just want something that’s hard to block, you can get that for less. So to want this, you not only have to be a Ninja deck, you have to specifically care about the Ninja creature type. Yuriko cares about that, so you likely still want this, but if you’re building around Vela or some other commander, this is not the Ninja you’re looking for.

Pondering Mage

Five mana is a tough sell for this effect, but at least you get a decent body out of the deal, unlike with something like Salvager of Secrets. It’s probably not good enough unless you’re Azami, Inalla, or Naban. Just be careful not to run too many durdly five-mana ETB creatures. If you’re not tribal, this is competing with cards like Mulldrifter, Sphinx of Lost Truths and Cloudblazer, and it doesn’t look good next to those. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to stop talking about this card, because I need to go back to the lab to prepare for tomorrow night.

Rain of Revelation

It doesn’t rain supreme as the best four-mana instant card draw spell – Fact or Fiction and Glimmer of Genius are both usually going to be better, especially if you’re digging for something specific. But I think it’s worth keeping in mind that this is available now, and if you’ve got madness or graveyard stuff going on, this might even be better than Jace’s Ingenuity. If you’re running Dark Bargain and are blue, this is a pretty easy upgrade.

Scour All Possibilities

I looked at this card and I wanted to like it, but then I scoured all possibilities for effects like this we can already play, and I realized that I just don’t. We get to play actual Preordain and have several other good options at one mana. At two, Impulse and Anticipate let you leave up a counter and Strategic Planning fills up your yard. This is better than Planning if you don’t care about your graveyard, but I’ve never had Planning make my deck when I didn’t. Think twice before running this.

Scuttling Sliver

I was all set to say that the most interesting thing about this card is that it’s the first Trilobite, but apparently it isn’t! Electryte and Shore Keeper are also Trilobites! You learn something new every day.

Smoke Shroud

Aren’t going to want outside a dedicated Ninja deck, blah blah yadda yadda. I think this is probably better than Sai of the Shinobi, for what that’s worth.

Tribute Mage

Trinket Mage fetches Sol Ring and that’s usually better than any mana rock this can fetch. This does fetch a nice pair of boots, though. And there’s probably other stuff in your deck to fetch, too. We have an embarrassment of Mages at this point (that’s actually the collective noun), so you have to look carefully at your artifacts and figure out which ones you’re really going to want to be able to tutor for. I don’t think you want to run all four – you have to actually put artifacts in your artifact deck.

Urza, Lord High Artificer

As a commander:
Yeah, this card is nuts. It doesn’t really open up any new archetypes; there are already several commanders that lend themselves to mono-blue artifacts, but this might be the most busted of all of them. I do love the callbacks to Tolarian Academy and Temporal Aperture. I wouldn’t want to shell out 40 bucks for this, though, because I’d be worried it’d get banned right out from under me. But some folks like to see how close to the sun they can fly, and if you’re one of those, Urza’s plenty high enough for you.

In the 99:
Throw him in your Breya or Saheeli deck and he’ll do a bunch of stupid stuff. His token seems like a pretty good Brudiclad target, too. Look, what do you want me to say? He’s probably one of the best nonartifact cards to put in your artifact deck.

Watcher for Tomorrow

Remember all that stuff I wrote about Pondering Mage earlier? You can just ignore most of that and run this instead. There are situations where Pondering Mage is better, but that’s not enough to offset the three extra mana except maybe in Azami, because she really wants her Wizard buddies to enter the battlefield untapped.

Winter’s Rest

If you’re dedicated snow, this is a playable removal spell and might even be better than On Thin Ice because it doesn’t get hard-countered by Strip Mine. If you’re not dedicated snow, leave this in the box with the rest of its cursed narcoleptic ilk.

Top 3:
3. Mirrodin Besieged
2. Watcher for Tomorrow
1. Urza, Lord High Artificer

Urza’s absurd and is easily the best blue card in the set for Commander. Mirrodin Besieged is better than Watcher for Tomorrow, but it only goes in artifact decks. Watcher’s good in tribal decks, but I can see plenty of blue decks just running him for value, and that’s why I gave him the nod. Overall, blue got some good stuff. We’re not really looking at any new archetypes, but if you’re a fan of blue artifact decks, cheap value creatures, or Ninjas, then you’ve got some new and exciting toys to play with.

Good evening, folks. Poster KingRamz here. I pretty exclusively play Commander and Limited, and I have a problem – I fall in love with new cards constantly. Every time Wizards prints a new set, I ooh and ahh over all the new goodies and I start dozens of decks in my head and I think of all the reasons you might want to play a card like Glorifier of Dusk over, you know, a good card.

Recently, I had an epiphany. The Commander format is massive, but most of the cards in it are mediocre. Unexciting. Some of them are downright shit-ass terrible. And you know what? This is true of the new cards, too! I used to wait for prices to bottom out on a new set, then grab all the cards that looked interesting to me, figuring I’d save money that way. So I bought a lot of cards that got thrown in a lot of piles that they ended up getting cut from because they just didn’t bring enough to the table. Nowadays, I’m saving a lot more money by not buying the cards at all. Not until I’ve got the deck built and I know the card is going in, anyway. So I thought it might be fun to review all the new cards to help figure out ahead of time which ones are actually going to make it into a deck, and which ones are just going to end up as the 65th card every time. Or the 80th. Or the 129th.

If I didn’t talk about a card, you can assume I think it’s obviously unplayable (or at least, as unplayable as cards get in Commander).

Answered Prayers

First, let’s get this out of the way: do not play this for the life gain. If you want that effect, you can get it for one mana on Ajani’s Welcome. You probably also want to consider Soul Warden, Soul’s Attendant and Auriok Champion. No, if you’re playing this, it’s because it’s a 3/3 flier that’s hard to kill with sorcery-speed removal. And that doesn’t really seem good enough – compare to Halcyon Glaze, a card which sees no play. If you’re looking for an early drop for your Angel deck, this card is not the answer.

Astral Drift

We already had Astral Slide. This is a slight upgrade overall if you’re a cycling deck, though realistically you’ll probably just run both. If you aren’t a cycling deck, Acrobatic Maneuver exists. This is probably better – you get to dodge mass removal and possibly remove a blocker, versus untapping a creature to block and triggering an ETB immediately. But I wouldn’t pay more than bulk price for this just to upgrade that card.

Enduring Sliver

Outlast for two mana is not good in this format. If you try to use Enduring Sliver to outwit and outplay your opponents, you are not going to survive.

Ephemerate

Cloudshift isn’t quite dead because it can blink Threatened stuff back to you to let you keep it permanently. But I mean, it’s pretty much dead. If you’re blink, strongly consider this card. You won’t find a better rate on two blinks anywhere.

First Sliver’s Chosen

Granting a bunch of creatures exalted is a powerful effect, and we’re all into new, shiny things. But it’s five mana, and for five mana you can cast Coat of Arms and then all of your slivers get to attack with an Exalted bonus.

Force of Virtue

This card doesn’t make me think any impure thoughts. For one more mana you get Dictate of Heliod. Yeah, you can cast it for free if it’s not your turn, but how often does that actually come up? The only thing that comes to mind is wanting it in response to damage or toughness-based mass removal, but this isn’t helping your stuff survive Blasphemous Act or Star of Extinction.

Generous Gift

Is this the first mono-white spell that can destroy target land? I think it might be. I don’t think that’s enough to save this card, though – white decks have plenty of tools to remove troublesome nonland permanents that don’t give your opponent the gift of a 3/3. The trick of killing your own thing to make a 3/3 is cute, but I’ve never really had it come up with Beast Within. Remember this card if you’re building a white deck that wants to make sure its opponents have creatures for some reason, but otherwise, just let the sleeping elephant lie.

Giver of Runes

Sure, I’m in for some runes. Turn one gets wasted so often in this format; I love one-drops that are still relevant on turn ten. We already had Mom, and she’s better than the Giver because she can protect herself, but any deck that wanted her probably also wants Giver (barring Human tribal). There’s enough artifact decks and Eldrazi running around that the colorless is not irrelevant, though the extra toughness usually will be unless your meta is pinger-heavy. I wonder if that Kor tribal deck I kick around periodically is at critical mass yet?

Irregular Cohort

Four mana for two warm bodies of whatever offbeat tribe you’re trying to build around is… not good, but irregular tribes like Scarecrows will take what they can get. At least it’s better than Changeling Sentinel. Just make sure you understand what you’re in for if that’s the bar a card has to clear to make it into your deck.

King of the Pride

Goes in a Cat (or Changeling) tribal deck and nowhere else. If you’ve got a Cat tribal deck, pick one of these up and put it in. No worries.

Lancer Sliver

Three’s too much. Run Striking Sliver or Talon Sliver (or both). For three mana you can get haste, Naturalize or shadow instead.

On Thin Ice

If you’re not snow-themed, the reasons to play this over Swords to Plowshares or Path to Exile start looking pretty thin. It’s not that hard to kill a basic land in this format. If you are snow, then sure! It’s cool to be able to hit your removal spell off Scrying Sheets.

Ranger-Captain of Eos

I dunno, this guy isn’t doing it for me. If you’ve got one-drop creatures you want to go find, this guy’s underling will give you better value. I guess if you want to do something filthy on your turn you can sac him and make it a lot harder for your opponents to interfere with you. But if you want to lock your opponents down, there’s better ways to do it.

Reprobation

If you enjoy playing cards for meme value(you reprobate), this is a playable removal spell. It doesn’t compete with the premier white removal spells, but there’s something to be said for slapping it on someone’s Surrak Dragonclaw and loudly declaring said khan to be a coward. If that’s not what you’re into, I suggest looking at Darksteel Mutation instead – it’s a way more annoying way to lock down an opposing commander, since a lot of commonly-played sweepers will not put the afflicted creature back in the command zone.

Segovian Angel

It’s so hard to find good early drops in Angel decks; you might actually want to run this if you have enough stuff that cares about Angels. I mean, you probably don’t, but dammit, it’s a one-drop Angel! Yes, this card has definitely hooked me and run a line ’round my tongue. But outside of theme decks or a deck that just wants as many cheap evasive creatures as it can get (like maybe Derevi), don’t bother playing Segovian Angel – you’re just not going to get a card’s worth of value out of her.

Serra the Benevolent

Planeswalkers are pretty bad in Commander because people will take any opportunity they get to kill them for free. They soak a lot of hits from stray fliers or from early ramp dorks, and if they’re really threatening, the table will work together to remove them. Serra the Benevolent is different, though – she’s secretly a Serra Angel that comes with a free planeswalker. That’s something you can spend four mana on and feel pretty good about. Her ultimate makes you harder to kill but doesn’t directly threaten to kill anyone, so your opponents might be less inclined to spend resources to remove her. I wouldn’t run her unless my gameplan involved attacking with multiple fliers, but I could see her making it into an Angel tribal deck or a deck based around populating sweet tokens. And I mean, we’ve wanted Serra forever, and here she is! As for you lore nerds out there who’re upset we didn’t also get Feroz: You’re banned.

Sisay, Weatherlight Captain
This is a Commander set review. Sisay is a WUBRG card. She’s with all the other multicolor stuff.

Splicer’s Skill

This card looks really interesting just because we’ve wanted to be able to splice onto anything for fifteen years now. Four mana is too much, though. I’ve never cast an instant or sorcery in Commander and thought to myself, “You know, I really wish I could also cast Hill Giant right now.”

Valiant Changeling

The body is reasonable, but the price isn’t. If you’re filling out a sparse tribe like Kithkin and you can reliably cast this for three or four mana, give it a shot. It’s probably pretty good if you’re doing a Changeling theme deck, and there’s some stuff like Kalemne or Rush of Knowledge that play nicely with 7 CMC spells that cost two or three mana.

Vesperlark

It doesn’t go infinite as easily as Reveillark, but there’s still plenty of value to be had here, if you’ve got the right mix of creatures. I wouldn’t run this if I didn’t have… oh, I dunno, at least ten potential targets.

Winds of Abandon

I really like the flexibility of this card. Two-mana sorcery Path of Exile is acceptable if unexciting. It gets a lot more interesting when you add a six-mana Plague Wind mode. Make sure you focus on your opponents with full grips first, because if you let them untap they’re going to dump their hands and you’re gonna have a bad time. I think it might be fun to cast this with something in play that punishes land drops – Ankh of Mishra, Polluted Bonds, Zo-Zu the Punisher, Sire of Stagnation, you get the idea.

Top Three

3. Vesperlark
2. Giver of Runes
1. Winds of Abandon

Winds is the only card I think has potential to go in most decks that can run it; it drops off pretty sharply after that. Serra’s close and when I first typed out the list she was third, but I think Vesperlark is more universally applicable. Ephemerate, Astral Drift and King of the Pride only go in one archetype, though I think they’re great in their respective archetypes. Overall, we get a solid addition and some role-players; there isn’t anything here that’s going to make waves in the format. White was the worst color in Commander before Modern Horizons, and it will continue to be so.